The Political Economy of the Media Volume IT
The International Library of Studies in Media and Culture Series Editors: Laurie Taylor Emeritus Professor of Sociology University of York
The Political Economy of the Media
Andrew Tudor
Volume 11
Reader in Sociology University of York 1. Feminist Cultural Studies (Volumes I and Terry I.ovell
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2. The Political Economy of the Media (Volumes I and Peter Golding and Graham Murdock
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Edited by
Peter Golding Professor of Sociology Loughborough University, UK and
Graham Murdock Reader in the Sociology of Culture, Loughborough University, UK Wherever possible, the articles in these volumes have been reproduced as originally published using facsimile reproduction, inclusive of footnotes and pagination to facilitate ease of reference. THE INTERNATIONAL LffiRARY OF STUDIES IN MEDIA AND CULTURE For a list of all Edward Elgar published titles visit our site on the World Wide Web at http://www.e-elgar.co.uk
634244 An Elgar Reference Collection Cheltenham, UK • Brookfield, US
©Peter Golding and Graham Murdock 1997. For copyright of. individual articles please refer to the Acknowledgements.
Contents
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Acknowledgements Introduction by the editors: 'Communication and the Common Good'
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data The political economy of the media I edited by Peter Golding and Graham Murdock. (International library of studies in media and culture ; 2) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Mass media. I. Golding, Peter. II. Murdock, Graham. ill. Series. P91.25.P65 1997 302.23-dc20
ISBN 1 85278 777 5 (2 volume set)
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PRIVATE INTERESTS TO COMMON GOODS 1. Edward Alsworth Ross (1910), 'The Suppression of Important News', The Atlantic Monthly, CV, 303-11. 2. Upton Sinclair (1919), The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism, Pasadena, CA: Upton Sinclair, extracts from 221-9, 244-6, 250-52, 258-60, 282-91, 408-14. 3. R. Hutchins (1947), A Free and Responsible Press: A General Report on Mass Communication, edited by Robert D. Leigh, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 20-29, 59-65, 67-8, 83-6, 92-~. 4. James Curran (1977), 'Capitalism and Control of the Press, 1800-1975', in James Curran, Michael Gurevitch and Janet Wollacott (eds), Mass Communication and Society, Chapter 8, Edward Arnold/Open University Press, 195-230. 5. Graham Murdock and Peter Golding (1989), 'Information Poverty and Political Inequality: Citizenship in the Age of Privatized Communications', Journal of Communication, 39 (3), Summer, 180-95. 6. Jiirgen Habermas (1979) [ 1964], 'The Public Sphere', in Armand Mattelart and Seth Siegelaub (eds), Communication and Class Struggle. I. Capitalism, Imperialism, IGIIMMRC, 198-201, bibliography. 7. James Curran (1991), 'Rethinking the Media as a Public Sphere', in Peter Dahlgren and Colin Sparks (eds), Communication and Citizenship: Journalism and the Public Sphere in the New Media Age, Chapter 1, London and New York: Routledge, 27-57. 8. Jiirgen Habermas (1992), 'Further Reflections on the Public Sphere' (translated by Thomas Burger), in Craig Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere, Chapter 17, Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 421-61. 9. Michael Schudson (1992), 'Was There Ever a Public Sphere? If So, When? Reflections on the American Case', in Craig Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere, Chapter 6, Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 143-63.
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12
41
64
100
116
120
151
192
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PUBLIC BROADCASTING AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST 10. J.C.W. Reith (1924), 'The Function of Broadcasting', 'The Responsibility', 'A Public Service', 'The Great Multitude', 'The Best of Everything', 'The Bread upon the Waters' and 'In Touch with the Infinite', selected chapters from his Broadcast over Britain, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 15-19, 31-9, 57-64, 77-82, 147-54, 181-8, 217-24. 215 11. Herbert Hoover (1952), 'Development and Control of Radio Broadcasting', The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Cabinet and the Presidency 1920-1933, Chapter 20, New York: · Macmillan, 139-48, appendix. 267 12. Report of the Committee on Broadcasting 1960 (The Pilkington Report), Presented to Parliament by the Postmaster General in June 1962, Cmnd. 1753, London: HMSO, excerpts from 16-18, 19-20, 37-8, 41, 46, 60, 62, 63, 70-71, 67-8. 277 13. FRC Interpretation of the Public Interest: 'Statement Made by the Commission on August 23, 1928, Relative to Public Interest, Convenience, or Necessity', 2 FRC Ann. Rep. 166 (1928), in Frank J. Kahn (ed.) (1978), Documents ofAmerican Broadcasting, Chapter 10, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 3rd Edition, 49-55, related readings. 287 14. The Great Lakes Statement: 'In the Matter of the Application of Great Lakes Broadcasting Co.', FRC Docket No. 4900, 3 FRC Ann. Rep. 32 (1929), in Frank J. Kahn (ed.) (1978), Documents of American Broadcasting, Chapter 11, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 3rd Edition, 56-62, related readings. 294 15. 'The "Vast Wasteland"': Address by Newton N. Minow to the National Association of Broadcasters, Washington D. C. May 9, 1961, in Frank J. Kahn (ed.) (1978), Documents of American Broadcasting, Chapter 28, Englewood Cliffs: NJ: Prentice-Hall, 3rd Edition, 281-91, related readings. 301 16. Peter Jay (1984), 'Electronic Publishing', The Crisis for Western Political Economy and other Essays, London: Andre Deutsch, 219-36. 313 17. Report of the Committee on Financing the BBC (The Peacock Report 1986), 12.2 'Broadcasting Aims and Broadcasting Finance', 12.3 'Implications for the Present System', 12.4 'Strategy and Implementation', Cmnd. 9824, London: HMSO, 125-36. 331 18. Douglas Kellner (1990), 'Public Access Television' and 'Satellite Television and Some Utopian Proposals', Television and the Crisis of Def!Wcracy, Chapter 5, Sections 3 and 4, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 207-24, notes and bi~liography. 343
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PART
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POLICING THE PUBLIC INTEREST 19. Robert Britt Horwitz (1989), 'Telecommunications and Their Deregulation: An Introduction' and 'Theories of Regulation', The Irony of Regulatory Reform: The Deregulation of American Telecommunications, Chapters 1 and 2, New York and Ox:(ord: Oxford University Press, 3-45, 285-95. 20. William H. Melody (1990), 'Communication Policy in the Global Information Economy: Whither the Public Interest?', in Marjorie Ferguson (ed.), Public Communication- The New Imperatives: Future Directions for Media Research, Chapter 2, London: Sage, 16-39, references. 21. Vincent Mosco (1990), 'The Mythology of Telecommunications Deregulation', Journal of Communication, 40 (1), Winter, 36-49. 22. James Curran and Jean Seaton (1991), 'Alternative Approaches to Media Reform', Power Without Responsibility: The Press and Broadcasting in Britain, Chapter 19, London: Routledge, 4th Edition, 335-72. 23. Howard Davis and Carl Levy (1992), 'The Regulation and Deregulation of Television: A British/West European Comparison', Economy and Society, 21 (4), November, 453-82.
