I began working as a journalist some 40 years ago in the Chicago Tribune on what was then known as the Society Desk, writes Mary Maher
On my first day the Society Editor, a warm-hearted woman, said: "Now dear, you're expected to be absolutely accurate at all times and in every detail. But in any case, never, never get a name wrong. That's what you won't be forgiven for."
Since the Society Page covered the doings of a small group of fund-raising socialites devoted to reading about themselves, she spoke only the literal truth. But I commend her words for their symbolic truth to the sub-committee now drafting the Code of Practice for the new Press Council.
That such a sub-committee exists at all is a stunning achievement, for which we can thank the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, and the Legal Advisory Group on Defamation he set up in 2002. Last autumn the group produced a report recommending libel law reform, a welcome development for journalists. The catch was that the report also put forward the decidedly unwelcome proposal that a statutory press council, appointed by the Government, should be established to regulate the press.
Within weeks, the impossible happened. Press barons and journalists agreed to regulate themselves. For the first time ever, representatives of all the major players in the sector - national and regional newspapers, the major UK newspapers published in Ireland, the magazine publishers and the National Union of Journalists - have come together, and set up a steering committee to devise a model council that might stay the Minister's hand.
The structure will include an independent ombudsman who will report to the council, and one sub-committee is now working on administration: the council's composition, the relationship between the ombudsman and the council, and so on.
The other sub-committee is concerned with developing a code of practice, and it is here that, with a little lateral thinking and a lot of unpleasant honesty, we might address the problem of the unforgivable offences, the ones we get away with because the victim has no redress. Journalists make mistakes. We get things wrong regularly enough to be widely regarded as untrustworthy. We make people nervous even in the most ordinary social situations; that edgy laugh upon introduction - "oooh, you're a journalist, better watch what I say" - reveals an unease which has nothing to do with libel.
Libel is rare. Most of us reach retirement age without an actionable defamation to our name. Our misdeeds are far more likely to fall into quite legal areas of insult: disregard for privacy and personal dignity, misrepresentation, exclusion.
Privacy will have to be addressed in the new code, at least as it refers to uninvited invasions of personal lives, and that should cause some discomfiture to the owners of publications which regard public embarrassment as a blood sport.
But journalists are more usually accused of embarrassing those who have co-operated with them: the person belittled by a description intended to be clever, the victim who agreed to be interviewed anonymously and finds identity revealed by an overlooked detail, the guileless soul whose indiscreet comments are unnecessarily announced to the world.
The last involves the important question of when it is, and when it is not, fair game to publish the humiliating quote. Some years ago a woman who had once been a minor celebrity was interviewed for a "Where Are They Now?" feature in a respectable paper, and candidly recited all manner of personal problems to a journalist who duly reported every one.
The distraught woman turned to the law and then to the NUJ. The union's FOC (shop steward) in the respectable paper was sympathetic but powerless. He went on corresponding with her, writing by hand instead of typing because it looked a little more humane and courteous.
Misrepresentation is an even more common complaint. Those directly involved in the political row, the environmental protest, the community crisis, have distinct views on what their story is about, and what pertinent point should be stressed. When what appears in print doesn't reflect that, journalists are accused of anything from prejudice and distortion to the simple stupidity of misunderstanding.
The complaints are often unjustified, but they deserve a hearing. As matters now stand, some publications provide that and some do not. There is, of course, an informal means of disposing of aggrieved callers that many reporters find useful, especially if they are likely contacts for future stores. "Sorry . . . it was the subs who cut it out" is the standard apology, occasionally even true.
There are other forms of misrepresentation. Journalism by its nature seeks excitement, and there are numerous organisations, institutions and communities whose occupations, opinions, interests and aspirations are seen by the press as either irrelevant or, worse again, worthy but dull. What this means in practice is that they are largely excluded, ignored until controversy breaks out. All it takes is one gadfly with a grudge, one colourful dissident, and the spotlight of bad publicity is in full focus just long enough to inflict damage.
Can one modest code of practice stretch to cover all the imagined or real affronts we are routinely charged with by the reading public? I don't see why not, and I see good reason why journalists should be the first to welcome a Press Council that invites criticism. If we are meant to serve the public, we must be accountable to them.
Our working lives may improve considerably, because the great majority of journalists' mistakes aren't due to malice or shoddy practice but to pressurised conditions and inadequate back-up. Senior management, prepare to open the coffers.
Mary Maher is a former Irish Times journalist and a member of the executive of the National Union of Journalists.