Industry | 2009.09.05
Put an end to this dumping of free news | James Murdoch
Why do we support a state-sponsored media that hinders quality news journalism and independence?
This year marks the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin\'s The Origin of Species. Darwin argued that dramatic evolutionary changes occur through a natural process. He proved that evolution is unmanaged.
These views were an enormous challenge to Victorian religious orthodoxy and remain a provocation to many today. The number who cling to creationism is substantial – and they crop up in surprising places. One such place is the UK broadcasting sector, where there appears consensus that the operation of the market is inadequate, and that a better outcome can be achieved by governments and regulators.
While creationism may provide an illusion of certainty, it has harmful effects. Creationism penalises the poorest with regressive taxes – such as the licence fee. It promotes inefficient infrastructure such as digital terrestrial television. It creates unaccountable institutions - the BBC Trust , Channel 4 and Ofcom . And it threatens significant damage to the provision of independent news, to investment in professional journalism, and to the growth of the creative industries.
We are on the wrong path. We should instead trust consumers, embrace private enterprise and profit, and reduce the activities of the state in our sector.
Yet the authorities currently pursue intervention with relish. In the past five years Ofcom has launched nearly 450 consultations – almost two every week. It has produced three public service broadcasting annual reports, and two PSB reviews in five phases. These alone have amounted to over 5,000 pages and spawned 18,000 pages of responses.
Ofcom\'s repeated assertion of its bias against intervention is becoming impossible to believe. If the diverse broadcasting ecology it calls for is to be achieved, intervention in the media should only be contemplated if serious harm to consumer interests is evident.
Investment is another victim of creationism in broadcasting. Heavy regulation and a large public sector crowds out the opportunity for profit, hinders job creation, and dampens innovation. And we don\'t even have the basics in place to protect creative work. Whether it\'s shoplifting a DVD or pirating it online, theft is theft. But government dithers.
Tolstoy said that all happy families resemble one another, while each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. True, nowhere is completely happy, but there are things to welcome – Germany\'s regulatory professionalism, India\'s growth opportunities, France\'s robust defence of intellectual property. The problem with the UK is that it is unhappy in every way: it is the Addams family of world media.
So what is the alternative? To trust people. To encourage free choice.
Soon more than half of all UK homes will enjoy some form of television that they freely choose to pay for. Pay-television has succeeded in Britain by providing programmes in genres which public service broadcasting served inadequately: to begin with, largely 24-hour news, a broad choice of sport, the latest films.
And so now with arts and drama. Sky offers four dedicated arts channels. Original commissioning by channels that customers choose to pay for is expanding, not just from Sky, but also National Geographic, History and the Disney Channel, to name a few. Sky alone now invests over £1bn a year in UK content.
The sector has delivered so many innovations: from multi-channel television itself, to the launch of digital, personal video recorders, high definition and soon 3D TV at home. And yet the authorities continue to seek more control.
The volume and character of detailed content regulation is astonishing. A recent Ofcom broadcasting bulletin weighed in at 119 pages. Every year, roughly half a million words are devoted to telling broadcasters what they can and cannot say.
The UK and EU regulatory system also tightly controls advertising: the amount per hour, the availability of product placement, the distinction between advertising and editorial and so forth.
The latest EU-inspired rules on scheduling of advertising restrict the number of ad breaks permitted in news programming. Television news is already a tough enough business. These proposals could undermine commercial viability even further.
In addition, the system is concerned with imposing what it calls impartiality in broadcast news. The effect is not to curb bias – bias is present in all news media – but simply to disguise it.
Broadcasters are beset by content control, advertising regulation and restrictions on free speech. Yet there is a strong alternative tradition with at least four centuries behind it – first of pamphlets and books, later of magazines and newspapers.
Would we welcome a world in which the Times newspaper was told by government how much religious coverage to carry? Would we support a state newspaper with more money than the rest of the sector put together and 50% of the market? Of course not. So why is this approach appropriate for broadcasting?
There is a land grab going on – and it should be sternly resisted. The land grab is spearheaded by the BBC. The scope of its activities and ambitions is chilling. Funded by a hypothecated tax, the BBC feels empowered to offer something for everyone, even in areas well served by the market.
Rather than concentrating on areas where the market is not delivering, the BBC seeks to compete head-on for audiences with commercial providers to dampen opposition to a compulsory licence fee. The corporation is incapable of distinguishing between what is good for it, and what is good for the country.
Dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market makes it incredibly difficult for journalism to flourish on the internet. Yet it is essential for the future of independent journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it.
We seem to have decided to let independence and plurality wither – to let the BBC throttle the news market, and get bigger to compensate. For hundreds of years people have fought for the right to publish what they think. Yet today the threat to independent news provision is serious and imminent.
We have a system in which state-sponsored media – the BBC in particular – grow ever more dominant. If we are to have that state sponsorship at all, then it is fundamental to the health of the creative industries, independent production, and professional journalism that it exists on a far, far smaller scale.
Above all, we must have genuine independence in news media. Independence is characterised by the absence of the apparatus of supervision and dependency. Independence of faction, industrial or political. Independence of subsidy, gift or patronage.
Independence is sustained by true accountability to customers. People who buy the newspapers, open the application, decide to take out the TV subscription – people who choose a service they value. And people value honest, fearless, and independent news coverage that challenges the consensus.
There is an inescapable conclusion. The only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]doch-media-independence-profit
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