The First Amendment; Ian Wright: BBC

The first amendment and the free people, a weekly examination of civil liberties and the media in the United States and around the world. The program is produced cooperatively by WGBH Boston and the Institute for Democratic Communication at Boston University. The host of the program is the Institute's director, Dr. Bernard Rubin. We are broadcasting from the studios of the British Broadcasting Corporation in London and I'm delighted on this edition to have the managing editor of the Guardian newspaper Mr. Ian Wright. Ian Wright started out in East Africa working for the British Government as a civil service in Kenya, in community development. At various other times of his life he's been a reporter in Canada for the Thompson newspaper group there and then went to Vietnam as a reporter beginning in 1968.

For at least 18 years he's been at the Guardian and has had a number of jobs, films editor, features editor, foreign correspondent and now he's the managing editor of one of the most prestigious newspapers in the world. There are very few newspapers whose opinions count from New Delhi to New York and from New York to Berlin and the Guardian is one of those newspapers. Ian Wright, as you know, we are most interested in what makes a newspaper tick. The Guardian is known as a liberal newspaper and has been so ever since 1821 when it was founded. How would you define liberal newspaper? I think one of the difficulties that one hears about in this country and I'm sure you've heard enough people talking about it and your trips around here is the problem that the majority of the national press in Britain and one of the main differences I suppose between

Britain and the U.S. is that it's such a much smaller place that we can actually have a national press that our railways can deliver papers printed in London to the four corners of the country on the same day that they're printed pretty well. The cry that you hear particularly on the left is that the press daily press is Wright Wing, by and large, this is true, I suppose the exception in the popular press is the daily mirror which has always carried the banner for the Labour Party, continues to carry the banner for the Labour Party. I don't think you call it liberal in that sense, therefore you look to papers that are unattached to political parties and plainly the times is one, the Guardian is another financial times, but the Guardian of those three papers occupies the centre to left ground in politics and it

always has. In regard to the positioning of the Guardian in the newspaper spectrum here in Britain there are about nine national newspapers and there's the regional press which is something different than the United States where almost everything is part of the regional press including the New York Times which has difficulty in winning a wide readership in other parts of the country, though it has circulated widely. Part of the spectrum of the press is composed of six newspapers which to an American eye are leaving the realm of delivering the news while the four papers at the top, the Times, the Telegraph, the Guardian and the Financial Times are what they call serious newspapers. Within the bounds of propriety could you describe your reaction to this trend for the mass circulation pop newspapers to become supplements to television really?

Well they were there of course, a popular press was there in England, the yellow press as it sometimes called was there in England a long time before television. It was conceived as part of the entertainment industry. I think if you draw a line between entertainment and information you would say that the, what we might call the serious press has been called our things in this country is just slightly to one side on the information side of that line and certainly I would hope my own paper the Guardian is and always will remain just on the right side of that line. But newspaper readership over the years has stood up pretty well to radio television on slots and we've done this by keeping an eye on the customer as well. I mean we do understand for instance that a customer has to be drawn into a paper, has

to be drawn into a page in a paper, he has to be drawn into a story in a newspaper and we go to some trouble to do that. I mean you might like to compare the layout, the appearance of, say the Guardian with the appearance of let's say Le Monde. Le Monde carries no pictures, it carries the odd cartoon, it carries, there are very few concessions to entertainment, it is pure information. I don't think we exactly make concessions ourselves but we are aware that we have to attract the reader, the top end of the market in this country, high level of newspaper readership but an awful lot of competition. Now the competition is so intense at the bottom end that when people like Rupert Murdoch, the Australian newspaper magnate came to Britain and bought one of the papers, the son,

he opened a new wave of sensationalism which was quickly imitated right across the board and this sensationalism is the bane of many intellectuals and the joy of millions upon millions of newspaper readers. To what degree do the serious papers reflect an anti sensationalist attitude, not only in terms of what they don't present in terms of cartoons and naked ladies but in terms of offering a class, an England is very class conscious, a class of English people, certain kind of information, certain kinds of information which is really not designed by other classes speaking broadly and without scientific precision. It's a good question. In a sense you as a visitor to these shores, probably in a better position to judge that than I am, certainly there is so much paper like mine which is a traditional movement

that you, it's very hard to stand back and see the distance you've actually covered in the last five years although it may be an absolutely mammoth distance. The other thing that I'd say is that when you look and as you know newspaper research is remarkably inaccurate but when you look at newspaper research we've done, it's very interesting to see the transition from what we may crudely call the popular market to the serious market. It is undoubtedly there and we've done research looking the other way. We've offered to our own readers copies of less serious papers and we've been interested to see what is attracted to them and there is no doubt that they are attracted to it and so it's not, it's not your classic two cultures at all, there is a great deal of slippage.

