0:00:00.872,0:00:02.416
I'd like to start, if I may,

0:00:02.416,0:00:05.140
with the story of the Paisley snail.

0:00:05.140,0:00:08.355
On the evening of the 26th of August, 1928,

0:00:08.355,0:00:10.729
May Donoghue took a train from Glasgow

0:00:10.729,0:00:13.260
to the town of Paisley, seven miles east of the city,

0:00:13.260,0:00:15.573
and there at the Wellmeadow Café,

0:00:15.573,0:00:18.699
she had a Scots ice cream float,

0:00:18.699,0:00:20.546
a mix of ice cream and ginger beer

0:00:20.546,0:00:22.501
bought for her by a friend.

0:00:22.501,0:00:24.902
The ginger beer came in a brown, opaque bottle

0:00:24.902,0:00:28.765
labeled "D. Stevenson, Glen Lane, Paisley."

0:00:28.765,0:00:30.841
She drank some of the ice cream float,

0:00:30.841,0:00:32.675
but as the remaining ginger beer was poured

0:00:32.675,0:00:34.071
into her tumbler,

0:00:34.071,0:00:36.524
a decomposed snail

0:00:36.524,0:00:39.106
floated to the surface of her glass.

0:00:39.106,0:00:40.650
Three days later, she was admitted

0:00:40.650,0:00:42.156
to the Glasgow Royal Infirmary

0:00:42.156,0:00:44.214
and diagnosed with severe gastroenteritis

0:00:44.214,0:00:46.167
and shock.

0:00:46.167,0:00:49.435
The case of Donoghue vs. Stevenson that followed

0:00:49.435,0:00:52.080
set a very important legal precedent:

0:00:52.080,0:00:53.811
Stevenson, the manufacturer of the ginger beer,

0:00:53.811,0:00:56.588
was held to have a clear duty of care

0:00:56.588,0:00:58.036
towards May Donoghue,

0:00:58.036,0:01:00.138
even though there was no contract between them,

0:01:00.138,0:01:02.955
and, indeed, she hadn't even bought the drink.

0:01:02.955,0:01:05.974
One of the judges, Lord Atkin, described it like this:

0:01:05.974,0:01:08.884
You must take care to avoid acts or omissions

0:01:08.884,0:01:10.952
which you can reasonably foresee

0:01:10.952,0:01:14.180
would be likely to injure your neighbor.

0:01:14.180,0:01:16.523
Indeed, one wonders that without a duty of care,

0:01:16.523,0:01:18.269
how many people would have had to suffer

0:01:18.269,0:01:21.993
from gastroenteritis before Stevenson[br]eventually went out of business.

0:01:21.993,0:01:24.374
Now please hang on to that Paisley snail story,

0:01:24.374,0:01:27.607
because it's an important principle.

0:01:27.607,0:01:30.101
Last year, the Hansard Society,[br]a nonpartisan charity

0:01:30.101,0:01:32.007
which seeks to strengthen parliamentary democracy

0:01:32.007,0:01:35.244
and encourage greater public involvement in politics

0:01:35.244,0:01:37.831
published, alongside their annual audit

0:01:37.831,0:01:40.704
of political engagement, an additional section

0:01:40.704,0:01:43.827
devoted entirely to politics and the media.

0:01:43.827,0:01:46.202
Here are a couple of rather depressing observations

0:01:46.202,0:01:48.210
from that survey.

0:01:48.210,0:01:50.375
Tabloid newspapers do not appear

0:01:50.375,0:01:53.208
to advance the political citizenship of their readers,

0:01:53.208,0:01:54.781
relative even to those

0:01:54.781,0:01:58.007
who read no newspapers whatsoever.

0:01:58.007,0:02:00.999
Tabloid-only readers are twice as likely to agree

0:02:00.999,0:02:02.850
with a negative view of politics

0:02:02.850,0:02:05.425
than readers of no newspapers.

0:02:05.425,0:02:07.418
They're not just less politically engaged.

0:02:07.418,0:02:09.866
They are consuming media that reinforces

0:02:09.866,0:02:11.828
their negative evaluation of politics,

0:02:11.828,0:02:14.931
thereby contributing to a fatalistic and cynical

0:02:14.931,0:02:18.266
attitude to democracy and their own role within it.

0:02:18.266,0:02:20.426
Little wonder that the report concluded that

0:02:20.426,0:02:23.616
in this respect, the press, particularly the tabloids,

0:02:23.616,0:02:25.955
appear not to be living up to the importance

0:02:25.955,0:02:28.591
of their role in our democracy.

0:02:28.591,0:02:30.650
Now I doubt if anyone in this room would seriously

0:02:30.650,0:02:32.097
challenge that view.

