Richard Lance Keeble, Professor of Journalism at the University of Lincoln, highlighted the role of the media in promoting multi-culturalism at the opening session of the conference “Learning to live in a multi-cultural world”, organised by Initiatives of Change, at Caux, Switzerland, 2 July 2010
Why are we here in at this amazing Mountain House, in Caux? Well. We all live in multi-cultural societies and we all have multi-cultural blood running through our veins. My family, for instance, can trace its roots back to Australia, Scotland and Ireland. My partner of 39 years is French. Our son, after spending two years teaching in Japan, is now a researcher at Murdoch University in Australia. The mother of his partner there is Greek, her late father Irish. In this context notions of racial, cultural, national purity are nonsense. We should celebrate our multi-cultural heritance.
And yet ethnic violence, crude nationalism and racism (often fuelled by underlying economic grievances) are globally on the rise. Most recently minority Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan have fallen victim to appalling violence.
In the UK, despite all the rhetoric about multi-culturalism over recent decades, evidence suggests a backlash is underway. Just take a look at the members of the new Con-Dem coalition government: the majority are Oxbridge educated, white and male. Eighteen of them are millionaires. Some 7 per cent of Britons go to private schools and yet a recent report concluded that some 54 per cent of top journalists in the UK went to private schools. 45 per cent went to Oxbridge. So much for cultural, class diversity!
Commentators on the coverage of the election by the major broadcasting companies also remarked on how again most of the reporters were white and male. Indeed, a recent report funded by the UK government and compiled by the charity Business in the Community found that some of the best-paid professions such as the media, law, banking and politics were seen by ethnics as subtly hostile or openly racist towards ethnic minorities. More than one-fifth of ethnic minority people in employment have heard racially offensive comments at work.
How the media can stoke hatred and ignorance
We are here because we know that the role of the media in all of this is vast - for instance, it can stoke xenophobia, stereotypes, hatred and ignorance. The controversy which exploded across the world following the publishing of the Mohamed cartoons in a Danish newspaper (resulting in more than a hundred deaths) served also to highlight the enormous responsibility of all journalists - and the complexity of the issues relating to freedom of expression, respect for difference and so on.
In the UK, the mainstream media too often perpetuate damning stereotypes about asylum seekers. A study by Article 19, the international organisation campaigning against censorship, of six daily newspapers found widespread use of such labels as “bogus asylum seekers”, “asylum cheats”, “scroungers” and “parasites”. In many of the reports the immigrants were dehumanised; the Mail, for instance, referred to a consignment of immigrants. Asylum seekers were often painted as criminals and threats to public health - as supposed importers of AIDS with words such as “exodus”, “flood”, “swamp”, “deluge”, “mass influx” fuelling fears. Roy Greenslade, professor of journalism at City University and Guardian media commentator, concluded: “In papers which pride themselves on their ability to tell human interest stories, human interest stories about people fleeing torture, oppression and gross poverty have been entirely absent.” Analysis of television coverage by Cardiff University School of Journalism found similar stereotyping.
At a more subtle level, cultural prejudice (which can confine black Africa to the margins of media coverage) can seriously distort new values - and mean that incredible stories of progressive political and journalistic action are marginalised. And so we must work to change those news values, sourcing conventions and practical routines that perpetuate stereotypes and exclude solution-oriented reporting.
Take, for instance, Liberia. Following mainstream media reporting, you may associate that country with child soldiers, the hacking of limbs by the combatants in the recent brutal civil war there. And yet Liberia has been the site of a little reported and yet extraordinary peace and peace journalism movement.
Extraordinary movement for peace - missed by the Western media
Let me explain: A peace movement called Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace played a crucial role in the ending of hostilities in Monrovia. Organised by social worker Leymah Gbowee, thousands of Christian and Muslim women staged silent protests and forced a meeting with President Charles Taylor and extracted a promise from him to attend peace talks in Ghana. Gbowee then led a delegation of Liberian women to Ghana to continue to apply pressure on the warring factions during the peace process. They staged a sit in outside the Presidential Palace, blocking all the doors and windows and preventing anyone from leaving the peace talks without a resolution. In other words, the women of Liberia became a powerful political force against violence and against their government.
Their actions helped bring about an agreement during the stalled peace talks. As a result, the women were able to achieve peace in Liberia after a 14-year civil war and later helped bring to power the country’s first female head of state, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. Since her election, unprecedented numbers of women have assumed leadership positions. Women comprise 17 per cent of the Senate, 12.5 per cent in the House of Representatives, 31 per cent among junior and senior ministers and 33 per cent among local government officials. Today, there are around 200 women’s organisations throughout Liberia and a series of regionally broadcast radio programmes have recently prominent women leaders in various fields.
