1
00:00:00,472 --> 00:00:02,463
I'd like to start, if I may,

2
00:00:02,463 --> 00:00:05,327
with the story of the Paisley snail.

3
00:00:05,327 --> 00:00:08,525
On the evening of the 26th of August, 1928,

4
00:00:08,525 --> 00:00:10,483
May Donoghue took a train from Glasgow

5
00:00:10,483 --> 00:00:13,245
to the town of Paisley, seven miles east of the city,

6
00:00:13,245 --> 00:00:15,697
and there at the Wellmeadow Café,

7
00:00:15,697 --> 00:00:18,869
she had a Scot's ice cream float,

8
00:00:18,869 --> 00:00:20,347
a mix of ice cream and ginger beer

9
00:00:20,347 --> 00:00:22,609
bought for her by a friend.

10
00:00:22,609 --> 00:00:24,964
The ginger beer came in a brown, opaque bottle

11
00:00:24,964 --> 00:00:28,827
labeled "D. Stevenson, Glen Lane, Paisley."

12
00:00:28,827 --> 00:00:30,903
She drank some of the ice cream float,

13
00:00:30,903 --> 00:00:32,614
but as the remaining ginger beer was poured

14
00:00:32,614 --> 00:00:34,288
into her tumbler,

15
00:00:34,288 --> 00:00:36,142
a decomposed snail

16
00:00:36,142 --> 00:00:39,385
floated to the surface of her glass.

17
00:00:39,385 --> 00:00:40,713
Three days later, she was admitted

18
00:00:40,713 --> 00:00:42,045
to the Glasgow Royal Infirmary

19
00:00:42,045 --> 00:00:44,414
and diagnosed with severe gastroenteritis

20
00:00:44,414 --> 00:00:46,583
and shock.

21
00:00:46,583 --> 00:00:49,528
The case of Donoghue v. Stevenson that followed

22
00:00:49,528 --> 00:00:52,045
set a very important legal precedent:

23
00:00:52,045 --> 00:00:53,935
Stevenson, the manufacturer of the ginger beer,

24
00:00:53,935 --> 00:00:56,174
was held to have a clear duty of care

25
00:00:56,174 --> 00:00:58,160
towards May Donoghue,

26
00:00:58,160 --> 00:01:00,277
even though there was no contract between them,

27
00:01:00,277 --> 00:01:03,014
and, indeed, she hadn't even bought the drink.

28
00:01:03,014 --> 00:01:05,974
One of the judges, Lord Atkin, described it like this:

29
00:01:05,974 --> 00:01:09,038
you must take care to avoid acts or omissions

30
00:01:09,038 --> 00:01:11,083
which you can reasonably foresee

31
00:01:11,083 --> 00:01:14,273
would be likely to injure your neighbor.

32
00:01:14,273 --> 00:01:16,631
Indeed, one wonders that without a duty of care,

33
00:01:16,631 --> 00:01:18,455
how many of people would have had to suffer

34
00:01:18,455 --> 00:01:22,081
from gastroenteritis before Stevenson
eventually went out of business.

35
00:01:22,081 --> 00:01:24,252
Now please hang on to that Paisley snail story,

36
00:01:24,252 --> 00:01:27,239
because it's an important principle.

37
00:01:27,239 --> 00:01:30,287
Last year, the Hansard Society,
a nonpartisan charity

38
00:01:30,287 --> 00:01:32,161
which seeks to strengthen parliamentary democracy

39
00:01:32,161 --> 00:01:35,321
and encourage greater public involvement in politics

40
00:01:35,321 --> 00:01:37,909
published, along side their annual audit

41
00:01:37,909 --> 00:01:40,828
of political engagement, an additional section

42
00:01:40,828 --> 00:01:43,827
devoted entirely to politics and the media.

43
00:01:43,827 --> 00:01:45,972
Here are a couple of rather depressing observations

44
00:01:45,972 --> 00:01:48,303
from that survey.

45
00:01:48,303 --> 00:01:50,375
Tabloid newspapers do not appear

46
00:01:50,375 --> 00:01:53,394
to advance the political citizenship of their readers,

47
00:01:53,394 --> 00:01:54,935
relative even to those

48
00:01:54,935 --> 00:01:58,009
who read no newspapers whatsoever.

