Our public meeting on media ownership held last night at the wonderful London Welsh centre has received some very welcome coverage today.
But an interesting thing has happened. And it serves to prove why a discussion on ownership and control of the media – and therefore control of the message – is so important for us.
Reading Roy Greenslade’s relatively positive and encouraging blog, Jon Slattery’s report in Press Gazette and Jon’s own post of the event on his blog, you’d be forgiven for overlooking the fact that there were four speakers on the platform: two men and two women.
Roy and Jon are big media figures and we were obviously delighted they were there – Roy to offer some interesting insights, going further in his criticism of the capitalist media model than perhaps we might have expected given some of his recent blogs; and Jon to report and blog about NUJ Left.
So there we are debating ownership and control, and how workers and audience can claim more of a stake in the media to make it more representative of the diverse nature of our communities and society, and all the good things we want from life.
And the reports that come out are by men of a certain age quoting other men of a certain age. Plus ca change.
Democracy at the Beeb?
What you might not have read is that the evening kicked off with an excellent contribution from NUJ Left activist Becky Branford speaking in a personal capacity about what it’s like working in state-funded, public service media.
She pointed out that the BBC is supposed to be free from commercial influence and its journalists therefore enjoy certain freedoms that other private sector media workers do not.
She pointed to the fact that the international section of the BBC website, where she works, puts more money into the South Asia and Pacific desks than it does into the America desk.
The point being that news-gathering in these regions is more expensive, and it is right that the BBC recognises this and doesn’t just abandon them as too difficult to cover as might be the case if profit was the motive.
The ethos of the BBC, she added, is that stories will get the coverage they deserve. A pretty basic aim for a broadcaster but, in today’s super-profit driven industry, something all too rarely aimed at.
But. There was always going to be a but. There are “critical intrinsic problems of structure” at the BBC, Becky said.
The corporation’s management and Trust, the governing body, are both “stuffed with establishment figures”. This means the BBC’s output is “far more weighted to the ruling class”, which affects the Beeb’s much-vaunted commitment to impartiality and balance.
This is not, Becky said, the same impartiality and balance that Mark Thompson cited in his defence of the scandalous decision not to run the DEC appeal for Gaza.
The unbalanced structure of the BBC denies us the impartiality and balance that would flow from a more representative organisation, one that truly reflected the make-up of its staff and its audience, and fully represented their lives and concerns.
The case for nationalisation
We already know that the bosses of the big news groups have been to Downing Street to ask the government for help.
In the event of there being state support for the media industry, Jane James of the Socialist Party said, the NUJ should demand conditions are attached.
These would include guarantees of no job losses, no pay freezes or cuts, and a demand that the books are opened to union inspection to see where the money is going.
“The media should be nationalised under democratic workers’ control and run for the benefit of all, not a few. What would this mean?”, she asked.
She said her vision of a nationalised media would not be “one great monolithic body”, but would include community media with greater access to print and publishing facilities for more people to be able to play a role.
“If we had a situation where we had access to the media for everyone then media would flourish. The people would shape it because it would be democratically controlled.
“Obviously we are not going to get socialism tomorrow but only under socialism can we guarantee that the gains that working people make will be maintained.”
More about what came out of the public meeting and where we go next will be posted shortly.
Posted by NUJ Left
This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 at 2:26am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
I work at the BBC and for a long time I’ve thought that there’s only one way to safeguard its future – annual elections to the BBC Trust. Everyone who buys a licence should have the chance to vote and everyone who manages to secure a determined number of nominations should be allowed to stand. It’s not rocket science to get campaign messages and ballot papers out to folk; the NUJ does it regularly.
The main argument I’ve heard against it is that the press would organise to try and get people on the Trust whose only interest would be in selling the BBC off.
I don’t agree. I trust the licence-fee payers. I think they value what the BBC is and does – even when the output winds them up. It does things like that pointed out by Becky Branford.
And I’d trust the licence-fee payers to set the licence fee every year as well. The outgoing Trust could submit a majority and minority recommendation for folk to vote on.
And if we failed to convince enough people not to vote for candidates who want to wind up the Corporation or privatise it, then that’s our failure. I’d rather have the argument out in the open and honest instead of the situation at the moment, where the BBC’s production capacity is being throttled by its own management and folk like Ofcom can start saying that Public Service Broadcasting is an outdated concept. I’ve no doubt that the BBC is being prepared for eventual commodification.
The idea of attached conditions to state aid is timely and sensible. State aid has happened in France and I’ve no doubt it will happen here. I think we’d need to come up with practical proposals about how democratic control could work. My own preference wouldn’t be for democratic workers’ control, but some kind of subscription member system that would allow the creation of democratic structures that allow everyone who has a stake in the papers – workers and readers – to have a say in their management.
And how about this as an idea – could we set up a voluntary fund that could be used to buy stakes in the media companies with the aim of creating democratic structures? If we persuaded 40,000 folk across the UK to pay £5 a month – that’s £2.4 million a year (I just picked that figure cause it’ s the approx membership of the NUJ). That could go a long way when you consider that Johnston Press has debts of over £600 million, its shares are tanking and its market value is now somewhere around £70 million. If we’d done it 10 years ago, and spent it all on JP shares when they’ve been at their lowest, we’d own a quarter of the company and the staff at the Yorkshire Post and YEP might be having an easier time of it.
Anyroad, great debate folks and a great time for it to happen. We are all members of the Interesting Times Gang now.
“you’d be forgiven for overlooking the fact that there were four speakers on the platform: two men and two women”
Be fair – the two men made the most constructive comments and contributed most to the debate. The reports covered the most interesting comments on that basis, regardless of sex.
Becky had an interesting tale to tell but by her own admission had not given much thought beyond the BBC model.
The Socialist Party could have sent a looped tape recorder along with their dogmatic repetition of “nationalisation under democratic workers control” blasting out. It would have made no difference it had been a man or a woman saying it – it didn’t engage in the debate, which moved beyond such dogma.
We need to capitalise on this and get some further discussion on the smaller-scale, local (or specialist) media funded by a different mechanism to advertising.
Chris Wheal
Dear NUJ Left,
I can’t believe you’ve lumped me together with those Old Codgers Roy Greenslade and Nick Jones as “men of a certain age”. I am way younger than them. I still have to pay when I go on a bus.
More seriously, I am sorry I didn’t quote everyone on the platform. I just picked the bits I thought were newsworthy.
Yours fraternally,
Jon S.
“I can’t believe you’ve lumped me together with those Old Codgers Roy Greenslade and Nick Jones as “men of a certain age”. I am way younger than them. I still have to pay when I go on a bus.”
Careful, you ageist reactionary, counter-revolutionary bigot.
Still no mention of the Leeds strikes you cockney scum
It’s started and here’s the latest:
http://www.nuj.org.uk/innerPagenuj.html?docid=1124
I read the great Pete Lazenby on PG’s website. Glad they started otherwise I was going to ask for my money back from the collection on Tuesday.