» SubscribeMain section
-
Top story
The State of the Media - Media Policy and the need for reform.
Tom O'Malley, CPBF National Council
Tom O'Malley surveys the state of the media in an important article first published in 'Voice of the Unions'. At the end of 2001 great shake ups and even greater changes were afoot in the UK media. ITN was in a kind of quality 'meltdown' (1), and the government seemed intent on making major concessions on media ownership (2).
At a time when the media have been playing a major part in shaping the political climate of the UK there can be no greater reason for trade unionists being concerned about who runs it and what we can do to make it better.
How could anyone conceive of the government being able to launch its so-called 'War on Terrorism' without the bulk of the media acting in support of its actions? There have been notable voices of opposition in the media unions against the war, and some major interventions - such as John Pilger's articles in the Daily Mirror. But whatever take you have on the 'war' there can be no doubt that the government needed the general compliance of the media to convince the population that its choice of means to respond to the terrible events of September 11th 2001 were justified.
In fact, just as in the 1970s and 1980s the media played a key role in framing public perceptions of the great industrial issues of the day, from steel, through coal and print, so in the 1990s it has played a key role in framing the overseas military interventions in Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Media presentation of the asylum issue and of questions of job losses are also key issues for all trade unionists. We need to get a clear handle on these issues.
This article tries to help do this, by focusing on the current state of play regarding media policy and on what trade unionists need to intervene. A collection of sources to help you follow these issues up are listed in Note 4.
Some Factors underpinning Change
The changes which have occurred in UK communications policy, and which frame the current debate have a number of key determinants.
Technology
Since the 1980s the diffusion and development of satellite, cable and computer related technologies have created many more ways of assembling, communicating and selling information.
The world that existed in the 1960s and 1970s or discrete media industries - film, newspapers, broadcasting - operating under different regimes has gone.
The new technologies demanded new forms of organisation. In the UK the old system of two major public service TV providers (BBC and ITV), governed by Charter and Statute, and obliged to provide high quality public service broadcasting were inevitably over.
The question was, and remains, how are these technologies to be introduced and to whose benefit?
Economics
There have been major economic forces at work over the last two decades pushing change.
Large media corporations, such as News Corporation, have been knocking at the door of governments seeking the opening up of domestic media markets. They want to operate in areas like broadcasting, where previously they had been excluded.
The advent, since the 1990s - a result of the Conservatives two Broadcasting Acts of 1990 and 1996 - of more channels in the UK, has led to intensive competition for audiences. This has had a direct effect on the programming on both ITV and the BBC. It is economics that is driving this change.
Political changes
The period after the second World War was marked, in Europe, and to some extent in the United States, by a consensus that the State had a key role to play in organising industry - broadcasting included.
Since the late 1970s policy making elites in the UK, the USA and Europe have become much more prone to support the market as the key policy instrument in government. So, we have had a wave of policies dismantling public services in favour of handing them over to private industry. PFI, schools, hospitals - and of course - Railtrack. Media and Communications have been influenced by this.
Labour's Communications Policy
The Labour Party under Tony Blair has carefully developed its links to business interests, and in particular media business interests. The intensity of this arguably outstrips previous Labour government's practice. What is clear is that in the area of media policy, it has welcomed the input of the corporate sector in policy formation. It has not been so keen to involve trade unionists and community groups in the process.
For instance. The Institute For Public Policy Research is a body dear to the heart of New Labour. It generates publications on media policy in which many of the key nostrums of New Labour pro-market media policies will be found including the proposal for OFCOM (See below). One of these studies, published in 1996, was funded by donations from British Telecom, the Cable Communications Association, London Weekend Television, Mercury Communications, News International and Pearson Another, published in 2001, had amongst its donors, the BBC, BSkyB, the ITC, the Commercial Radio Companies Association, The Radio Authority, Panasonic and Turner Broadcasting.
Labour had inherited a set of media policies which had been reshaped in the mid 1980s and early 1990s by the Tories.
