The First Amendment; British Look At Media

The First Amendment and a Free people; A weekly examination of civil liberties in the media in the 1970s. Produced by WGBH Radio, Boston in cooperation with the Institute for Democratic Communication at Boston University. The host of the program is the Institute's Director Dr. Bernard Rubin. Host: This edition of The First Amendment and a Free People is being recorded in the studios of the British Broadcasting System in London. My guest is Henry James, the Director General of the Central Office of Information. The Central Office of Information does information work for all government departments and is nonpartisan in nature. It is like the United States Information Agency except that it has enormous domestic responsibilities and is... I would think, Henry James, if I'm not incorrect, very much concerned about improving British trade and economic opportunities as one of its central features. Is that not correct?

Henry James: Absolutely right. Yes. The the overseas role of the central office of information in fact represents something like three fifths of the work. That's to say the productive work of the staff of the Central Office of Information. Though you will not be surprised to know that three fifths of the budget is spent on domestic interpretation. Largely, of course, because in the domestic area, there's a very heavy advertising budget which runs away with money which is not staff intensive. But three fifths of the people in the Central Office of Information are concerned with the projection of Britain overseas largely, or frequently in the context of trade, with the simple objective of sharing (hopefully dispassionately) that Britain is still an innovative nation and potentially a reliable trading partner. Rubin: Right, now, I want to stop at that point to introduce you a little bit. I don't want to be too modest. Mr. James is a career civil servant with thirty years in government communication. He has served in over nine departments

and has been in all possible jobs.... that one can be in the non-policy but interpretive managerial side of the British government in information. He has been press secretary for example, in the press secretariat, of three prime ministers. Douglas Hume, Prime Minister Wilson, and Prime Minister Heath. He is now Director General as I say and the last thing I remember when I was here four years ago or six years ago, I've forgotten, was a flap caused in Parliament about the COI and they said the Central Office of Information is engaging in politics because it has put out pamphlets which are distributed through the post office about possible British entry into the European Economic Community. There was a parliamentary discussion and COI was completely exonerated as I recall. Is that the short history of that? James: It is absolutely right, yes.

The central office of information in that context would simply have reflected either the decision or the tacit will of parliament and that would be the criterion upon which I would judge any information that we put out from the Central Office of Information. Rubin: Well certainly when we look at the reexamination of the potentials for the United States Information Agency, we might do very well to look at the history of COI because I'm one of those who believe that the United States Information Agency should follow the non-partisan guidelines through all administrations and that it ought to do a great deal more in the commercial area. I think this is one, one gap when we have interpreted foreign policy in a very narrow sense. I would like to turn our discussion, Henry James, to the question of press rights, as you see it, as a professional person in the information business for lo these many years. First, I would like to ask you your opinion of what really seems to be the thesis of Phillip Knightley

in the well-known book, "The First Casualty" which was published in 1975 by Harcourt Brace and he talks about correspondents in wars over the last 150- 200 years and he discovers that in the majority of the situations, correspondents did not as a group, deliver the truth.... War correspondents, but acted as propagandists either because they were too close to their own governments, too close to a political party, or they assumed the role of non-military combat associates. In some cases they even took up arms and had a go at the enemy themselves. Do you think that if that thesis is correct...(I tend to agree with it). Do you think that the modern correspondents that you are dealing with in this post Vietnam era, in this post-Watergate era, has improved? Does he sense his job any differently than he did before?

I'm talking about the first rate people. James: I take your point and I would extend it to below the first rate people if you wish. Because I do sense in many ways, a change of emphasis. I think one has to discriminate between the attitudes of nationals in whatever profession-- in a wartime situation and in a peacetime situation. My own impression is that, post Watergate, and let's not minimize the effect of Watergate in the western world on relations between the media, the free media we will call them, hopefully free media in the western world as I believe them to be generally, and institutions of state, whether they be governments or indeed institutions of democracy flowing from democracy. I think what I have sensed myself in the last four or five years has been an increasing awareness in the media of their necessity to fulfill the role of devil's advocate. We've always held in this country in Britain the feeling that the media have a love/hate

relationship with the government of the day. They are essentially sceptical. They are...their first role perhaps, is that of critic, or at any rate to test the viability of the arguments of government, whichever government, as a normal role of the Democratic process of communication. I think this has perhaps become accentuated a little uh in this sense and I think there are other factors besides Watergate, not least the speed of communication today which does lead one into the terribly difficult situation as a reflection of the physical law that action and reaction are equal and opposite. I've served for the last 30 years as a spokesman for, or an interpreter for government to media who are in their turn going to interpret. And I detect a greater sceptability or scepticism from the media in that... which I utter on behalf of the governments whichever government I serve, than was the case let's say 10 years ago.