PART IV INSTITUTIONALIZING DIVERSITY 24. George Lansbury (1925), 'The Miracle of Fleet Street' and 'Finance', selected chapters from The Miracle of Fleet Street: The Story of The Daily Herald, London: Labour Publishing Company, 1-22, 157-67. 25. Brian Groombridge (1972), 'Alternatives and Precursors' and 'Mobilizing British Resources for Democracy', Television and the People: A Programme for Democratic Participation, Chapters 10 and 12, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 161-86, notes and 219-41, notes. 26. The International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems (1980), 'Democratization of Communication', Many Voices, One World, Part ill: Chapter 3, London, New York and Paris: Kogan Page, Unipub and Unesco, 166-74. 27. John Keane (1991), 'Public Service Media?', The Media and Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press, 116-62. 28. Peter Golding (1990), 'Political Communication and Citizenship: The Media and Democracy in an Inegalitarian Social Order', in Marjorie Ferguson (ed.), Public Communication- The New Imperatives: Future Directions for Media Research, Chapter 5, London: Sage, 84-100, references.
Name Index
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365
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444
458
496
529
562
612 621
668 687
Acknowledgements The editors and publishers wish to thank the authors and the following publishers who have kindly given permission for the use of copyright material. Blackwell Publishers Ltd for excerpt: John Keane (1991), 'Public Service Media?', The Media and Democracy, 116-62. HMSO for excerpts: Report ofthe Committee on Broadcasting 1960 (The Pilkington Report), Cmnd. 1753, excerpts from 16-18, 19-20, 37-8,41, 46, 60, 62, 63, 70-71, 67-8; Report of the Committee on Financing the BBC (The Peacock Report 1986), Sections 12.2, 12.3, 12.4, Cmnd. 9824, 125-36. Herbert Hoover Presidential Library for excerpt: Herbert Hoover (1952), 'Development and Control of Radio Broadcasting', The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Cabinet and the Presidency 1920-1933, Chapter 20, 139-48, appendix. Hodder Headline PLC for excerpt: James Curran (1977), 'Capitalism and Control of the Press, 1800-1975', in James Curran, Michael Gurevitch and Janet Wollacott (eds), Mass Communication and Society, Chapter 8, 195-230. Peter Jay for his own excerpt: (1984), 'Electronic Publishing', The Crisis for Western Political Economy and other Essays, 219-36. Frank J. Kahn for excerpts: (1978), FRC Interpretation of the Public Interest: 'Statement Made by the Commission on August 23, 1928, Relative to Public Interest, Convenience, or Necessity', 2 FRC Ann. Rep. 166 (1928), in FrankJ. Kahn (ed.), Documents ofAmerican Broadcasting, Chapter 10, 3rd Edition, 49-55, related readings; (1978), The Great Lakes Statement: 'In the Matter of the Application of Great Lakes Broadcasting Co:', FRC Docket No. 4900, 3 FRC Ann. Rep. 32 (1929), in Frank J. Kahn (ed.), Documents of American Broadcasting, Chapter 11, 3rd Edition, 56-62, related readings; (1978), 'The "Vast Wasteland"': Address by Newton N. Minow to the National Association of Broadcasters, Washington, D.C. May 9, 1961, in FrankJ. Kahn (ed.), Documents ofAmerican BroadcaSting, Chapter 28, 3rd Edition, 281-91, related readings. Kogan Page Ltd for excerpt: The International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems (1980), 'Democratization of Communication', Many Voices, One World, Part III: Chapter 3, 166-74.
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MIT Press for excerpts: Michael Schudson (1992), 'Was There Ever a Public Sphere? If So, When? Reflections on the American Case', in Craig Calhoun (ed.), Habennas and the Public Sphere, Chapter 6, 143-63; Jiirgen Habermas (1992), 'Further Reflections on the Public Sphere' (translated by Thomas Burger), in Craig Calhoun (ed.), Habennas and the Public Sphere, Chapter 17, 421-61. Oxford University Press for articles: Graham Murdock and Peter Golding (1989), 'Information Poverty and Political Inequality: Citizenship in the Age of Privatized Communications', Journal of Communication, 39 (3), Summer, 180-95; Vincent Mosco (1990), 'The Mythology of Telecommunications Deregulation', Journal of Communication, 40 {1), Winter, 36-49. Oxford University Press, Inc. for excerpts: Robert Britt Horwitz (1989), 'Telecommunications and Their Deregulation: An Introduction' and 'Theories of Regulation', The Irony of Regulatory Reform: The Deregulation of American Telecommunications, Chapters 1 and 2, . 3-45' 285-95. Penguin Books Ltd for excerpts: Brian Groombridge (1972), 'Alternatives and Precursors' and 'Mobilizing British Resources for Democracy', Television and the People: A Programme for Democratic Participation, Chapters 10 and 12, 161-86, notes and 219-41, notes. Routledge for excerpts and article: James Curran (1991), 'Rethinking the Media as a Public Sphere', in Peter Dahlgren and Colin Sparks (eds), Communication and Citizenship: Journalism and the Public Sphere in the New Media Age, Chapter I, 27-57; James Curran and Jean Seaton (1991), 'Alternative Approaches to Media Reform', Power Without Responsibility: The Press and Broadcasting in Britain, Chapter 19, 4th Edition, 335-72; Howard Davis and Carl Levy (1992), 'The Regulation and Deregulation of Television: A British/West European Comparison', Economy and Sodety, 21 (4), November, 453-82. Sage Publications Ltd for excerpts: William H. Melody (1990), 'Communication Policy in the Global Information Economy: Whither the Public Interest?', in Marjorie Ferguson (ed.), Public Communication - The New Imperatives: Future Directions for Media Research, Chapter 2, 166-39, references; Peter Golding (1990), 'Political Communication and Citizenship: The Media and Democracy in an lnegalitarian Social Order', in Marjorie Ferguson (ed.), Public Communication - The New Imperatives: Future Directions for Media Research, Chapter 5, 84-100, references. Telos Press Ltd for excerpt: Jiirgen Habermas (1979) [ 1964] , 'The Public Sphere', in Armand Mattelart and Seth Siegelaub (eds), Communication and Class Struggle. 1. Capitalism, Imperialism, 198-201, bibliography. University of Chicago Press for excerpt: The Commission on Freedom of the Press (1947), A Free and Responsible Press: A General Repon on Mass Communication, edited by Robert D. Leigh, 20-29, 59-65, 67-8, 83-6, 92-3.
