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be the first to commentPosted by Tim Gopsill
A series of potential projects for 2010-11 arose from the campaign's annual general meeting in London on 26 June. Two resolutions (including an emergency motion) were passed - see AGM papers below - and a quartet of guest speakers set out the issues in media policy in the wake of the UK General Election.
Download Emergency Motion (Wikileaks)
Download Membership Analysis (Graphic)
LOCAL MEDIA
Natalie Fenton, Co-Director of the Media Research programme at Goldsmith College, University of London, criticised the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government policy on media ownership.
She said there was a contradiction between the stated commitment to “localisation" and the relaxation of the restrictions on media ownership that would allow the nation-wide groups to control all media across wide areas. “It will just end up with fewer papers owned by fewer companies," she said.
She said that research carried out by the Goldsmsiths team showed the demand for truly local papers. “We went to areas where the papers had closed. Local communities desperately want their papers back. We need newspapers that report locally. People are willing to pay for it if it is a good service.
“People say, if the news is 10 miles away it might as well be national. The local paper enables a sense of belongingness. They feel disengaged and disempowered, particularly older people who are not engaged with the digital future.
“You can't put local democracy in the hands of companies whose motivation is profit."
On ITV's regional news she said the company had wanted to cut back even more but had realised it would lose advertising and had decided to keep doing it though on a vastly reduced basis, with Ofcom's agreement.
As for localised alternatives, she said: “Local TV can't generate enough advertising, not with ITV and the BBC broadcasting regionally as well. Multi-media is not necessarily a viable answer. Scrapping the regulations to allow cross-platform news won't solve the problem."
THE MEDIA IN THE ELECTION
Writer Nicholas Jones, a former BBC political correspondent, and the party leaders' TV debates had “changed the dynamics of the campaign. Once the debate started the reaction became the story, from the networking sites and from the newspapers that commissioned instant opinion polls.
“A lot of people predicted that the blogosphere would have an impact on the campaign – the 'army of the night' as Labour spinner Philip Gould put it. There were predictions that the campaign influenced by stories from the bloggers but it didn't happen. Neither did the newspapers use the audio visual outlets on their sites as much as had been expected.
Joy Johnson, another former BBC political journalist and Labour campaigns officer, added: “The newspapers took back the agenda. The political parties lost control because of the TV debates. Because the debates were so late in the campaign and the polls were immediately afterwards, the parties lost control."
NB Nick Jones's complete speech is on this web site.
BROADCASTING
Tony Lennon, until recently the President of the broadcasting union BECTU, said that the LibDems in the collation did have a commitment to pluralism, but the government was pressing on with deregulation.
There were questions about the future of ITV, and the privatisation of Channel 4 could be back on the agenda to raise cash.
The BBC's current funding formula was meant to run to 2013. Renewal will be discussed in 2012, and, he said, “they won't hesitate to raise the issue of the licence fee."
He said that top-slicing the licence fee is “happening as we speak. £150 million is topsliced already. The BBC says it is 'topslicing with a purpose' so that's all right then. They will have similar calls to topslice for other worthy projects like broadband. We need to think about this.
“If it can be ring-fenced to provide a reservoir of public money for activities that will otherwise be killed off – what's wrong with that?
THE RIGHT TO REPORT
Photographer and NUJ activist Marc Vallee, a leading campaigner against the use of “anti-terror laws" to suppress journalistic work on the streets, said that he and fellow photographer Jason Parkinson had just won a significant case against the Metropolitan Police. This was over assaults they were subjected to while covering a demonstration at the Greek Embassy in 2008.
Police had admitted infringing the photographers' right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. They had apologised and recognised that “press freedom is the cornerstone of democratic society." Further, the settlement included the payment of compensation of £3,500 each.
“But this is all a warm-up act for the main even to come," Marc Vallee said. “The cuts are going to leads to huge dissent and disorder over the next few years. Some people like the Guardian think we have won, with the LibDems in government."
He reported another victory – the ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which authorises police to make random stop-and-searches without suspicion of wrongdoing, was illegal. The government would have to change it, he said, but “it will probably be modified rather than scrapped.
“I have no illusion that even if all the nasty laws passed by Labour are got rid of, at the end of the day if they don't want the media on the ground they will get rid of them.
“To highlight press freedom is good for campaigning. It's very difficult to get the media interested in press freedom."
DATELINE: 2 July, 2010
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