APPENDIX 18
Memorandum submitted by the Campaign for
Press and Broadcasting Freedom
THE CPBF
1. The CPBF was founded in 1979 to campaign
for a freer more accountable media. It has a wide membership base
including Trade Unions, constituency parties, community groups
and individuals. It produces regular publications (notably Free
Press) and campaigns vigorously on media ownership, public service
broadcasting and press reform. During the 1980s and 1990s it backed
and, or, wrote Private Members' Bills on Right of Reply for Frank
Allaun, Austin Mitchell, Ann Clywd, Tony Worthington and Clive
Soley. It has an established national and international reputation
for promoting debate about public service broadcasting and has
submitted evidence to the Davies Committee on BBC funding, and
a response to that Committee's Report to the Department for Culture,
Media and Sport.[80]
2. In this evidence we argue that the future
funding of the BBC has to be assessed within the context of mass
communications policy as a whole. We therefore urge the Committee
to recommend to the Government that such an inquiry be established.
BROADCASTING SINCE
THE 1980S
3. Prior to the mid 1980s broadcasting policy
was governed by public service principles. This meant that all
broadcasters had to promote high standards in broadcasting. After
the publication of the report Committee on Financing the BBC in
1986[81],
government policy on broadcasting changed. Thereafter, in the
context of political preference for the expansion of market forces
into broadcasting and, arguably, a misconception about the impact
of technological change on the ability to sustain public service
broadcasting, policy on the BBC, ITV, radio, satellite and digital
has been increasingly driven by a belief that public service broadcasting
can only exist on the margins of market driven system acting,
at best, as a standard setter for broadcasting as a whole. This
is a view that has been expressed most recently by John Birt,
Director-General of the BBC and also by the Report on The Future
Funding of the BBC chaired by Gavyn Davies.[82]
4. The consequence of this was that the
BBC was made to act more like a commercial operator, public service
principles were modified for ITV, regulation of commercial television
and satellite was weakened and we have witnessed a massive explosion
of commercial competion in broadcasting, with no discernible increase
in quality across the whole sector. Indeed the Davies Committee
fears, although with no evidence, that the BBC has been dumbing
down in the face of intensified commercial pressures, and there
is plenty of evidence that ITV has become driven by the need to
compete with its commercial rivals in a way which has led to a
watering down of its commitment to news and current affairs.[83]
5. Policy has been developed since 1986
in a vacuum, as far as public debate has been concerned. There
have been major policy changes, exemplified by the 1990 and 1996
Broadcasting Acts and the internal restructuring of the BBC which
have proceeded without wide-ranging public discussion. Instead
policy has been developed internally by successive governments
using reviews and reports that are accessible to only a small
number of interested people. Consultation has been minimalistic.
This might not be a problem were the changes in broadcasting not
so dramatic and of such long term political and cultural significance,
but they are, and there should now be a breathing space for the
public, the industry and politicians to take stock of developments
and take a longer term view.
THE BBC
6. The funding of the BBC is intimately
bound up with the legal and economic context of broadcasting as
a whole. It is our view, one which we have developed in the evidence
to the Davies Committee and in response to that Committee's Report,
that it is wrong to take decisions about BBC funding in isolation
from political considerations about the overall direction of communications
policy. We consider that a digital licence fee, the selling of
BBC Resources and the proposal for putting private money into
BBC Worldwide, were decisions taken in a vacuum. There were also,
as a close reading of the Davies Report illustrates, decisions
taken without research on their likely impact on the BBC and on
public service broadcasting as a whole.[84]
This is a thoroughly unsatisfactory way to construct policy.
7. Public service principles should, in
our view, be applied across the whole broadcasting system, just
as public service principles are applied across the whole of the
health service and education service. In these two latter cases
markets operate on the margins of the system, because it is recognised
that markets cannot provide a full range of public services to
all. In broadcasting it is clear that markets cannot provide the
range of services, of the quality, that public provision has been
able to and can provide. The Committee on the Financing of the
BBC in the 1980s recognised this problem, and any cursory assessment
of the problem of quality in the commercially dominated system
in the USA also illustrates this.[85]
PUBLIC SERVICE
BROADCASTING AND
BBC FINANCES
8. The BBC only exists in relation to public
service broadcasting. If, as policy has tended to do since the
1980s, you undermine public service outside of the BBC, you put
pressure on the BBC to act less like a public service broadcaster
and more like a commercial broadcaster. It is then a short step
to the situation where the BBC's commercial rivals press for the
abolition of the BBC on the grounds that it provides unfair competition.
9. A more progressive view, one that prioritises
public service, would stress that public service broadcasting
should apply across the whole system, and the object of policy
should be to ensure that this is the case. This would involve
difficulties and compromises, but it would provide a bedrock on
which to build policy that enhanced the range, choice, accessibility
and diversity of mass communications.
10. The Campaign believes that the BBC's
future, its funding and its remit, should be a part of a public
service system of mass communications. This would involve extending
public service commitments, incrementally across the system, as
well as developing methods to increase democratic accountability
and diversity of ownership and service providers.
11. To achieve this end we consider that
the Government should initiate a wide ranging public inquiry into
the future of mass communications and that one major purpose of
this activity would be to consult the public and promote a full
public debate on the issue. Currently this is not taking place,
and is unlikely to do so.
CONCLUSION
12. The Campaign therefore rejects the main
recommendations on privatisation and the DLF as the way forward
for the BBC. We consider that the BBC should be given a proper
licence fee increase, linked to broadcasting inflation and that
the Government should explore ways of providing real concessions
for those unable to pay. We also consider that the future of the
BBC should be part of a wider public debate about broadcasting
policy, one which is conducted in the context of an open, wide
ranging, public inquiry into mass communications policy. In that
context we will be arguing for more accountability, diversity
and public service principles. We hope that the Committee will
help the Campaign and the public at large to have the opportunity
of being involved in such a debate, by recommending that the Government
set up such an inquiry.
October 1999
80 CPBF, Evidence to the BBC Funding Review Panel,
(London, CPBF March 1999); CPBF, Response to: The Future Funding
of the BBC, Report of the Independent Review Panel, Chairman Gavyn
Davies, (London, CPBF, October 1999). These two submissions are
appended to this evidence (not printed). Back
81
Committee on Financing the BBC 1986, Report Cmnd 9824. Back
82
J. Birt, The Prize and the Price. The Social, Political and Cultural
Consequences of the Digital Age: The New Statesman Media
Lecture, (London, BBC, 6 July 1999). Future funding of the BBC
(1999 p207. Detailed accounts of the developments of policy since
1979 can be found in: T. O'Malley, Closedown? The BBC and Government
Broadcasting Policy 1979-92 (London, Pluto, 1994); Peter Goodwin,
Television Under the Tories, Broadcasting Policy 1979-97 (London,
BFI 1998). Back
83
Funding (1999) p139; for evidence on the impact on ITV of the
changes see: J. Gibson, `News at Ten heads for 6.30', Guardian
3 September 1998. Back
84
See note 78 above. Back
85
Robert W McChesney's Rich Media Poor Democracy (University of
Illinois Press 1999) is the most recent and eloquent book supporting
this view of media in the USA. Back
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