Fra ZNet Daily Commentaries,
(http://www.zmag.org).
Trond Andresen
***********
Big Business, As Seen On TV
By George Monbiot.
Published in the Guardian 14th December 2000
Our liberty could scarcely be entrusted to a more rackety bunch. Journalists
are, quite rightly, almost universally reviled. But the freedom of a nation
depends in large measure on the freedom they enjoy. If reporters are forced
to show the world not as it is but as a handful of multimillionaires would
like it to be, then the people they reach are less able to choose wisely. It
is the curious duty of democratic governments to defend this freedom, often
at great cost to themselves. It is a duty this government has just
comprehensively flunked.
If you want to know why the media needs to be regulated, take a look at Greg
Dyke's speech to the CBI last month. "Too much of Britain's mainstream news
and current affairs programming," the BBC's director-general complained,
"has ignored or failed to understand the real business agenda." In future,
he insisted, the BBC must show more "understanding" of the difficulties
companies face. "I am totally committed to taking business centre stage in
the BBC."
Now imagine what the response would have been had Mr Dyke said the same
about any other political or economic movement: socialism, fascism, trades
unionism, the aristocracy or the European Union, for example. It is surely a
measure of how effectively the corporations, working through the media, have
colonised our minds that his speech elicited barely a squeak of protest. In
principle, Mr Dyke's enthusiasms are supposed to be restrained by the BBC's
governors. But their chair, previously chairman of both the freight company
NFC and the Private Finance Initiative, is hardly likely to intervene. Power
shall speak peace unto power.
Mr Dyke's views might be less consequential if the rest of the media were
busy confronting wealth and power. But almost every deviation from the
pro-corporate political consensus has now been stamped out. For the past
three years, Channel 4's science and public health programming has been
dominated by the view that big business has our best interests at heart. ITN
shares its staff and studios with its part-owned subsidiary, Corporate
Television Networks, which makes programmes for British Airways, Philip
Morris and Shell. Granada used a corporate lawsuit as an excuse to shut down
its investigative series World in Action.
Most newspapers expose only the misdemeanors of the powerless, while the
central political issue of our age, the corporate takeover of public life,
is left to tiny underfunded groups such as Corporatewatch to investigate.
Almost every new commercial development is represented by the mainstream
media as a "jobs boost", even if, in reality, it is a job-destroying,
self-serving monstrosity. And dumbing down and trivialisation are, in this
increasingly complex world, the foremost enemies of radical analysis.
Even the web in Britain is proving vulnerable to censorship, as our libel
laws are used to force service providers to remove material the rich and
powerful don't like. Shell, for example, is currently seeking to close a
site (www.nuclearcrimes.com). which alleges irregularities in its handling
of nuclear waste.
Yet, far from seeking to defend free speech, the government is proposing to
subject the media to even fewer effective controls. The white paper on
communications it published on Tuesday will allow companies to regulate the
"qualitative elements of public service broadcasting" themselves. It rightly
defends multiculturalism, but offers no new protections for political
diversity. In practice, the "impartiality" it demands is seen to have been
achieved if neither of the two main political parties are offended. If they
do not disagree upon an issue, then there is no statutory need to explore it
further. As the scope of politics contracts, in other words, so does that of
the media.
The white paper celebrates Britain's libel laws (which do for big business
in this country what official censorship does for oppressive states) as a
"bedrock of legal protections" which helps "to achieve the right balance".
The ban on advertising companies buying TV stations will be rescinded, but
ads by groups such as Amnesty International will remain forbidden, in case
broadcasting is "skewed by those best able to fund advertising". Corporate
adverts, of course, present no such dangers. The paper envisages "greater
consolidation of the ITV network" and fewer contraints on newspaper mergers.
It gives proprietors everything they want, in other words, while enabling
dissenting voices to be stifled.
"During times of universal deceit," George Orwell wrote, "telling the truth
becomes a revolutionary act." The government has backed universal deceit.
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