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Westview Press, Inc. for excerpt: Douglas Kellner (1990), 'Public Access Television' and 'Satellite Television and Some Utopian Proposals', Chapter 5, Sections 3 and 4, Television and the Crisis of Democracy, 207-24, notes and bibliography.
Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity. In addition the publishers wish to thank the Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science for its assistance in obtaining these articles.
Introduction: Communication and the Contmon Good Peter Golding and Graham Murdock
As Western societies moved from the age of feudalism and absolutism to that of modernity, relations between public and private life were fundamentally redefined. A number of commentators interpreted this shift as centring around a basic division between the state and civil society. One of the most striking institutional features of modernity was the rise of the nation-state as a central node of power. New machineries of administration, law and surveillance, penetrating ever more pervasively into people's everyday lives, were added to longstanding systems of taxation. The consolidation and extension of this system prompted increased demands for basic freedoms in relation to private life and to the multiple social and political arenas - clubs, churches, trade unions, associations and social movements that comprised civil society and provided foci of identity and solidarity beyond the reach of the state. There were struggles to establish rights to freedom of conscience and religious worship, freedom of association and freedom of speech and expression, and extended battles to win rights to participate forms of political life that expressed public opinio~ and the public will. At the heart of these demands was the notion that people were no longer 'subjects' but 'citizens'. The subjects of a monarch or ruler were protected by, but also subjected to, a central power that could be exercised in an arbitrary way. Citizens were defined as free and equal members of a moral and political community - the 'public'. They claimed the right to participate in electing representatives who would formulate the laws by which they would consent to be governed and the right to be treated equally under those laws. These notions found their most influential early expression in the American Declaration of Independence and in the slogan, 'To Arms, Citizens', which echoed through revolutionary France. These clarion calls played a decisive role in defining the 'political' concerns of political economy. They centred around the balance between state activity and power (and its proper limits) and the organization of civil society; between rights and responsibilities; · private interests and the public good. The problem was that civil society included not only the intimate world of private life and the dense networks of social and voluntary associations, but also the commercial corporations at the heart of industrial capitalism. Consequently, the problem was not simply how to balance the interests of the state and capital, but how best to organize the complex interplay between these two central nodes of power and the private and social life of civil society. Adam Smith's seminal text The Wealth of Nations, first published in the year of the American Declaration, is (as we noted in Volume I) often promoted by present-day advocates of 'free' markets as a straightforward celebration of the way in which the 'hidden hand' of
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market dynamics works unerringly to produce a perfect fit between the pursuit of economic interests and the promotion of the common good. In fact, Smith was careful to point out that in some spheres, such as education and culture, state-supported activity might do rather better than markets in advancing the public interest. He had little to say about the communications system, but with the rapid growth of the popular press and other public media in the second half of the 19th century, market failures and imperfections emerged as major issues for debate. The concept of citizenship presupposed a diverse and open communications system. If people were to participate fully in debates about prevailing systems and competing proposals for intervention and change, they had to have access to the widest possible range of viewpoints, relevant information and frameworks of interpretation, coupled with opportunities to participate in arguments as speakers as well as listeners. In a democratic society the success and popular legitimacy of a system of political representation - institutionalized in local and national assemblies - depended on the vitality and openness of the system of discursive representation organized through public cultural institutions. The general imaginative and argumentative space provided by these organizations is what the contemporary German theorist, Jiirgen Habermas, has called, in a very influential formulation, the 'public sphere'. It offers citizens access to the social dialogues that confront questions of common concern (Dahlgren, 1995: 9) where a balance needs to be struck between personal or sectional interests on the one hand and common interests on the other. Part I of this volume includes Habermas' own summary of his core argument (Chapter 6) together with several representative critiques and rethinkings of his position ·(Chapters 9 and 7) and a 1992 piece by Habermas himself (Chapter 8) in which he reflects on his original position and answers his critics. In the book that initiated the debate, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (originally published in 1962), Habermas argues that, together with the salons, coffee houses, clubs and other meeting places, the pamphlets, journals and newspapers that emerged in the early phase of liberal capitalism were instrumental in constructing a new 'bourgeois public sphere'. By providing an extended arena for information exchange and rational argument, they enabled the rising classes of entrepreneurs and professionals to develop a shared world view and a set of common interests. With the arrival of representative democracy and the modem mass media however he argues, that the concept of 'public' was extended well beyond its original bourgeois boundaries and that rational argument gave way to sensation. His deeply pessimistic view of the emergence of mass popular media and their inability to sustain a rational public sphere was shared by many commentators who witnessed these developments at first hand. In the early part of the 19th century, it was possible to view the development of a more open market in information and opinion, centred around the press, as an essential precondition for the extension of citizenship. The ending, or weakening, of the more obvious forms of state control over means of communication - licensing, special taxes on newsprint, detailed official censorship - was greeted almost universally as a liberation. The idea of a 'free' press became more or less synonymous with a 'free' market. As the century wore oii, however, it became evident that capital exercised its own forms of manipulation and censorship and promoted its specific interests over the general interest. Concern focused on two groups of capitalists with a central stake in the emerging
popular press- newspaper owners and advertisers. As the readings in Part N in Volume I illustrate, these concerns are still very much on the contemporary agenda of discussion and policy. The origins of these debates lie in the second half of the 19th century. As the news production process became less labour intensive and more dependent on expensive machinery, the costs of entering the major markets soared and newspaper ownership became more and more the privilege of wealthy entrepreneurs who controlled chains of titles. Men like Northcliffe in Britain and Pulitzer and Hearst in the US emerged as a new breed of press barons who ran their print empires like feudal overlords and expected their editors to follow whatever political line they chose. The other figures of power were the major corporations who saw the popular press as a key arena for advertising and promoting both their products and their corporate image. The ways in which the organization and operation of the British press were shaped by advertisers' interests over the period from 1800 to 1975 is taken up by James Curran in Chapter 4. Earlier critics were mther less circumspect in their attacks on advertisers and newspaper owners. Chapters 1 and 2 by Edward Ross and Upton Sinclair, both American writers from the early part of the 20th century, are reprinted here as examples. Ross was a Professor of Sociology, Sinclair a journalist and novelist who once stood, unsuccessfully, for election as Governor of California. They represent a powerful