These radio programmes have been used to foster dialogue among women’s groups about topics of particular importance to women, including health, education, and peace building and have provided networking opportunities for women interested in contesting elections. And since its formation by a group of Liberian journalists interested in sustaining peace, democracy, human rights, free expression and development in their country the Center for Media Studies and Peace Building has helped sustain these peace moves through the provision of training and research for the media in peace building, advocacy and development.
All these remarkable achievements are happening largely away from the glare of the western media.
Moreover, in western Europe the promotion of multi-culturalism and human rights is more often rhetoric than reality. Human rights, for instance, were evoked scandalously to legitimise the “war on terror” and the illegal war in Iraq in 2003 - with all its terrible consequences: the abuse of prisoners, the massacres of civilians, the creation of millions of refugees, the impoverishment of whole nations, the extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects to Guantanamo Bay and secret prisons - where they have been tortured - or disappeared. In the UK, black and Asian people have been seriously discriminated against by the police in anti-terrorism strategies - with blacks now seven times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people. More than 310,000 black and Asian people were searched on the streets in 2008/09, the figures rising more than 70 per cent over the last five years.
We might even say there is an excess of morality of one kind in the media and the dominant political culture in general. The mainstream media are forever swamped in predictable media moral panics: over declining media standards, over violent video games, irresponsible parents, rowdy students, football hooligans and so on. And each week some one or some group is damned as “evil”.
Crucial role of progressive journalists within the mainstream
How do we confront these issues? How do we theorise our strategies? Well, clearly we should not exclude activities within the mainstream. While its closeness to dominant financial, military and ideological forces means that the professionalised mass media in advanced capitalist countries function largely to promote the interests of the political/industrial/political complex, at the same time the contradictions and complexities of corporate media do provide spaces for progressive journalism. The careers of journalists such as Martha Gellhorn, Nicholas Tomalin, John Pilger, Robert Fisk, Arundhati Roy, Naomi Klein are proof enough. In this context the work of organisations such as the International Communications Forum, PressWise and the Media Diversity Institute are crucial - working for changes from within the professional sector.
Indeed, we are also here because while we know the media too often promote dangerous cultural stereotypes, in many parts of the world the media are part of the solution - assisting in conflict resolution, encouraging understanding between races and cultures, campaigning for positive changes.
In Media Values, the book I have just edited, drawing together the writing of 27 journalists and artists inspired by the ICF founder Bill Porter, Fabrice Boulé describes the programme he has developed promoting the journalism of peace and reconciliation in the Great Lakes Area of Africa. Even in the Congo, where a little reported civil conflict has caused more deaths than any other conflict since 1945, journalists are working together to promote peace.
There are many other examples of practical moves by journalists to promote civil harmony and progressive peace. In Germany the Peace Counts projects brings together a network of international journalists to work in trouble spots - such as in the Ivory Coast - inspiring journalists to work for reconciliation.
Just recently in the UK, the Guardian revealed that 216 CCTV cameras had been installed by the police in two predominantly Muslim though relatively crime-free neighbourhoods of Birmingham. As a result of the newspaper’s investigations which prompted local protests, the cameras were de-activated.
But professionalism is not enough. Professions are best seen as historically-located and class based social groupings which seek to regulate market conditions in their favour by restricting access. Significantly research suggests that only around 2 per cent of journalists in the UK are black, Asian or Arab compared to a national minority population of 5.26 per cent. Moreover, professionalism tends to stress the individual conscience, an apolitical stance and the importance of following codes of conduct to transform the mainstream media. All of these approaches need to be confronted.
Indeed, we need to redefine journalism as political practice. And by applying a political analysis of the media and journalistic activity we will be able to highlight the crucial roles of collective trade union action within the mainstream and of alternative media in the formation of a progressive, multi-racial, multi-cultural public sphere.
Let me give a few international examples of progressive collective action by journalists in the mainstream:
Between 1999 and 2001 the media worked alongside other civil society organisations in protests against President Estrada in the Philippines culminating in what became known as the Second People’s Power Revolution. In 2001 all-women teams at the Philippines Center for Investigative Journalism produced a series of television reports exposing government corruption that gained massive publicity and were considered as crucial in helping inspire the mass non-violent protests, in part sparked by Estrada fuelling of civil discord in his brutal clampdown on the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
Closer to home in the UK, during 2003 and 2004 Daily Express journalists in London passed the following motion:
This chapel is concerned that Express journalists are coming under pressure to write anti-Gypsy articles. We call for a letter to be sent to the press Complaints Commission, the leading regulatory body in the UK set up by the Thatcher government in the early 1990s) reminding it of the need to protect journalists who are unwilling to write racist articles which are contrary to the National Union of Journalists’ code of conduct.
Call for conscience clause rejected by PCC
They asked the PCC to insert conscience clause in its code whereby journalists who refused unethical assignments would be protected from disciplinary action or dismissal. This would be surely an important element of any campaign to promote higher standards in the mainstream media. But the PCC, being too much the voice of vested media interests, predictably refused.
