It is with a certain reluctance that I offer to intervene in this debate and that reluctance is occasioned by two circumstances. The first is that the level at which the Minister has approached this problem is such and has been such, particularly in his speech in the Seanad, supplemented by his speech here, that to give an adequate rejoinder or comment on the content would call for an analysis that I have not had the time to assemble. I should like the Minister to take that as a compliment. In the introduction of this Bill in the Seanad, and again in his comments in this House, the Minister showed a creditable depth of thought which contrasts sharply with the all too frequently and superficial contributions or clichés and doctrinaire platitudes which so many politicians have to offer, even Ministers, where constructive political thought is called for. Unfortunately, those comments are intended to pass as a serious contribution to economic, social and political problems.
Judged by that norm the Minister's contribution in the Seanad, and in this House, stands out sharply. Although I am opposed to him here, and would be opposed to him on certain points of principle and much of detail, it should be recognised that the level on which this debate was cast at the outset was exceptional and one I would like to see achieved more frequently. My second hesitation originates in a certain familiarity with the problems that are posed in this area, certainly a familiarity with them in the sense that they have frequently been intruded upon me. I must confess that one feels that some of these problems when stated in a certain way are insoluble and that, perhaps, part of the art of finding practical solutions is to find the proper way of posing the problem. For these reasons I approach this with considerable hesitancy.
Now to the Bill itself. Instead of attempting an overall approach, as the Minister very creditably did, I should like to draw attention to the fact that this is an amending Bill. Therefore in a sense in addressing ourselves strictly to the Bill as it stands we are dealing with a series of amendments. I do not think there is any basic change in general approach in this Bill to that in the parent Bill because there is only one logical way of approaching this problem. If one accepts the overall principle that it is the business of the State, then the homogeneity of this amending Bill and the parent Bill follows as a matter of course. That is not to say that the Bill does not effect some very significant amendments, because it does. It effects not only significant amendments but significant improvements. This Bill must command sympathy because of the ordered thought which has gone into its construction in relation to the parent Bill and because of what is enshrined in it, but, like every other Bill and amendment, it is not perfect. Those remarks in themselves dispose of the first section.
The second section raises the question of the autonomy of the authority and the relationship of that body to the Minister of the day. In the parent Bill and this Bill there is no question, it would appear, that this is a State enterprise. There is no difference of opinion between us that it is a community service for which the community is paying. It is the community's property with the Government as custodians or executors and, as executors, they have their duties to perform. Therefore it is a question of how much should be delegated, how much autonomy should be divested directly from the Minister and the Government and how much should be retained by the Minister and the Government to enable them to discharge their trust and responsibility.
These questions arise under the parent Bill and this Bill and answers have to be found within a common framework. At the risk of inaccuracy I will paraphrase what the Minister said. He said that in expanding the duties, he was also adjusting them to the circumstances of the time, in contrast to the time of the original legislation. He also said he wanted to give greater autonomy, within limits, while at the same time improving public control in certain areas. Basically the question the Minister asked is this: Is it necessary that the Minister should keep the general control he had under the original section 31, which was a general discretion on power of intervention at all points, or if it would be more effective to delimit the areas where he had control and delegate real autonomy? Quite rightly, he pointed out that while such a blanket power existed, the appearance of delegation of autonomy lacked reality. Furthermore, the Minister made the point, correctly, that not only did the body fundamentally lack autonomy but that responsibility was back on the Government and they would have to proceed to detail in the matter.
That is a large area of debate, but all I will say is that some of the Minister's arguments convinced me. In principle the Minister was right to try to delimit authority and place the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the people who are to carry it, and then provide for two things, namely, the ultimate power to see that that responsibility as a whole was carried, and power to directly control certain areas. The Minister made a strong case for that. Perhaps if one were so minded, a very protracted debate could evolve from this problem. I do not propose to enter into that debate, neither do I wish to appear to be washing my hands of it. But I am not prepared to concede the Minister's arguments without qualification. That is perhaps a very safe thing to say, but the Opposition have the privilege of taking up such an attitude.
Section 3 deals with the removal of a member of the Authority or the Authority as a whole. There is merit in the Minister's proposal. At least it means this House must take its responsibility, that the subject would be debated with full public knowledge.