Specifically the Tories had privatised telecommunications, and backed the expansion of commercial cable and satellite systems. The two Acts, the 1990 Broadcasting Act and the 1996 Broadcasting Act were steps down the road of re-regulating the media in favour of market forces.
Under Labour, there has been no let up on this process.
In the 1980s when Mrs Thatcher attacked public service broadcasting and created the 1990 Broadcasting Act, the Labour Party stood four-square against the attacks and against the dominance of purely commercial values in the media. It pushed for a diverse media and for restraints on media ownership.
Since then New Labour has reversed its policies.
After the 1997 election, Labour moved headlong into a policy which supported the spread of privately owned market driven media and was barely distinguishable from that of the Tory's. Whilst allowing the BBC to remain intact, Labour has nonetheless eroded the very basis on which public service media operate, by sanctioning the expansion of more and more market based communications outlets.
Until Mrs Thatcher came along, public service principles underpinned all major developments in electronic communications. Labour shifted decisively away from this. In July 1998 its Regulating Communications: Approaching Convergence in the Information Age, Labour stated that public service broadcasting was no longer at the centre of broadcasting policy. Public service broadcasters were now defined as providers of ' a service which is not solely determined by commercial considerations'.
In so far as public service broadcasting used regulation as the key policy tool to achieve a strong, socially and culturally desirable broadcasting system, it was clear that by 1998 the Labour government wanted no more of this.
Regulating Communications stated that:'Regulation should be the minimum necessary to achieve clearly defined policy objectives. The presumption that broadcasting and communications should be regulated should therefore in general be reversed'. This is in line of course with the thinking underpinning the WTO attitude to national regulation of the media.
Under the 1997 Labour government then the outcome was a policy which encouraged the expansion of weakly regulated commercial radio, satellite and cable services. This in turn put the BBC under increasing pressure to act commercially, and also drove the ITV system further down the road of commercial consolidation, with a series of mergers. There was also a move over the 1990s towards making peak-time schedules more populist and entertainment driven, a development which Labour did little to halt.
The White Paper: A New Future For Communications.
The pinnacle of this strategy came last December (2000) when the government published its White Paper, A New Future For Communications. This asserted, with a confidence only true believers could possess, that ' a dynamic market is fundamental to choice'. It made it crystal clear that from now onwards the main purpose of media regulation was to 'to promote competition'.
The White Paper places markets at the centre of the new system. It asserts that a 'dynamic market is fundamental to securing choice'. A new key regulator, OFCOM will be there primarily 'to promote competition and protect consumers'.
This is a major departure from the principles underlying media regulation up to the early 1980s. It goes further than the changes in the 1990 and 1996 Acts.
OFCOM - Accountability and Power
There are currently a number of government appointed regulators. The BBC , the ITC, the Radio Authority and OFTEL. This relative diversity of regulation allows for diversity in provision across the various media. It could be much better, much more democratic and substantially more public service orientated. But the government's proposals will make things far worse.
OFCOM will swallow all of the present regulators except the BBC Governors. But, the government's think tank, the IPPR is pressing for the BBC to be placed under this body now.
Its members will be appointed by the government. But there will only be a maximum of six appointees running the whole system. There is no requirement that the regulators represent any section of opinion in society, or the national interests of Wales and Scotland, or community interests.
OFCOM will seek to impose a common economic logic onto a diverse set of media outlets.
It will also have the power to be judge and jury on questions of licensing, competition, public complaints and, maybe even, on the classification of media content.
Content - collapse of regulation
With the exception of the BBC, the White Paper proposes a system of regulation which, will allow commercial operators to regulate themselves in the matter of whether they are fulfilling proper public service obligations. This is to be done by having a tiered system of regulation, with tiers one and two containing some basic requirements, but with the big issues of content being subject, in the end to self regulation.
This will allow commercial operators to redefine what the nature of public service is in order to suit their own needs.
Ownership - Green light
The White Paper also gave the green light for a further concentration of ownership in the main ITV provider, Channel 3 and opening the door to a greater degree of cross-media ownership.
Who will benefit ?
What will be the consequences of this structure ?
