Media Plurality: Communications Committee Report

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with a good deal of the report, but there are four areas where I have small disagreements.

First, plurality is not enough. You might have several points of view, but if those points of view do not communicate with each other or do not understand what each is about, the plurality can be a recipe for social fragmentation. Therefore plurality should be accompanied by mutual understanding and dialogue. That dialogue and debate is the lifeblood of democracy, not just plurality per se.

The second important thing is that that we might have plurality in the sense of several points of view, but it is perfectly possible for one to be extremely dominant and drown out the others. How do we ensure that simple multiplicity of points of view is not enough? There has to be some equality between different points of view.

The third important point to bear in mind, which was made earlier, has to do with the pluralisation of the media itself. You can have a situation where you have a wide number of newspapers and media outlets, but let us say on the questions of race or gender they may be manned only by people from one particular community or gender. In that case you have plurality of ownership, plurality of media, but uniformity of views, which obviously does not bear thinking about. When we talk about plurality we are talking about plurality of points of view, not just in one area but in all.

The last point is on something that slightly puzzled me. The report attacks the market, rightly, but talks in the language of the market. It says, for example, that plurality is important in order that a citizen “can access and consume” points of view. I should think that a point of view is not a commodity and that it is not something to be consumed. It is something one identifies with. Therefore, diversity of points of view and media plurality are important, not so that the individual consumer can make a choice between them but in order that democracy can be vibrant, different points of view can debate with each other, and we can arrive at a broadly acceptable point of view.