Right of Reply (Hansard, 12 June 1984)

§ Mr. Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to give members of the public the right of reply to allegations made against them or to misreporting or misrepresentations concerning them in the press, on radio or on television; to set up a media Ombudsman; and for connected purposes.

I start by declaring an interest as a member of the National Union of Journalists, and that interest lies in better journalism and more responsible media. Neither of those interests is held at the moment, or fulfilled, by the popular press, against which this measure is directed. That is not to say that the electronic media are perfect. They have enormous powers, so when mistakes are made they have an enonnous impact. They also have an institutional inertia—an amour-propre—which makes them slow to apologise, but they are nevertheless impartial and responsible. They have a conscientious attachment to standards, but none of these things can be said of the popular press.

With the single exception of the Daily Mirror, which I regard as a cut above the rest of the popular press, we have a vicious, prostituted press, which besmirches the democracy which it should be serving and educating. It is—this is not the least of its crimes—overwhelmingly Tory, with no higher sense of duty than to act, not as the Prime Minister's lapdogs, but as her yapdogs. Its members yap and bite at whoever stands out, whoever is different, whoever is a trade unionist, whoever stands up for his rights and whoever believes in the values of liberty, equality and fraternity, or who is not 100 per cent. committed to the doubtful proposition that we have the best of Prime Ministers and a healthy economic boom and are destined for whatever cut-price greatness histrionics can bring us.

We have a press which sensationalises and trivialises and whose only deference to the great American tradition of inquiring and vigorous journalism is a prurient interest in sex and anything that is sordid and sensational and in impersonal trivia. It grovels before power, and indeed positively clamours for honours—the crumbs from the Prime Minister's table—while the Prime Minister buys support in a contemptuous fashion. At the same time, it clobbers anyone who is too weak or powerless to look after himself, and anyone who steps out of line. The measure is directed at such a press.

The ownership structure at the centre of this network is difficult to tackle. The circulation war, which debases, sensationalises and trivialises, is difficult to stop. If we cannot tackle those two problems, we cannot protect the individual against the distortions, misrepresentations, misreporting and hounding, which are becoming all too common in the popular press.

We could protect the individual by creating a legal right of reply, such as exists in statutes in France, West Germany, Austria, Sweden, Denmark and Canada. Such a statute should exist in the United Kingdom. In most of those countries the right of reply extends to individuals and organisations, which have a legal personality. I pay tribute to the previous hon. Member for Salford, East, Mr. Frank Allaun, for his work on this issue.

I have sympathy with the case for extending the Bill to trade unions and companies, but to win wider support today I have restricted the measure to those who need its 780 protections most — ordinary individuals. An ordinary individual has the greatest difficulty and diffidence in getting a right of reply. The measure will cover cases such as are often seen in popular newspapers; for example, that of Mr. and Mrs. Lipkin, who are teachers. Their house was pictured and their address given in the Daily Mail on 26 January 1984 under the headline, Inside the nerve centre of teacher propaganda. It was followed by a sneaky interview, with the journalist posing as someone on the Left. It was designed to focus antagonism against them, which it did. When the expected consequences occurred they protested to the editor of the Daily Mail, who called the police.

Similarly, Frank Bronwell, a miner at Markham colliery, was pictured crossing the picket line under various headings, such as "Defying the pickets". He was not reporting for work and was later on the picket line, but he had no opportunity to correct the report.

Those are two recent examples of such cases, but there are a host of others, from the mother lampooned by the Daily Express as a council house queue jumper, to the treatment of Arthur Scargill as a Yorkshire version of Adolf Hitler. All those cases merit the right of reply.

When individuals are faced with such treatment by the press, what redress do they have? They can go to law, but that costs a fortune and the results are unpredictable. Such action usually gets nowhere, and that remedy is not available to ordinary people. They can complain to the printing unions, who in previous instances have helped to enforce a right of reply through representations to the editor concerned. However, that sort of procedure should not be necessary in a democracy.

Individuals can go to the Press Council which is much improved. Delays in cases have been cut from 10 months to six months. Since February it has had a fast-track procedure, which has dealt with half a dozen cases. Unfortunately, the Press Council has no teeth. Its recommendations can be, and are, ignored by editors and proprietors. They can go to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission, but that, too, is a slow procedure.

A quick reply is needed, and the Bill provides it. The Bill provides a media ombudsperson, which is an important innovation and one for which there are important overseas precedents. In the United States, about 30 newspapers, including the Washington Post, have set up their own ombudsmen to adjudicate complaints against themselves. I wish that British newspapers would follow their example. The Guardian might need a part-time ombudsman, but The Sun and The Daily Mirror would probably need five or six full-time ombudsmen. The Bill provides for an ombudsman, as an official appointee, with a staff, and follows the Swedish precedent. That is the machinery on which to build. I should like to build a standing commission on the media on it.

The ombudsman would provide a personalised, public and prompt redress system. He would be responsible for deciding whether the complaint against a particular organ of the media was justified, and if so, what redress should be given, up to and including a right of reply, which would give equal prominence or audience to the original imputations or misrepresentations.

The measure could be criticised as a restraint on the freedom of the press. It is not. It is an incentive to use that freedom responsibly and a restriction on the licence, which the press, under the impetus of the circulation war for survival, has recently misused. The importance of the 781 measure is not how frequently it is used, but its existence. The existence of such a right will mean that journalists, editors and proprietors will become more cautious. They will think before they write the sort of thing that will lead to a right of reply. They will be careful about the attacks, misreporting, misrepresentation, personalisation, half-truth and distortions, which have become all too common, and about which we are right to complain. The very existence of the machinery will help to check the abuse with which it is designed to deal.

At present the press is mobilising power without responsibility — the prerogative of the harlot and the newspaper proprietor — often against defenceless individuals. The only way to deal with that is to give individuals the power to hit back where it hurts.