[a] Regulation will be in the hands of a body whose main purpose is to enable the industry to make money. Public Service requirements are at the very least, bolt on, minor additives.
[b] The principle that, in some way, regulators should reflect public opinion, by dint of their composition, has been ditched. These appointees will be there to represent the interests of OFCOM.
[c] OFCOM will, like the FCC in the USA, become subject to regulatory capture. That is, it will become - for its remit demands, in a sense that it does so - the body which seeks to implement the economic wishes of the big players.
[d] Under the regime of weakened content regulation that will be OFCOM, whole areas of programming will be threatened. Most obviously, the regional news and current affairs tradition within ITV will be under threat due to the willingness of the government to see mergers in the commercial sector.
[e] Distinct areas of output, TV, radio, internet, will become blurred in regulatory terms.
[f] The surge of consolidation and economic competition unleashed by the industry, will seriously jeopardise the BBC. It will make the BBC even more than it is today the sole representative of public service values in the broadcasting, and push the BBC, into more and more measures designed to justify its existence. More soaps, more quizzes, more fly on the wall - at the expense of documentaries, new drama, better children's programmes, enhanced regional provision.
Who benefits ?
[a] The major beneficiaries will be shareholders in large media companies. It is for them that this brave new world has been constructed. It is in the service of there wizened, warped and narrow pursuit of profit through the exploitation of mass communications that this policy has been developed. This may seem strong - it is in my view a mild summation of the situation.
[b] Look to the USA and there you will see the future. Mass corporations dominating the output of US TV. Corporations themselves locked into the world of high industry and politics in the US, and reluctant to stand outside. It is their world view, the world view that leaves most Americans ignorant of the role their country plays in world affairs, that will eventually become the norm here.
[c] Arguments about the liberatory potential of new technology are overstated. Just as community radio, community cable, and community TV have been invoked as saviours for public values in broadcasting so has the internet. This simply ignores the economics of the system. It will be large corporations who engineer the internet to satisfy there economic needs. The internet does provide a wonderful new tool for community based communications, but nothing that in the foreseeable future rivals the large corporations.
What can be done ?
[a] Education. One key part of this is to educate people, beyond the portals of Universities to the issues. This is what the CPBF, the trade unions and the voluntary sector are trying to do now. We have produced a pamphlet on this which is free. See our web site.
[b] Trade unionists and members of political organisations should endeavour to raise the issue. The CPBF will support them.
[c] We need to unite around some key principles:
[i] Accountable regulation: that is regulators who are elected, not appointed. Regulators who are required to represent the public at large, not the industry.
[ii] Plurality of mass media outlets. This means stopping concentration, and taking steps to promote new public service media across the new systems.
[iii] Placing public service values at the heart of legislation. Making it worthwhile for new entrants to behave in a manner that conforms to public service ideals. At the moment there is a kind of fatalism, which asserts that the market will determine the content of new services. This is naive. It is possible to provide incentives to new, major providers of services, to boost their public service content.
Finally...
The White Paper will be followed in the Spring - possibly April - by a Communications Bill. It is the job of the Campaign, and others to keep raising the view that the government's policy is wrong. There are many people within the Labour party and the trade union movement who are deeply worried by these developments, and want to persuade the government to develop those parts of its policy which encourage and promote public accountability and diversity in the media.
There is another way of thinking about communications policy. That way is to start from the principle that communications are areas where the public have an overriding right to determine the purpose, shape and broad areas of provision of our media. We need to assert that principle now, to ensure that it is we, not multi-national companies which benefit at the expense of our pockets, our cultural life, and , ultimately, the health of our democracy.
_________________________________________________
NOTES
1)The CPBF was founded in 1979 to campaign for a freer more accountable media. It has a wide membership base including Trade Unions, constituency parties, community groups and individuals.
It produces regular publications ( notably Free Press) and campaigns vigorously on media ownership, public service broadcasting and press reform. During the 1980s and 1990s it backed and, or, wrote Private Members' Bills on Right of Reply for Frank Allaun, Austin Mitchell, Ann Clywd, Tony Worthington and Clive Soley.
