Trust and the media

Here’s another divide between the US and Europe (and the rest of the world). In the US the press has a privileged position, its freedom guaranteed by the Constitution. In Britain, and most other places, we’re not so lucky.

I’d guess that Onora O’Neill’s Reith lecture on trust and the media, Licence to Deceive, would not get a welcome reception in the US.

“There is plenty of more or less accurate reporting, but this is very small comfort if readers who can’t tell which are the reliable bits. What we need is reporting that we can assess and check: what we get often can’t be assessed or checked by non-experts. If the media mislead, or if readers cannot assess their reporting, the wells of public discourse and public life are poisoned. The new information technologies may be anti-authoritarian, but curiously they are often used in ways that are also anti-democratic. They undermine our capacities to judge others’ claims and to place our trust.”

Since 1948 the annual Reith lectures on BBC radio have been one of the most prominent — and serious — platforms for issues of public concern. O’Neill is a Cambridge philosopher and generally on the right in her views: she places more emphasis on responsibilities than on rights, for example.

There’s a strong undercurrent in O’Neill’s lecture of the need for restraint of press freedom, which I think would be very dangerous. And I think she over-rates the power of the press. But while I’d like to reject her assertions about the media, from a London perspective it’s not so easy. There’s a major part of the press here (it’s mostly a print media issue) that exercises little or no responsibility, in terms of truth or respecting individual privacy. I’ve often been annoyed by the self-righteous attitude of some American journalists I know, but with that smugness generally comes a sense of duty and responsibility (even if plenty of errors occur).

What O’Neill has certainly done, however, is make me think, which is, after all, what philosophers are for.