current of radical populism that has had a major influence on criticat political economy in the United States. Strong echoes can be found in the work of Dallas Smythe and Herbert Schiller (reprinted in Volume I) as well as in contemporary polemical commentary. If it was obvious to radical observers that a press operating in a capitalist marketplace could not, and would not, offer the diversity of information, argument and perspective required for full citizenship, it was by no means clear what should be done about it. This was particularly problematic in the United States where Constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech applied to corporations as well as to individuals. As one disgruntled commentator put it in 1900: 'The American people must dearly love the freedom of the press, or we should have heard before now much talk of government control or operation of the newspaper' (Wilcox, 1900: 90). Observers were no nearer to squaring this circle half a century later. When the Commission on Freedom of the press under R. Hutchins published its conclusions (Chapter 3), it was obliged to fall back on moral suasion, calling on the 'giant units' that dominated the marketplace to act responsibly in 'providing the current intelligence needed by a free society'. By the time the Report was published, however, the focus of concern over the organization of public communications had already shifted - from the press to broadcasting. The latter had first emerged as a major popular medium in the 1920s with the rise of radio services. The dilemma facing American legislators is dramatically caught in the memoirs of Herbert Hoover (Chapter 11). As Secretary of Commerce, he played a central role in debates about the way this powerful new medium should be organized in the United States, calling four national radio conferences between 1922 and 1925 to hammer out a modus vivendi. He insisted that the 'ether is a public medium, and its use must be for public benefit', but could envisage no option but to allow stations to be operated by private companies and financed by the sale of advertising time and commercial sponsorship opportunities. At the same time, he recognized the need for a regulatory system that would ensure that radio
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services operated, in the words of the 1927 Radio Act, according to 'public interest, convenience, or necessity'. To this end, a five-member regulatory body, the Federal Radio Commission (FRC), was set up to allocate and renew broadcasting licences and to oversee the general delivery of services. As the early FRC statements reprinted here indicate (Chapters 13 and 14), the Commission had considerable difficulty in defining what constituted 'the public interest'. They were clear that because 'broadcasting stations are licensed to serve the public and not for the purpose of furthering the private or selfish interests of individuals or groups', advertising had to be 'rigidly confined' to prevent the airwaves from being unduly commandeered by commercial speech at the expense of other voices. But they were less certain about how best to fill the non-advertising space, settling for the notion of 'well-rounded' programming 'in which entertainment, religion, education and instruction, important public events, discussions of public questions, weather, market reports and news, and matters of interest to all members of the family find a place'. However, by 1961, when Newton Minow gave his first public speech as Chair of the Federal Communications Commission (~e enlarged successor to the FRC), he condemned American television, which by then had overtaken radio as the major popular medium, as a 'vast wasteland' (Chapter 15). One response to commercial television's perceived failure to deliver appropriate cultural resources for a complex democracy was to explore the opportunities for access programming offered by the proliferating local cable networks (Chapter 8). A second respo_nse was the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. This established a Corporation for Public Broadcasting to channel Congressional funds to support a network of educational and non-profit-making stations across the country. This provided the basis for a new Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Finances remained problematic, however, with the monies granted by Congress being constantly threatened by cuts. To top up their budgets, stations appealed for voluntary donations from viewers, a system that had strong echoes of the proposals for endowed newspapers put forward, unsuccessfully, by an earlier generation of activists (see again Chapters 1 and 2). In marked contrast to this relatively late initiative, broadcasting in Britain was organized, almost from the outset, as a public service rather than a commercial enterprise. This idea was given its most influential formulation by John Reith, the first Managing Director of the British Broadcasting Company, founded by a consortium of radio manufacturers to offer services to listeners as an incentive to invest in their new receiving sets. The Government had granted the Company a monopoly right to broadcast and it fell to Reith to define how it would use this privilege responsibly. His book Broadcast over Britain, written in haste and published in 1924, was the result (see Chapter 10). In strictly economic terms, broadcasting (however it was organized) was a public good rather than a commodity since, unlike a cinema seat or a newspaper, it could be enjoyed by everyone simultaneously: it was nonexclusive. But for Reith it was also a public good in the more philosophical sense that it operated to promote and consolidate shared experiences and common values. To this end, unlike commercial broadcasting, it set out to address people as citizens, as members of moral and political communiti.es, not as consumers of products and programmes. The difficulty was deciding whose definition of the 'needs' of citizenship should prevail? This became even more problematic when the BBC was recreated as a public institution - the British Broadcasting Corporation - in the late 1920s. A diverse and open broadcasting
system required an operating space, relatively free from the pressures of the marketplace on the one hand and of the state on the other. The BBC's guaranteed income from the compulsory licence fee levied on set ownership removed it from the need to take advertising, but its position as the sole national broadcaster continually exposed it to pressure to identify the 'public' interest with the 'national' interest as defined by the state and/or the government of the day. In this context, the professional autonomy of broadcasters had to be continually defended and fought for. But even when won, there were problems with the way autonomy was exercised. Critics of public service television claimed that it was overly paternalistic, staffed by mandarins intent on giving people what they felt they needed rather than what they wanted. This paternal position was trenchantly defended in The Pilldngton Report of 1960 which reviewed the initial performance of the new commercial television stations launched in Britain in the mid-1950s (Chapter 12). Commercial television in Britain was strongly regulated. Companies were obliged to produce a range of programmes that would not necessarily be popular or profitable, but which fitted the established definition of 'public service'. This was the social price levied on the 'licences to print money' granted by their regional monopolies over the sale of advertising time. However, throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, more and more groups began to complain that this system failed to properly represent their interests or aspirations. They saw themselves pushed to the margins of programming by the BBC's orientation to outmoded definitions of national culture and by the commercial companies' search for maximum audiences. They demanded a system of representation more sensitive to shifts in the structure of civil society. One solution (described in Chapter 25) was to press for more opportunities for viewers to appear in and to make programmes. A second option was that of 'electronic publishing'. One of the most influential versions of this idea came from Peter Jay who had worked at the Treasury (Chapter 16). He argued that new distribution technologies spelled the end of conventional broadcasting and enabled all forms of communications to adopt the model of print publishing, in which companies decided what to offer and then sold their services to customers. This would allow for an explosion of 'narrowcasting' in which specialist services were targeted at particular interest groups. State interference would be reduced to a minimum since there would be no need for regulation outside of the general limits imposed by laws in areas such as copyright, racism and pornography. This manifesto for the 'commodification' of broadcasting fitted snugly with the wider shift in policy-oriented thinking in the late 1970s, prompted by the resurgence of neo-liberal economics. This new orthodoxy found one of its most cogent British expressions in The Peacock Report on broadcast finances, published in 1986 (Chapter 17), which provided an authoritative and influential statement of the case for converting all broadcast services, including those offered by the BBC, into subscription channels. This would abolish at a stroke two of the central tenets of the public service ideal - that everyone should have equal access to all services regardless of their level of income, and that channels should provide mixed programming so that people would encounter new and unexpected material alongside familiar fare. Yet, interestingly, Peacock insisted on a safety net, arguing that the market was unlikely to support the full range of programmes required for citizenship and that, consequently, some form of public subsidy for production was essential. In a rapidly changing communications environment, recent arguments about the appropriate