During the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine in 2004 about 40 journalists from all TV channels announced that they were being compelled to lie on air and promised not to do so in future. - these activities culminated three months of campaigning.
In 2006 journalists on the German Berliner Zeitung newspaper refused to produce a normal edition of the paper in protest at the appointment of a new editor since they were concerned their proprietor planned to “sacrifice journalistic quality and high standards for the sake of short-term money-making ambitions” As Tony Harcup comments: “Without a collective voice and collective confidence, control of the ethics of journalism will remain largely in the hands of editors and proprietors with individual journalists being left with little choice but to do what they are told or resign. Journalistic ethics cannot be divorced from everyday economic reality such as understaffing, job insecurity, casualised labour, bullying and unconstrained management prerogative.”
Considering further collective action it’s important to acknowledge the work of media trade unions in promoting anti-racist struggles. In the UK, the National Union of Journalists has a range of guidelines on handling issues relating to multi-culturalism and the coverage of overtly racist groups - and highlights many of these activities in its publication: The Journalist. The Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists likewise constantly speaks out over the oppression of progressive journalists around the world and the dumbing down of standards as proprietors focus obsessively on profits and ratings. And the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, which brings together trade union progressives, leftist political activists and academics, similarly works in many imaginative ways to support anti-racist campaigns.
Intriguingly, the ideologies of professionalism and the linked notion of “objectivity” have served largely to exclude alternative, campaigning, social media even from the definition of “journalism”. Thus it’s important to extend the definition of journalism beyond the mainstream to incorporate the vital role of alternative media.
Firstly there’s the much under-valued anti-racist media: In Britain there’s the magazine of the organisation Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, there’s the excellent Race and Class, published by the Institute of Race Relations and there’s Muslim News. There’s the progressive US-based website, www.blackagendareport.com and the human rights campaigning magazine New Internationalist.
Then there are all the newspapers, magazines, newsletters, community radio and television stations which specifically target ethnic minority groups in the UK. A list produced by the Commission for Racial Equality carried the names of 113 such outlets. And yet these media are hardly ever considered by conferences such as this, by the mainstream media in their handling of contemporary journalism - nor rarely feature in academic research.
Important role of “citizen journalists”
Finally, I want to consider the controversial role of the new “citizen journalists” in the promotion of multiculturalism. Many professionals, predictably, see the new journalists as upstarts threatening their privileges and unconstrained by any adherence to any credible codes of conduct. I take the opposite view. The best citizen journalists are providing a necessary critique of professional standards. For instance, the media monitoring website medialens based in the UK is subjecting the mainstream media to a constant and extremely well informed critique from a radical, Chomskyite perspective.
Moreover, too much of the conventional debate over multi-culturalism and anti-racism focuses on the journalist as professional producer and the audience as a passive consumer of a professional product. Rather we need to view the audience as producers of their own (written or visual) media. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 proclaims, in effect, the right to journalism since it stresses that everyone has the right not only to seek and receive but to “impart” (in other words communicate) information and ideas.
So let’s celebrate blogs such as tomdispatch.com and the website www.the-latest.com (edited by the black campaigning journalist Marc Wadsworth) for highlighting important issues and carrying out investigations ignored by the mainstream.
There are many journalisms today and more may well sprout in future years - in the struggle against racism we need to tap the special potentials of all of them.
Canada’s highest court has quashed an attempt to establish journalists’ absolute right to protect confidential sources. In an 8-1 ruling, the Supreme Court ordered the National Post to hand over to police documents obtained in 2001 alleging the involvement of former prime minister Jean Chretien in a loan scandal.
Barry Turner, senior lecturer in law at the University of Lincoln, UK, commented: ‘I am increasingly alarmed at the civil liberties situation in Canada. They have some draconian laws in a number of areas that even Tony Blair would have blanched at.’
The court recognised the public’s interest ‘in being informed about matters of public importance that may only see the light of day through the cooperation of sources who will not speak except on condition of confidentiality’.
But the court added that the right to confidentiality had to be balanced against other important public interests, including the investigation of crime. ‘The bottom line is that no journalist can give a source a total assurance of confidentiality. All such arrangements necessarily carry an element of risk that the source’s identity will eventually be revealed.’
The Supreme Court said the constitutional protection of freedom of expression was not limited to ‘traditional media’ but was enjoyed by ‘everyone’: bloggers, tweeters and even those who stood on street corners and shouted news at passing pedestrians.
Granting immunity to sources deemed worthy to quote on condition of anonymity by ’such a heterogeneous and ill-defined group of writers and speakers…would blow a giant hole in law enforcement and other constitutionally recognised values such as privacy’.
Dr Ola Ogunyemi, of the University of Lincoln, argues that Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka was wrong to condemn a BBC series set in the slum areas of Lagos. Rather, the films should be praised for celebrating the human endurance and creative resourcefulness of the slum-dwellers
The condemnation by Professor Wole Soyinka of the series of three documentaries titled Welcome to Lagos which concluded on the BBC2 on Wednesday, 28 April 2010, is unfortunate as it diverts attention from the important issues raised by the films. It also threatens to undermine the real purpose of the programme which is to highlight the everyday experiences of these people from their own perspective.