49
00:01:58,009 --> 00:02:01,323
Tabloid-only readers are twice as likely to agree

50
00:02:01,323 --> 00:02:03,189
with a negative view of politics

51
00:02:03,189 --> 00:02:05,702
than readers of no newspapers.

52
00:02:05,702 --> 00:02:07,618
They're not just less politically engaged.

53
00:02:07,618 --> 00:02:10,070
They are consuming media that reinforces

54
00:02:10,070 --> 00:02:11,798
their negative evaluation of politics,

55
00:02:11,798 --> 00:02:14,886
thereby contributing to a fatalistic and cynical

56
00:02:14,886 --> 00:02:18,206
attitude to democracy and their own role within it.

57
00:02:18,206 --> 00:02:20,150
Little wonder that the report concluded that

58
00:02:20,150 --> 00:02:23,448
in this respect, the press, particularly the tabloids,

59
00:02:23,448 --> 00:02:25,648
appear not to be living up to the importance

60
00:02:25,648 --> 00:02:28,684
of their role in our democracy.

61
00:02:28,684 --> 00:02:30,513
Now I doubt if anyone in this room would seriously

62
00:02:30,513 --> 00:02:32,297
challenge that view.

63
00:02:32,297 --> 00:02:34,713
But if Hansard are right, and they usually are,

64
00:02:34,713 --> 00:02:36,689
then we've got a very serious problem on our hands,

65
00:02:36,689 --> 00:02:38,817
and it's one that I'd like to spend the next 10 minutes

66
00:02:38,817 --> 00:02:41,385
focusing upon.

67
00:02:41,385 --> 00:02:43,237
Since the Paisley snail,

68
00:02:43,237 --> 00:02:45,763
and especially over the past decade or so,

69
00:02:45,763 --> 00:02:47,343
a great deal of thinking has been developed

70
00:02:47,343 --> 00:02:49,386
around the notion of a duty of care

71
00:02:49,386 --> 00:02:51,817
as it relates to a number of aspects of civil society.

72
00:02:51,817 --> 00:02:54,561
Generally a duty of care arises when one individual

73
00:02:54,561 --> 00:02:57,449
or a group of individuals undertakes an activity

74
00:02:57,449 --> 00:02:59,657
which has the potential to cause harm to another,

75
00:02:59,657 --> 00:03:02,586
either physically, mentally, or economically.

76
00:03:02,586 --> 00:03:04,919
This is principally focused on obvious areas,

77
00:03:04,919 --> 00:03:08,193
such as our empathetic response
to children and young people,

78
00:03:08,193 --> 00:03:10,718
to our service personnel, and
to the elderly and infirm.

79
00:03:10,718 --> 00:03:14,757
It is seldom, if ever, extended
to equally important arguments

80
00:03:14,757 --> 00:03:19,160
around the fragility of our
present system of government,

81
00:03:19,160 --> 00:03:22,807
to the notion that honesty, accuracy, and impartiality

82
00:03:22,807 --> 00:03:24,769
are fundamental to the process of building

83
00:03:24,769 --> 00:03:26,559
and embedding an informed,

84
00:03:26,559 --> 00:03:29,453
participatory democracy.

85
00:03:29,453 --> 00:03:30,889
And the more you think about it,

86
00:03:30,889 --> 00:03:32,767
the stranger that is.

87
00:03:32,767 --> 00:03:34,337
A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure

88
00:03:34,337 --> 00:03:35,967
of opening a brand new school

89
00:03:35,967 --> 00:03:37,507
in the northeast of England.

90
00:03:37,507 --> 00:03:41,200
It had been renamed by its pupils as Academy 360.

91
00:03:41,200 --> 00:03:42,775
As I walked through their impressive,

92
00:03:42,775 --> 00:03:44,350
glass-covered atrium,

93
00:03:44,350 --> 00:03:46,183
in front of me, emblazoned on the wall

94
00:03:46,183 --> 00:03:47,839
in letters of fire

95
00:03:47,839 --> 00:03:50,863
was Marcus Aurelius's famous injunction:

96
00:03:50,863 --> 00:03:53,487
if it's not true, don't say it,

97
00:03:53,487 --> 00:03:56,879
if it's not right, don't do it.

98
00:03:56,879 --> 00:03:58,558
The head teacher saw me staring at it,

99
00:03:58,558 --> 00:04:01,967
and he said, "Oh, that's our school motto."

