By Danny Schechter
When I returned to London this time, there were two surprises I didn't anticipate: first and most important, the sun was shining unseasonably, and second, many eyes were focused on the country I came from. During that weekend, the Grammy music awards were rebroadcast on the BBC in Britain without commercials, as they were meant to be seen, and Prime Minister Tony Blair was in "the States," as Brits call the USA, making nice to Dubya, who revealed, to the PM's chagrin, that the two leaders share an intimate secret: both brush with Colgate. (Whatever happened to "gardol," that mysterious dental ingredient that supposedly acts like an "invisible shield"?) That was one detail I could have been shielded from.
Blair, who is readying a call for an election to keep New Labor in power, is also bracing for a new Battle of Britain with regard to his media policies. At the center of the debate is the future of the U.K.'s prized broadcast asset, the BBC. Ironically, George W., perhaps unaware of this fierce debate, arranged to have the BBC piped into Camp David to help his guest, a Clinton crony, feel more at home. While he enjoys its programming, his ministers are undermining its mission.
The gauntlet on the issue was thrown down when Blair's government recently released a White Paper on a "new future for communications." Such papers are prepared — at least theoretically — as a basis for democratic discussion in the run-up to the introduction of proposals for new laws into Parliament. Usually, the procedure provides ample time for consultation. But not on this issue! This one, which affects the whole future of British broadcasting, was rushed through in only eight weeks, not excluding the Christmas and New Year break. As a result, critics — many of whom are allied through the Campaign for Press and Broadcast Freedom, an advocacy coalition founded in 1979 — complain that the process is closed and favors "those with money and knowledge to respond."
They are right; the public for the most part is being left out of a debate over legislation that threatens to transform the media environment with more privatization, relaxed regulation and giveaways to vested interests.
In the eyes of the Campaign, Blair's White Paper might be more appropriately called a "Blight Paper," not just because it is on the agenda of a country known colloquially as "Blighty," but because it could blight or otherwise undercut the strong, publicly owned but independently run public-service broadcasting tradition exemplified by the BBC.
Perhaps that's why the government has dressed up its plans in bland, high-minded language that masks what's really at stake. "Our world is changing and communications are central to that change," the paper begins. "We want to ensure the widest possible access to a choice of diverse communications services. We want to safeguard the interests of citizens and consumers. We want to make sure that the U.K. is home to the most dynamic and competitive communications market in the world." (You can read the whole White Paper by clicking here: A New Future for Communications: To comment Consultation@whitepaper.gov.uk) Much of it reads like Orwellian newspeak. Britain today is suffering from a new outbreak of foot and mouth disease. Sadly, it's not confined to the farms or the swine.
"The Knives Are Out"
The British government is not proposing to sell off the BBC — far from it. There would no doubt be a national revolt if they tried that. Nevertheless, "it is increasingly clear that the knives are out for the BBC," Steven Barnett, a communications professor, writes in The Guardian. "[The BBC] is in severe danger of being caught between the self-interested animosity of commercial rivals and the less self-interested but equally threatening moves toward government intervention." That intervention would be facilitated by the creation of a new oversight body called Ofcom, a pan-industry regulator that ostensibly has no oversight of the BBC but will be used by media industries to restrain the growth of public sector broadcasting. Former BBC producer Ian Hargreaves, now a professor of journalism,writing in the Financial Times, fears elements within the BBC want to commercialize its operations and are rooting for industry forces to win.
The government says it likes the BBC and includes in the proposal a number of sweeteners to the Labor Party base, which is well to the left of Blair, including a recognition of the need for
a strong public service role in the new media environment. Their proposal includes noncommercial public-service digital channels, a call for more community media initiatives and a commitment to impartiality and accuracy in all news services. The authors of the White Paper also acknowledge that the concentration of media ownership in fewer and fewer hands affects the range and quality of service. Some of these points would be considered radical in the United States, or anywhere market-based systems dominate.
At the same time, it is precisely those market values that inspire the government ministers who came up with this plan. The document is built around a blind faith in the magic of market forces and competition. Its proposals will strengthen the power of commercial networks in the name of offering more consumer choice, which will inevitably weaken the power of the BBC. Despite reservations about the effects of consolidation, it will promote mergers in the same way that the U.S. Telecommunications "Reform" Act of 1996 did. A year after its passage, the U.S. Government Accounting Office reported that a bill sold to the country as a way to protect consumers through more competition resulted in more concentration of media ownership. Moreover, the Campaign in Britain contends that "the White Paper neglects to establish structures of democratically constituted bodies in the regulatory process, leaving regulation to a mix of industry lobbyists, politicians and media companies."