On the other hand, looking at another aspect of it, the Minister said— I will refer to that in more detail at the end—that this can be a very inhibiting provision for him. When he talks about retaining direct power in certain areas and provides for it, he still precludes himself from the possibility of exercising the sanction that may be necessary to enforce that power and he may come up against a managerial difficulty. This section provides, in effect, that any member of the Authority may be removed in certain conditions. One asks naturally what about the Authority as a whole? Of course, from the strict legal point of view all the Minister has to do is to remove them individually, but the practical difficulty remains. It is not so serious if it is the case of one recalcitrant member, but if it comes to the whole Authority the Minister may very well find himself with problems. He may have urgent reasons as well as cogent ones for giving a directive within the limits he has defined and the Authority may refuse to carry out his directive. There may be a practical urgency in such a case. What then does the Minister do?
The procedure the Minister has provided for here can be cumbrous. What happens, for instance, if in a situation—I am not thinking of an ordinary political situation but the type of problem the Minister digressed on in the Seanad and a little in the Dáil when presenting his philosophy— when the Authority might well flout the Minister to his face? It might be Oireachtas vacation time and it might take a period to assemble the Dáil or the Oireachtas as a whole. Then because of the democratic nature of the Oireachtas there might be delays, perhaps some recourse to the traditional filibuster. Meanwhile the Minister is powerless; the thing he seeks to control goes on out of control and the mechanism he has set up here will aggravate it.
I will not go into the justification, the advisability or anything else of the decision that might have been taken, but it was made and the directive given. There was a directive under section 31 given by the Minister's predecessor. What about a case like that? If the provision had been there as in section 2, in practical terms the consequences might have been serious. I am putting a hypothetical case. Supposing the Authority do not act in accordance with the Minister's directive. There is in such a case a stmulus given in the opposite direction. The object of the exercise under section 31 was to minimise publicity and incitement, but the result of this provision will be to maximise publicity and incitement in such a situation. That is the difficulty I see in a section of this nature.
I must say that the section appeals to me. In principle I feel that when authority is delegated it should be delegated thoroughly because a body or an individual cannot carry responsibility unless he has the inner certainty that comes from security to carry out that responsibility. Therefore, I see this section as a dilemma for the Minister in which the last state will be worse than the first.
Perhaps I am a little sensitive in certain areas like many other Deputies who have been here for some time. It has been fashionable to try various devices for dealing with problems. At one period in our history there was a tendency for Ministers and Governments to escape from their responsibilities by appointing commissions, authorities and the rest of it. Some of this was justified but, as I say, the suspicion remains that the device tended to be used to avoid awkward responsibilities.
For instance, directly cognate to this was the old practice of appeals to the Minister for Justice on convictions. That became a real nuisance and the setting up of other mechanisms to deal with it were naturally a temptation. Other problems were referred to commissions as a way of putting off the evil day. Other devices were apparently successful, such as the setting up of State bodies, but now we find that the result of setting up semi-State bodies and companies, no matter how useful they have been, has been that they are not thoroughly under public control—that it is impossible for the public to get all the information they would get if the Minister and the Department in question had retained the power. They have been carefully insulated from questions in this House although at the same time they are in receipt of large subsidies from the taxpayers.
This kind of problem can arise again out of this section and can be a dilemma for the Minister. I see it also as something much more embarrassing and potentially dangerous, nationally, than what I might call the guillotine operation of section 31. It is a matter on which debate might have been expanded but the debate has been concentrated in other areas. I should have been interested to hear the answer because in modern circumstances there is the great danger of the arbitrary power of the machinery of Government, something from which we all need to be protected.
The Minister is conscious of this need but he should be conscious also of the equally arbitrary—in the sense of sole discretion of a blinder but more powerful force—total force of governmental or departmental machinery, in other words, the collective force of a psychology that is generated within the administrative machine. The Minister has made a strong point on these grounds but it is on these grounds hinge the arguments for all he has done. In the area of the executive responsibility of the Government I fear that the Minister has put himself in a straitjacket. This reminds one of what is happening all over the world with the majority of the forces of law and order in straitjackets and unable, because of a certain type of liberal thinking, to control effectively and safeguard the interests of the peaceful majority of mankind.