100
00:04:01,967 --> 00:04:03,247
On the train back to London,

101
00:04:03,247 --> 00:04:05,047
I couldn't get it out of my mind.

102
00:04:05,047 --> 00:04:07,384
I kept thinking, can it really have taken us

103
00:04:07,384 --> 00:04:09,886
over 2,000 years to come to terms

104
00:04:09,886 --> 00:04:11,767
with that simple notion

105
00:04:11,767 --> 00:04:14,673
as being our minimum expectation of each other?

106
00:04:14,673 --> 00:04:17,158
Isn't it time that we develop this concept

107
00:04:17,158 --> 00:04:19,103
of a duty of care

108
00:04:19,103 --> 00:04:21,145
and extended it to include a care

109
00:04:21,145 --> 00:04:24,485
for our shared but increasingly
endangered democratic values?

110
00:04:24,485 --> 00:04:26,589
After all, the absence of a duty of care

111
00:04:26,589 --> 00:04:28,102
within many professions

112
00:04:28,102 --> 00:04:30,435
can all too easily amount to
accusations of negligence,

113
00:04:30,435 --> 00:04:33,773
and that being the case, can we be
really comfortable with the thought

114
00:04:33,773 --> 00:04:35,813
that we're in effect being negligent

115
00:04:35,813 --> 00:04:38,773
in respect of the health of our own societies

116
00:04:38,773 --> 00:04:41,585
and the values that necessarily underpin them?

117
00:04:41,585 --> 00:04:44,103
Could anyone honestly suggest, on the evidence,

118
00:04:44,103 --> 00:04:47,805
that the same media which
Hansard so roundly condemned

119
00:04:47,805 --> 00:04:51,169
have taken sufficient care to avoid behaving

120
00:04:51,169 --> 00:04:54,349
in ways which they could reasonably have foreseen

121
00:04:54,349 --> 00:04:56,450
would be likely to undermine or even damage

122
00:04:56,450 --> 00:05:00,209
our inherently fragile democratic settlement.

123
00:05:00,209 --> 00:05:01,645
Now there will be those who will argue

124
00:05:01,645 --> 00:05:03,071
that this could all too easily drift into a form

125
00:05:03,071 --> 00:05:05,270
of censorship, albeit self-censorship,

126
00:05:05,270 --> 00:05:07,103
but I don't buy that argument.

127
00:05:07,103 --> 00:05:09,087
It has to be possible

128
00:05:09,087 --> 00:05:11,293
to balance freedom of expression

129
00:05:11,293 --> 00:05:14,685
with wider moral and social responsibilities.

130
00:05:14,685 --> 00:05:16,397
Let me explain why by taking the example

131
00:05:16,397 --> 00:05:19,090
from my own career as a filmmaker.

132
00:05:19,090 --> 00:05:21,006
Throughout that career, I never accepted

133
00:05:21,006 --> 00:05:22,411
that a filmmaker should set about putting

134
00:05:22,411 --> 00:05:25,245
their own work outside or above what he or she

135
00:05:25,245 --> 00:05:27,965
believed to be a decent set of values

136
00:05:27,965 --> 00:05:31,093
for their own life, their own family,

137
00:05:31,093 --> 00:05:34,597
and the future of the society in which we all live.

138
00:05:34,597 --> 00:05:36,063
I'd go further.

139
00:05:36,063 --> 00:05:38,525
A responsible filmmaker should
never devalue their work

140
00:05:38,525 --> 00:05:41,086
to a point at which it becomes less than true

141
00:05:41,086 --> 00:05:44,730
to the world they themselves wish to inhabit.

142
00:05:44,730 --> 00:05:47,685
As I see it, filmmakers, journalists, even bloggers

143
00:05:47,685 --> 00:05:50,840
are all required to face up to the social expectations

144
00:05:50,840 --> 00:05:54,411
that come with combining the
intrinsic power of their medium

145
00:05:54,411 --> 00:05:57,830
with their well-honed professional skills.

146
00:05:57,830 --> 00:06:00,702
Obviously this is not a mandated duty,

147
00:06:00,702 --> 00:06:03,023
but for the gifted filmmaker
and the responsible journalist

148
00:06:03,023 --> 00:06:04,655
or even the blogger it strikes me as being

149
00:06:04,655 --> 00:06:06,989
utterly inescapable.

