Media Ethics Is A Silly And Vitally Important Debate

Michael Hedges November 17, 2011 Follow on Twitter

Turn it one way and a free press is the essential voice of democracy. Turn it another and it’s an emblem of power. At a different angle it’s just a big business. Ethics are important no matter which way you see it.

Another inquiry spurred by allegations of illegal activities at the now closed UK tabloid News Of The World officially commenced (November 15) under the leadership of Lord Justice Brian Leveson. UK Prime Minister David Cameron impaneled the inquiry in July to “return with recommendations for the regulation of the press, of ways to ensure a free press which is nonetheless held to the highest ethical standards.” There are other inquiries on going, at least three involving the Metropolitan Police.

“From the very start I made it clear that I fully consider the freedom of expression and freedom of the press to be fundamental to our democracy and fundamental to our way of life,” said Lord Justice Leveson in opening remarks. “But that freedom must be exercised with others in mind.”

Views on regulating news media are holographic, image reconstruction appearing three-dimensional. The printed press enjoys, in most democracies, enshrined privilege dating back several centuries to prevent Dukes and Bishops from shutting down printers. Broadcast news media has had more restriction based on assumed breadth of coverage and government license. The Web, in turn, is a free-for-all in the great mosh-pit of information. Assumed in the legal imperative for press freedom is that democracy prevails when the public is well informed, restriction countervailing that fundamental right.

Arguments favoring the public’s right to know fell hard as allegations mounted that employees or agents of News Group Newspapers, ultimately owned by News Corporation, surreptitiously and illegally accessed privately owned communications devices for the assumed purpose of scraping up a bit of headline filling gossip. Reporting the foibles of the rich and famous has always sold newspapers and, as noted by UK newspaper Daily Mail editor-in-chief Paul Dacre, don’t start wars. Secrets, though, are inherently undemocratic and politicians bristle when news media apply the same level of scrutiny to them as, say, Lady Gaga. Suggestions abound that this inquiry into the ethics of UK news media entered the political prism with the wide reporting of dodgy expense claims of members of the UK Parliament.

Ethics might be this decade’s central theme. Thank you, bankers. Thank you, Silvio. Thank you, Rupert. By focusing on ethical lapses within the news media, though nothing excuses illegality, the rich and powerful are able to bend those light waves away from inconvenient knowledge. Also unpersuasive are arguments that the news media’s requisite competitiveness, dazzling in the UK, should allow journalists, editors, directors and CEO’s to cross a certain line. In ethics the line is clear.

“The press holds the powerful to account and is therefore an important curb on potential abuse of executive and corporate power,” said Leveson inquiry council Robert Jay in his opening statement. “At its best, the press espouses unpopular causes and gets to the bottom of scandals, which would otherwise be left uninvestigated. It is essential in a functioning democracy that the press be permitted to discharge these vital functions.”

Keeping to its literal mandate the Leveson inquiry will, eventually, make a legal statement about keeping or booting the self-regulatory Press Complaints Commission (PCC). “We certainly don’t want the imposition of ludicrous quangos or statutory controls or anything of the kind,” said UK justice secretary Kenneth Clarke to the Society of Editors conference (November 14). 

A quango is a quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization. These are government-funded agencies providing specific public services, sometimes with executive power, like media and telecom regulator OFCOM, which, among other tasks, oversees broadcasting. Clan Murdoch has long demanded limiting OFCOM’s powers. The Conservative UK government also dislikes quangos and has cut many, like the UK Film Council. 

Criticizing the media, admitted Mr. Clarke, “seemed to get in the way of the currying of favor that politicians have engaged with editors and proprietors down the years.”

The discussion of whether or not governments should impose regulation on the 4th Estate is hardly limited to the UK. The Australian government has launched an inquiry into media ethics, partially in response to the overseas drift of the NOTW scandal. Media executives have been called to defend their journalistic and business practices. News Corporation owns several newspaper titles in Australia. Earlier this month Rupert Murdoch named himself chairman of News Ltd, publisher of News Corps Australian titles.

Predictably, Australian media executives rallied against the notion of stronger regulation. Self-regulation is, said Fairfax Media CEO Greg Hywood in testimony (November 15), “way better than the notion of bringing government into play.”

Not limited to North Korea, Venezuela and Belarus, governments – even tacit democracies – have taken the means of imposing, say, preferences on news media organizations. The Israeli Knesset Economic Affairs Committee is set to vote again (November 16) on a request of independently owned television station Channel 10 to delay royalty and license fees due the State. Last week the committee, controlled by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, voted against postponing the fee payments, which the station’s owners said would lead to its closing. Channel 10 was launched nearly 10 years ago to compete with the only other privately owned television station Channel 2 and Israeli state broadcasting. It’s always been under financial stress yet has produced “lively” newscasts, reported Haaretz (November 15), including investigative reports embarrassing for Mr. Netanyahu.

In recent weeks media organizations have been shuttered in Liberia, Ecuador’s president Raphael Correa continued to threaten private sector media and the Council of Europe, again, strongly condemned the jailing of journalists in Turkey.

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