New structures established to examine codes for media coverage of race-related stories "should be given every opportunity to win [ their] spurs in an area of undoubted importance for journalists and for public and political discourse generally", the new Press Ombudsman said yesterday.
John Horgan said sometimes the racial or ethnic characteristics of someone who was the subject of a news story might be explicitly mentioned, especially if the person concerned was associated with criminal behaviour or with activities that were regarded as deviant.
"It would, I think, be unfair generally to assume that such practices are simply the outward manifestation of some deep-seated inner prejudice. In some cases, indeed, the additional information is plainly superfluous," he told a Race and the Media conference in Derry.
He told the conference, organised by the University of Ulster's International Conflict Research project, that if he read that someone accused of a minor misdemeanour is named "Ionescu" it is a fairly safe bet that the defendant was not born in "Ballygobackwards".
"Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of geography could make a fair guess as to their country of origin. But why would any journalist feel it necessary, in such circumstances, to add the words "a member of the Romanian community" by way of explanation?"
He added: "It is fairly easy to categorise the more obvious explanations, however indefensible. 'Habit' may be one of them, or 'because the editor told me to' might be another. Other reasons may be that 'people have a right to know' or 'because it is relevant to the story'. The first two of these are explanations, not excuses. The other two are more problematic."
He said in the rush into print and onto the air, details like this often seem relatively unimportant.
"The tendency to minimise the importance of issues like this is accentuated by the increasing competition between journalists and between media generally and by the erosion of layers of quality control, ie costs, within media organisations."
Prof Horgan said he believes there is a growing sense that authenticity, accuracy and fairness are among those core values of the media that are in the process of being rediscovered.