The First Amendment; From London: Windsor Clarke

The. WGBH Boston in cooperation with the Institute for Democratic communications at the School of Communications with Boston University now presents the First Amendment and a free people. An examination of civil liberties in the media in the 1970s and now here is the director of the Institute for democratic communication. Dr. Bernard Rubin. This edition of The First Amendment and a free people is coming from the British Broadcasting Corporation studios in London England. And I'm very happy to have as my guest Mr Windsor Clarke the editor of The Westminster Press. He was trained in weekly an evening journalism in newspapers before the war. So army service in the infantry and had staff appointments he's been a very experienced reporter. Having a background as chief reporter of The South Wales Argus spire subeditor and later Daily editor of The South Wales Echo assistant editor and editor of The

Evening News. He is presently group editorial consultant for the Westminster Press Ltd director and manager of the National Press Agency. In the past his professional qualifications include chairman of the newspaper conference vice chairman of the defense press and broadcasting Committee which is the dean notice committee and spokesman for the press and broadcasting section. Also chairman of the general elections news conference committee and notably Mr Clarke a member of the. Institute for International Affairs the Royal Institute for International Affairs and has been awarded the CBE recently in January 19 73. Mr. Cox Westminster Press is a string of what is called provincial newspapers meaning not Fleet Street newspapers but regional newspapers in Great Britain which include 12 daily newspapers and sixty three weekly newspapers.

Mr. Clark if I may I'm going to ask you the toughest question right at the start. In regard to the current situation in Great Britain. What are the danger points or the flash point insofar as your feelings about freedom of the press are concerned. Well I think there are two which concern us immediately. My group happens to be right in the middle of a dispute about what we call here the closed shop situation for journalists. That is an attempt by one journalist Regine in the largest one the National Union of Journalists to impose a cost entry clothes shop which many would be that in our office concerned. We would not be able to engage any journalist in future unless he were already a member of the Union all willing to join that union. It would mean we couldn't engage members of the other journalist unit in the institute. All engage a bonafide journalist who would chose not to join a

union at all. That's an immediate and critical one. I think another extremely serious situation facing us here is the whole question of the relationship of the press with authority. This is a running battle and probably never will be resolved. But there is a serious unease about the relations between the press the government a government agency is. All of which we always have to be aware and we feel that there are some tendencies is within this present government although there were some in the previous conservative government too but we think we are more marked on their way now. And I desired to put the press in its place desired to let the press know what governments would like it to know. Now those are two very immediate and direct challenges to what we would regard as office to management

function which we don't have specified as you have. Well to pick up that point for many years British friends of mine told me that the First Amendment guarantees or guarantees such as the First Amendment in the American Constitution which provide for freedom of the press and speech and assembly and so on are not necessary in Great Britain because of precedent because of longstanding habit and so on and so forth. Many of them are now saying to me that they would like to see some of these guarantees ensured by parliamentary action What's your own position on that. I'm one of those people for many years I held that the less that was written into the law all about anybody's rights the better I had because the British constitution had evolved on the whole satisfactorily. I must say now that my experience. Over the last 20 years in particular that has brought me around quite definitely to the feeling that we must have a bill of rights. And I don't say this basically as a journalist it is

not just the threat. All the position of the press that has changed my mind. We have had in Great Britain under all governments an absolute loud Monkton of legislation which shows no sign of diminishing. We are the most over legislated democracy in the world. And in this the significance of the ordinary individual citizen is being obliterated. And we must restore that significance by thinking out what the system is what is rights ought to be. I'm quite sure now that the bill introduced into the House of Lords by Lord Wade to establish a bill of rights is something we must support. I don't think it will get through this time which will have to go on trying. But I'm quite certain that this attempt must be made. Well in reading the report of the Royal the latest royal commission on the press which only came out this past June there are hints by that Royal