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balance between the public sector and the market and about the need to rethink the role of regulation have extended well beyond broadcasting. The increasing convergence of media sectors, brought about by the shift towards digital coding (which allows all forms of communications to be stored and accessed using the same basic binary language of O's and 1's), has given a new impetus to neo-liberal arguments for reducing public regulation and allowing maximum scope for market dynamics and relations. The major testing ground for these arguments was the drive to deregulate the telecommunications system in the US. This process and some of the reasons behind it are addressed in the extracts by Robert Britt Horwitz and Vincent Mosco (Chapters 19 and 21). The pieces by Davis and Levy and by William Melody (Chapters 23 and 20) offer comparative, international, perspectives on the wider drive to deregulate communications, whilst the extract from Curran and Seaton (Chapter 22) places this movement alongside competing policy frameworks. The recent rise and rise of market-oriented policies makes the task of formulating alternative initiatives - designed to promote diversity, ensure accessibility and meet the-cultural and information needs of complex democracy - all the more pressing for critical political economy. The conceptual and practical problems raised by this ambition are addressed in Part IV. Chapters 24 and 25 by George Lansbury and Brian Groombridge recount the careers of selected attempts to intervene in the British newspaper market and television system, whilst the pieces by John Keane and Peter Golding and the extract from the McBride Report (Chapters 27, 28 and 26) deal more generally with the justifications and prerequisites of policies aiming to democratize the operations of public media and to orientate these media more forcefully to the overall extension of democracy. The rise of the new media the Internet, video, multi-media systems, virtual reality offers new opportunities for democratic communications, but they do so in the context of deeply-embedded social, economic, political and cultural formations. Analysing the relations between these formations, and in particular the· ways in which the economic organization of the communications industries structures their social and political uses and their cultural potentialities, is the distinctive task and promise of the political economy of communications. Understanding how these links might be realigned to deepen democratization is the particular challenge of a political economy that claims to be critical.
References Dahlgren, Peter (1995), Television and the Public Sphere: Citizenship, Democracy and the Media, London: Sage. Wilcox, D.F. (1900), 'The American Newspaper: A Study in Social Psychology', Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, July, pp. 56-92.
Part I Private Interests to Common Goods
[1] THE SU;E>PR.ESSION OF IMPORTANT NEWS BY EDWARD ALSWORTH H.OSS
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MosT of the criticism launched at our daily newspapers hits the wrong party. Granted they sensationalize vice and crime, "play up" trivialities, exploit the pr.ivate affairs of prominent people, embroider facts, and offend good taste with screech, blare, and color. Dut all this may be only the means of meeting the demand, of" giving the public what it wants." The newspaper cannot be.expected to remain dignified and serious now that it caters to the common millions, instead of, as formerly, to the professional and business classes. To interest errand-boy and factory-girl and raw immigrant, it had to become spicy, amusing, emotional, and chromatic. For these, blame, then, the American people. · There is just one deadly, damning count against the daily newspaper as it is coming to be, namely, It does not git•e the news.
For all its pretensions, many a daily newspaper is not "giving the public what it wants." In spite of these widely trumpeted prodigies of costly journalistic "enterprise," these ferreting reporters and hurrying correspondents, these leased cables and special trains, news, good "live" news, "red-hot stuff," is deliberately being suppressed or distorted. This occurs oftener now than formerly, and bids fair to occur yet oftener in the future. And this in spite of the fact that the aspiration of the press has been upward. Venality has waned. Detter and
better men have been drawn into journalism, and they have wrought under more self-restraint. The time when it could be said, as it was said of the Reverend Dr. Dodd, that one had "descended so low as to become editor of a newspaper," seems as remote as the Ice Age. The editor who uses his paper to air his prejudices, satisfy his grudges, and serve his private ambitions, is going out. Sobered by a growing realization of their social function, newspap(!r men have come under a sense of responsibility. Not long ago it seemed as if a professional spirit and a professional ethics were about to inspire the news.: paper world; and to this end courses and schools of journalism were established, with high hopes. The arrest of this promising movement explains why nine out of ten newspaper men of fifteen years' experience are cynics. As usual, no one is to blame. The apostasy of the daily press is caused by three economic developments in the field of newspaper publishing. II
In the first place, the great city daily has become a blanket sheet with elaborate presswork, printed in mammoth editions that must be turned out in the least time. The necessary plant is so costly, and the Associated Press franchise is so expensive, that the daily newspaper in the big city has become a capitalistic enterprise. To-day a million dollars will not begin to outfit a metropolitan newspaper. The editor 303
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is no longer the owner, for he has not, and cannot command, the capital needed to start it or buy it. The editor of the type of Greclcy, Dana, Mcdill, Story, Halstead, and Raymond, who owns his paper and makes it his astral body, the projection of his character and ideals, is rare. Perhaps l\Ir. Watterson and JUr. Nelson are the best living representatives of the type. More and more the owner of the big daily is a business man who finds it hard to see why he should run his property on different lines from the hotel proprietor, the vaudeville manager, or the owner of an amusement park. The editors are hired men, and they may put into the paper no more of their conscience and ideals than comports with getting the biggest return from the investment. Of course, the old-time editor who owned his paper tried to make money,- no sin that!- but just as to-day the author, the lecturer, or the scholar tries to make money, namely, within the limitations imposed by his principles and his professional standards. But, now that the provider of the ·newspaper capital hires the editor instead of the editor hiring the newspaper capital, the paper is likelier to be run as a money-maker pure and simple- a factory where ink and brains are so applied to white paper as to turn out the largest possible marketable product. The capitalist-owner means no harm, but he is not bothered by the standards that hamper the editor-owner. He follows a few simple maxims that work out well enough in selling shoes or cigars or sheet-music. "Give people what they want, not what you want." "Back nothing that will be unpopular." "Run the concern for all it is worth." This drifting of ultimate control in to the hands of men with b.usiness motives is what is known as "the commercialization of the press."
