As part of the National Union of Journalists’ “Make Your Vote Count” campaign, we’ve written to every prospective parliamentary candidate asking them to sign up to a number of media-related pledges. You couldn’t make up some of their responses.
My favourite remains the UKIP candidate in my own constituency who, when asked about support for the BBC, said the problem is “the BBC’s insistence on quoting distances in metric when the British equivalent is ‘miles’. For example, BBC journalist John Simpson, during the first Iraq war, doing a piece to camera: ‘The Iraqi positions are five kilometres down the valley.’ Suddenly there was a loud ‘whooshing’ noise and the air was thick with dust, stones and falling rocks. Off camera, we heard Simpson say: “Bloody hell, that was 20 feet away.”
The UKIP man went on: “I could elaborate further, but hopefully you have by now received the picture.” Oh yes, we’ve got the picture alright. Don’t call us.
Sadly, it’s not just the fringe parties who have a disastrous approach to media issues. All the main parties seem to be accepting the employers’ argument for greater deregulation and weakening of media ownership laws. All seem to believe that there will need to be cuts in public service broadcasting. None show real commitment to genuine freedom of information.
And yet the influence of media on the election is massive. How many “ordinary” people(whatever that may be) have been interviewed on Radio 5Live and elsewhere said things like: “I didn’t see the leaders’ TV debate, but that Nick Clegg did well”? It’s like those who call for films to be banned or DJs to be sacked even though they haven’t seen or heard what they are supposed to have said.
Media issues should occupy the parties more. Its influence on a future government will be huge unless steps are taken to ensure, out of the current crisis, the opportunities for a fundamental shift in media ownership are taken.
The Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom has produced an excellent media manifesto setting out the key issues, starting from the fundamental one that media policy should be shaped in the public interest, not in the interests of powerful companies. Lance Price, a former media advisor to Tony Blair, once wrote that Rupert Murdoch was “like the 24th member of the Cabinet. His voice was rarely heard, but his presence was always felt.”
When the broadcasting regulator Ofcom was set up, there was a last-minute House of Lords amendment to force the regulator to put the interests of consumers rather than citizens first, thereby in a single word changing the whole basis for its light touch regulation. It has brought us cheaper prices, but media collapse, less diversity and greater concentration of ownership.
Other key aspects of the CPBF manifesto include opposition to Tory plans to scrap impartiality regulations for broadcasters not receiving public funds, which would pave the way for Fox News UK, calls for public funding, subsidy or incentives in the form of tax breaks for public service media at a local level, a democratically-elected board to regulate the BBC, the replacement of the Press Complaints Commission with an effective self-regulatory body with powers to order meaningful recompense to complainants and regulations limiting the concentration of media ownership.
All these policies challenge power and wealth, so it’s little surprise that politicians run a mile (or, for our friends in UKIP, just over a kilometre) from them. In this election, there is little on offer from the main parties that challenges the fundamental balance of power and wealth in society. To coin a popular slogan: it’s time for change, not of government, but of policy. While we wouldn’t expect the Tories or Liberal Democrats to be offering that, Labour must or it risks losing not only the votes of media workers but also the opportunity to make media accountable in the public interest.