I am grateful that it is no part of my duty as a member of the Opposition to offer the Minister a solution. If I were in his seat I should be very concerned with finding a solution. However, regarding the Minister's statement in the Seanad—I have not the reference available to me at the moment—where he said that his second aim was for greater autonomy within limitation while at the same time improving public control in certain areas, I believe a qualification may be necessary to this section albeit that it is strictly delimited to the area in which the Minister wishes to exercise more effective public control.
Section 3 must be the one of greatest interest to anybody who thinks politically or who is interested in human affairs and, in particular, to politicians who, as the Minister pointed out correctly in the Seanad must not shirk their responsibilty. This section must be of much interest, too, to those engaged professionally in broadcasting, particularly journalists. The section provides for objective and impartial reporting, for accurate news and for fair comment. I do not think that any professional involved in this field would seek any other ideal. Exception is taken often by bona fide journalists to their being accused from time to time of a deliberate lack of objectivity or of fairness. In the main these charges are unfounded but they are resented by those concerned. Unfortunately, as in every other field, instances will be found where comment is made in such a way as to give colour to the story but every decentminded journalist, and that goes for practically all of them, accepts objectivity and fairness as the basic tenets of his creed.
We might ask, then, how these unjust charges are made and repeated. It may not be difficult to assemble circumstantial evidence which may appear to substantiate such charges. This is something that has impinged on my mind on more than one occasion but each time I have had to ask myself what is objectivity, a question that is much akin to asking what is truth—the question which Pilate asked but which has never been answered. I suspect that there is reality in the concept of objectivity and I believe that there is an absolute truth. But I fear that that objectivity, like absolute and perfect truth, is beyond the power of any human individual, group or community to realise. That, I think, is what we are up against here.
I do not for a moment deny the concept of objectivity but in the reporting of and the commenting on human affairs it is impossible to achieve complete objectivity in a single, so to speak, contribution or in a series of contributions. This is where the difficulty arises. We cannot seperate completely what we commonly understand as objectivity in reporting from the subjective approach of the reporter. The more honest and imaginative he is the greater the difficulty he has.
I should like now to pay tribute to the general objectivity and the very high standard of the new services of both radio and television. It is, however, inevitable that they can be faulted, if one is so minded. I think every politician has had the experience of saying: "Oh, my God, he gave that bit but he did not give the subsequent qualification", and so on and so forth. That problem arises under this section but I think the paragraph should stand and should be emphasised because it is an ideal to be aimed at.
The question is how to achieve that ideal. What I have to say now may be a slight digression but it may serve to show the difficulties that are there in achieving objectivity. In the old days the Minister—I shall not say will recall—will appreciate from his knowledge of history that before the days of any modern form of communication, written news was largely confined to certain serious areas like politics or the local county council. It was customary for a reporter to go to a meeting and his problem was very largely solved for him because he was required to take the whole thing down verbatim. He was merely the medium through which the verbatim report was transmitted into print. Whatever William Smith O'Brien or anyone else said was there as he said it. That standard minimised the problems of objectivity. Today there is a time factor. There is also the human factor. One cannot under present circumstances expect a reporter to take down everything, knowing very well that only a paragraph will be used. To expect him to do so would be asking a little too much of human nature. The reporter must use his head and, after he furnishes his report, it goes to the subeditor who again has to tailor it to the requirement of the medium concerned and, when all these processes have been carried out, the problem of objectivity takes on a more intimidating form.
To my mind there is only one way of achieving objectivity in regard to news presentation, and that is to set out clearly this ideal: to publicise everything but, more importantly, to have as many media as possible, to have a multiplicity of media, each giving the news in the first instance with the same idea according to their lights and then providing honest and fair comment. Honest and fair comment are words understood by any human being but they are not words that a group, even a small group, will find a consensus of agreement on when applied in a particular place. If you have a diversity of comment aiming to be fair and complete I believe the sum total will be the informing of the community. That will be the best and only practical way of achieving what the Minister envisages in this section.