The significance of it is apparent when you consider the second economic development, namely, the growth of newspaper advertising. The dissemination of news and the puryeyance of publicity are two essentially distinc;t functions which, for the sake of conYenience, are carried on by the same agency. Theoneappeals to subscribers, the other to advertisers. The one calls for good faith, the other does not. The one is the corner-stone of liberty and democracy, the other a convenience of commerce. Now, the pun'cyance of publicity is becoming the main concern of the newspaper, and threatens to throw quite into the shade the communication of news or opinions. Every year the sale of advertising yields a larger proportion of the total receipts, and the subscribers furnish a smaller proportion. Thirty years aao, advertising yielded less than half of the earnings of the daily newspapers. To-day, it yields at least two-thirds. In the larger dailies· the receipts from advertisers are several times the receipts from the readers, in some cases constituting riincty per cent of the total revenues. As the newspaper expands to eight, twelve, and sixteen pages, while the price sinks to three cents, two cents, one cent, the time comes when the advertisers support the newspaper. The readers are there to read, not to provide funds. "He who pays the piper calls the tune." When news-columns and editorial page are a mere inCident in the profitable sale of mercantile publicity, it is strictly "businesslike" to let the big advertisers censor both. Of course, you must not let the cat out of the bag, or you will lose readers, and thereupon advertisina. As the publicity expert, Deweese, fra~kly puts it; "The reader must be flimflammed with the idea that the publisher is really publishing the newspaper or magazine for him." The wise owner will
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"maintain the beautiful and impress- mill, it may come into the hands of ive bluff of running a journal to influ- those who will hold it in bondage to ence public opinion, to purify politics, other and bigger investments. The to elevate public morals, etc." In the magnate-owner may find it to his adlast analysis, then, the smothering of vantage not to run it as a newspaper facts in deference to the advertiser pure and simple, but to make it- on an instrument for coloring finds a limit in the intelligence and the sly alertness of the reading public. Hand- certain kinds of news, diffusing certain led as "a commercial proposition," the misinformation, or fostering certain imnewspaper dares not suppress such pressions or prejudices in its clientele. news beyond a certain point,' and it In a word, he may shape its policy by can always proudly point to the un- non-journalistic considerations. By suppressed news as proof of its inde- making his paper he! phis other schemes, or further his political or social ambipend~nce and public spirit. The immunity enjoyed by the big tions, he will hurt it as a money-maker, advertiser becomes more serious as no doubt, but he may contrive to fool more kinds of business resort to adver- enough of the people enough of the tising. Formerly, readers who under- time. Aside from such thraldom, newsstood why accidents and labor trou- papers are subject to the tendency of bles never occur in department stores, diverse businesses to become tied to. why dramatic criticisms are so lenient, gether by the cross-investments of their and the reviews ·of books from the owners. But naturally, when the shares publishers who advertise are so good- of a newspaper lie in the safe-deposit natured, could still expect from their box cheek by jowl with gas, telephone, journal an ungloved freedom in deal- and pipe-line stock, a tenderness for ing with gas, electric, railroad, and these collateral interests is likely to afbanking companies. But now the gas fect the news-columns. people advertise,'.' Cook with gas," the electric people urge you to put your Ill sewing-machine on their current, and That in consequence of its commerthe railroads spill oceans of ink to attractsettlersor tourists. The banks and cialization, and its frequent subjection trust companies are buyers of space, to outside interests, the daily newsinvestment advertising has sprung up paper is constantly suppressing importlike Jonah's gourd, and telephone and ant news, will appear from the intraction companies are being drawn stances that follow. They are hardly ip.to the vortex of competitive public- a third of the material that has come ity. Presently, in the news-columns of to the writer's attention. A prominent Philadelphia clothier the sheet that steers by the cash-register, every concern that has fa vors to visiting New York was caught pervertseek, duties to dodge, or regulations to ing boys, and cut his throat. His firm evade, will be able to press the soft being a heavy advertiser, not a single paper in his home city mentioned the pedal. A third development is the subor- tragedy. One New York paper took dination of newspapers to other enter- advantage of the situation by sending prises. After a newspaper becomes a over an extra edition containing the piece of paying property, detachable story. The firm in question has a from the editor's personality, which large bra·nch in a Western city. There may be bought and sold like a hotel or too the local press was silent, and the VOL. 105-NO. 3
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opening was seized by a Chicago paper. In this same ·western city the vicepresident of this firm was indicted for bribing an alderman to secure the p
found in so diabolical a plot. Yet the newspapers unanimously refused to print this testimony. In the same city, during a strike of the elevator men in the large stores, the business agent of the elcYator-startcrs' union was beaten to death, in an alley behind a certain emporium, by a "strong-arm" man hired by that firm. The story, supported by afficla vits, was given by a responsible lawyer to three newspaper men, each of whom accepted it as true and promised to print it. The account never appeared. In a,nothcr city the sales-girls in the big shops had to sign an exceedingly mean and oppressive contract which, if generally known, would have made the firms odious to the public. A prominent social worker brought these contracts, and evidence as to the bad concli lions that had become established under them, to cYcry newspaper in the city. Not one would print a line on the subject. On the outbreak of a justifiable streetcar strike the newspapers were disposed to treat it in a sympathetic way. Suddenly they yecred, and became unanimously hostile to the strikers. Inquiry showed that the big merchants had threatened to withdraw their advertisements unless the newspapers changed their attitude. In the summer of 1908 disastrous fires raged in the northern Lake country, and great areas of standing timber were destroyed. A prominent organ of the lumber industry belittled the losses and printed reassuring statements from lumbermen who were at the very moment calling upon the state for a fire patrol. When taxed with the deceit, the organ pleaded its obligation to support the market for the bonds which the lumber companies of the Lake region had been advertising in its columns. On account of agitating for teachers' pensions, a teacher was summarily dis-
