Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1220
- 1239)
WEDNESDAY 5 DECEMBER 2007
Mr John Perkins, Mr Jon Godel and Mr Peter Murphy
Q1220 Lord Maxton:
May I come back to what we were talking about in terms of ownership
of media. There has over the years, as in newspapers, been a concentration
of ownership of radio stations. Of your 250, the 250 will be owned
by much fewer than 250 companies. Do you negotiate with the holding
company or do you negotiate with each individual station when
you are undertaking your negotiations in terms of the new ...
?
Mr Perkins: The negotiation of contracts we
would do through groups. For instance, I will have one contract
with GGAP Media Limited which covers all of what used to be Capital
Radio group and I will have one contract with EMAP plc which covers
all of their stations and then singly with all the groups, large
and small. There are a number of independents in the sense of
individual stations with whom we negotiate separately. So, it
is groups and individual stations, whatever.
Q1221 Lord Maxton:
Does that in any way influence the news you are going to provide?
How do you come down to more local ... ? Your Leicester fire,
for example.
Mr Godel: There are two levels in terms of the
business commercial relationship—that would be at a group
level, a parent company level if you like—and then, in terms
of day-to-day news judgment and news discussions and story collaboration,
that would be at a station-by-station level because it is dictated
by geography. I would talk to my stations in Liverpool if I had
a story about Liverpool and that is how it works. On an operational
sense, it would be very local.
Q1222 Baroness Thornton:
I would like to ask you think a little about impartiality requirements
because, like television news, radio news is subject to impartiality
requirements, and ask you what your view is on the requirement
that broadcast news is subject to. Also, as there has been some
discussion about this in Ofcom, if those did not exist, how would
your products change, and I would particularly be interested in
Mr Murphy's views on this.
Mr Murphy: When it comes to impartiality in
a news bulletin, I think that should stay in the way that it already
exists. Where there is talk of change, it is actually in programming
rather than in news bulletins as such. I am personally not terribly
happy about that but that is a personal view. From a news bulletin
point of view, I think that it would be a very bad step if you
actually ended impartiality and I suspect that, even if there
were changes, it would not actually involve news bulletins.
Mr Godel: My view would be looking to the future.
I think that we have to see where everyone is moving in the media.
We now have newspaper that are broadcasting effectively on broadband
and will do so on IPTV and, at the moment, they are unregulated
in all forms and certainly not part of that impartiality clause.
We are going to be in a difficult position quite quickly if not
already where we are required to abide by impartiality regulations
but there are other people broadcasting audio and television who
are not playing on that playing field, if you like. There seems
to be a bit of a growth—and that is why Ofcom is doing this—and
surely there needs to be a grown-up debate about that. I think
that Peter's suggestion about news being impartial and programming
not may be a kind of middle road, but I do think that it is something
that will become quite an issue for us and I can see radio stations
in the local market, for example, having that competition and
feeling, certainly commercially, that it is difficult for them
because they are not able to do what some of their competitors
might be doing already. Once you get away from the argument as
to what impartiality is, the commercial constraints it perhaps
puts on someone with a competitor in the marketplace will eventually
be quite huge.
Mr Perkins: I would like to make a point about
the Internet news because we do come under severe pressure with
individual news stories because we clearly have to be legal and
indeed not only truthful but impartial, we do not run with any
story from any source but Jon's department can come under immense
pressure. The case that I always quote is that of George Michael
when he was misbehaving himself in America. That was on the Internet
and there was a special website set up and our radio stations
were reading these websites and looking at them and ringing us
up and asking, "When is IRN going to run the story?"
and Jon, quite rightly, said, "We will run the story when
we have proof that it is a story and that the man involved is
George Michael but not until then". I think it is terribly
important that we retain that in the same way that we retain impartiality
in the story because otherwise you are then open to the whims
of any news source however unsubstantiated.
Mr Godel: The other issue is that obviously
stations are now beginning to put content on to their website,
which I explained earlier, and we are doing the same but ITN has
a policy that we will abide by the Ofcom regulations that we have
for terrestrial broadcast and we will do the same online; we think
that is the right and proper thing to do. Also, it would very
difficult to say to our journalists, "When you are broadcasting
on this channel, you have to abide by these rules and, when you
are doing something for the Internet, you do not". That would
be difficult. I do think that the local stations going forward—and
they are not quite there yet—will be a situation where technically
they would abide by impartiality rules on air but could do anything
they like on their website, rightly and wrongly they could do
that, and it really needs some attention.
Q1223 Chairman:
What are the things that they would want to do on their website?
Mr Godel: Express more views and opinions would
be the obvious one within news. So, you could be a little more
selective on whom you spoke to, how you spoke to them and the
kind of questions that you asked. You would not have to be necessarily
required to speak to someone to balance the story.
Q1224 Chairman:
So, you would slant it?
Mr Godel: No, no, no. You do not slant—
Q1225 Chairman:
Come on, that is slanting it, is it not? If you only speak to
one side in the argument, that strikes me as slanting news.
