4 - “They all have different policies, so of course they have to give different news”: Images of Human Rights Lawyers in the British Press

Summary

“What readers get when they pick up their newspaper – and what they miss when newspapers do not arrive – is a particular way of structuring events, of producing ‘the news’ as a coherent reality.”

ACH Smith, Paper Voices

“They all have different policies, so of course they have to give different news.”

Evelyn Waugh, Scoop

Introduction

It has been suggested that cause lawyers' moral commitments have the potential to legitimate and even enhance the public's view of the legal profession. The likelihood of this occurring clearly depends on first, whether the public recognizes such a commitment in the work of cause lawyers, and second, whether the public subscribes to the particular moral principles underlying that work. These questions help focus our attention on the content of the messages about cause lawyers disseminated through the media. Recent developments in Great Britain provide an opportunity to examine in detail how one group of cause lawyers has been depicted by the nation's newspapers and to ask whether these depictions conform to a vision of the common good that is shared by newspapers and their readers.

The 1998 Human Rights Act (HRA) subjected all public authorities in the United Kingdom to the restrictions of the European Convention on Human Rights. The HRA greatly expanded the opportunities for Britons to challenge government officials in court; it also magnified the importance of lawyers who actually handle such cases.