missed by a corrupt school-board, in violation of their own published rule regarding tenure. An influential newspaper published the facts of schoolboard grafting brought out in the teacher's suit for reinstatement until, through his club affiliations, a big merchant was induced to threaten the paper with the withdrawal of his advertising. No further reports of the revelations appeared. During labor disputes the facts are usually distorted to the injury of labor. In one case, strikers held a meeting on a vacant lot enclosed by a newly-erected billboard. Forthwith appeared, in a yellow journal professing warm friendship for labor, a front-page cut of the billboard and a lurid story of how the strikers hac!. built a" stockade," behind which they intended to bid defiance to the bluccoats. It is not surprising that when the van bringing these lying sheets appeared in their quarter of the city, the libcled men overturned it. During the struggle of carriage-drivers for a six-day week, certain great dailies lent themselves to a concerted effort of the liverymen to win public sympathy by making it appear that the strikers were interfering with funerals. One paper falsely stated that a strong force of police was being held in reserve in case of "riots;'' and that policemen would ride beside the non-union driYcrs of hearses. Another, under the misleading headline, "Two Funerals stopped by Striking Cabmen," described harmless colloquies between hearse-drivers and pickets. This was followed up with a solemn editorial, "l\fay a Man go to his Long Rest in Peace?" although, as a matter of fact, the strikers had no intention of interfering with funerals. The lying headline is a favorite device for misleading the reader. One -sheet prints on its front page a huge "scare" headline, '"Hang Haywood
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and a Million Men will march in Revenge,' saysDarrow." The few readers whose glance fell from the incendiary headline to the dispatch below it found only the following: "1\Ir. Darrow, in closing the argument, said that 'if the jury hangs Bill Haywood, one million willing hands will seize the banner of liberty by the open grave, and bear it on to victory.'" In the same style, a dispatch telling of the death of an English policeman, from injuries received during a riot precipitated by suffragettes attempting to enter a hall during a political meeting, is headed, "Suffragettes kill Policeman!" The alacrity with which many dailies serve as mouthpieces of the financial powers came out very clearly during the recent industrial depression. The owner of one leading newspaper called his reporters together and said in effect, "Boys, the first of you who turns in a story of a lay-off or a shutdown, gets the sack." Early in the depression the newspapers teemed with glowing accounts of the resumption of steel mills and the reYival of business, all baseless. After harvest time they began to cheep, "Prosperity," "Bumper Crops," "Farmers buying Automobiles." In cities where banks and employers offered clearing-house certificates instead of cash, the press usually printed fairy talcs of the enthusiasm with which these makeshifts were taken by depositors and workingmen. The numbers and suffcrings of the unemployed were ruthlessly concealed from the reading public. A mass meeting of men outofwork was represented as" anarchistic" or "instigated by the socialists for political effect.'' In one daily appeared a dispatch under the heading "Five Thousand Jobs Offered; only Ten apply." It stated that the Commissioner of Public Works of Detroit, misled by reports of dire distress, set afoot a public work which called for
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five thousand men. Only ten men applied for work, and all these expected to be bosses. Correspondence with the official established the fact that the number of jobs offered was five hundred, and that three thousand men applied for them!
firemen with water. The water company replied that they had "sufficient." Neither this nor other damagip.g information concerning the company's conduct got into the columns of the local press. A yellow journal conspicuous in the fight for cheaper gas by its ferocious onslaughts on the "gas trust," suddenly ceased its attack. Soon it IV began to carry a full-page "Cook with On the desk of every editor and sub- gas" advertisement. The cow had found editor of a newspaper run by a capital- the entrance to the sacred fold. ist promoter now under prison sentence Traction is a "sacred cow." The lay a list of sixteen corporations in truth about Cleveland's fight for the which the owner was interested. This three-cent fare has been widely supwas to remind them not to print any- pressed. For instance, while .i\Iayor thing damaging to these concerns. In Johnson was superintending the removthe office these corporations were jocu- al of the tracks of a defunct street raillarly referred to as "sacred cows." way, he was served with a court order Nearly every form of privilege is enjoining him from tearing up the rails. found in the herd of "sacred cows" As the injunction was not indorsed, as venerated by the daily press. by law it should be, he thought it was The railroad company is a "sacred an ordinary communication, and put it cow." At a hearing before a state rail- in his pocket to examine later. The road commission, the attorney of a next day he was summoned to show shippers' association got an eminent reason why he should not be found in magnate into the witness chair, with contempt of court. When the facts the intention of wringing from him the came out, he was, of course, discharged. truth regarding the political expendi- An examination of the seven leading tures of his railroad. At this point the dailies of the country shows that a discommission, an abject creature of the patch was sent out from Cleveland railroads, arbitrarily excluded the dar- stating that Mayor Johnson, after ing attorney from the case. The mem-. acknowledging service, pocketed the orable excoriation which that attorney injunction, and ordered his men to gave the commission to its face was proceed with their work. In the newsmade to appear in the papers as the paper offices this dispatch was then emcause instead of the consequence of this broidered. One paper said the mayor exclusion. Subsequently, when the at- told his men to go ahead and ignore the torney filed charges with the governor injunction. Another had the mayor against the commission, one editor intimating in advance that he would wrote an editorial stating the facts and not obey an order if one were issued. criticising the commissioners. The ed- A third invented a conversation in itorial was suppressed after it was iri which the mayor and his superintendtype. ent made merry over the injunction. The public-service company is a" sa- Not one of the seven journals reported cred cow." In a city of the Southwest, the mayor's complete exoneration later. last summer, while houses'were burning The tax system is a "sacred cow." from lack of water for the fire hose, a During a banquet of two hundred sinlumber company offered to supply the gle-taxers, at the conclusion of their
state conference, a man fell in a fit. Reporters saw the trifling incident, yet the morning papers, under big headlines, "Many poisoned at Single-Tax Banquet," told in detail how a large number of banqueters had been ptomaine-poisoned. The conference had formulated a single-tax amendment to the state constitution, which they intended to present to the people for signature under the new Initiative Law. One paper gave a line and a half to this most significant action. No other paper noticed it. The party system is a" sacred cow." When a county district court declared that the Initiative and Referendum amendment to the Oregon constitution was invalid, the item was spread broadcast. But when later the Supreme Court of Oregon· reversed that decision, the fact was too trivial to be put on the wires. The "man higher up" is a "sacred cow." In reporting Prosecutor Honey's argument in the Calhoun case, the leading San :Francisco paper omitted everything on the guilt of Calhoun and made conspicuous certain statements of :Mr. Heney with reference to himself, with intent to make it appear that his argument was but a vindication of himself, and that he made no points against the accused. The argument for the defense was printed in full, the "points" being neatly displayed in large type at proper intervals. At a crisis in this prosecution a 'Vashington dispatch quoted the chairman of the Appropriations Committee as stating in the House that "l\Ir. Heney received during 1908 $23,000, for which he performed no service whatever for the Government." It was some hours before the report was corrected by adding Mr. Tawney's concluding words, "during that year." In view of their suppression and misrepresentation of vital truth, the big