Rubin: Is this because the public itself is skeptical and critical of..of or of the belief that it might have been misled in major moments of history? James: I think this is absolutely right. And the press believed quite rightly that they have a role to play in putting a litmus paper test as I tend to call it, to the veracity of whatever the government of the day or... And I do extend this to institutions. Academic institutions, included. There is that initial skeptical approach. Now I believe that is fundamentally healthy but if it is carried to the extreme, that there can be no truth in the institution... And if you start from the supposition that the institution is, in itself, has a continuing malevolent role, then you reach a position of danger and indeed of almost a nihilistic approach. I was in your country earlier this year and I

spoke to a Midwest University on this particular subject. I was asked particularly about the situation post Watergate. And I stressed that there is, I genuinely believe, there is a danger in the inability of the free media for a number of reasons. One, the atmosphere of the time, which is that there is a credibility gap which has to be overcome, two, the demands on space in the free media. We tend to say, rather flipply, that the media... there, they need more and more material. But in fact the demands on space at a time of professional communication, where the most minor institution now has a professional lobby working on the editor or editors. The demands on space mean that on the whole, it is probably true that the free media have not now the capacity to convey for governments, all the outpourings of government which now take place when government itself has become more and more involved, on both sides of the

Atlantic in the day to day lives of individuals. Some information from government is so great. Rubin: Some of the critics, I believe it was Lord Chalfont was it? James: Uh huh. Rubin: Reported in an article, a major article in The Times of London the other day, his opinions that the British people at least ought to take the view that revolution is not necessarily impossible. No, it was a theoretical article. He wasn't saying that it's happening tomorrow or that it will happen at all. But that forces were afoot in which the press among other institutions had a part... that we're leaving people bereft of stable points of reference. (I'm not paraphrasing him now I'm just now remembering back to the article). And that unless we realize that there is a duty here to expose violence, and the crudities of violent action for its own sake, for what it is... (James:That's right) that we are all in danger. Do you find a sympathetic ear to such a

statement? James: I'm broadly sympathetic to that. Though not necessarily for the reasons that Lord Chalfont adduced. I think one of the problems is the sheer speed of communication in the media. We are in fact the victims of our own technology. Let me give you a general example. I served a prime minister, in fact it was Edward Heath. Now Edward Heath in this very building, we are in the BBC at the present time, recorded on a Wednesday night a broadcast which was going to be transmitted at 9:00 p.m. on Friday night. We are on Wednesday now. So far so good. On Thursday night the BBC quite properly distributed a transcript of the broadcast that the prime minister was going to make the following night, Friday. This again was a quite proper process whereby the other media could have access to what was going to be said for editorial reasons. But that press release, news release of that text, did not carry any approach embargo. So the other media were free on Friday morning to approach other

people to get their view on what the prime minister was going to say that night. And on Friday lunchtime, I was with the prime minister in Newcastle on Tyne which is some 300 miles away from here and we held a press conference and the first question, "What was Mr. Heath's reaction to what Mr. Jones had said that morning in response to something which he, the prime minister hadn't yet said, but was going to say later that night"? Well now, that way lies absolute confusion for the lay reader. And I do believe that the time scales are getting out of joint where the reaction to an incident, to a statement, to a policy, becomes just that degree more important than the original statement itself. I think the lay viewer, the lay reader is probably getting his times out of joint and is in fact getting the story in the wrong order and never get back to the original. Rubin: So where we're in the process of "de-educating" the public through information which is a phenomenon that we

have to face is a reality. James: Well, not "de-educating", if I may say so, so much as confusing (Host: Well, mal-educating) James: because the professional who understands the ways of communication,the speeds of communication, the business of deadlines, is well able to make his own adjustment. But the lay reader is not. Rubin: There is in Great Britain at this time-- I don't think the press has ever been more, as we would say "chockablock" with stories about assessments of its own profession and industry. There is the Royal Commission report on the press which is dated June of 1977. There is the long belated appearance of the Press Council's 1975 report and one gets the sense there are arguments in this country about whether one union ought to have the right for a closed shop, one gets the impression that that there is great worry here. That there is a threat to the press that cannot be lightly

tossed aside and not and that is not abstract. You know I had one of our popular press people, Eric Sevareid, one day about a year ago lamenting the fact that there were threats to democracy in Great Britain, that we in America should be concerned with and that we ought to be very interested in. Am I exaggerating the fact that the mood is one of apprehension over press liberty? Not necessarily threat to press liberty but apprehension over its continuance. [James] You know, that's in no way an understatement. There is a great apprehension in lay circles and very much in professional circles. I don't want to dwell on the rights or wrongs of the battle over the clothes shop which is bedeviling the British newspaper industry at the present time, but it does go beyond the British newspaper industry, it is in fact threatening the freedom of communication or the mutual act of professionals seeking, on the one hand to transmit and on the other hand to understand what is being transmitted.