Soyinka, a Nobel laureate and one of Nigeria’s most famous living writers, told the Guardian that he considered the series ‘condescending’, ‘patronising’ and ‘colonialist’ (see Nobel laureate condemns BBC portrayal of Nigerian city as a ‘pit of degradation’, by Ben Dowell, Guardian, 29 April 2010).
According to the BBC, Welcome to Lagos aimed to explore the impact of the massive rate of global urbanisation in one of the fastest growing mega-cities in the world. It also sought to give a voice to those adapting to life in this most extreme of urban environments. All these aims were realised in the three, engrossing films.
Soyinka’s opinion that Welcome to Lagos portrayed a bad image of Nigeria was not supported in a random survey I conducted of friends and colleagues who viewed the programmes. Many of them were extremely positive about the programme, arguing that they helped to put the everyday experience of Nigerians in a proper perspective. They applauded the resilience of the slum dwellers, their ability to remain hopeful and even sane in such conditions. They also found it uplifting that these people had refused to allow their circumstances to rob them of their humanity.
A cursory examination of the comments on the BBC blog also reveals a similar pattern as a high percentage praised the tone and content of the programme. For example, one viewer wrote: ‘This is exactly the kind of documentary we should be seeing more of, surely? Too many times these films concentrate on corruption or degradation or extreme poverty. This sounds like the opposite of that: a genuine attempt to capture people, albeit slum dwellers, as they see themselves, as they are. I actually think this is quite a brave move by the BBC.’
The slum dwellers are the victims of decades of neglect by the government to provide and improve basic social amenities for the people of Nigeria. I was in Nigeria in 2006 when the Governor of Edo State appealed for help to rid the capital of beggars. Many people find it difficult to imagine that a country that is well endowed with skilled manpower and natural resources could allow her citizens to endure such hardships. It is tantamount to a denial of basic human rights. Regrettably, the high youth unemployment, estimated at 40 million, is exacerbating social problems. However, the formation of the Unemployed Youths Association of Nigeria might help to galvanise the government to act promptly.
It is a pity that Nigerian journalists could not make such a programme for fear of reprisal from the government. Many of them are known to be living in fear of losing their jobs and even their lives if they expose social problems. This serves to perpetuate a spiral of silence that is not conducive for democracy in Nigeria. Only last weekend, three journalists, Edo Ugbagwa, 42, a court reporter with the Nation, Nathan S. Dabak, 36 and Sunday Gyang Bwede, 39, of the Christian newspaper, the Light Bearer, were murdered (see Three journalists pay the ultimate price after bloody year for media, by David Smith, the Observer, 2 May 2010). However, the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) is vociferous in its condemnation of the erosion of press freedom in Nigeria.
The complaint over Welcome to Lagos by the Lagos State Commissioner for Information and Strategy to the BBC is uncalled for and suggests that the officials need a crash course in media management. Moreover, the brute force and sporadic actions witnessed on the programme by the government Task Force can only exacerbate the problem rather than tackle its root causes.
As the father of the nation, Prof Soyinka should rather be using his influence to lobby the Federal government and the State governments to eschew party politics and leave a lasting legacy for posterity. Democracy has been mocked through vote rigging and self-serving politics.
The collapse of civil society in Nigeria is not helping either. One would have expected non-governmental organisations dealing with homelessness, poverty, capacity building and preventable diseases to swing into action with a clear strategy for helping these people. The Nigerians in diaspora also have a role to play. This could be coordinated through their association - Nigerians in Diaspora Organisation (NIDO). However, Nigerians, both at home and in diaspora, need to overcome their mutual distrust and work together to develop their country.
Finally, the BBC should be commended for making and showing the programme. It is a classic form of ’show and tell’ documentary that shuns the negative and stereotypical portrayal of Africa. The programme is not damaging to the reputation of Nigeria. Rather, it celebrates human endurance, resilience and creative resourcefulness which could even inspire the rest of the world at this time of global economic uncertainty.
Since the Icelandic economy imploded in 2008, its citizens have been determined to learn the lessons. And one of the most remarkable responses has been the launch of the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (Immi) which aims to make the country a haven for investigative journalists and whistleblowers everywhere.
The official website of the Immi says ‘Because of an economic meltdown in the banking sector, there is a deep sense among the nation that a fundamental change is needed to prevent such events from taking place again.’ The proposal tasks the government with adopting laws that provide strong protection for sources and freedom of expression and information both at home and abroad. As some nations are known as tax havens for their secrecy, the Immi suggests Iceland could be the opposite - a journalism haven known for its openness.