What he has written is excellent. The principles are well worth stating but, in order to achieve them, it seems to me you need, not a concentration on and not a tendency to narrow the number of communicating channels, whatever they may be, print, or radio, or anything else. The ideal is to diversify and maximise and give the freest possible opportunity for the expression of—I am going to use the word—"responsible" views. That brings me up against the question of censorship. The only practical and fair form of censorship is the censorship of a mature mind. In saying that I am quoting an editor. This section introduces aspirations which are practicable, desirable and in every way laudable. What I have said about fairness applies in equal measure to provisions later in the section about promoting or inciting to crime, tending to undermine the authority of the State or an intrusion on privacy. I am glad that in the Seanad the Minister recognised that incitement to crime and the promotion of violence is something in regard to which a journalist, whether in television, on radio, in the newspapers or anywhere else, is not any more lacking in responsibility or anti-patriotic or anti-social than any other citizen. He pointed out two things: the appetite of all of us for what we consider to be news, and the very fact that the persons who should not be encouraged are the very persons who seek out the television cameras and the media for exploitation of their points of view.
The responsible journalist will subscribe to principles but he will be very much aware of the difficulties the Minister pointed out. He will also be aware that, in some cases, the executive, the people who are directly involved in the matter may have a super-sensitivity which may distort their overall long-term judgment. It is a sobering thought that we, and particularly the executive, may be super-sensitive in certain areas and that the Government's judgment of the values for the community may not be as sound as the journalist's judgment. The journalist is more detached and, like the hurler on the ditch may see more of the game, although he is by no means the hurler on the ditch in the context.
It is a sobering thought to add that dimension to the dimensions the Minister has rightly considered, particularly in his speech in the Seanad. Both journalists and other members of the community will deplore the tendency for groups or interests to try to gain control of or at least to influence or affect the presentation of comment and news in the media. People with these intentions actually infiltrate the media. Some time ago—fortunately it has eased off—there was a considerable amount of incitement to young people to take up journalism for such motives. The geuine journalists resented this as much as the rest of us. This was not confined to the secular area where this idea of commitment was being sold to young people. They were encouraged to go into the media with a commitment which was nothing more nor less than an incitement to demoralise an area of paramount public importance and to prostitute an honourable profession.
That phase has passed. It never amounted to a significant danger but for a while it did seem to be a significant threat. Whether from the community's point of view or from the professional's point of view, the ideal of objective reporting, unachievable as it may be, and the ideal of fair comment, responsibility and sensitivity for individual privacy, by and large have been achieved by the media in spite of all that is said about them. They should be encouraged in this approach. To encourage others in the commitment approach is an incitement to demoralise the media and prostitute a profession. People who do that must bear a very heavy responsibility. I am glad to have the opportunity of saying this here.
It is important, therefore, in the area of education that these ideals of the journalistic profession should be instilled into young men and women at the sensitive age instead of the distorted idea that the media achieve everything and therefore they should try to gain control of the media. Nobody is more alive to these dangers than journalists, both collectively and individually.
To come back to the problem in the Bill, the section should be there. By and large, the requirements are being met by RTE. They are also met in our own immediate environment. Occasionally an interviewer may have his own views. There is also the technique of cross-examining a person on the box as if he was a hostile witness. That is becoming more rare. It could have been said of broadcasting at the beginning. I am thinking of somebody in another system who made his name on it. I have seen cases in which one person begins to feel a criminal and the other canonised. At its worst there is malice and that malice should be eliminated and at its best, this is merely another symptom of the impossibility of getting objectivity. We should not be too sensitive in interpretation; there must be understanding. Much greater danger can occur, not so much with the interviewer or with the journalist, but when free comment is allowed, shall I say, out of a crowd. There are certain people—like those who propound the commitment doctrine—who come in when they get the chance and trot out the same old thing; who make a point of trying to denigrate whoever is being interviewed. This usually happens in a programme where there is an audience and some care has to be exercised in selecting these audiences who participate. That is about as far as my adverse criticism would go.
Section 4 simply deals with the complaints commission and has very wide and detailed provisions. But what does the commission do in the long run? A charge is made; they try the charge; they give their result—and I should be glad if the Minister would correct me if I am wrong in this— but then the Authority either take it or leave it.
