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Book by John Maxwell
How to Make Our Own News: A Primer for Environmentalist and Journalists
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The Truth and the Public Interest
By John Maxwell
On Thursday a veritable galaxy of media powers and stars
assembled at the University of the West Indies for a
seminar to discuss the liberalization of the libel laws
of Jamaica. The Media Association of Jamaica in
association with the Private Sector Organisation of
Jamaica and the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce sponsored
the occasion. The Jamaica Press Association was also
represented.
The seminar was proposed to ”produce a body of relevant
knowledge regarding the practical implications of the
current laws and practices as they apply to local and
regional media” according to a handout issued by the
organizers.
Since there was no one representing the ordinary people
of Jamaica I took the liberty of speaking on their
behalf – a liberty which the Press and the Media take
every day without any serious consideration of what such
a presumption really entails.
Over the last few years, against the background of
punitive libel damages awarded against certain elements
of the media, there has been a growing concern among
media owners that libel damages could actually put some
of them out of business, and that such damages are a
threat to freedom of the Press.
The remedies proposed include a liberalizing of the laws
and practices governing Defamation. Among these is a
proposal to extend the range of privilege, to allow news
organisations to publish as fact, statements made in
public by almost any politician about any other
politician or public servant. There are other proposals
including one to extend the ability of the press to
defame public officials in line with the doctrine
enunciated by the US Supreme Court in the 1964 case of
Sullivan v the New York Times.
This doctrine, based on the First Amendment to the US
constitution, basically allows anyone to say with
impunity anything about any ‘public official’ acting in
his public capacity. The only exceptions are if the
plaintiff can prove that the statements were made with
express malice or with a reckless disregard for the
truth of the statement.
Unless the plaintiff is a mind reader, it would seem to
me impossible to prove a libel given these constraints.
How does one discover a ‘reckless disregard’ in the mind
of the journalist?
We speak grandly of the Press as a Public trust, but I
wonder whether we understand the meaning of that claim.
For some others and me the function of journalism is a
duty undertaken in the public interest
We assume the duty to provide the public with
information, which is as accurate as we can make it.
We assume the duty to provide Public Information, which
is not spun, skewed, twisted, biased, or prejudicial in
any way to the public interest.
As part of that public trust, we have tacitly undertaken
to ensure that the people are entitled to know the
source of the information we deliver and we should be
able to guarantee that our sources are as clean and pure
as the sources of the water we drink.
Public information is as essential as water, because
people cannot make up their minds or protect their best
interest if they are not aware of the opportunities as
well as the pitfalls and snares in their paths.
The Public Interest demands that we report the Truth,
the Whole Truth and Nothing but The Truth. Our opinions
must be labeled as Opinion and not disguised as fact. We
need to respect the reality that a fact is a statement
that is independently verifiable.
We take it for granted that Freedom of Expression is a
basic Human Right – that it means the right speak one's
mind freely, to communicate freely, to publish and share
information without restraint, except the restraints
necessary in the protection of the Public Interest.
The Public Interest mandates the protection of
individual private rights in the context of the general
public right to safety, environmental health, economic
security, privacy and protection from harassment from
any quarter.
In defining our rights we must understand that our human
rights belong to all of us, that no one has any
superior or different or sectoral rights as against
anyone else and that all of us are entitled to equal
protection under the law and the Jamaican constitution.
Truth is an absolute Defence
We have been informed that the law as it currently
stands – including the statutes and the precedents –
exercises a chilling effect on freedom of speech, that
it interferes with fair comment and that it restrains
the practice of investigative journalism.
As a journalist of 55 years experience, I would be more
impressed were I presented with any evidence that our
Press and Media are really interested in investigative
journalism or evidence of the chilling effect on such
enterprises.
For instance I have not been able to understand why it
has taken more than two years for our press to become
interested in the business of Cash Plus, a monstrosity
that threatens to undermine the very fabric of public
confidence in our financial institutions.
I cannot understand why a catastrophic appointment at
the National Gallery has not attracted the interest of
the Press although the affair threatens to destroy the
National Gallery itself. I cannot understand why the
Press ignores the UDC's beach stealing campaign or why
it pays no attention to the destruction wreaked on our
sea defences, our national airport and our roads and
bridges by unrestrained sand mining.
I cannot understand why there has been so little
attention paid to the business of drug trafficking and
to the collateral damage it is wreaking in our
communities.
In a more general perspective, I cannot understand why
it has been impossible for our Press and media to
explain the real state of the poor and the communities
in which they suffer and to explain why force cannot
cure our crime problem.
I cannot understand why there is usually no attempt to
discover the real reason some policemen are being
murdered. Or why, people collaterally connected to news
organisations are immune from public criticism in most
of the news media.
There are many other things I cannot understand,
especially since the Truth is an absolute defence to a
charge of libel.
This is an important thing to remember: The truth is an
absolute defence to a charge of libel, except in some
rare and peculiar circumstances relating to criminal
libel.
Since I speak as a journalist, I share the
responsibility for these lapses, but how much greater is
the responsibility of those who hire journalists and can
direct them to look into whatever seems suspicious or
inexplicable?
It is my opinion that we are failing in our duty to the
Public Interest and that while the libel laws may need
revision; the push for reform is less necessary for
investigative journalism than it is to disguise the fact
of our failure to perform. The cure may be worse than
the disease.
It is a fact that for most people a good reputation is
their only capital asset.
If their good reputation is lost or damaged, they are in
danger of being smeared and disadvantaged for as long as
they live. Mud sticks. The media has recently embarked
on the publication of gossip and rumour to the detriment
of various person’s reputations. Unfortunately for them,
this gossip is couched in such terms that to challenge
its veracity will only expose the plaintiff to more
obloquy.
