WEBVTT

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I'd like to start, if I may,

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with the story of the Paisley snail.

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On the evening of the 26th of August, 1928,

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May Donoghue took a train from Glasgow

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to the town of Paisley, seven miles east of the city,

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and there at the Wellmeadow Café,

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she had a Scots ice cream float,

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a mix of ice cream and ginger beer

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bought for her by a friend.

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The ginger beer came in a brown, opaque bottle

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labeled "D. Stevenson, Glen Lane, Paisley."

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She drank some of the ice cream float,

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but as the remaining ginger beer was poured

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into her tumbler,

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a decomposed snail

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floated to the surface of her glass.

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Three days later, she was admitted

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to the Glasgow Royal Infirmary

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and diagnosed with severe gastroenteritis

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and shock.

NOTE Paragraph

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The case of Donoghue vs. Stevenson that followed

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set a very important legal precedent:

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Stevenson, the manufacturer of the ginger beer,

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was held to have a clear duty of care

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towards May Donoghue,

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even though there was no contract between them,

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and, indeed, she hadn't even bought the drink.

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One of the judges, Lord Atkin, described it like this:

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You must take care to avoid acts or omissions

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which you can reasonably foresee

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would be likely to injure your neighbor.

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Indeed, one wonders that without a duty of care,

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how many people would have had to suffer

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from gastroenteritis before Stevenson
eventually went out of business.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now please hang on to that Paisley snail story,

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because it's an important principle.

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Last year, the Hansard Society,
a nonpartisan charity

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which seeks to strengthen parliamentary democracy

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and encourage greater public involvement in politics

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published, alongside their annual audit

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of political engagement, an additional section

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devoted entirely to politics and the media.

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Here are a couple of rather depressing observations

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from that survey.

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Tabloid newspapers do not appear

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to advance the political citizenship of their readers,

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relative even to those

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who read no newspapers whatsoever.

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Tabloid-only readers are twice as likely to agree

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with a negative view of politics

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than readers of no newspapers.

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They're not just less politically engaged.

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They are consuming media that reinforces

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their negative evaluation of politics,

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thereby contributing to a fatalistic and cynical

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attitude to democracy and their own role within it.

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Little wonder that the report concluded that

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in this respect, the press, particularly the tabloids,

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appear not to be living up to the importance

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of their role in our democracy.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now I doubt if anyone in this room would seriously

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challenge that view.

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But if Hansard are right, and they usually are,

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then we've got a very serious problem on our hands,

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and it's one that I'd like to spend the next 10 minutes

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focusing upon.

NOTE Paragraph

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Since the Paisley snail,

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and especially over the past decade or so,

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a great deal of thinking has been developed

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around the notion of a duty of care

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as it relates to a number of aspects of civil society.

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Generally a duty of care arises when one individual

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or a group of individuals undertakes an activity

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which has the potential to cause harm to another,

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either physically, mentally or economically.

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This is principally focused on obvious areas,

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such as our empathetic response
to children and young people,

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to our service personnel, and
to the elderly and infirm.

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It is seldom, if ever, extended
to equally important arguments

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around the fragility of our
present system of government,

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to the notion that honesty, accuracy and impartiality

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are fundamental to the process of building

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and embedding an informed,

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participatory democracy.

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And the more you think about it,

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the stranger that is.

NOTE Paragraph

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A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure

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of opening a brand new school

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in the northeast of England.

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It had been renamed by its pupils as Academy 360.

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As I walked through their impressive,

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glass-covered atrium,

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in front of me, emblazoned on the wall

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in letters of fire

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was Marcus Aurelius's famous injunction:

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If it's not true, don't say it;

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if it's not right, don't do it.

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The head teacher saw me staring at it,

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and he said, "Oh, that's our school motto."

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On the train back to London,

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I couldn't get it out of my mind.

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I kept thinking, can it really have taken us

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over 2,000 years to come to terms

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with that simple notion

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as being our minimum expectation of each other?

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Isn't it time that we develop this concept

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of a duty of care

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and extended it to include a care

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for our shared but increasingly
endangered democratic values?

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After all, the absence of a duty of care

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within many professions

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can all too easily amount to
accusations of negligence,

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and that being the case, can we be
really comfortable with the thought

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that we're in effect being negligent

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in respect of the health of our own societies

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and the values that necessarily underpin them?

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Could anyone honestly suggest, on the evidence,

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that the same media which
Hansard so roundly condemned

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have taken sufficient care to avoid behaving

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in ways which they could reasonably have foreseen

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would be likely to undermine or even damage

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our inherently fragile democratic settlement.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now there will be those who will argue

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that this could all too easily drift into a form

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of censorship, albeit self-censorship,

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but I don't buy that argument.