0:02:32.097,0:02:34.713
But if Hansard are right, and they usually are,

0:02:34.713,0:02:36.689
then we've got a very serious problem on our hands,

0:02:36.689,0:02:39.324
and it's one that I'd like to spend the next 10 minutes

0:02:39.324,0:02:41.353
focusing upon.

0:02:41.353,0:02:43.036
Since the Paisley snail,

0:02:43.036,0:02:45.500
and especially over the past decade or so,

0:02:45.500,0:02:47.419
a great deal of thinking has been developed

0:02:47.419,0:02:49.278
around the notion of a duty of care

0:02:49.278,0:02:51.817
as it relates to a number of aspects of civil society.

0:02:51.817,0:02:54.561
Generally a duty of care arises when one individual

0:02:54.561,0:02:57.295
or a group of individuals undertakes an activity

0:02:57.295,0:02:59.825
which has the potential to cause harm to another,

0:02:59.825,0:03:02.539
either physically, mentally or economically.

0:03:02.539,0:03:05.010
This is principally focused on obvious areas,

0:03:05.010,0:03:08.052
such as our empathetic response[br]to children and young people,

0:03:08.052,0:03:10.778
to our service personnel, and[br]to the elderly and infirm.

0:03:10.778,0:03:14.971
It is seldom, if ever, extended[br]to equally important arguments

0:03:14.971,0:03:19.221
around the fragility of our[br]present system of government,

0:03:19.221,0:03:22.730
to the notion that honesty, accuracy and impartiality

0:03:22.730,0:03:24.874
are fundamental to the process of building

0:03:24.874,0:03:26.603
and embedding an informed,

0:03:26.603,0:03:29.360
participatory democracy.

0:03:29.360,0:03:30.781
And the more you think about it,

0:03:30.781,0:03:32.612
the stranger that is.

0:03:32.612,0:03:34.074
A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure

0:03:34.074,0:03:35.828
of opening a brand new school

0:03:35.828,0:03:37.399
in the northeast of England.

0:03:37.399,0:03:40.938
It had been renamed by its pupils as Academy 360.

0:03:40.938,0:03:42.790
As I walked through their impressive,

0:03:42.790,0:03:44.165
glass-covered atrium,

0:03:44.165,0:03:45.983
in front of me, emblazoned on the wall

0:03:45.983,0:03:47.531
in letters of fire

0:03:47.531,0:03:50.632
was Marcus Aurelius's famous injunction:

0:03:50.632,0:03:53.487
If it's not true, don't say it;

0:03:53.487,0:03:56.570
if it's not right, don't do it.

0:03:56.570,0:03:58.558
The head teacher saw me staring at it,

0:03:58.558,0:04:01.350
and he said, "Oh, that's our school motto."

0:04:01.350,0:04:03.077
On the train back to London,

0:04:03.077,0:04:04.931
I couldn't get it out of my mind.

0:04:04.931,0:04:07.490
I kept thinking, can it really have taken us

0:04:07.490,0:04:09.701
over 2,000 years to come to terms

0:04:09.701,0:04:11.566
with that simple notion

0:04:11.566,0:04:14.518
as being our minimum expectation of each other?

0:04:14.518,0:04:17.126
Isn't it time that we develop this concept

0:04:17.126,0:04:18.795
of a duty of care

0:04:18.795,0:04:21.221
and extended it to include a care

0:04:21.221,0:04:24.485
for our shared but increasingly[br]endangered democratic values?

0:04:24.485,0:04:26.342
After all, the absence of a duty of care

0:04:26.342,0:04:27.932
within many professions

0:04:27.932,0:04:30.435
can all too easily amount to[br]accusations of negligence,

0:04:30.435,0:04:33.542
and that being the case, can we be[br]really comfortable with the thought

0:04:33.542,0:04:35.843
that we're in effect being negligent

0:04:35.843,0:04:38.634
in respect of the health of our own societies

0:04:38.634,0:04:41.369
and the values that necessarily underpin them?

0:04:41.369,0:04:44.364
Could anyone honestly suggest, on the evidence,

0:04:44.364,0:04:47.620
that the same media which[br]Hansard so roundly condemned

0:04:47.620,0:04:50.907
have taken sufficient care to avoid behaving

0:04:50.907,0:04:54.349
in ways which they could reasonably have foreseen

0:04:54.349,0:04:56.450
would be likely to undermine or even damage

0:04:56.450,0:04:59.284
our inherently fragile democratic settlement.

0:04:59.284,0:05:01.305
Now there will be those who will argue

0:05:01.305,0:05:03.078
that this could all too easily drift into a form

0:05:03.078,0:05:05.085
of censorship, albeit self-censorship,

0:05:05.085,0:05:07.041
but I don't buy that argument.