There is considerable support for the initiative from among the country’s 51 MPs and organisations such as Transparency International and Reporters Without Borders. The founders of the whistleblowers’ site, Wikileaks, Julian Assange and Daniel Schmitt, advised on the proposal, and preparations for the recent release of the Wikileaks video showing a US army helicopter attack in Iraq were made in Iceland.
Wikileaks also played a crucial role during Iceland’s financial meltdown when a television broadcaster was prevented from revealing creditors in the banking scandal. In response, the broadcaster ran the url for the Wikileaks’ revelation instead.
The Immi proposals also include:
- the introduction of special whistleblower protections;
- protection for the communications between an anonymous source and a media organisation and internally within a media organisation prior to publication (based on the Belgium source protection law of 2005);
- limitations on prior restraint, namely the coercion of a publisher, by a government authority or through the judicial system, to prevent publication of a specific matter.
John Tulloch, head of the Lincoln School of Journalism, argues that the latest BBC cuts are unlikely to placate the corporation’s most determined enemies who want to give Aunty a good kicking - but could quieten some of its critics in the run-up to the general election
The BBC cuts, confirmed on 1 March 2010, in a ’strategy review’ - £600 million on an overall licence fee income of £4.6 billion in 2009 - will not be sufficient to placate the BBC’s most determined enemies, although they may quieten some of its more vociferous critics in the run-up to the general election. Cutting a couple of digital networks (BBC 6 Music, the Asian Network), halving the size of the website, losing one in four website staff and reducing imports of US series will, claims BBC director general Mark Thompson, allow extra resources to be channelled into domestic programme production and facilitate a licence fee freeze in 2013.
The enemies of Britain’s most popular institution can be divided into three major groups. Most noisy are sections of the commercial press, including the Daily Mail and Rupert Murdoch’s Sun and Times, and the commercial broadcasting sector led by News Corporation, headed by the crown prince of global media, James Murdoch. They complain that the BBC’s licence fee funding allows it to provide a range of ‘free’ services that crowd out competition.
Notoriously at the last Edinburgh Television Festival (in August 2009) young Murdoch, favourite son of the more famous Rupert, used his MacTaggart lecture to accuse the BBC of a ‘chilling’ effect on its media rivals and that its free news services online made it ‘incredibly difficult’ for other providers to ask consumers to pay for news. ‘The expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision.’
A left/liberal conspiracy?
These commercial interests intermesh with a range of political ideologues, from both right and left, who regard the BBC as a left/liberal conspiracy to undermine conservative values or an insufferably arrogant establishment organisation which marginalises minority and radical voices. The third ingredient in the brew is party politicians, who scent political advantage in giving Aunty a kicking, and may have alliances with commercial interests who see benefit in this. Most of them find their home in the Conservative Party.
This alliance of enemies has been consistent pretty much from the setting up of the corporation in 1927. In fact, it goes right back to the BBC’s origins as the British Broadcasting Company in 1922. This was an alliance of the major radio manufacturers brought together by the Post Office to provide a monopoly service of programmes. It was beset by restrictions - not allowed to provide news programmes and not funded by advertising but a licence fee attached to the possession of a radio set.
Essentially this was a trade off between competing commercial and political interests. The newspaper industry saw radio broadcasting as a huge potential rival for news audiences and advertisers. Newspapers such as the Daily Mail aspired to operate radio stations for profit but did not want them in the hands of commercial rivals. The radio manufacturing lobby, which owed its origins to fat World War One contracts to provide wirelesses for the armed forces, wanted access to a growing market for sets and needed a reliable source of programmes. And the political class was transfixed by the potential power of broadcasting to take news and entertainment into the nation’s homes but fearful of that power being put into the hands of overmighty Press Barons such as Lords Northcliffe, Beaverbrook and Rothermere. As for the Post Office - it simply wanted a stable system, safe for King and Country, after a visit to the US presented a vivid picture of capitalism red in tooth and claw as hundreds of radio stations were set up and died in a radio boom and bust.
The result was a classic British compromise in which the press was kept out of ownership but given assurances that their markets for news and advertising would not be endangered while the radio lobby was given a captive market in which to churn out sets.
Elaborate ideology of public service
The British Broadcasting Corporation - built on these foundations in 1927 - cemented this monopoly and invented an elaborate ideology of public service broadcasting based on the licence fee system with a mission to ‘educate, inform and entertain’ and a historically unique commitment to a form of cultural democracy - anyone who paid the licence fee had access to the service wherever they were located and whatever their class. News was grudgingly added to its remit, despite newspaper pressure, but only became very significant in the corporation’s operations during World War Two.
There were of course historic losers and malcontents outside the framework of this trade-off. One group was advertisers who wanted to exploit the new service to sell audiences to clients. Another was entrepreneurs who wanted to set up broadcasting stations and proclaimed the virtues of the free market. A third was an amorphous group of political ideologues and activists - social conservatives on the right and radicals on the left - who in their different ways variously attacked thesuffocating and broadly consensus building centrist politics of the BBC, assailing the largest cultural bureaucracy in Europe as, on the one hand, a refuge for lefties and communists and on the other, insufferably wedded to the British state and monarchy and middle class values.
