REVIEWS
| Date | 01 July 1973 |
| Published date | 01 July 1973 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1973.tb01378.x |
It
EV
I
E
w
s
PRESSURES
ON
THE
PRESS:
AN EDITOR
LOOKS
Ar
FLEET STREET.
By
CHARLES
WINTOUR. [London: Andre
Deutsch.
1972.
260
pp.
28.50.1
THIS
book by the editor of the London
Ev@?&g
rStandard
is
not written
for
lawyers, but is nonetheless very interesting for them. His approach is to
look
at the pressures to which
an
editor
is
subject. He begins with the most graphic
minuteby-minute account of
an
editor’s day
I
have read. (The first person he
mentions as having
a
constant right of access to his office
is
the newspaper’s
lawyer.) Then successively, he deals with pressures from his production
workers, the law and from the newspaper industry.
None of the books
on
the law of libel written by lawyers succeeds
in
con-
veying the practical workings of this branch of the law. Two cases discussed
at length in his chapter
on
libel afford
a
valuable insight on this aspect. The
first
is
a
little
known
libel action by the novelist
L.
P.
Hartley against the
Evening
Standard
and its book reviewer,
T.
C. Worsley, on
a
review of
Hartley’s novel,
Poor
Clare.
Every stage is set out, Rubinstein Nosh
8:
Co.‘s
original letter on behalf of Hartley, the immediate oral consultation with
Andrew Bateson, his written Opinion, the subsequent procedural developments
and attempted compromises, culminating in the discontinuance of the action
before
trial,
with Hartley paying
$900
of the defendants’ total costs of
Sl,O69 16s.
The second case arose
out
of an article in
The
People
describing
Randolph Churchill
as
a
hack paid by the
Evening
Btaiidnrd
to write biased
accounts of an election campaign. At the time much was made of the award of
S6,OOO
damages as proof
of
the unfair treatment of the Press in libel actions.
When we read of
The
People’s
handling of the correspondence before action,
and the verbatim account of Randolph Churchill’s triumph in
the
witness box
under cross-examination by Gilbert
Pad,
Q.c.,
we understand for the first
time why the award was made. We
get
nice
examples of calculated libel-proof
communications
too:
the unexplained juxtaposition on the front page of the
Daily
Espress
just before the Profumo case broke of
a
story
on
Profumo and
a
picture of Christine Keeler.
Mr.
Wintour
is
an enthusiastic supporter
of
the Press Counail. He has
confidence in
their
ability to contain intrusion into privacy without legal
reform. In view of the
Sunday
Thr
thalidomide contempt case, it is
iiseful
to be reminded
that
the Council under Lord Devlin stated: “It
is
doubtful
whether even
a
complete discussion of the merits of a case awaiting trial by
a
judge would amount
to
contempt of court.” He suggests that
a
sub-committee
of the Council, reinforced by
a
T.U.C. element, could adjudicate on objections
by production
or
dtstribution workers to any article which they are handling,
on condition that no stoppage took place while the objection was bdng
considered.
Many of his criticisms of the law are soundly based. He is the first
I
have
read to point
out
that when the thirty-year publication rule is extended by the
Lord Chancellor in sensitive areas it
is
done without any public statement,
e.g.
100
years for
Suez
papers.
He
finds some decisions, espedally Scottish ones,
unsatisfactory in their attaching liability for contempt
to
members of the
editorial staff other than the editor, and shows how such
a
rule
would weaken
the editor’s position and lead to more inaccuracies. He admits that advertisers
affect
editorial content, but not in any harmful way.
He
critidses automobile
correspondents for their fulsome praise of new cars. Why did they mend their
ways only after
Cnr
Which
set
the
pace?
445
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