The Corporate Role
The government is not the only player in this debate. The corporate sector is also quite vocal and influential. Already one of those lobbyists is hard at work as a spokesman for Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which wants all restrictions on media cross-ownership lifted. His name is Dr. Irwin Stelzer, labeled "the most powerful lobbyist in Britain, bar none," by Gregory Palast, who writes The Observer's Inside Corporate America column. Stelzer has a column in the Sunday Times, a Murdoch-owned newspaper, and frequently appears on TV talk shows. An American and contributor to Murdoch's Washington organ, The Weekly Standard, Stelzer worked at the American Enterprise Institute alongside Larry Lindsey, now chief of the Council of Economic Advisors. Lindsey has already demanded that the European Union lift all trade controls, especially restrictions on films and TV programs made in the United States.
According to Palast, this Bush demand, as echoed by Stelzer, has begun to influence government policy. "Blair is already adapting to the new order," according to the country's leading business organ, as quoted by Palast. "The Financial Times reports, deadpan, that 'the Government has accepted the view that media markets have changed significantly since [communications legislation] was devised and that there was an argument for no regulation [of ownership] because of the proliferation of new services.
Translation: If this goes through, Murdoch will get the right to buy into terrestrial (i.e. over the air) broadcasting networks along with his satellite channels and press holdings. Recall that
before Blair ran for office the first time in 1996, he flew to Australia to speak to a Rupert-run global shareholders and executive meeting. Afterward, Murdoch's racy tabloid, The Sun, laid off its Blair baiting. The Sun, like Murdoch's New York Post, is often deployed during campaigns as a political masher unit to maul politicians the boss doesn't like. Politicians like Blair live in fear of Murdoch's media attacks, because they are so orchestrated and vicious and often masquerade as the populist voice of common sense, never the overtly hard-line, right-wing stance they really represent.
Britain's media activists understand what's at stake and are mobilizing to fight back. I was one of the participants in a February 24 conference, organized with the backing of Britain's National Union of Journalists, on how to respond to the White Paper. Several hundred people turned out, including many trade union members, labor activists and students. The roster of speakers included Mike Jempson of the PressWise Trust; Bettina Peters of the International Federation of Journalists; producer Phillip Whitehead, who is also in the European Parliament; Carole Tongue, a crusader for audio-visual diversity, especially in the film industry; Dorothy Byrne of Britain's Channel 4; Tony Lennon, a Campaign activist; press regulation expert Tom O'Malley; and never last or least, John Pilger, one of Britain's most outspoken and famous TV journalists and writers.
Pilger did not mince words in characterizing the White Paper as a pack of lies aimed at undercutting public broadcasting in support of a strategy of neo-liberalism (i.e., capitalist economics). He deconstructed the document in detail, terming it "the most serious attack on media freedom in our lifetime" and "a political attack on journalism," and calling for resistance, especially among prominent journalists like himself. As a TV journalist with a large following, his visibility on the issue will impress many (see his New Statesman article).
Opponents of the White Paper have a persuasive critique. Now they need an effective outreach effort to build political support. They need to create a media presentation to bring their case to the country. The challenge facing the Campaign for Broadcast and Press Freedom is how to use media to fight this assault on media and to organize the many people — professionals and consumers alike — who want to save what quality media they have left. Unfortunately, the British government is much slicker than its adversaries in packaging its message. They know how to use modern media to their advantage and are moving fast to impose their views. Can they be stopped?
Activists need to learn how to fight fire with fire. New Labor could win on this crucial issue unless its many opponents are as adept at disseminating their analysis as they are at making it. As one activist said at the close of the Campaign conference: "Once something like the BBC is lost, it's almost impossible to get it back."
- Danny Schechter, executive editor of MediaChannel.org, is the author of "Falun Gong's
Challenge to China: Spiritual Practice or 'Evil Cult'?" (Akashic Books, 2000) and coeditor of the MediaChannel book, "Hail to the Thief: How the Media 'Stole' the 2000 Presidential
Elections" (Innovatio, 2001).
* Why I love Britain: Grammy winner Eminem has become the subject of fierce debate in the British press, according to the Rapwatch column in Private Eye. The political satire magazine recaps a debate about his music that has sharply divided critics, some of whom consider him a menace to civilization, "the archetypal Ritalin-stoked attention-deficient über brat," while others, quite seriously, compare his work to that of Tennyson, Hardy, Kipling, Frost, Pound, Eliot and even the bard of bards, Bad Bill Shakespeare.
Only in Her Majesty's Kingdom! But don't fear, reports the Sunday Telegraph, Eminem may soon be challenged by the Canonesses of the Holy Sepulcher, a 20-person choir of nuns who have recorded "Eternal Light," an album of chants and hymns promoting "calm, tranquillity and inner peace" now climbing to the top of the pops. Their record company has mounted a campaign to "Get the Nuns to Number One."
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