You've only got to look in when the first editions of all the newspapers arrive on our night desk which happens each evening about 11 o'clock to see our own stuff, see which papers they leap on, what they look at and for how long they look at them. That's a certain guide when the newspaper people themselves are attracted to certain newspapers. At the start of this program I made note that the Guardian was widely respected for its opinions as it were and to a certain degree there is a respect within the Guardian, within the English newspaper tradition for including opinion in news stories. The Guardian assuming that, correct me if I'm wrong, that it's not its job as perhaps on the times to follow through the exact details of every news story but to summarize to say this is what went on last week and therefore the editorial opinion is much more

prevalent than would be in a typical American newspaper which would tend to divide on that issue between news and editorials or at least they say they do. Exactly. You put your finger on it, don't you think that it's one of the myths of our profession that this is and can be such a clear cut divide even when people are going out of their way simply because the newspaper has the constraints of time and space that you actually have to decide what you're putting in and what you're not putting in. You have made, you've got to have made some sort of editorial distinction there. Now I would say, if you ask me what is the Guardian about, I would say that it's about explanation. Now that doesn't mean to say that we're not interested in breaking news, we are and

if we weren't we'd be out of business. It doesn't mean to say that we're not painstakingly I hope following a story as it develops from day to day even out to hour and those are two categories of news if you like but there is a third and for us I think very important category of news which is the explanation that I mean this is not spoon feeding people but this is simply showing how we got to where we are and possibly giving some sort of clues about what is happening to the world or be it a small thing or a big event that you're reporting otherwise it doesn't make any sense for instance on the energy question in the United States in this morning's paper we printed a fair whack of the text of what President Carter actually said late on Sunday night to the American people.

We also published our own correspondent, chief correspondent in Washington's account of that speech and how it was received and if you read that you will see not paragraphs of explanation but I hope gently inserted bits of important information that helps the reader understand the story. The reader is left a drift really in a leaky boat. Another thing he wants to know I think in Britain there are more pressure groups to finish my early sentence he left a drift and what you're suggesting is that you try to bail out the boat with explanations. Another thing that notable here in Britain even more than the United States is the pressure group concentration. I think there probably is a pressure group for left-handed chiroprates here in Great Britain but Britain has always been known for if people believe something they don't care whether there are two or fifty people they'll pursue it.

To what degree in a country now that is really written with trade union congress versus employer problems as we're doing this in the summer of 1979 the times after eight months is still out the times of London the Sunday times is out. To what degree do you feel it's your job to in effect tell the general public where they are in this ferocious pressure group battle which is another kind of news. I think what you're relying on there are your expert writers and we have always relied on the Guardian a great deal on our expert writers. Now these are people who have not only got to confront their public when they sit down at their typewriters but they've also got to go back to their contacts. They are living a life out there in that world whether it be the world of the science

correspondent or the education correspondent or the labour correspondent and so in the sense that they are the one of the many intermediaries in all this they are being kept by this process on an even keel and when you see someone begin to wobble it becomes pretty obvious but the pressure the pressure group the pressure groups are there but then we are there not always let's be honest we're not there with the sort of resources often that the pressure groups have it's often a very very tough battle indeed and that's why when you're looking for your expert and on my paper frequently it is a question of promoting a person who has gone through various parts of the organisation and has

shown interest and an aptitude for a particular subject. When you're looking for that sort of person you're looking for somebody who has a degree of toughness and ability to sort things out. In a general sense because we could get lost in detail but for the American listener for the four serious newspapers the telegraph the times the Sunday times, financial times the Guardian, how fares press freedom as against what the press itself would like to see? You can say a great deal about this but and obviously we continually make comparisons are not favourable to ourselves with the operation of the Freedom of Information Act that have

been pioneered in the United States, Sweden. We look at you with a certain amount of envy I think. I think we will in this country I know we will sort ourselves out given time this particular issue has been festering for far too long. There is a lot of mixed feelings particularly among the legislators where you have fewer mixed feelings in the bureaucracy, the bureaucracy at the moment is looked after pretty well indeed in the last ten years the number of press handlers, information offices in Whitehall has proliferated to an astonishing extent to weave your way through this sea is quite difficult.

