Freedom of expression and media freedom

The two are not quite the same thing.

 

THE NEWS about the telephone-hacking scandal involving The News of the World broke out in July 2011. Extensive coverage tracked the investigation and hearings and the impact on Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. But the story has died as news.

Newsrooms did not follow the discussions provoked by the controversy in the classrooms and lecture halls of UK and perhaps, other countries. In November last year, the Financial Times gave space to an essay by philosopher and member of the House of Lords, Onora O’Neill, that suggests that there may be some re-defining to be expected in the discussion of the concepts as well as the use of these terms.

O’Neill had given the BBC Reith lecture series in 2002. She delivered in November last year, the Reuters memorial lecture speaking on the topic: the rights of journalism.

Some have found her thoughts worrying, as she raises statutory options that most press freedom advocates cannot accept.

I think her arguments deserve to be heard.

In the FT article, O’Neill revives concerns about the merging of the freedom given to the individual as his or her right to free expression and opinion and the freedom granted to powerful institutions and media organizations. Her point–such media organizations are “simply not in the business of self-expression.” She points out the difference between freedom of expression and opinion and the freedom of organizations whose business it is to gather and disseminate news, and related commodities, talk and commentary.

There are forms of self-expression that have nothing to do with the search for truth, such as granted to artists. Freedom of self-expression, protected for individuals speaking or even writing, depends on the correction of wrongful speech by exposure to other ideas, to debate and the exchange with others differing in opinion or claims.

“We can afford to ignore a great deal of inaccuracy, insincerity and gaps in the ways individuals express themselves, and to take issue only when their self-expression risks harm to others.” Please note that many free expression advocates find themselves defending even the kind of “hate-speech” that has in some countries stirred communities to ethnic riots and even genocide.

She points out that those engaged in journalistic enterprise need to be held to higher standards. “(But) analogous defects in media communications would frequently be risky, even damaging. Both false and unreliable reporting, and reporting that misrepresents its aims and its evidence, can silence, confuse or marginalize important issues or voices can promote manufactured or manipulated ‘news’, and can make it hard or impossible for audiences to judge what they read, hear or view.”

She asserts the justification of press freedom, as necessary for that level of civic and political discourse necessary for a democracy to function.

How then do we respond to the massive failure of this purpose and, as O’Neill’s catalogue of failed standards reflects, to the perversion of journalistic purpose that drives the mega-empires of media?

“If the media misrepresent serious matters as a contest of celebrities, as scandal and sensation, they may promote a culture of apathy, cynicism or mistrust and fail to convey to their audiences what matters and what is trivial. Equally, it they misrepresent the riff and raff of celebrity activity, as serious matters, they may mislead in other ways.”

The reign of ratings, the network wars, the domination of celebrity news and various private matters–these have serious consequences. Even more damaging, the effects of journalistic malpractice, such as the reports based on spin which has become pretty standard practice and other forms of manipulation of stories to favor one or another political personality or party?

So far no one has yet raised the possibility of lifting the protection for these as privileged communication.