By the 1930s the BBC’s enemies had established a commercial radio system abroad, beaming programmes into Britain from France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, funded by British advertisers, despite the best efforts of the BBC to close them down. Roughly half the working class audience had defected to these stations, especially on the deadly dull BBC Sunday. World War Two started disastrously for the BBC, with bored troops engaged in a ‘phoney’ war driven to near mutiny by its tedious fare, but improved with the forced closure of its continental rivals and the reinvention of the corporation as a national entertainer, utilising dance music, popular comedy shows and American style radio formats.
A great national consensus builder
Reborn as a great national consensus builder, the BBC maintained its monopoly until the mid-1950s. It was the advent of television that provided the BBC’s enemies in the Conservative Party and their allies in the City of London with the opportunity to push for the introduction of commercial broadcasting. The argument was that television was being introduced slowly and reluctantly by the BBC - a reasonable assumption, as television soaked up roughly ten times the production costs of radio. It was also reasonable to look for a newly revived industrial sector, and a burgeoning post-war advertising industry to take the strain, as it had in the United States.
Thus was established a major pattern in the BBC’s development. It was post-war Conservative governments that largely looked to restrict BBC expansion and cap or even abolish the licence fee. It was Labour governments, who were not ideologically unfriendly to a non-commercial ethos and an ideology of public service, that by and large facilitated BBC expansion.
Labour in the early 1960s allowed the creation of BBC2 and, after moving to abolish pirate radio, encouraged the BBC to provide a substitute in the shape of Radio 1 and to commence the creation of a network of local radio stations. A second Conservative government, in the early 1970s, introduced commercial radio and backed the creation of Channel 4.
Of course it’s naïve to paint Labour as the BBC’s protector. The Blair government’s ‘New Labour’ project consistently regarded the BBC as a major obstacle to its mission to manage the news. Blair’s most significant media alliance was with the Sun. And it was Blair that oversaw the most extraordinary crisis in relations between government and BBC in the nation’s history - the removal of both chairman and director general in the fallout from the Hutton inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, the whistleblowing arms inspector who was outed as a BBC source.
Lovingly documented scandals
Cut to 2010. Labour still in power but prospects of a Conservative government. A slump in advertising, a continuing decline in newspaper readership, and a severe cutback in commercial television news. Some lovingly documented scandals, such as Ross-Brand and BBC executive pay, are stoked up by the popular press, notably the Sun and the Daily Mail. A well-publicised alliance between the largest media group, Murdoch’s News International and Sky, and the Conservative leadership, which accompanies a sustained attack by all Murdoch outlets on the BBC. And a high profile Murdoch agenda to find a way of charging for online content that sees the BBC’s formidable but ‘free’ online presence as a huge obstacle to its strategy.
Widespread suspicions that a deal has been done between two traditional enemies of the BBC. Consistently orchestrated attacks on an ‘overlarge’, ‘arrogant’ BBC, safely buttressed in the worst recession in 60 years by an inflation-protected licence fee. BBC executives - 140 reported as earning more than the Prime Minister - skilfully delegitimated as cousins of banking fatcats.
Reasonable then to interpret the BBC’s proposed cuts in its website and digital services as a pre-emptive strike to defuse the venom of an incoming Conservative government and take control of a news agenda that has mainly consisted of negative stories. But the Murdoch agenda is unlikely to be satisfied by the marginal cuts proffered so far. While The Times gleefully leaked the story under the headline ‘BBC signals an end to era of expansion’, its leader writer signalled no let up in the Murdoch agenda. Under a headline: ‘Big, bloated and cunning’ we learned:
Proposals seen by The Times look like a welcome recognition that the empire has gone too far, and should focus back on quality programming. But they actually constitute an evasive and artful strategy designed to keep the next government from intervening, while in reality changing very little. (The Times 26 February 2010)
It seems a big fuss to make about an institution that costs most Britons 39p a day. Murdoch would like Radio 1 and 2 hived off, the website charged for or abolished and the competition to Sky - the BBC’s main rival - scaled down. How much might Cameron concede? Tricky given the BBC’s enduring popularity - nearly 8 out of 10 Britons still believe the BBC is a ‘national institution we should be proud of’ according to a 2009 ICM poll. Expect to hear nothing until after polling day. If you want to dismantle a national treasure, proceed with stealth, never forget and never forgive.
Barry Turner, senior lecturer in media law at the University of Lincoln, argues that the worldwide injunction on the reporting of one of Jamie Bulger’s killers represents an extraordinary attack on the freedom of the press
In an article on AOL news (3 March 2010) it was reported that one of the killers of Jamie Bulger has been returned to prison for breaches of his parole licence. Jon Venables had allegedly repeatedly breached the terms of his release from prison.