150
00:06:06,989 --> 00:06:09,618
We should always remember that our notion

151
00:06:09,618 --> 00:06:12,525
of individual freedom and
its partner, creative freedom,

152
00:06:12,525 --> 00:06:14,320
is comparatively new

153
00:06:14,320 --> 00:06:16,597
in the history of Western ideas,

154
00:06:16,597 --> 00:06:18,530
and for that reason, it's often undervalued

155
00:06:18,530 --> 00:06:20,693
and can be very quickly undermined.

156
00:06:20,693 --> 00:06:23,029
It's a prize easily lost,

157
00:06:23,029 --> 00:06:24,684
and once lost, once surrendered,

158
00:06:24,684 --> 00:06:28,097
it can prove very, very hard to reclaim.

159
00:06:28,097 --> 00:06:29,926
And its first line of defense

160
00:06:29,926 --> 00:06:32,002
has to be our own standards,

161
00:06:32,002 --> 00:06:36,014
not those enforced on us by a censor or legislation,

162
00:06:36,014 --> 00:06:37,685
our own standards and our own integrity.

163
00:06:37,685 --> 00:06:39,740
Our integrity as we deal with those

164
00:06:39,740 --> 00:06:41,052
with whom we work

165
00:06:41,052 --> 00:06:44,714
and our own standards as we operate within society.

166
00:06:44,714 --> 00:06:46,292
And these standards of ours

167
00:06:46,292 --> 00:06:49,727
need to be all of a piece with
a sustainable social agenda.

168
00:06:49,727 --> 00:06:51,423
They're part of a collective responsibility,

169
00:06:51,423 --> 00:06:53,215
the responsibility of the artist or the journalist

170
00:06:53,215 --> 00:06:56,127
to deal with the world as it really is,

171
00:06:56,127 --> 00:06:58,208
and this, in turn, must go hand in hand

172
00:06:58,208 --> 00:07:01,024
with the responsibility of those governing society

173
00:07:01,024 --> 00:07:03,211
to also face up to that world,

174
00:07:03,211 --> 00:07:05,248
and not to be tempted to misappropriate

175
00:07:05,248 --> 00:07:07,808
the causes of its ills.

176
00:07:07,808 --> 00:07:10,561
Yet, as has become strikingly clear

177
00:07:10,561 --> 00:07:12,583
over the last couple of years,

178
00:07:12,583 --> 00:07:14,663
such responsibility has to a very great extent

179
00:07:14,663 --> 00:07:17,768
been abrogated by large sections of the media,

180
00:07:17,768 --> 00:07:19,616
and as a consequence, across the Western world,

181
00:07:19,616 --> 00:07:23,007
the over-simplistic policies of the parties of protests

182
00:07:23,007 --> 00:07:25,208
and their appeal to a largely disillusioned,

183
00:07:25,208 --> 00:07:26,904
older demographic,

184
00:07:26,904 --> 00:07:29,039
along with the apathy and obsession with the trivial

185
00:07:29,039 --> 00:07:30,887
that typifies at least some of the young,

186
00:07:30,887 --> 00:07:33,047
taken together, these and other similarly

187
00:07:33,047 --> 00:07:34,872
contemporary aberrations

188
00:07:34,872 --> 00:07:36,904
are threatening to squeeze the life

189
00:07:36,904 --> 00:07:40,648
out of active, informed debate and engagement,

190
00:07:40,648 --> 00:07:43,096
and I stress active.

191
00:07:43,096 --> 00:07:45,512
The most ardent of libertarians might argue

192
00:07:45,512 --> 00:07:48,583
that Donoghue v. Stevenson should
have been thrown out of court

193
00:07:48,583 --> 00:07:50,440
and that Stevenson would eventually
have gone out of business

194
00:07:50,440 --> 00:07:53,903
if he'd continued to sell ginger beer with snails in it.

195
00:07:53,903 --> 00:07:57,255
But most of us, I think, accept some small role

196
00:07:57,255 --> 00:08:00,579
for the state to enforce a duty of care,

197
00:08:00,579 --> 00:08:03,039
and the key word here is reasonable.

198
00:08:03,039 --> 00:08:06,080
Judges must ask, did they take reasonable care

199
00:08:06,080 --> 00:08:08,200
and could they have reasonably foreseen

200
00:08:08,200 --> 00:08:10,399
the consequences of their actions?