The Campaign is currently involved in campaigning around the Labour government's proposals to reshape the way mass communications are organised.
2) ITN and the decline of PSB.
Independent Television News revolutionised news in the UK in the 1950s. Its informal style, use of film, and innovative interviewing techniques forced major changes in news broadcasting. Its News at 10 was a flagship programme.
The 1990 Broadcasting Act unleashed a wave of competition in ITV. The owners of ITN the ITV companies, were, by the late 1990s obliged to put the ITN contract out to tender. ITN won the recent round of contract bidding. But it was at a price. According to Jon Snow, the Channel 4 news presenter, in '1991 the Independent Television Commission required ITN to spend £60m to provide an adequate service compared with a £36m budget' announced in November 2001. It was due to lose up to 133 jobs, with a consequent cut back on original news bulletins.
The competition unleashed by the Conservatives has not only led to a cut back in ITN's services, but to pressure for less real news. Steve Anderson, ITV's controller of news, ITN's main customer, has made it clear he wants more show business stories, and 'more stories about people's lives'.
The changes proposed in the December 2000 White Paper are only the latest stage in this. ITN will be under more pressure to cut costs in the future. This will reduce the range and quality of news on UK TV.
3) Government Plans on Media Ownership
On 26 November the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, published proposals on media ownership. Responses were invited by 25 January 2002.
DCMs Secretary of State, Tessa Jowell said: 'The existing media ownership rules are outdated, inconsistent and not flexible enough to respond to the rapid change we have seen in the media markets'.
This is code for relaxing media regulation. The government proposes to allow ITV to become one company - thus undermining regional programming in ITV. It proposes to allow advertising companies to own media companies, as well as religious organisations - more shopping channels and US style evangelical channels.
It proposes to allow ITN ownership to become more concentrated, and has signalled the desire to drastically dilute ownership controls in commercial radio. It is looking for ways to relax restraints on newspaper mergers.
All of this is line with the way government policy is going forward. The CPBF will be responding to this document, so contact us for a copy and for advice on how your Union can intervene.
We must do all we can to prevent a drift to further media concentration.
4) Sources for follow up
Tom O'Malley, Closedown ? The BBC and Government Broadcasting Policy 1979-92 (London: Pluto, 1994)
Peter Goodwin, Television Under The Tories (London: BFI, 1998)
Robert McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy (New York, The New Press, 2000) - on the USA and global issues.
Get your free copies of the CPBF pamphlet, 'Communications revolution, who benefits ?' from the CPBF, 2nd Floor, Vi and Garner Smith House, 23 Orford Road, London, E17 9NL. Tel: 020 8521 5932. Copies can be downloaded from the website at www.cpbf.org.uk.
White Paper
Department of Culture Media and Sport Web Site has both the Communications White Paper and the Ownership Consultation document.
Responses
The following have produced responses - available on their web sites:
Campaign For Press and Broadcasting Freedom
BECTU
NUJLINKSwww.bectu.org.uk
www.nuj.org.uk
Last modified: Friday, December 21, 2001
Previous government policy stories
The Danger in a Reasonable Approach
ITN to Embrace Madonna
Wales, OFCOM and the democratic deficit
Roadshows raise awareness
Trade unionists take up the gauntlet
CPBF to give oral evidence on bill
Media Ownership Consultation
Diverse and Public - Public Service Broadcasting and the Communications White Paper
Consultation on Media Ownership Rules
5 December: CPBF Policy Seminar on Media Ownership
CYMRU RESERVATION:
HEALTH DEVOLVED BUT NOT CASUALTY!
CPBF COMMENTS ON THE COMMUNICATIONS WHITE PAPER
WHITE PAPER OR WHITE FLAG?
