Is our press fair?

 Ian Boyne, Contributor

In reading Lord Justice Leveson's 45-page summary of his 2,000-page report on the phone-hacking scandal and other misdeeds of the British press, published last week, as well as reflecting on the American media's coverage of the recent Road to the White House race, it struck me that our press is miles ahead of Britain and America in terms of fair play and balance.

Fortuitously, Lord Leveson's report came out during our own marking of National Journalism Week.

The Leveson report has provoked a firestorm of controversy in Britain, especially over its recommendation that a new regulatory body be established to replace the Press Complaints Commission, and which would be empowered to impose fines on erring media houses. The British people were outraged and incensed when it emerged in July last year that one of Rupert Murdoch's papers, News of the World, had intercepted voice messages left on a cellphone belonging to murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler - all in pursuit of salacious stories and sales.

The British press has been known for its excesses and sensationalism, but most people felt that this time they had gone too far. And information kept emerging that violations of citizens' privacy, without any basis at all for a claim to public interest, were taking place all too frequently just to satisfy the financial appetites of media owners.

Lord Leveson was unsparing in his trouncing of the British press, while acknowledging that his remarks did not apply to all. "Although errors and inaccuracies will always follow a fast-moving and healthy press, when the story is just too big and the public appetite too great, there has been significant and reckless disregard for accuracy. It is clear that misrepresentation and embellishment take place to a degree far greater than could ever be thought of as legitimate or fair comment. In an industry that purports to inform, all misinformation should be a matter of concern, and distortion far more so."

drawn out and difficult

Referring to the chilling effect of press resistance to making apologies, Lord Leveson says, "There is a cultural tendency" in sections of the British press "to resist or dismiss complainants almost as a matter of course. Securing an apology, a correction or other appropriate redress, even when there can be no argument, becomes drawn out and difficult. When an apology or correction is forthcoming, there is then an argument of prominence, which again can be prolonged. Meanwhile, a general defensive approach has led to some newspapers resorting to high volume and extremely personal attacks on those who challenge them: It is not enough simply to disagree."

Adds the learned judge: "The result is that potential critics sometimes do not complain, not because they do not have a valid complaint but because they do not have the energy for the inevitable fight, or because they are unwilling to expose their friends and families to hurt. This can hardly be described as a healthy state of affairs."

The Western press, which speaks self-righteously about accountability, transparency and independence, suffers from psychopathological arrogance. It exempts itself from the lofty standards it proclaims for everyone else. Media owners and editors particularly pontificate about morality and standards - except for themselves. Journalists reflexively snarl at anything which smacks of regulation. But we want every other association to be held accountable.

This is the big problem many in the British press are having with Lord Leveson's report. The attacks on Lord Leveson himself in the British press have been scandalous, if predictable.

"As we all know, it is almost impossible to argue with a man who has a megaphone, and the papers have bitterly resented the way that the inquiry took theirs away," says Brian Cathcart in a piece on CNN's website. "For months, they have had to endure the unfamiliar experience of being under scrutiny and being unable to drown out the voices they didn't want the public to hear."

We in Jamaica, generally, do a fine job of balanced, fair and impartial coverage of news. We have no equivalent of Fox News or MSNBC. Don't say it's because we don't have many stations. There was a time in Jamaica when our single television station backed one or another political party. And when politicians interfered with the work of journalists there. We had a partisan press in the 1960s and the 1970s. Public Opinion was for the People's National Party (PNP); The Gleaner was, generally, for the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).

GLEANER ADVOCACY

In the 1970s, the partisanship of The Gleaner became even more pronounced under the editorship of a former chairman of the JLP, Hector Wynter. Then The Gleaner saw itself as a saviour of Jamaica from communism, and it practised an open, abrasive form of advocacy journalism. That not only influenced its columns - dominated by Right-wing writers like Wilmot Perkins, John Hearne, David DaCosta, Morris Cargill, Cedric Lindo (writing as Colin Gregory) - but it influenced its news coverage, too.

We had the Jamaica Daily News owned by PNP businessmen and run by people sympathetic to the PNP. And the JBC later came to be under the control of Workers Party of Jamaica operatives and PNP Left radicals. We have come a long way in our journalistic practice.

