Economy: Broadcast Media

Viscount Colville of Culross Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a producer/director who works at the BBC in its history and science departments. I thank my former colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, for having procured this debate, and add my congratulations on the splendid maiden speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. I look forward to hearing much more from him.

I have just come back from America, where I have been filming a science special for BBC2 on a comet which, if we are lucky, is going to light up our skies next week. In the early hours one morning, I found myself sitting in an observatory in the hills of Arizona with one of the world’s leading comet watchers. As we sat waiting for the first glimpse of the comet Ison, we got talking. The comet watcher said, “It’s great to have you Brits here filming this great moment for me. Thanks to BBC America, I’m able to watch my news from you guys. I prefer its international agenda but, above all, I like to hear a balance of views on a subject. Everything here is so polarised”. That is a rather self-serving story, but it makes the point I want to make.

Noble Lords have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, and the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, about the huge export success of British broadcasting, which is making great inroads into the American market and the emerging Asian markets. Much of that success has been based on the extraordinary creativity of our television industries, but I suggest to your Lordships that this success is also based on the trust in our products that we have built up across the world. That trust is worth its weight in gold—literally. It applies not just to the BBC but to all the main broadcast media in this country, including ITN and Sky, and at its heart is the mandate to be impartial. It means that our programmes can be broadcast across the world, carrying with them a balance of views. This balance resonates into documentaries, history and science programming.

The impartiality of our broadcast media is something that I, as a broadcast journalist, have always taken for granted—I feel it is in my working DNA—but this impartiality mandate is under threat both from technology and from those who say that in the interests of the free market, it is important to end the mandate and allow editorial freedom for our broadcast media. America used to have the fairness doctrine regulating it broadcasters. It required the holders of broadcast licences to present controversial issues of public importance in a manner that was honest, equitable and balanced. That doctrine was abandoned in 1987, apparently overwhelmed by the proliferation of cable television. The chairman of the Federal Communication Commission, Julius Genachowski, said, “The fairness doctrine holds the potential to chill free speech and the free flow of ideas and was properly abandoned over two decades ago”.

Since then, as anybody who goes to America will know, news information on the broadcast media has become increasingly polarised. Shock jocks from both sides of the political spectrum blast out extreme political bile on the radio airwaves, and Fox News gives a right-wing slant to its journalism, while left-wing talk shows, such as “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”, make endless fun of the right-wing agenda and its advocates. The internet allows a plethora of free opinion and voices that are fuelled by this polarised editorial news agenda.

What is the result? America is a land of conspiracy and distrust in any kind of broadcast information. You just have to look at the horrendous and widely believed conspiracy theories about what happened to flight UA93 on September 11, 2001, which claim that the United States Air Force shot down the plane, even though it has been proved repeatedly that the brave passengers overpowered the hijackers to prevent the plane being crashed into the White House. In my view, the polarisation of the media has exacerbated political divisions in that country, so it was no wonder that my comet-watching friend in Arizona paid the higher tariff on his cable package to ensure that he could watch BBC America and British programmes.

Trust must be a crucial cornerstone of our broadcast economy. It fuels our international reputation for excellence. The internet and cable television have allowed an extraordinary range of voices to be heard on numerous platforms. This technology has allowed China Central Television, Russian television and even Iran’s Press TV to be heard across our country. Critics of the impartiality mandate of our broadcast media say that in a new media landscape that allows these numerous other voices to be heard, our mainstream broadcast media should be unyoked from the impartiality constraints imposed on them.

I was at a very interesting seminar last week, attended by a number of noble Lords, discussing plurality in the media. Stephen Hornsby, who is one of this country’s leading experts on media mergers, raised the difficulty of assessing and imposing impartiality in the international broadcast climate of cable TV and access to TV on the internet. Our broadcast media are under attack from politicians, as has been mentioned, particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and from free market advocates who claim that they are not impartial and should be open to free market forces. Of course, all journalism has a subjective element—after all, it is witnessed and written by human beings, all of whom have opinions—but the power of an impartiality mandate ensures that other views are heard and that broadcasters have to bear their views in mind when reporting. In a multichannel world, where opinion is easy and facts are hard to come by, never has this emphasis on impartiality and balance in our mainstream media been more important.

The Minister’s department has a consultation paper out at the moment to canvass views on plurality in the media, and one of the questions being investigated is whether the impartiality mandate on our broadcast media should be maintained. Many voices will call for it to be scrapped, but I urge the Minister to realise that in the new world of broadcast media, it has never been more important to maintain impartiality in mainstream broadcasting. It must be a gold standard against which others can be judged. Failing to do so will mean that the economic power of Britain’s broadcast media across the world will be greatly weakened.