I deplore this, I deplore it particularly as a government servant because I hold very dearly to the principle that democratically elected governments have both the right and a responsibility to communicate, it's a simple statement of fact a democratically elected government has to inform the individual citizen of his rights and his responsibilities as created or altered by that government. And I find that an interruption in the normal flow of communication in this way is a disruption of the democratic process. The rights and wrongs of that battle as I say I would not wish to enter upon, but we are passing through a slightly schizophrenic phase of self-analysis in the communications business in this country. [Rubin]: Is this a phase? Now I notice in the Press Council, now we have our own national news Council as you know. You have your Press Council which in its present form is goes back to 1973 goes back to the late 50s in other forms. There are demands now that half of the membership be the laymen now it's 50 50-- It's 25 percent

I believe laymen. But in that report they have number 10 in the series chronicling great newspapers and in the ladies report it's about the observer. And I read their report on the history of the observer. I was amazed. I shouldn't have been but I was amazed at how periodic threats to press freedom are. The observer, for example, has gone through many periods when the threat may have come from its own management or owners or from outside forces. It seems to me that each generation must face up anew and recreate press freedom and that it's time now again in England to put the press in perspective. [James]: I think this is absolutely right. We have to make certain assumptions that as a result of the progress in other media and in this I would think particularly of things like Ceefax, or Article, or Viewdata, the technological

distribution of information, these are causing not unease but a sense of discontinuity in the communications industry which is not good. But I think I come back to a point I stopped a little earlier, which is that the sheer speed of communication is making, is having to, forcing us to change some of the disciplines or the ways in which we use-- [Rubin]: When you say the sheer speed of communication you mean the sheer speed in the passage of data but not necessarily the speed of interpretation? [James]: Absolutely right. It is the sheer speed of passage of data. I mean my, my own personal bete noire, which is a common place in this country is through the television medium where for example if the Chancellor of the Exchequer makes a budget speech in the House of Commons, the television media will assemble a group of pundits in the studio. Well now we do not as yet have in this country the broadcasting of parliament either by television or radio.

Therefore these four pundits who are giving instant reactions to news taken out of context, they are taking a sentence or two out of a chancellor's speech and forming instant judgments on behalf of the institutions they represent, whether their employers' associations or trade unions. That sort of instant reaction is to my mind a contradiction of interpretation because there is no interpretation, you cannot interpret out of context. So I'm rather tending myself, in communications terms, to look for if you like, the action replay which television has had to create or the still photograph which the film industry had to create to establish a veracity or a term of reference or terms of reference for the lay viewer to make his interpretation. The result of the speed of communication, and I take your point, lack of interpretation or route is for example in this country we have a thriving indeed, a most remarkable evening

newspaper industry outside London and in the provinces, which is a principal interpreter or principal reading material or a reference point for the vast majority of the population of this country outside London. [Rubin]: Well Fleet Street at the same time has from my own, my own opinion, a disastrous evening newspaper. [James]: Well that would be a matter of opinion but I would accept that the Fleet Street's evening newspapers which are based upon London which of course have the advantage of being able to turn out new editions on the hour-- [Rubin]: But Fleet Street is a morning press? [James]: That's right and the evening newspapers of Fleet Street effect the national morning paper interpretation. But for many years now the principal reading of the provincial Englishman has been his evening newspaper, his locally produced evening newspaper, over his high tea, his fish and chips in the early evening. Now with the speed of communication you have come across also the parallel phenomenon of cost of communication so that although an evening newspaper now can replay to "click" just

like that, the cost of doing so means that the deadlines come earlier. Now it is impossible in parliament for example now to get a sensible interpretation of a parliamentary question at 3:30 in the afternoon into the provincial evening press. Whereas 10 years ago when I came to the heart of government working in those days in 10 Downing Street, the prime minister's headquarters, it was possible to get a statement in the house in the evening newspaper editions. It's no longer possible. In fact, in some areas of Britain in order to get a statement of what is going to happen in Parliament that afternoon, Parliament doesn't meet until 13:00 in the afternoon 2:30 in the afternoon. You've got to have that information with the editor by 11:30 in the morning. The consequence is that the evening press in the provinces has become a speculative press; he's having to anticipate news, it is having to be provided with guidance as to how the news is likely to develop. And we all know the hazards of that situation