Today, the people who run and work in the newsrooms of TVJ and CVM are professionals who are not grinding any axe. Milton Walker, Archibald Gordon, Garfield Burford, Irvin Forbes and Andrew Cannon are just doing their jobs and doing a very fine job, too. Burford is an energetic, fired-up news hound and consummate public affairs host with no discernible bias. I am very proud of our journalists in terms of their balance, fairness and genuine devotion to impartiality in reporting, news coverage and public affairs hosting.

Partisans have always had a problem with The Gleaner. JLP handlers had a problem with the paper when Bruce Golding was in power, and some PNP handlers now have a problem with the paper, but a keen content analysis of The Gleaner will reveal no anti-PNP agenda. Yes, its editorials take Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller to task. But that is the absolute right and prerogative of a media house.

A newspaper can have a point of view. That's defensible. What's not defensible is not providing opportunity for rebuttal or enunciation of another view. No one can accuse The Gleaner of that. It gave pride of place recently to, in my view, an unnecessarily strident and overly defensive piece by PM adviser Delano Franklyn, a normally well-reasoned person.

The Observer, in my view, crosses the line in its indelicate promotion of its owner's interests, but again a content analysis shows that it generally provides fair coverage to the political parties and to public issues. It carries anti-Portia columnists like Mark Wignall and publishes Ken Chaplin, who no one could accuse of being PNP, but it also publishes Claude Robinson (my favourite columnist), Chris Burns (whom I always read), Michael Burke and Howard Gregory, who are by no means anti-PNP. Nor do its editorials take a decidedly partisan line. (Incidentally, The Gleaner's editorial criticisms of the prime minister must not be conflated with an anti-PNP position).

HARD-HITTING WOMEN

In electronic media, you have that first-rate journalist and radio and television host, Dionne Jackson Miller, a model of fairness, balance, decorum and intelligence. You don't get more impartial and even-handed than that. Yes, she could be more edgy and provocative, but styles differ. Many believe Emily Crooks has too much of that and behaves as though she is on steroids. Some say she is plain rude and often out of order.

But, in my view, Emily Crooks is one of our finest journalists and should long have been named Journalist of the Year. Jamaica needs provocateurs like Emily Crooks. Emily has a passion for news and public affairs that is unsurpassed. She is an investigative journalist at heart. She brings energy to journalism that is irresistible. I am glued in the mornings. She is not a partisan. The fact that she might not be fond of Portia Simpson Miller or her Government is not a journalistic sin.

Emily has a right to strongly disagree with the prime minister, and if she feels Portia is not doing a good job, she has an absolute right to say so. I will defend that right of hers. Why do we hate genuinely independent (or contrary) views in this country and always seek to malign those how hold them? Why do we always crave an echo chamber?

I like Portia Simpson Miller and know, not feel, she means Jamaica well. If Emily disagrees with me, that does not detract from her professionalism and excellence as a journalist. We don't like contrarians. But we need them. The Jamaican press is all the richer and, indeed, is indebted to contrarians like Gordon Robinson and Ronnie Mason, two of the most provocative, irreverent and disconcerting commentators in Jamaica today. We must cherish them. You don't have to like what they say, but I can't help admiring the spirit of fearlessness, daring, and, yes, cynicism that they exemplify - even when I am at the bitter end of it. But such is the inconvenience of free expression.

But we don't really respect democracy and a plurality for views in this country. We mouth it in the right for a, but in our heart of hearts, we resent people who don't toe a particular line. That is why we are contemptuous of people like Emily Crooks, Gordon Robinson and Ronnie Mason and why they are so regularly abused by people on both sides. (Though Emily is enjoying a reprieve from Labourites now!)

I salute young, outstanding journalists like George Davis, Abka Fitz-Henley (Watch these two!) and Kirk Wright. Kirk has a passion for stories about our inner cities unequalled by anyone else in our media fraternity.

A country which has such journalists as Cliff Hughes and Earl Moxam has every reason to be proud. These journalists can hold their own anywhere in the world. And to my own editors who are cosmopolitan enough in this anti-intellectual environment to allow my particular brand of column writing to have full expression, I say, big up, guys, at the close of National Journalism Week.

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and ianboyne1@yahoo.com