0:05:07.041,0:05:09.100
It has to be possible

0:05:09.100,0:05:11.200
to balance freedom of expression

0:05:11.200,0:05:14.407
with wider moral and social responsibilities.

0:05:14.407,0:05:16.258
Let me explain why by taking the example

0:05:16.258,0:05:19.161
from my own career as a filmmaker.

0:05:19.161,0:05:20.968
Throughout that career, I never accepted

0:05:20.968,0:05:22.595
that a filmmaker should set about putting

0:05:22.595,0:05:25.645
their own work outside or above what he or she

0:05:25.645,0:05:27.595
believed to be a decent set of values

0:05:27.595,0:05:30.944
for their own life, their own family,

0:05:30.944,0:05:34.535
and the future of the society in which we all live.

0:05:34.535,0:05:35.859
I'd go further.

0:05:35.859,0:05:39.153
A responsible filmmaker should[br]never devalue their work

0:05:39.153,0:05:41.197
to a point at which it becomes less than true

0:05:41.197,0:05:44.637
to the world they themselves wish to inhabit.

0:05:44.637,0:05:48.023
As I see it, filmmakers, journalists, even bloggers

0:05:48.023,0:05:50.547
are all required to face up to the social expectations

0:05:50.547,0:05:54.302
that come with combining the[br]intrinsic power of their medium

0:05:54.302,0:05:57.676
with their well-honed professional skills.

0:05:57.676,0:06:00.563
Obviously this is not a mandated duty,

0:06:00.563,0:06:03.045
but for the gifted filmmaker[br]and the responsible journalist

0:06:03.045,0:06:06.854
or even blogger, it strikes me[br]as being utterly inescapable.

0:06:06.865,0:06:09.464
We should always remember that our notion

0:06:09.464,0:06:12.355
of individual freedom and[br]its partner, creative freedom,

0:06:12.355,0:06:14.150
is comparatively new

0:06:14.150,0:06:16.412
in the history of Western ideas,

0:06:16.412,0:06:18.330
and for that reason, it's often undervalued

0:06:18.330,0:06:20.693
and can be very quickly undermined.

0:06:20.693,0:06:22.920
It's a prize easily lost,

0:06:22.920,0:06:24.683
and once lost, once surrendered,

0:06:24.683,0:06:28.000
it can prove very, very hard to reclaim.

0:06:28.000,0:06:29.525
And its first line of defense

0:06:29.525,0:06:31.876
has to be our own standards,

0:06:31.876,0:06:35.615
not those enforced on us by a censor or legislation,

0:06:35.615,0:06:37.438
our own standards and our own integrity.

0:06:37.438,0:06:39.432
Our integrity as we deal with those

0:06:39.432,0:06:40.980
with whom we work

0:06:40.980,0:06:44.605
and our own standards as we operate within society.

0:06:44.605,0:06:46.075
And these standards of ours

0:06:46.075,0:06:49.340
need to be all of a piece with[br]a sustainable social agenda.

0:06:49.340,0:06:51.453
They're part of a collective responsibility,

0:06:51.453,0:06:53.583
the responsibility of the artist or the journalist

0:06:53.583,0:06:55.957
to deal with the world as it really is,

0:06:55.957,0:06:58.406
and this, in turn, must go hand in hand

0:06:58.406,0:07:00.824
with the responsibility of those governing society

0:07:00.824,0:07:02.901
to also face up to that world,

0:07:02.901,0:07:05.261
and not to be tempted to misappropriate

0:07:05.276,0:07:07.853
the causes of its ills.

0:07:07.853,0:07:10.499
Yet, as has become strikingly clear

0:07:10.499,0:07:12.567
over the last couple of years,

0:07:12.567,0:07:14.601
such responsibility has to a very great extent

0:07:14.601,0:07:17.644
been abrogated by large sections of the media.

0:07:17.644,0:07:19.584
And as a consequence, across the Western world,

0:07:19.584,0:07:22.883
the over-simplistic policies of the parties of protest

0:07:22.883,0:07:25.268
and their appeal to a largely disillusioned,

0:07:25.268,0:07:26.657
older demographic,

0:07:26.657,0:07:28.865
along with the apathy and obsession with the trivial

0:07:28.865,0:07:30.763
that typifies at least some of the young,

0:07:30.763,0:07:32.821
taken together, these and other similarly

0:07:32.821,0:07:34.902
contemporary aberrations

0:07:34.902,0:07:36.949
are threatening to squeeze the life

0:07:36.949,0:07:40.523
out of active, informed debate and engagement,

0:07:40.523,0:07:43.050
and I stress active.