As it is, the media now gets away with major
transgressions against the public interest while
neglecting its primary responsibilities to that
interest.
To expand the libel laws in the directions proposed will
simply give the owners of the Press the privilege to
destroy their enemies at will, and particularly to
destroy the representatives of the poor in their public
functions.
If the libel laws are to be revised there must be a
revision of the time needed to defend one's character.
Today, the damage seeps throughout the society and
reaches all parts in the years it takes to bring an
action.
The other side of the equation is that some publishers
and journalists are intimidated by the mere threat of
a writ by people who have no real interest in pursuing a
cause they themselves know is without merit. This is a
serious abuse of the law, but no one seems to care. The
worthless writ hangs on, like an abandoned fish-pot,
catching and killing initiative and subverting courage.
If these two faults were corrected we would have
achieved much more than is possible by extending the
Sullivan doctrine to this country.
The Press needs to remember that public officials are
human beings with feelings and families. Above all,
they should remember the case of Richard Jewell a
security guard at the Atlanta Olympics who was suspected
of planting the bomb he reported finding. After several
years the FBI cleared his name, absolving him absolutely
of any connection with the bomb. In the interim his life
was made miserable by the Press who decided that since
he was a suspect, the only one for some time, he must be
guilty. After years of the most hostile attention and
physical harassment he was cleared, and decided to sue
his tormentors for libel.
The Press’ first line of defence was that since Jewel
was a public official and a person in the news – where
they put him) – he could not sue because of the Sullivan
doctrine. The courts dismissed this wickedness, but
Jewell’s mental and physical health had so deteriorated
that he died soon after, a victim of Press Freedom as
understood in the United States. The gravamen of the
Press’ case was that since their false and malicious
publicity had made Jewell a public figure, he was unable
to sue by virtue of the Sullivan doctrine.
As the sans culottes sang in 1789, Privilege for
ALL or Privilege for NONE. Freedom is indivisible – a
slogan we all parrot, many of us without understanding
the meaning.
We cannot give the Press and Media rights not enjoyed by
the rest of us. Nor can we impose peculiar disabilities
on certain groups or classes of people. If we are going
to expose politicians to the slings and arrows of
outrageous talk show hosts and other pettifoggers,
shouldn’t the press and media barons and practitioners
by the same reasoning, be subject to the same
disabilities?
I speak with some feeling, since I am the only
journalist who has been successfully sued for libel by a
newspaper for telling the truth, but who was
compromised by a manager who knew nothing about libel.
I am also the only Jamaican journalist to have been
threatened in Parliament with imprisonment by a
government upset by my opinions. I am also the only
editor whose newspaper was officially blacklisted by
order of the Financial Secretary of Jamaica.
And in that time I stood alone, unsupported by many of
the very same people now protesting about Freedom of the
Press
Protecting our patrimony
Last Sunday I was among several dozen people, from
Portland and from Kingston and other places, who
attended a meeting at Fairy Hill, near Port Antonio, to
form an organisation for the protection of Jamaica’s
public beaches. The casus belli, so to speak, was
the threat by the Ultimate Devastation Conglomerate to
capture the Fairy Hill Beach at the Winnifred Rest Home
and to convert it into an upscale resort for foreigners,
destroying the environment and depriving the people of
Jamaica of one of their best and last remaining public
beaches.
The movement was sparked by Cynthia Miller, a vendor on
the beach, and Carla Gulotta, an Italian born woman who
has owned a guesthouse at Drapers, San San, for the past
18 years. We heard testimony from the people whose
livelihoods depend on the beach which they have used and
husbanded for more than 50 years, and to which they
have prescriptive rights.
The UDC, however, claims that it has acquired the beach
from the government in a peculiar transaction which
appears to have bypassed the nominal owners of the beach
and the land, the Winniefred Rest Home Trust, a charity
set up nearly 90 years ago.
The Winnifred Beach Defence Committee (WBDC) intends to
ask for a declaration by the courts recognizing their
indefeasible rights to the beach and to access to the
beach by virtue of the Beach Control Act and the
Declaration of the Beach as a Public Beach fifty years
ago.
This action was initiated by a number of people from the
area, but people like me, who have used the beach freely
for up to fifty years, are to join them in the suit.
Originally, the petitioners had asked and got the
support of the Beach Control Authority (BCA) – part of
NRCA/NEPA – to assert their rights and the rights of the
general public. The BCA however withdrew from the suit
without giving the petitioners any notice of their
intention, apparently believing that their withdrawal
would allow the UDC greater leverage in the attempt to
capture the beach.
This issue is an important beachhead in the campaign to
defend the public right to public property all over
Jamaica against the campaign by the UDC to steal beach
property and for to private entrepreneurs.
The WBDC needs help; we need volunteers for fundraising,
management planning and a variety of other jobs. You
can make your feelings and your presence felt in a
campaign that is vital to the protection of the Jamaican
Public Interest.
We cannot afford to lose this beach if the people of
Jamaica are to retain their rights to their own
country. You can make contributions to the Fighting
Fund at – Winnifred Defense Fund at Scotia Bank, Port
Antonio Branch Account N°807657
You can find out more at the website:
http://free-winnifred.com
I urge you to become involved in this struggle. If you
believe in Jamaica and understand the need to protect
our nation, our patrimony and the welfare of the people,
you need to come aboard
CopyrightG2007 John Maxwell
jankunnu@gmail.com
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posted 15 December 2007 |