In your expert he can do it much more easily because he has his own friends in his own contacts but your average journalist here when faced with the bureaucracy has to ring up telephone the relevant press handler and he has got a battle on his hands because that man is no expert usually, access to the real person who knows can as you can see very easily blocked. So for the ordinary journalist this is a one hell of a dilemma, do you take the easy answer, well I hope not, I mean it is not only in the Whitehall area, the area of bureaucracy and government that you are up against this, we do not have in this country the same tradition of the people to know, the people the rights are rights that have been gained rather slowly

painstakingly and they are still being gained but I would not pretend for one moment that the present is an ideal situation because not only have you got bureaucratic restraints but you have also got, as you know there are restraints of the law which are also very considerable what you may and may not say, there is a debate which can go on for a long time because there is the whole question of privacy, the whole question of the protection of the individual and where you are not starting off from the principle of the right of the citizen to know, it is difficult. I think most Americans are really not aware that if you went to Britain a newspaper man would not be able to approach an ordinary civil servant, he would feel that is not his job, that more than 100 ministers of the

government sit in parliament for the party that has the Prime Minister ship, that has won the election and therefore many of those people feel that you are not entitled to know, there is so much cloistered behavior that it is a wonder that the press manages to get through at all and one wonders whether this really, and I don't want to step on friendly British sensitivities, is not boiling up to be a major constitutional issue in a country that doesn't have a written constitution. Well that is right and we have seen with some recent decisions that have gone as far as the European Court, notably the lidomide case the Sunday Times brought and won, incidentally. Brought by its editor Harold Evans. And this sort of battle is a battle which is going on at the moment. Just to explain to the reader

would you just digest that so they will understand? Yes, very briefly, the Sunday Times perhaps I should go back to, I'm not sure that the lidomide was a drug that was marketed in the United States but it was marketed here in the I think the early 60s and it, the result of being prescribed to pregnant women led to deformed births. And actions were brought by them against the company marketing it and after a very long and drawn out legal battle compensation was paid awarded. The Sunday Times investigated this, it took an early interest in it and it investigated in great detail but was prevented from publishing it because

of the ongoing legal battle. It was held to be in contempt of court. For almost eight years the story was kept out of print. Exactly. Now the whole area of contempt which one we haven't mentioned is for us still a very difficult area because there are quite obviously cases where the press can try someone in its pages and unless it has stopped from doing so and if you just imagine yourself at the other end of that process it may be something which you wouldn't like. And so there is not a very simple answer but we do know in the lidomide case that the law was used to prevent publication when it shouldn't, the law was really meant to do something else to provide for fair trial. This eventually went beyond British court to the European courts and the European courts

upheld the right of the Sunday Times published and presumably when the Sunday Times comes back we shall hear all about it. But it certainly is an amazing case just briefly in the few minutes that we have left. Do you have any comment to make about the battle between the Third World and the First World on news fairness? Obviously everything is unfair. We are more developed. Most of our populations don't have much interest in the Third World. Most of the Third World actually don't have much interest in the First World on daily newspaper basis. Is there any way that we are going to become more compatible with the complainers and try to do something that will ease their pain a little bit? I think there has been a great deal of misconception about this sort of thing that has taken place. But I think what has got to be done, what has got to be realised in the Third World is

that the First World can and indeed in any place it does take an interest. But the form that that interest takes has got to be completely understood. And it's no good Third World news pools trying to market absolutely unmarketable news from the Third World because you can't say you've got to take this. This is medicine. You've got to say this is something which you should know about another part of the world which is inevitably and increasingly intermatched with your own. For our part we've taken a step in the last 18 months. We've started a special Third World supplement and this Third World supplement is coming out now once a fortnight where unique I think in the British press in doing this, we're trying to get into our pages. Third World writers, thinkers to put over the concepts of the

Third World and what the Third World is actually making a noise about because we think this is one way in which the understanding of those problems is eased and with it the problem of the Third World information order which so many of them seek but don't quite know how to go about. Well on that issue I'd like to go on more but I can't because of the constraints of time. I do want to thank you very much Ian Wright the managing editor of the Guardian published in London and influential in the world for coming here today. It was my pleasure for this edition Bernard Rubin. The first amendment and a free people, a weekly examination of civil liberties and the media in the United States and around the world. The engineer for this broadcast was Margot Garrison and the program is produced by Greg Fitzgerald. This broadcast

is produced cooperatively by WGBH Boston and the Institute for Democratic Communication at Boston University which are solely responsible for its content. This is the station program exchange.