0:07:43.050,0:07:45.327
The most ardent of libertarians might argue

0:07:45.327,0:07:48.321
that Donoghue v. Stevenson should[br]have been thrown out of court

0:07:48.321,0:07:50.439
and that Stevenson would eventually[br]have gone out of business

0:07:50.439,0:07:53.856
if he'd continued to sell ginger beer with snails in it.

0:07:53.856,0:07:57.270
But most of us, I think, accept some small role

0:07:57.270,0:08:00.348
for the state to enforce a duty of care,

0:08:00.348,0:08:03.020
and the key word here is reasonable.

0:08:03.020,0:08:06.600
Judges must ask, did they take reasonable care

0:08:06.600,0:08:08.015
and could they have reasonably foreseen

0:08:08.015,0:08:10.213
the consequences of their actions?

0:08:10.213,0:08:13.195
Far from signifying overbearing state power,

0:08:13.195,0:08:16.720
it's that small common sense test of reasonableness

0:08:16.720,0:08:19.379
that I'd like us to apply to those in the media

0:08:19.379,0:08:21.650
who, after all, set the tone and the content

0:08:21.650,0:08:24.967
for much of our democratic discourse.

0:08:24.967,0:08:27.687
Democracy, in order to work, requires that

0:08:27.687,0:08:30.635
reasonable men and women take[br]the time to understand and debate

0:08:30.635,0:08:32.967
difficult, sometimes complex issues,

0:08:32.967,0:08:35.260
and they do so in an atmosphere which strives

0:08:35.260,0:08:37.659
for the type of understanding that leads to,

0:08:37.659,0:08:39.726
if not agreement, then at least a productive

0:08:39.726,0:08:42.093
and workable compromise.

0:08:42.093,0:08:44.450
Politics is about choices,

0:08:44.450,0:08:48.441
and within those choices, politics is about priorities.

0:08:48.441,0:08:50.979
It's about reconciling conflicting preferences

0:08:50.979,0:08:56.195
wherever and whenever possibly based on fact.

0:08:56.195,0:08:58.666
But if the facts themselves are distorted,

0:08:58.666,0:09:02.389
the resolutions are likely only[br]to create further conflict,

0:09:02.389,0:09:04.276
with all the stresses and strains on society

0:09:04.276,0:09:06.492
that inevitably follow.

0:09:06.492,0:09:08.439
The media have to decide:

0:09:08.439,0:09:11.613
Do they see their role as being to inflame

0:09:11.613,0:09:13.943
or to inform?

0:09:13.943,0:09:16.805
Because in the end, it comes down to a combination

0:09:16.805,0:09:19.296
of trust and leadership.

0:09:19.296,0:09:21.873
Fifty years ago this week,[br]President John F. Kennedy

0:09:21.873,0:09:23.479
made two epoch-making speeches,

0:09:23.479,0:09:26.976
the first on disarmament[br]and the second on civil rights.

0:09:26.976,0:09:29.078
The first led almost immediately

0:09:29.078,0:09:30.659
to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty,

0:09:30.659,0:09:33.724
and the second led to the 1964 Civil Rights Act,

0:09:33.724,0:09:37.310
both of which represented giant leaps forward.

0:09:37.310,0:09:39.715
Democracy, well-led and well-informed,

0:09:39.715,0:09:42.208
can achieve very great things,

0:09:42.208,0:09:43.881
but there's a precondition.

0:09:43.881,0:09:47.192
We have to trust that those making those decisions

0:09:47.192,0:09:49.659
are acting in the best interest not of themselves

0:09:49.659,0:09:51.423
but of the whole of the people.

0:09:51.423,0:09:54.502
We need factually-based options,

0:09:54.502,0:09:55.741
clearly laid out,

0:09:55.741,0:09:57.139
not those of a few powerful

0:09:57.139,0:09:59.236
and potentially manipulative corporations

0:09:59.236,0:10:01.603
pursuing their own frequently narrow agendas,

0:10:01.603,0:10:04.032
but accurate, unprejudiced information

0:10:04.032,0:10:06.408
with which to make our own judgments.

0:10:06.408,0:10:08.302
If we want to provide decent, fulfilling lives

0:10:08.302,0:10:10.613
for our children and our children's children,

0:10:10.613,0:10:13.730
we need to exercise to the[br]very greatest degree possible

0:10:13.730,0:10:15.442
that duty of care for a vibrant,

0:10:15.442,0:10:18.339
and hopefully a lasting, democracy.

0:10:18.339,0:10:20.422
Thank you very much for listening to me.

0:10:20.422,0:10:24.361
(Applause)