Commission that it too wonders about the Charter rights of the press and feels that they should be more certain than they are now although the Royal Commission I noticed it. It doesn't get too bold by saying that this is what ought to be except in a long list of recommendations the Press Council the British Press Council also has a long list of recommendations. Do you think that the majority of the reporters and editors and publishers could get together as Jefferson and Madison and others did some years ago with government officials. And at this late date reach conclusions about what freedom of the press consists of. I doubt it in view of an attempt that was made in fact when the whole issue of clothes shops affecting journalists. Was a subject for national debate

and was extensively debated in parliament. The idea that there should be a press charter and not in trying in law but that it should be a recognized document a cunt of which would be taken in any situation affecting employment in the press. When these this subject was being debated it was decided by the government that all sections of the newspaper and broadcasting industry should get together to work out a chart at two and show our freedom for the press and for genderless within the broad framework of industrial legislation which the government was proposing. These talks took place they took place over a period of about a year. All sides of the industry were represented and in the end they failed to produce a chart that the result is now that when a charter is proposed it's going to be a charter written by a minister

of the government which is about the worst of all possible solutions from a journalist point of view. But nevertheless the government took this reserve pot that if the industry could not produce its jotter the government would produce one for it. Fortunately the Millis distraught when he eventually writes It cannot finally be adopted except by affirmative resolution of both Houses of Parliament. It is doubtful at this moment whether it will get through the House of Commons because that is so evenly divided and the government is in such trouble and I think it's extremely doubtful that it could get through the House of Lords. So the situation I foresee is that this attempt to produce a charter well in the end turned out to have been stillborn. But they did declare that the effort has been made on the basic agreement is not that no one of the problems at least from the point of view of an observer who reads the British press from America is that the trade union issue the

issue of the press as a business. Who owns it who manipulates it who creates what bias there is or will protect the objectivity of it is embroiling everybody in problems that didn't concern our writers of the of the Bill of Rights. They were only concerned about looking back to the John Peter Singer case in the attempt of a royal Guyana to ensure Is it possible that. The nature of changes in in British life have solely imposed conditions on the discussion. Not unless the discussion is removed from trade union habits and and a guaranteed annual wage and the social state that it would be impossible even to make beginning progress in other words can we deal with issues as issues. As was done in the 18th century you are cynical about I take your point. I very much wish we could. And frankly I have to say I don't see much

prospect of this happening. I mean what we have had in Britain is an inflation of expectations and in this inflation people's expectation of what they can get materially. Their expectation of the kind of organized power that they can use to obtain what they want has been raised to a level at which factionalism is at this moment the driving force in nearly every issue of major importance about political and social life in Britain. Now we are at this moment a divided nation in this respect and I don't see an early end to it. What I am sure is that people who are concerned about something greater. Better more long standing tall for the softer goal than this constant and recurring

fermenting factional dispute that we've been engaged in now for ten years and all that those people should insist that the debate starts on a higher level that the debate on U.S. uses that if action were Advantage should constantly be brought to the center. And I think if enough of us do this in time we shall get somewhere. I see no early progress and I'm very sad about it but you are making progress on another front and that is the British Press Council which is rather in recent innovation and does consider all sorts of cases and does. Review the cases and find culprits where culprits are to be found and absolve people when they are to be absolved. But I find that they tend to find more cases to uphold the complaint and then in the United States with the national news Council. Is this a healthy development that the Press

Council is now on duty watching although it complains about being so short of staff and money that is 975 report took two years for it to publish. Well yeah its reports are always over a year late. It hasn't enough staff and it hasn't enough money this is true. Nevertheless I think the answer to your question is yes it is a very healthy development that we have the Press Council because it is a Press Council of a particular and peculiar kind. Firstly it was a press console set up by the industry itself not by the government. The Press Council owes nothing to the government is not controlled by the government. He is not answerable to the government. I won't pretend that the motives of the industry in setting up are entirely altruistic we knew at the time that unless we had a voluntary Press Council of our own the Wilson government as it was in those days would get your state governor to impose a statutory one. So we did the sensible thing and organized our own.

Since those early days the represent the late representation by non broadcasting representation on the Press Council has been released. It has been increased I'm sorry. Now the Royal Commission on the press has recommended that there should be in effect a lady controlled by having 50 percent lay members. Is it I don't want to know about. Yes and the Royal Commission the suggested 50 percent lay members and an independent Chapman. Well we have long had the independent chairman. But that would in effect mean non-industry control of the Press Council. I think we could get along with this I don't think it's highly desirable because so many of the issues coming to the Press Council do require a detailed knowledge and some considerable experience all of. The workings of the press and all the influences and shades of significance of subjects which lay people on the whole don't have.