The case is important for all reporters in that a phenomenon known as the injunction contra mundum was employed upon Venables’ release from prison preventing the media from either reporting his whereabouts or the new identity given to protect him from revenge attacks. This ‘worldwide injunction’ purports to prevent the publication of any story, anywhere in the world that would either identify Venables or identify where he is now living.
In a conversation with a spokesperson from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), I was told that it makes a mockery of our courts if a journalist can report a story prohibited in the UK to a foreign newspaper that may then be read here. The MoJ spokesperson then said that it did not, of course, have the jurisdiction to prosecute a foreign journalist. However, if a foreign newspaper published such a story, the MoJ would investigate how they acquired the information and if it was found to have come from a British journalists or news agency then they would prosecute them. It might, of course, be possible for the MoJ to employ the foreign courts to use a domestic injunction forcing the disclosure of sources.
The concept that a British court can extend its jurisdiction in this way to effectively gag the foreign press is an alarming one. Concepts of freedom of speech vary widely between different jurisdictions and Britain already has a number of laws constraining the ‘free press’. It is rather odd that we should impose our ideas as to what can and cannot be reported on other countries with quite different and sometimes constitutionally protected freedoms of the press.
The concept of a ‘worldwide injunction’ is not only contrary to common sense in that our courts have no legal right to impose reporting restrictions on foreign newspapers but it fundamentally defeats the object for which the law of equity introduced the injunction in the first place.
The rationale of the MoJ is understandable. It does not like to see the authority of our courts undermined. The rationale behind hiding Jon Venables is also clear. Despicable he may be but we always place rights to life above freedom of expression. That does not make it any more comfortable to hear ministers arrogantly announcing that the world may not be told this story. The press has an essential role to play in monitoring the justice system and it is quite right that the public has a right to know of the activities of a murderer released on licence.The ‘worldwide injunction’ is an example of neo colonialism and further threatens the freedom of the press.
How would our Justice Minister and our Home Secretary respond to Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe, obtaining an injunction in a Harare court injuncting the worlds press from calling him a criminal and a despot? Would our courts be prepared to allow an injunction requiring identification of all of those in Zimbabwe who were giving stories to the British media? Of course not! But then again, we are civilised aren’t we?
Honesty, accuracy and integrity are the three most important words in the journalist’s lexicon, Angela Rippon told a meeting at LincolnUniversity.
Miss Rippon, who became the BBC’s first regular woman newsreader in 1976 and was awarded an OBE for her services to broadcasting in 2004, advised students: “Be honest in your dealings with whoever you meet. Be accurate in the facts you put into your story, and have integrity in your motives - and in everything you do.
“Those three words should be printed above your desk or computer screen. They are a tripod of values on which to build your career - a solid foundation of principles on which to establish a peerless reputation.”
In a recent MORI poll on public trust, doctors had come out on top - politicians, not surprisingly, grubbing along at the bottom - but journalists below even them, she told the meeting, organised by the Lincoln School of Journalism.
“What a terrible indictment on our profession,” she said. “But I am proud to have on my passport that I am a journalist and broadcaster. Because I know that for the most part journalists can be and, indeed, should be a potent, powerful and influential force in society - especially when they do their job well.”
She said reporters could be especially effective when working on behalf of the consumer whether it’s trying to sort out a grievance or perceived injustice by banks, the health service, shops on the high street, the government or large corporations. “There are always in our communities individuals who, on their own, feel helpless and need the support of a more powerful voice to help them fight a wrong or social injustice.”
Consumer journalism - in its broadest sense - was one area where journalists were able to re-build the public’s trust. “We can make a real difference to people’s lives.”
Professor John Tulloch, head of the School of Journalism, commented: “Angela Rippon made a supremely articulate and passionate argument for the crucial role of the consumer journalist in championing ordinary members of the public in their disputes with the powerful. Most striking was her stirring suggestion that journalists could only rebuild trust in the media on the basis of a commitment to honesty, accuracy and integrity in their professional conduct. Mightily impressive.”
Listening Overlooked: Rethinking media and the public sphere
A public lecture for the Transforming Cultures Research Centre University of Technology, Sydney
Wednesday December 9th 2009
6 for 6.30 pm
UTS Building 2, Room 411 (enter via Tower Building)
Dr. Kate Lacey School of Media, Film and Music University of Sussex, UK
Since the late nineteenth century, the recording, manipulation and transmission of sound have opened up the possibility of new industries, new prospects for commodification, new artistic practices, new cultures of listening, new subjectivities and, not least, new publics. The idea of ‘the listening public’ that emerged with the infant sound media has tended to be associated with the text or medium listened to, not carrying with it any particular connotations of critical practice. This paper will challenge such a restricted understanding of the audience. It will examine the discursive construction of the listening public in relation to the ongoing transformation of communications media, and will argue the case for taking listening as a critical category in thinking not just about radio and other auditory media, but about the public sphere more broadly. In short, the ambition is to amplify the specifically auditory roots of the word ‘audience’, a word that combines the experiential with the public aspect of mediated culture.
