Lord Denning’s Dictum: What lessons for Ghana’s media?
In view of the reckless comments made by some people on our airwaves, we have had the cause to reproduce the Dictum of Lord Denning in Schering Chemicals Limited v. Falkman Limited (1981) on press freedom.
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According to the most celebrated English judge of the 20th century who died a centenarian in 1999: “The Freedom of the Press is extolled as one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty. It is entrenched in the constitutions of the world. But it is often misunderstood. I will first say what it does not mean.
“It does not mean the press is free to ruin a reputation or to break a confidence or to pollute the course of justice or to do anything that is unlawful.
“It means that there should be no censorship. No restraint should be placed on the press as to what they should publish. Not by a licensing system. Nor by executive direction. Nor by court injunction.
“It means the press should be free from what Blackstone calls previous restraint or what our friends in the United States, co-heirs with us of Blackstone, call ‘prior restraint’.
“The press is not restrained in advance from publishing whatever it thinks right to publish. It can publish whatever it chooses to publish. But it does so at its own risk. It can publish and be damned.
“Afterwards, after publication, if the press has done anything unlawful, they can be dealt with by the courts. If they should offend by interfering in the course of justice, they can be punished in proceedings for contempt of court.
“If they should damage the reputation of innocent people by telling untruths or making unfair comments, they can be made liable in damages. But always afterwards; never beforehand, never by previous restraint.”
Food for thought, indeed, especially for those who speak for and on behalf of institutions and political parties.
The era of criminal libel in Ghana may have passed, but as Lord Denning rightly stated in his notable statement quoted earlier, press freedom “does not mean that the press is free to ruin a reputation or to break a confidence or to pollute the course of justice or to do anything that is unlawful”.
It only means that there should be no censorship of the press.
Article 162 Clause 2 of the Constitution says: “Subject to this Constitution and any other law not consistent with this Constitution, there shall be no censorship in Ghana.”
Press freedom has, however, been misconstrued by many media outlets and practitioners. But as the Daily Graphic has stressed quite often, there is nothing like absolute freedom of the press.
The law on defamation is still very much alive in our statutes and members of the press risk being hauled before a court of competent jurisdiction, or worse still risk serving a term in prison or being fined heavily for defaming an individual.
Many a time, especially on our airwaves, we find that political actors take their liberties too far and slander and defame others viewed as their opponents. They make spurious and unsubstantiated allegations which ordinarily should attract the severe sanctions of the law.
However, because those making the baseless accusations belong to one of the big and influential political parties, even their leadership supports them and their followers refuse to comment when they know very well that the unfounded allegations have the propensity to irreparably damage someone else’s reputation.
The Daily Graphic wishes to remind all media practitioners, especially those who host political programmes, that they too will be held liable if they allow their platforms to be used to disparage others. Media practitioners must be professional and responsible.
We may be in the political season but we do not subscribe to the making of statements calculated to damage people’s hard-earned reputation.
Let us keep the sanctity of the press intact and promote clean issues-based debates in the run-up to elections this year.