[Rubin]: Right, I hesitate to ask you the question since we can't change the press, should we change the hours of parliament? [James]: Well-- [Rubin]: I don't mean that seriously. [James]: I take your point. Well that would be a subject for another half hour discussion of course. The answer must be I think no. If you're going to have parliament as a deliberative body. That's right. That's right. Well indeed politicians and members of parliament may be kept in touch in other ways and the other half of their day. [Rubin]: Well Henry James you are pointing out I think a very interesting phenomena and that is that the interpretive people, the editorial side of news, the people who write the stories and assess what's going on, they are been on a plateau and not making very much headway while the mechanical side has been racing ahead. Is this the crux of Lord Chalfont's worry that the tortoise will not win in the race between the tortoise and the hare? The hare will

win and the tortoise will disappear into, into a fairytale land? [James]: Well I take a slightly more optimistic view than Lord Chalfont here. [Rubin]: His is the most pessimistic I have read. [James]: That's right. Traditionally, and in theory, the tortoise ought to lose. But I do believe that the human receptivity for information is such that it, in other words the ability of the average reader or viewer to interpret, will finally slow down the information process. I think once the professional communicators have got round to the idea, and they are nowhere near it as yet, that the sheer technological thrill of delivering the information "just like that", as one of our comedians would say, is is not in fact, what they're about. What they should be about is the business of interpretation and of exploration in depth. Which probably points to the reason for the growth of "journalism in depth", "the insight report" and that sort of reporting. [Rubin]: Well, will there be

time though, while I've been in Britain and observing for many years, but on this particular day of the last month and more, there have been street riots against the police based upon extreme Left party fighting extreme Right party, with the police in the middle, every soccer match seems to be another "send the Christians to the to the lions in the center of the arena". The police and local inhabitants look upon it as an invasion of animals, and they say so. Will there time-- do politicians in particular, for example right at this moment Heathrow is a disaster, a million people are involved, the prime minister has said nothing. International opinion is aroused. No one has talked about the security of the state, the needs of the general public. It is all reduced to the labor issue. When the million people and all their friends are wondering why there is no comment outside of the editorial pages from government, from learned people, from labor union leaders.

[James]: Well that's a direct invitation to write a Ph.D. thesis. I must say-- [Rubin]: Assuming that what I say has some basis in fact. [James]: Oh, I think all that you have said has some basis in fact. I think what the media have now got to do on the first part of your question, which is the question of law and order, the question of rioting, the question of conflict between extremists on the streets or in public, the media are I think very conscious, certainly the technical media, the technological media, that in fact they have a catalytic role, or have probably employed a catalytic role in a number of these events. It's a thing which has been strenuously denied by the BBC and the IBA, that in fact television for example can create situations, but it's a thing of which I have no doubt myself that the-- it is impossible with all the accumulated expertise of cinema verite, not to assume that the

presence of television cameras, or even of microphones, can have a catalytic effect on the situation and change the course of events. I think this is one of the problems that the media, the mass media have got to study and reach some pretty clear conclusions on. On the events to which you're referring, there is a very clear suggestion that the presence of television cameras, of the BBC indeed, outside the hall on this occasion provided the focus for the dissident elements. I don't comment on that as to whether it's true or not, but I do believe, it's my own personal belief, that the people change behavior in the presence of observers, and visible observers will change that behavior. [Rubin]: Now we're getting to the question of ethics of the press aren't we? [James]: For sure, indeed we are. And in addition to that of course you have the question of editorial process, of how you report, to report an event that is taking place with a subjective implied assessment of how

that may arise. For example, the events in South London which were the cause of so much concern last week, the headlines both in the press and in the mass media tended to say "this is happening and there probably will be a conflict." Now I-- it's one of my arguments with my friends in the BBC over many years to put a subjective allusion into the headline rather than simply to report the facts has an effect on how that event is going to turn out. It is a-- it's not an academic debate, though we tend perhaps sometimes sitting here in comfort as we are now to think of it in academic terms. But I think it's very relevant to behavior of the masses, and of the mass media. [Rubin]: "The future of our children", as they always like to say. [James]: As they always like to say, indeed yes. [Rubin]: Well, Henry James, I, I thank you very much for your candid opinions, and and I think very direct and I think that the American public has a much better idea

of the presence with which the director general of the Central Office of Information conducts himself. This is Bernard Rubin reporting this time from the British Broadcasting Studios in London saying goodnight. [music] The First Amendment and a Free People, a weekly examination of civil liberties in the media in the 1970s. The program is produced in cooperation with the Institute for Democratic Communications at Boston University, by WGBH Radio Boston which is solely responsible for its content. This is the Station Program Exchange. [music] This is NPR, National Public Radio.