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It has to be possible

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to balance freedom of expression

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with wider moral and social responsibilities.

NOTE Paragraph

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Let me explain why by taking the example

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from my own career as a filmmaker.

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Throughout that career, I never accepted

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that a filmmaker should set about putting

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their own work outside or above what he or she

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believed to be a decent set of values

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for their own life, their own family,

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and the future of the society in which we all live.

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I'd go further.

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A responsible filmmaker should
never devalue their work

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to a point at which it becomes less than true

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to the world they themselves wish to inhabit.

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As I see it, filmmakers, journalists, even bloggers

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are all required to face up to the social expectations

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that come with combining the
intrinsic power of their medium

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with their well-honed professional skills.

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Obviously this is not a mandated duty,

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but for the gifted filmmaker
and the responsible journalist

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or even blogger, it strikes me
as being utterly inescapable.

NOTE Paragraph

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We should always remember that our notion

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of individual freedom and
its partner, creative freedom,

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is comparatively new

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in the history of Western ideas,

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and for that reason, it's often undervalued

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and can be very quickly undermined.

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It's a prize easily lost,

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and once lost, once surrendered,

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it can prove very, very hard to reclaim.

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And its first line of defense

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has to be our own standards,

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not those enforced on us by a censor or legislation,

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our own standards and our own integrity.

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Our integrity as we deal with those

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with whom we work

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and our own standards as we operate within society.

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And these standards of ours

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need to be all of a piece with
a sustainable social agenda.

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They're part of a collective responsibility,

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the responsibility of the artist or the journalist

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to deal with the world as it really is,

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and this, in turn, must go hand in hand

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with the responsibility of those governing society

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to also face up to that world,

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and not to be tempted to misappropriate

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the causes of its ills.

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Yet, as has become strikingly clear

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over the last couple of years,

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such responsibility has to a very great extent

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been abrogated by large sections of the media.

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And as a consequence, across the Western world,

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the over-simplistic policies of the parties of protest

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and their appeal to a largely disillusioned,

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older demographic,

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along with the apathy and obsession with the trivial

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that typifies at least some of the young,

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taken together, these and other similarly

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contemporary aberrations

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are threatening to squeeze the life

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out of active, informed debate and engagement,

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and I stress active.

NOTE Paragraph

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The most ardent of libertarians might argue

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that Donoghue v. Stevenson should
have been thrown out of court

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and that Stevenson would eventually
have gone out of business

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if he'd continued to sell ginger beer with snails in it.

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But most of us, I think, accept some small role

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for the state to enforce a duty of care,

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and the key word here is reasonable.

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Judges must ask, did they take reasonable care

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and could they have reasonably foreseen

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the consequences of their actions?

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Far from signifying overbearing state power,

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it's that small common sense test of reasonableness

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that I'd like us to apply to those in the media

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who, after all, set the tone and the content

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for much of our democratic discourse.

NOTE Paragraph

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Democracy, in order to work, requires that

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reasonable men and women take
the time to understand and debate

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difficult, sometimes complex issues,

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and they do so in an atmosphere which strives

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for the type of understanding that leads to,

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if not agreement, then at least a productive

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and workable compromise.

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Politics is about choices,

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and within those choices, politics is about priorities.

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It's about reconciling conflicting preferences

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wherever and whenever possibly based on fact.

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But if the facts themselves are distorted,

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the resolutions are likely only
to create further conflict,

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with all the stresses and strains on society

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that inevitably follow.

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The media have to decide:

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Do they see their role as being to inflame

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or to inform?

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Because in the end, it comes down to a combination

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of trust and leadership.

NOTE Paragraph

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Fifty years ago this week,
President John F. Kennedy

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made two epoch-making speeches,

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the first on disarmament
and the second on civil rights.

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The first led almost immediately

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to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty,

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and the second led to the 1964 Civil Rights Act,

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both of which represented giant leaps forward.

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Democracy, well-led and well-informed,

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can achieve very great things,

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but there's a precondition.

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We have to trust that those making those decisions

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are acting in the best interest not of themselves

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but of the whole of the people.

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We need factually-based options,

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clearly laid out,

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not those of a few powerful

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and potentially manipulative corporations

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pursuing their own frequently narrow agendas,

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but accurate, unprejudiced information

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with which to make our own judgments.

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If we want to provide decent, fulfilling lives

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for our children and our children's children,

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we need to exercise to the
very greatest degree possible

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that duty of care for a vibrant,

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and hopefully a lasting, democracy.

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Thank you very much for listening to me.

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(Applause)