Nevertheless the performance of the Press Council to date I think has been good. Well being excellent. But it's been good enough to justify its existence amply. I'm glad it exists. I think no good and responsible in it it to has anything to fear. And I think where there might be a less responsible editor he is conscious of the exposure he can suffer before the Press Council and is the more cautious because of it. Looking at the British press and just changing the subject slightly from an American's point of view an American who's been to Britain many times I find one difference in that is that the print is so miniscule in most of the newspapers that one longs for some magnifying glass I want you to why that was. I find that the the style tends to be very conservative. But at the same time I find that while there are newspapers one could pick some days I

pick because I like the whitest paper The Times and some days I pick an equally good paper. The high class papers here the Guardian or the Telegraph and so on. But. I find that there are some newspapers here as beginning to appear at home which I would classify as non newspapers page 3 the undraped are slightly draped young lady. Yes akin to somebody found a ghost in an old house and somewhere on the inside a very profound editorial about a labor situation. Yes. Is this going to continue is this part of the press that's here forever. Well I think so because it's been here for a very long time it isn't in fact anything very new. It's perhaps gained a certain amount of additional emphasis because of the competition introduced when the Sun newspaper as it was under its sole owner has a rather dull broadsheet was converted by its new owners into a very enterprising very

cheeky very brash highly successful tabloid and forced its chief rival the Daily Mirror which had been that kind of paper years ago and had become rather staid and rather more sober to revert to the brash tabloid image and the competition between these two or reemphasize is that kind of what you call a non newspaper. I don't agree with you actually I don't think they are not newspapers. They have very incomplete newspapers in the sense that they haven't brought news coverage. They don't often cover many things in depth but often they cover it very very shrewdly knowing what their segment of the readership is going to be and they cater for that segment. And I wouldn't wish to work one of those papers myself. But I'm not going to be as we say in England tough we know enough to run them down on the grounds that there ought to be no place for them.

There is I think it's a growing segment of the British press going their own commission is it not. I think he is growing to the extent that you have these two major top lines was well-aware 3 million a day circulation each. You'll have the Daily Mail and The Daily Express which are a tabloid size is much more newsworthy and newsy newspapers. And the Daily Express in particular that looking for a bigger section of the market than it's got now and it may begin to lean a little bit in the direction of the daily matter and the sun. But I would think that would be very limited I think perhaps there is some growth in this kind of. New Z Magazine Daily News the magazine some growth yet to come but not pretty much I think it's just about reached its peak. Well freedom of the press implies that we're going to have all sorts of newspapers from the sensational so-called press to Tatler magazine which is guaranteed to put me to sleep at an

instant's notice anywhere. But it that's also beloved by people who like to see little microscopic pictures of people standing with glasses in their hands. Let me ask you as a the editor of The Westminster Press How do the London developments affect the provincial press. Or let's put it the other way around. How do potential developments outside of London affect the London press. One it depends what kind of developments they are. Most of the major industry in Britain is outside London. Major industrial centers Birmingham Manchester Newcastle and north and so on so you can cover that story better you think. I think we do all the regional newspapers much closer to events much closer to the people involved much closer to the implications and the repercussions and therefore they treat it in greater depth and I think with that a great sense of responsibility. The major national newspapers. Deal with it very well I don't think they perform at all badly at this but the call of us to this is that

while the active industrial centers are outside London the financial economic and political decision making is already largely centered in London and you will have this division. So it makes it difficult perhaps of the regional press center. On the one hand and difficult for the national press to cover the outlying industrial centers on the other nevertheless you see we're not a vast country geographically it's still very easy and very quick to get from one place to another. I don't think it poses tremendous problems and certainly in Westminster Press and in the other groups which are similar to us we keep in our London office is a call of specialist reporters and writers on various subjects. Politics we hope for in our London office who do nothing but politics the whole time. Diplomacy industrial affairs and so on with very good specialist writers in these subjects who are writing the London end

for regional newspapers. I will sometimes the national press had equally good people out in the regions reporting the regions to them. Britain is unique amongst all countries having I think nine national newspaper trends and also a desert in one region I understand that the southeast region really is almost devoid of regional newspapers correct me now if I died I correct you immediately. We have to evening this papers ourselves in the southeast and a whole string of weekly papers and there are Commission pointed up competitive newspapers. I think yes perhaps I think I'm thinking all of competitive newspapers the situation does exist for example where in. On the north bank of the Thames way out towards the east Gus that place called South and the southeast of the county of Essex Westminster Press has the evening paper and the local weekly papers. So it's better to say that there's no