Mr Godel: It depends what they are saying. Equally,
it could be very much on the grounds of opinion. For example,
if you are a terribly right-wing newspaper, you can launch a website
now and be as right wing as you want or as left wing as you want.
There is no regulation. Radio stations are not able to do that
at the moment. You cannot have broadcasting on digital radio or
on terrestrial radio, you cannot have a left-wing radio station,
but there may well be. If you go to America, obviously you see
right-wing television and hear radio all the time. So, in radio,
I think that it would certainly lead to the ability to have a
right or left-wing outspoken radio host—
Q1226 Baroness Howe of Idlicote:
A shock jock.
Mr Godel: Exactly that. That is correct. There
is a strong argument that some of that would be quite a compelling
listen and welcome distraction from what some of the radio stations
already put out.
Q1227 Chairman:
Forgive me if I have the wrong interpretation, but you sound rather
supportive of this change.
Mr Godel: I will give my personal opinion rather
than for my company. I think that there is scope for it to be
looked at and to be carefully thought about. I think that we are
constrained as an industry occasionally in not being able to do
that. Up until this point, it has all been fine because we have
all been playing on the same playing field but, as we go forward,
as the newspaper sites become bigger and have more viewers and
more listeners, then we will not be subject to the same rules
and that will be unfair commercially. There will always be a place
for impartial news.
Q1228 Lord Maxton:
On digital radio, which you can get of course both on television
and on your digital radio, there are already stations which come
very close to being not biased—biased, yes, because you
have religious channels which are entirely religious and express
a particular religious point of view. Do you supply them with
material?
Mr Perkins: There are analogue stations also.
Premier Christian Radio is one that we can think of. They are
still regulated. Whether they are digital or analogue is academic
in a way because they are still regulated by Ofcom, as I understand
it.
Mr Godel: We know lots of examples of religious
belief radio stations, certainly community radio stations, the
third tier taking off now. You get radio stations promoting Christian
values and Islamic values but they are all required by law to
show unbiased views and opinions and, if someone wants to give
their view and opinion, then they should be able to and they are
required to do that, even if it goes against the ...
Lord Maxton: I will try it!
Q1229 Lord Inglewood:
I would like to come back to the general point about the contrast
between what I call the newspaper generated/originating material
and the broadcasting material. You have slightly overlooked, which
I think is important, that actually the newspaper generated material
and all material is subject to things such as the law of defamation
and incitement to racial hatred and so on, so it is not as if
it is a free-for-all.
Mr Godel: It is not a free-for-all of course
and, with my newspaper background, obviously I know that very
well. What newspapers are able to do that we are not able to do
is express a political opinion, for example.
Mr Perkins: I think that most newspapers given
the George Michael story would have checked it very carefully
on the grounds of defamation protection.
Q1230 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
Do your journalists have blogs?
Mr Godel: No.
Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury: How
do you distinguish on a blog between personal opinion and ...
?
Q1231 Chairman:
Would you like to be in a position to be able to express political
opinion?
Mr Godel: Not within a news bulletin.
Q1232 Chairman:
But outside that?
Mr Godel: I think that there is some scope for
it to be looked it outside of that. Thinking out loud and I have
not really done much thinking about this—
Q1233 Chairman:
Go on, you have been thinking about it.
Mr Godel: No, no, no. If we were in a world
where a programme was able to express a view—at the moment,
you have to do that within the format, you have to balance that
out within the format of the programme—it might be that
you could do it within a schedule, rather than being wholly on
Tuesday nights you could be left wing and on Friday nights you
could be right wing, as blatant as that. That is just thinking
aloud. I do think that going forward, my concern is that I know
and I am aware of new ventures that scoot under the regulation
and, sooner or later, that is going to be an issue commercially
because obviously people relying on advertising will not be able
to go to a advertiser that is keen to advertise around a right-wing
programme, for example.
Q1234 Bishop of Manchester:
I listened carefully to the earlier responses to Lord Inglewood,
Lady Eccles and Lord Maxton about the potential influence over
news broadcasting that might come from advertisers or shareholders
or owners. I do think that this is an important area and I would
like to explore a little further the ownership issue, which of
course might become even more interesting in the light of what
you have just described about introducing political opinion. In
order to really push this point, unusually I am going to quote
from our brief. I am going to give the full quote from the study
on IRN in the journal Journalism from Niblock and Machin, "For
the IRN subscribers, news is thought of as something which must
be coherent with the rest of the schedule. An interview with Gordon
MacNamee, previous owner/controller of Kiss FM, carried out by
one of the authors, revealed that when he was taken over by EMAP,
all programmes had to be changed in order to fit more closely
with audience segments for advertisers. This included all kinds
of content" and that last sentence I do emphasise because
I infer from that that news coverage is therefore within the meaning
of this statement. I wonder if you could comment on that and talk
about the influence of owners in that kind of role.