The paper will argue that there is an analytical distinction to be made between ‘listening out’ - as an attentive and anticipatory communicative disposition - and ‘listening in’ - as a receptive and mediatized communicative action. This analytical distinction, I will argue, opens up a space to consider listening as an activity with political resonance. The main argument is that listening, as a communicative and participatory act, is necessarily and inescapably political. This has nowhere more profound consequences than in balancing the normative ideal of free speech with a normative freedom of listening that encompasses both a responsibility and a right to listen. Where the freedom of speech is a right ascribed to the individual, I argue there is a freedom of listening that, by contrast, inheres in the space between individuals, and is concerned precisely with guaranteeing the context within which freedom of expression can operate not as speech, but as communication.
Light refreshments will be served. Please RSVP to transforming.cultures@uts.edu.au
The Third International Global Ethics Association (IGEA)
University of the West of England, Bristol, UK
30 June - 1 July, 2010
Global Ethics:
10 years into the millennium
What progress have we made in addressing the key ethical issues of our time such as global conflict, climate change, and international injustice?
Confirmed speakers: Simon Caney (University of Oxford) and Darrel Moellendorf (Director, Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs, San Diego State University)
This conference invites papers and panels on all aspects of Global Ethics in 2010. We encourage multidisciplinary papers which address the theory and practice of Global Ethics and global justice from academic, policy and practice perspectives. Issues which we would like to consider include:
Development issues like progress towards achieving the MDGs and impact of post-colonial and post-development critiques on development ethics
Ecological crises such as global warming and the distribution of increasingly scarce natural resources
War and peace concerns such as the ethical issues arising from the War on Terror, humanitarian intervention, privatization of the military and the ethics of peace-keeping
Gender issues 20 years since CEDAW, for example, transnational feminism and reproductive rights
Human rights issues 60 years after the UDHR
Economic injustices and the global market
Global networks and civil society
Identity politics, multiple identities and transnationalism
Robert Beckett considers the implications of the recent Copenhagen Climate Change conference for communication ethicists
The recent Copenhagen Climate Change conference - COP 15 - proved a milestone, bringing together 192 nation states to confront a new class of global issues. Two communication insights are now vitally important for the success of the Copenhagen agenda.
Instead of talking about climate change, a single specialised science susceptible to scientific doubt, all communicators need to talk about global sustainability - a label for 40-50 interlinking sciences, or narratives, which together, present a clearer picture of the issues and are far less susceptible to dispute.
The argument is not whether climate change is beyond question, but that a wider variety of global and national economic and natural systems are deeply threatened. There is little scientific doubt that global population is exploding, the ice caps are melting, that many fisheries and forests are reaching a terminal point, or that 25 per cent of the species on earth are threatened by human activity and so on.
If everyone of conscience were to focus not on climate change but on global sustainability we might stop the climate change lobby fixating on a single issue and seeking selective evidence to stop all subsequent change. This problem is connected to another: namely the influence of specialists and lobbyists on a political system that is simply incapable of managing the quantity of information to evaluate and coordinate such a change.
Secondly, to address the complexity of social and environmental issues, all people have to be included in the political process itself, and to make these decisions themselves. The conceit of representative politics (even at Copenhagen level) can be stated with one simple figure. Despite calls for a smaller House of Commons, each British MP, on average, represents 100,000 people. That’s a bigger crowd than fits in Wembley stadium. Imagine one person, standing in the centre of a stadium of such magnitude and saying: ‘I promise to represent your views.’
Every citizen (please let’s not talk of stakeholders, consumers or customers) needs to represent themselves in their own fully operational democratic community. Consider this: no permanent full time government employees, only part time, semi-permanent citizens working for their communities. We’d wipe out unemployment in one go, solve the problem of educating our under-qualified citizens (on-the-job training) and include everybody in the big debates about sustainability (local education, transport, food, clothing and housing taken care of, not by Whitehall, but by the town hall).
The conceit of centralisation is no longer valid, because the technology of our age, the computer, stimulates the opposite effect. We’d expect to recreate coordinating governance at the global, regional, national, sub-regional and local levels, with no extra resources, because the system efficiencies and higher rates of innovation will create a far wealthier system, simply due to the magnified benefits of greater inclusiveness, increased participation, higher education levels, greater capacity for innovation etc.
Cries of socialism will be directed at such a plan, while a response is straightforward. Socialism and capitalism are outdated 19th century labels for larger historic ideas by which to navigate human social and economic action. We need to move beyond labels and to create new communities founded in low consumption of resources, individual and familial well-being and peaceful coexistence between nations and communities guaranteed by transparent and inclusive self-governing technologies and a minimum body of rules.