internal competition in that but we are nevertheless in competition not only with the National morning papers from Fleet Street. We're in competition to a degree with the London evening papers from Fleet Street where in competition with newspapers owned by other groups which are nibbling away at odd territory from their centers just as we nibble away at that. So while there's no internal competition within a relatively small city like Southland we have all the newspapers that those newspapers are in no position to sit back and think that there's no competition at all in total is plenty. Mr Windsor CLARKE I know that you have very strong views about the training of journalists. I wonder if you might comment about some of the things that you would insist upon in the best of all possible worlds was here and you could say Windsor Clarke's rules about how journalists ought to be prepared. I'm going to be carried out. Well we have a full training scheme already. A whole new entrance of the profession and journalists to a degree trained already. First

of all I think we have to admit that the caliber of new entrant we have tracked is not nearly good enough. Let me say also it is much better than it was 10 15 years ago. And I think it is still improving but we are still not attracting enough thoughtful people. And people are suitably intellectually equipped to produce the standard of journalist I would hope to see in the future. I think our training is too orientated to what one might call the nuts and bolts of the job of learning some form of shorthand all speed writing is certainly important. Type writing copy specimen interviews with local officials and this kind of thing. It is training really is to vocational. We

can teach people that kind of thing once we get them in the office. What our training system doesn't do is to encourage or as I think it ought to do even force new entrants to think. Training doesn't broaden their mind and this is a grave deficiency. It's very difficult to know how it ought to be overcome but it's something to which we must address ourselves for the future. On certain stories such as Labor background stories industrial stories foreign affairs stories and others perhaps foreign affairs less than others. Many of the reporters here and at home it appears do not have the background to handle more than the outside of the story none of the nuances would you mind telling a great I think foreign affairs here I think are well done by on the whole very highly skilled people of good intellect or common but it has always been a British special young financial reporting.

Also God not quite so God there are some weak elements in it. You mentioned industrial reporting in particular and we have a very peculiar situation because our industrial reporters here tend to concentrate overwhelmingly upon the trade union aspect of industry and the conflict to concentration aspects of industry. They do not for the most part even understand enough much less concentrate enough upon the structure of industry. Few. Industrial correspondents here in Britain could sit down without notice and give a reasonable assessment of the boardroom performance of any one of our major industries over the last three years. And this to me it would seem to be the necessary bread and butter for an industrial right to what can be done about it. Not much where those who are already there only I think by recruiting better people and insisting upon a more catholic preparation for their job when we appoint them.

And that would be what. Now in the United States we will almost reach of inclusion that anybody can be a reporter I'd rather have one with a university degree. I'd rather have one with a general liberal arts background plus a journalism degree. I'd rather have one who took some economics and so on Al and so on. Well for a Brit we don't as yet have in your sense journalism degrees although we are working our way to wanting and I think what we what we need is to get these industrial people in particular to go to some kind of business school and again we haven't this kind of business school readily available in Britain and those we have a much too limited and specialized and perhaps one of one or more of the rest is all to introduce some kind of business curriculum for journalists and particularly for industrial and financial journalist. Is there an area in which the publishers might get together and provide a series of scholarships for outstanding people too. To become better at their jobs. I think they've been in the New Year.

We've never looked at this a little bit as being done in that direction I think very much more could be done. But on the other hand a lot of demands are being made upon proprietors and how to improve and extend training and it's a very big and complex subject and the British press is not by a lot so prosperous that it can pour endless amounts of money in. But it must put in more than it's put so far and you see some hope that it will see the need for it in several centers. Encouraging developments are taking place. I don't think personally that are yet nearly good enough but I think we've begun. There is some work going on over the years in the University of Leeds and it's me quail on the lake in various games and so on and so forth Cardiff waves are 6 I 6 a.m. but that's still the exception rather than the US and they haven't a sense not formally been sense they've been pilot schemes they've just been exploring territory.

And I think we must build on this and begin to develop now the night to get back at me. At the end of this program too I thought that we might meet again and I want to thank you wins it for being on this program. This is Bernard Rubin reporting from the British broadcasting studios in London saying good night. Whatever you GBH radio in cooperation with the Institute for Democratic candidate cations of the School of Communications at Boston University has presented the First Amendment and a free people. An examination of civil liberties in the media in the 1970s. This program was produced in the studios of WGBH Boston.