Mr Godel: I cannot comment on that particular
incident because that would be an internal matter for EMAP. We
do not work for EMAP. EMAP are a partner, obviously a shareholder,
but that is going back some years ago. Actually, I am sure that
the Committee would be interested to know that, going back to
the days before EMAP, there was no news on Kiss at all. They did
not provide a news service; there were selected bulletins but
there was no continual news service. EMAP came along and then
news was introduced into Kiss and we now provide news to Kiss.
I reiterate that I have never had a shareholder come to me and
say, "We have just bought six new radio stations and, as
a result, we would like you to change your news". We are
too umbrella, if you like; we are too agency based to be able
to do that. What they do with the content that we send to them,
once they have taken over the six stations, is entirely a matter
for them, but I have never had a conversation with any radio owner
talking about the kind of news that I produce and how it should
change as a result of their ownership of certain stations.
Q1235 Bishop of Manchester:
You can understand why, in spite of those protests—and Mr
Perkins earlier was saying, "I can honestly say that this
is not the case"—reading that report, there appears
to be the slightest chink in the armour.
Mr Godel: I was not at Kiss when that was going
on but, when Kiss was taken over, it was a very street-cred station.
It had won a licence. Its history was that it had been a pirate
radio station and it then won a licence and it continued its pirate
kick-offs on air, if you like, but broadcasting quite legally
and, when EMAP came along, it was a more organised and more established
radio company and felt that it knew what more listeners wanted
and, as a result of the changes that they made several years ago,
listenership has gone through the roof compared to what it was
back then. I would say that those were improvements but I was
not involved in changing any programme inaccuracy.
Mr Perkins: What it invariably is, if a new
owner or a new programmer comes in, it is often the sense of how
the bulletin sounds and the style of the bulletin as much as the
content. As Jon said, Kiss is a very, very street-cred young persons'
station. We also produce the news for Magic which is a very different
station and for Classic FM. Essentially, what we do is produce
a very big basket of goods from which individual stations ...
These are the people dictating how the station sounds and what
the content of the news is, not us. They are selective. If they
want to lead on Paris Hilton, we may cringe secretly but we cannot
intervene. That is what happens. It is partially a dilemma. Lord
Hanson famously used to run Melody Radio many years ago and he
decreed that there would be no unpleasant stories about the Royal
Family, for instance. That was a matter for him but that did not
mean to say that we therefore only sent nice stories about the
Queen to the station. That happened to be his selection process
at the end of it. I do not think that we are influenced by it
in any way. When they talk about change of ownership and change
of programming, it is often to do with style.
Q1236 Chairman:
That is a proprietor literally intervening to prevent particular
stories going on.
Mr Perkins: I believed that he banned Doris
Day at one stage but that is another story!
Chairman: I will not bother to go down
that route.
Lord Maxton: A girl I loved!
Q1237 Baroness Howe of Idlicote:
Following up on what you were saying about targeting news to consumers
and again quoting from Niblock and Machin, "Commercial radio
news, our data suggest, should now be thought of as part of the
targeting of the media flow for a particular kind of reception"
and then a little later on the comment about how the Editor of
IRN, "showed that he had a strong sense of his target audience,
whom he referred to as `Craig from Birmingham'" and I have
a wonderful picture of Craig from Birmingham in my mind.
Mr Godel: Oh, him!
Q1238 Baroness Howe of Idlicote:
I do find it a little confusing because, thinking about your 250
or 260, whatever it is, clients and, I do not know but perhaps
some of them are in groups and so on, I quite take the point about
the 16-year old in Brixton because that is a particular segment
and might be several of your clients' areas, but can you say a
little more about how your conception of your target audience
actually does filter and change the news you produce.
Mr Godel: I think that probably a good example
would be to read out the stories that are our agenda today to
give you an example of how we target and I think you will be surprised
that this targeting sounds frightening, but actually it sort of
targets almost everyone. These are our stories today on our agenda:
the canoeist who suddenly reappeared.
Q1239 Baroness Howe of Idlicote:
Who is now in jail.
Mr Godel: He is now in jail, least said about
that. Abortions, which is the Government considering making abortions
available in GP surgeries. Prostitution: young girls being lured
into prostitution by teenage boys. Ghana: two girls sentenced
for smuggling. PMQs: whatever will come from that. Prisons: a
report by Lord Carter who is expected to recommend that some criminals
should be spared prison depending on cells. Mortgages: a story
about the ongoing mortgages. Cricket, which is very important.
Dolly Parton speaking about kids learning how to read more—I
have no idea where that has come from—in Rotherham. A story
about The Golden Compass, a very popular family film for this
Christmas. Hearing that selection of stories, I think you would
agree that there is something there for everyone. Although, as
I have already said, they may not be done in any great depth or
analysis, each one will have a package of about 90 seconds made
around them. I think that from that it gives a fair understanding
of how we are targeting stories. That is pretty much a national
agenda there, but we are making sure that we pick out elements
from those stories that are relevant to young people. So, the
girls going into GPs surgeries is an example and the girls being
prosecuted for smuggling in Ghana. They are all relevant and,
from that, we can speak to a drugs counsellor and we can speak
to a health official. I think that that is an example of how we
are targeting effectively.
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