TEDxHousesOfParliament
David Puttnam: Does the media have a "duty of care"?
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In this thoughtful talk, David Puttnam asks a big question about the media: Does it have a moral imperative to create informed citizens, to support democracy? His solution for ensuring media responsibility is bold, and you might not agree. But it's certainly a question worth asking.
David Puttnam - Producer
After a much-awarded career as a film producer, Lord David Puttnam now works at the intersection of education, media and policy. Full bio
After a much-awarded career as a film producer, Lord David Puttnam now works at the intersection of education, media and policy. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:12
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.
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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.
eventually went out of business.
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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
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.
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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.
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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,
to children and young people,
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to our service personnel, and
to the elderly and infirm.
to the elderly and infirm.
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It is seldom, if ever, extended
to equally important arguments
to equally important arguments
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around the fragility of our
present system of government,
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.
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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?
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,
accusations of negligence,
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and that being the case, can we be
really comfortable with the thought
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
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.
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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.
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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
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
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
and the responsible journalist
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or even blogger, it strikes me
as being utterly inescapable.
as being utterly inescapable.
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We should always remember that our notion
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of individual freedom and
its partner, creative freedom,
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.
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.
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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
have been thrown out of court
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and that Stevenson would eventually
have gone out of business
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.
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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
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,
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.
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Fifty years ago this week,
President John F. Kennedy
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.
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
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)
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
David Puttnam - ProducerAfter a much-awarded career as a film producer, Lord David Puttnam now works at the intersection of education, media and policy.
Why you should listen
David Puttnam spent thirty years as an independent producer of award-winning films, including The Mission, The Killing Fields, Local Hero, Chariots of Fire, Midnight Express, Bugsy Malone and Memphis Belle. His films have won ten Oscars, 25 Baftas and the Palme D'Or at Cannes.
He retired from film production in 1998 to focus on his work in public policy as it relates to education, the environment, and the creative and communications industries. In 1998 he founded the National Teaching Awards, which he chaired until 2008, also serving as the first Chair of the General Teaching Council from 2000 to 2002. From July 2002 to July 2009 he was president of UNICEF UK, playing a key role in promoting UNICEF’s advocacy and awareness objectives.
David Puttnam | Speaker | TED.com