DTI DCMS Communications White Paper - A new future for communications
Corporate Media Trends in Europe
CPBF/Public Voice seminar on media ownership
JOWELL ANNOUNCES CONSULTATION PAPER ON MEDIA OWNERSHIP
12 November - Communications revolution: who benefits? Nottingham.
30 October - Communications revolution: who benefits? Bath.
30 October - Communications revolution: who benefits? Preston
Public service broadcasting on the brink
The Communications Revolution : Who Benefits? (CPBF Pamphlet)
Response to the Communications White Paper - February 2001
Additional Submission to the Communications White Paper Reform Team - November 2000
Comments for the Communications Reform White Paper - 22 June 2000
-
Notices
Events & Announcements
World Press Freedom Day
More reporters are currently imprisoned in Turkey than in any other country in the world. Only a matter of weeks ago lawyers failed to persuade a Turkish court to release a 76-year-old journalist from a Turkish internet news station.
World Press Freedom Day on Friday May 3, 2013 is being marked in Britain by a rally to highlight the dangers facing journalists in Turkey and in this podcast, Nicholas Jones speaks to Barry White, Organiser at the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, and Sam Bamford, the TUC's policy officer for Eastern Europe and Africa about the importance of a campaign to highlight international press freedom.
The World Press Freedom Day rally is being staged by the National Union of Journalists at the NUJ head office, Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1 on Thursday May 2, 6pm-8pm.
DATELINE: 27/4/13
UK launch of EU media campaign
DATELINE: 13/3/13
The UK launch of a 'European Citizens' Initiative' calling for EU rules against concentration of media power will take place on Thursday March 21 from 11:00am – 12:30pm in Committee Room 4A at the House of Lords, London. Guest speakers will include actor and activist Hugh Grant (pictured), media consultant Claire Enders, Professor Steven Barnett, Barry McCall (President of the NUJ) and Marc Gruber (Director of the European Federation of Journalists).
A European Citizens' Initiative is an official petition, like a Downing Street petition. If it succeeds in gathering a million signatures across the EU, the Commission is obliged to respond.
This petition calls for the EU to act to protect media pluralism and press freedom.
CPBF Annual General Meeting
DATELINE: 1/3/13
Make a note in your diary
Saturday 13 July 2013 from 10.00am
NUJ HQ, 308/312 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1.
Leveson, media ownership, CPBF future work.
DOWNLOAD FREEPRESS NOW
DATELINE: 26/3/10
Download Freepress in PDF, ePub or mobi format. Issue 194 now available.
MEDIA FOR ALL CONFERENCE
DATELINE: 26/3/10
Papers from the Media for All Conference
MEDIA MANIFESTO
DATELINE: 26/3/10
The media’s job is to inform and entertain us but we rely on them too to tell us what our rulers and representatives are up to. In the run-up to the Iraq war the government used spin and disinformation in the media to create panic and mislead people. The truth is coming out now, but we need stronger, more independent media to be able to scrutinise governments and make informed choices.
-
Previous stories
Government Policy
The Danger in a Reasonable Approach
ITN to Embrace Madonna
Wales, OFCOM and the democratic deficit
Roadshows raise awareness
Trade unionists take up the gauntlet
CPBF to give oral evidence on bill
Media Ownership Consultation
Diverse and Public - Public Service Broadcasting and the Communications White Paper
Consultation on Media Ownership Rules
5 December: CPBF Policy Seminar on Media Ownership
CYMRU RESERVATION:
HEALTH DEVOLVED BUT NOT CASUALTY!
CPBF COMMENTS ON THE COMMUNICATIONS WHITE PAPER
WHITE PAPER OR WHITE FLAG?
DTI DCMS Communications White Paper - A new future for communications
Corporate Media Trends in Europe
CPBF/Public Voice seminar on media ownership
JOWELL ANNOUNCES CONSULTATION PAPER ON MEDIA OWNERSHIP
12 November - Communications revolution: who benefits? Nottingham.
30 October - Communications revolution: who benefits? Bath.
30 October - Communications revolution: who benefits? Preston
Public service broadcasting on the brink
The Communications Revolution : Who Benefits? (CPBF Pamphlet)
Response to the Communications White Paper - February 2001
Additional Submission to the Communications White Paper Reform Team - November 2000
Comments for the Communications Reform White Paper - 22 June 2000