201
00:08:10,399 --> 00:08:13,119
Far from signifying overbearing state power,

202
00:08:13,119 --> 00:08:16,997
it's that small common sense test of reasonableness

203
00:08:16,997 --> 00:08:19,379
that I'd like us to apply to those in the media

204
00:08:19,379 --> 00:08:21,758
who, after all, set the tone and the content

205
00:08:21,758 --> 00:08:25,046
for much of our democratic discourse.

206
00:08:25,046 --> 00:08:27,334
Democracy, in order to work, requires that

207
00:08:27,334 --> 00:08:30,805
reasonable men and women take
the time to understand and debate

208
00:08:30,805 --> 00:08:33,152
difficult, sometimes complex issues,

209
00:08:33,152 --> 00:08:35,026
and they do so in an atmosphere which strives

210
00:08:35,026 --> 00:08:37,752
for the type of understanding that leads to,

211
00:08:37,752 --> 00:08:39,865
if not agreement, then at least a productive

212
00:08:39,865 --> 00:08:42,232
and workable compromise.

213
00:08:42,232 --> 00:08:44,450
Politics is about choices,

214
00:08:44,450 --> 00:08:48,441
and within those choices, politics is about priorities.

215
00:08:48,441 --> 00:08:50,979
It's about reconciling conflicting preferences

216
00:08:50,979 --> 00:08:56,396
wherever and whenever possibly based on fact.

217
00:08:56,396 --> 00:08:58,529
But if the facts themselves are distorted,

218
00:08:58,529 --> 00:09:02,313
the resolutions are likely only
to create further conflict,

219
00:09:02,313 --> 00:09:04,478
with all the stresses and strains on society

220
00:09:04,478 --> 00:09:06,816
that inevitably follow.

221
00:09:06,816 --> 00:09:08,593
The media have to decide:

222
00:09:08,593 --> 00:09:11,614
do they see their role as being to inflame

223
00:09:11,614 --> 00:09:14,129
or to inform?

224
00:09:14,129 --> 00:09:16,790
Because in the end, it comes down to a combination

225
00:09:16,790 --> 00:09:19,882
of trust and leadership.

226
00:09:19,882 --> 00:09:22,049
Fifty years ago this week,
President John F. Kennedy

227
00:09:22,049 --> 00:09:23,665
made two epoch-making speeches,

228
00:09:23,665 --> 00:09:27,223
the first on disarmament
and the second on civil rights.

229
00:09:27,223 --> 00:09:28,925
The first led almost immediately

230
00:09:28,925 --> 00:09:30,829
to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty,

231
00:09:30,829 --> 00:09:33,863
and the second led to the 1964 Civil Rights Act,

232
00:09:33,863 --> 00:09:37,541
both of which represented giant leaps forward.

233
00:09:37,541 --> 00:09:39,885
Democracy, well-led and well-informed,

234
00:09:39,885 --> 00:09:42,424
can achieve very great things,

235
00:09:42,424 --> 00:09:44,205
but there's a precondition.

236
00:09:44,205 --> 00:09:47,192
We have to trust that those making those decisions

237
00:09:47,192 --> 00:09:49,783
are acting in the best interest not of themselves

238
00:09:49,783 --> 00:09:51,623
but of the whole of the people.

239
00:09:51,623 --> 00:09:54,641
We need factually-based options,

240
00:09:54,641 --> 00:09:56,085
clearly laid out,

241
00:09:56,085 --> 00:09:57,325
not those of a few powerful

242
00:09:57,325 --> 00:09:59,313
and potentially manipulative corporations

243
00:09:59,313 --> 00:10:01,773
pursuing their own frequently narrow agendas,

244
00:10:01,773 --> 00:10:04,125
but accurate, unprejudiced information

245
00:10:04,125 --> 00:10:06,702
with which to make our own judgments.

246
00:10:06,702 --> 00:10:08,488
If we want to provide decent, fulfilling lives

247
00:10:08,488 --> 00:10:10,613
for our children and our children's children,

248
00:10:10,613 --> 00:10:13,700
we need to exercise to the
very greatest degree possible

249
00:10:13,700 --> 00:10:15,719
that duty of care for a vibrant

250
00:10:15,719 --> 00:10:18,447
and hopefully a lasting democracy.

251
00:10:18,447 --> 00:10:20,422
Thank you very much for listening to me.

252
00:10:20,422 --> 00:10:24,361
(Applause)