Comment

The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Public Interest Principle

David Berry

On June 15th 2005, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams delivered a lecture at Lambeth Palace entitled 'The Media, Public Interest and Common Good'. The media are a common target to attack, particularly in terms of the power they have at their disposal and issues concerning ethics and standards. So did the Archbishop tell us anything new? There are many issues raised in the speech but I want to focus on the core components, which are the purpose of communication, public interest and common good.

The first point concerning the purpose of communication is linked to ethical considerations regarding media practice; in other words journalists have responsibilities that are prior to self-interest or in the interests of their employers. Rowan Williams raised the idea that journalism and media practice are there to provide information to citizens who can then make rational judgements on the world around them. This recognition of public right to know is at the heart of democracy; a knowing and educated public, essential in characterising a mature society that can participate in action and decision-making based on a solid foundation of good information. This in turn produces a better-informed citizenry aware of its rights and able to offer political critique.

So what are the journalist's responsibilities actually based on? Towards the end of the speech the Archbishop states 'good journalism is one of the models of good conversation and communication in the wider social context' and a 'flourishing, morally credible media is a vital component in the maintenance of genuinely public talk'. The reference to 'public' requires some expansion here. Rowan Williams doesn't speak in terms of a homogenous public, but rather one that is genuinely diverse having different interests, beliefs and values. In fact, he offers a stern criticism of the media for underestimating plurality and difference and proposes what amounts to a Habermasian model of the 'ideal speech situation'. This is based on the idea that the media satisfy the informational needs of this diverse public with the proviso that the standard of information and the quality of practice are sufficiently and ethically defined to be able to meet this requirement. The space where information is to be located is a public space or to use Habermasian language, the public sphere. For Habermas, the public sphere is a discursive space, which permits citizens to debate issues and take action if necessary. Within this space individuals are able freely to share their views with one another, to help form what John Stuart Mill called public opinion. For Rowan Williams this represents the nuts and bolts of participatory democracy. However, he raises another, more profound logic underpinning journalist responsibilities, which is based on the idea of human nature; 'humans are created for communication' he states and warns of 'idle' speech quoting the New Testament and consequently of a 'corrupt speech' that 'leaves us less human'. Two issues arise from this: journalistic standards, and 'the quality of communication in … society'.

Communication has an ideal purpose to assist a positive development of society. This leads us to Williams's second point, which is premised on the public interest principle. Here is what he says:

'My argument is that "public interest" if it is understood as the process of opening up conversation and debate between the real communities of learning that make up society, is a real and crucial priority for a society's health, for the common good'.

Of course, this assumes that the information to be distributed has a specific use-value in a political context. However, if the de facto journalistic definition of the public interest equals more is better and thereafter it's up to the public how they use such information then this allows for the type of squalid, sensationalist news that occupies the spaces of the British tabloids; the type I would imagine the Archbishop criticises for distorting debate.

This is one of the problems we have with defining the meaning of the public interest. In most cases it becomes a normative principle that entails values and beliefs on the part of the author. This is what Barry Mitnick calls 'preferences', which are based on the idea that certain forms of information are preferred over others. By definition the act of 'preference' thus entails restriction and this is exactly the point of Rowan Williams' lecture as he clearly states:

'So revelation in the public interest ought to be the same as working for the common good - the journalist in the service of active democracy', which strengthens political citizenship by helping to produce 'a genuinely and rightly questioning public'.

Williams then links his first two points to the third, the common good. His view is not that dissimilar to the ideas on media practice and ethics expressed in the USA by advocates of the civic or public journalism school of thought who regularly refer to the common good as a benchmark for good journalistic practice. Libertarians on the other hand frown in despair at such philosophical ideas, for it is the language of interference and meddling. Such discontent is founded on the idea that civic journalism and the communitarians who advocate it are primarily dictatorial. For libertarians the common good is both dangerous and immoral because it infringes upon and undermines individual rights to be free from external constraints.

Rowan Williams rightly talks in terms of the media creating a 'parallel universe' or to put it another way the media, perceived as an autonomous institution detached from the community it is meant to serve, automatically develops an immanent logic; in other words it becomes self-serving. It was George Simmel who originally argued that industries in modern cultures were creating a 'crisis of culture' because the rationales that drove them differed from moral questions concerning the development of culture and 'intellectual achievement' or 'the improvement of the soul'. For Simmel the 'acquisition of culture' or self-improvement was undermined by industries who were 'kingdoms according to their own laws'. Simmel also argued against the idea that 'technological progress' is naturally or inevitably beneficial to 'cultural progress'. For Simmel at least this detachment from community led to the 'tragedy of culture' for it undermines the 'cultivation of humanity', a point that Rowan Williams would clearly sympathise with.

Many of the points raised in Rowan Williams lecture are perfectly valid. The public interest principle is based on diverse forms of information satisfying diverse interests within a political context that empowers citizenship. This, in turn, forms the ideal foundation of communication and the common good, within which good public talk is in evidence. All of this is based on the sense of responsibility or the good will of the virtuous journalist. Conversely, information driven by the market is uniform because it assumes homogeneity and as Rowan Williams states journalism in this context requires a construction of a group to speak to and, I may add, to define and justify action: 'A public is a necessary fiction' he states or to use the language of Benedict Anderson, communication is about creating an 'imagined community', often singular, and once that is achieved news discourse is framed with a fixed view of the audience in mind - the public!

There is however, one fundamental flaw in Williams's argument, and that is the complete lack of critique of the political and economic system that allows for the degradation of information in the first place, and considerations of what happens when journalists, owners and editors refuse to show good will. After all, Rowan Williams has already stated that his preference is for self-regulation. It's worth bearing in mind that this is an economic system that doesn't tolerate the public interest and common good in the same way that's advocated by Rowan Williams. To put it bluntly under present capitalist conditions the battle between what Andrew Belsey refers to as 'industrial journalism' and 'virtue ethics', the former wins hands down. This leads me on to a critique of the US civic journalism school of thought, which is very similar in outlook to Rowan Williams's views. It, like Williams, talks in terms of democracy but fails to address issues concerning the ownership of the means of communication or to use Marx's phrase the means of production of communication. Only when we begin to locate the deficiencies of the media in not satisfying the public interest at the point of ownership and control can we begin to talk in terms of inequality, not just inequality of wealth, but of power and the distribution of ideas in society. The Internet has gone someway in undermining the mainstream media and offers alternative sources of information but the mainstream media can still pack by far the biggest punch in the world of social influence. The Archbishop can discuss the ethics of journalism until the cows come home, but the huffing and puffing must include a debate on power. Now that could turn him into a turbulent priest, and would really be in the public interest!