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daily papers, broadly speaking, must be counted as allies of those whom- as Editor Dana reverently put it-" God has endowed with a genius for saving, for getting rich, for bringing wealth together, for accumulating and concentrating money." In rallying to the side of the people they are slower than the weeklies, the magazines, the pulpit, the platform, the bar, the literati, the intellectuals, the social settlements, and the universities. Now and then, to be sure, in some betrayed and misgoverned city, a man of force takes some little sheet, prints all the news, ventilates the local situation, arouses the community, builds up a huge circulation, and proves that truth-telling· still pays. But such exploits do not counteract the economic developments which have brought on the glacial epoch in journalism. Note what happens litter to such a newspaper. It is now a valuable property, and as such it will be treated. The editor need not repeat the bold strokes that won public confidence; he has only to a void anything that would forfeit it. Unconsciously he becomes, perImps, less a newspaper man, more a business man. He may make investments which muzzle his paper here, form social connections which silence it there. He may tire of fighting and want to "cash in." In any case, when his newspaper falls into the hands of others, it will be run as a business, and not as a crusade. V
What can be done about the suppression of news? At least, we can refrain from arraigning and preaching. To urge the editor, under the thumb of the advertiser or of the owner, to be more independent, is to invite him to remove himself from his profession. As for the capitalist-owner, to exhort
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him to run his newspaper in the interests of truth and progress is about as reasonable as to exhort the mill-owner to work his property for the public good instead of for his priyate benefit. What is needed is a broad new avenue to the public mind. Already smothered facts are cutting little channels for themselves. The immense vogue of the "muck-raking" magazines is due to their being vehicles for suppressed news. Non-partisan leaders are meeting with cbecring response when they found weeklies in order to reach their natural following. The Socialist Party supports two dailies, less to spread their ideas than to print what the capitalisticdailieswould stifle. Civic associations, municipal voters' leagues, and legislative voters' leagues, arc circulating tons of leaflets and bulletins full of suppressed facts. Within a year five cities have, with the taxpayers' money, started journals to acquaint the citizens with municipal happenings and affairs. In many cities have sprung up private non-partisan weeklies to report civic information. l\ioreover, the spoken word is once more a power. The demand for lecturers and speakers is insatiable, an.d the platform bids fair to recover its old prestige. The smotherers are dismayed by the growth of the Chautauqua circuit. Congressional speeches give vent to boycotted truth, and circulate widely under the franking privilege. City clubs and Saturday lunch clubs are formed to listen to facts and ideas tabooed by the daily press. More is made of public hearings before committees of councilmen or legislators. When all is said, however, the defection of the daily· press has been a staggering blow to democracy. Many insist that the ,public is able to recognize and pay/for the truth. "Trust the public" and in the end merit will be rewarded. Time and again men
have sunk money in starting an honest and outspoken sheet, confident that soon the public would rally to its support. But such hopes are doomed to disappointment. ·The editor who turns away bad ad\·ertising or defies his big patrons cannot lay his copy on the subscriber's doorstep for as little money as the editor who purYeys publicity for all it is worth; and the masses will not pay three cents when another paper that "looks just as good" can be had for a cent. In a word, the art of simulating honesty and independence has outrun the insight of the average reader. To conclude that the people are not able to recognize and pay for the truth about current happenings simply puts the dissemination of news in a class with other momentous social services. Because people fail to recognize and pay for good books, endowed libraries stud the land. Because they fail to recognize and pay for good instruction, education is proYided free or at part cost. Just as the moment came when it was seen that private schools, loan libraries, commercial parks, baths, gymnasia, athletic grounds, and playgrounds would not answer, so the moment is here for recognizing that the commercial news-medium does not adequately meet the needs of democratic citizenship. Endowment is necessary, and, since we are not yet wise enough to run a public-owned daily newspaper, the funds must come from private sources. In view ofthe fact that in fifteen years large donations aggregating more than a thousand million of dollars have been made for public purposes in this country, it is safe to predict that, if the usefulness of a non-commercial newspaper be demonstrated, funds will be forthcoming. In the cities, where the secret control of the channels of publicity is easiest, there are likely to be founded financially independent news-
papers, the gift of public-spirited men of wealth. The ultimate controlof such a foundation constitutes a problem. A newspaper free to ignore the threats of big adyertisers or powerful interests, one not to be bought, bullied, or bludgeoned, one that might at any moment blurt out the damning truth about police protection to vice, corporate tax-dodging, the grabbing of water frontage by railroads, or the non-enforcement of the factory laws, would be of such strategic importance in the struggle for wealth that desperate efforts would be made to chloroform it. If its governing board perpetuated itself by coaptation, it would eventually be packed with "safe" men, who would see to it that the newspaper was run in a "conservative" spirit; for, in the long run, those who can watch for an advantage all the time will beat the people, who can watch only some of the time. Chloroformed the endowed newspaper will be, unless it be committed to the onward thought and conscience of the community. This could be done by letting vacancies on the governing board be filled in turn by the local bar association, the medical association, the ministers' unron, the degree-granting faculties, the federated teachers, the central labor union, the chamber of commerce, the associated charities, the public libraries, the non-partisan citizens' associations, the improvement leagues, and the social settlements. In this way the endowment would rest ultimately on the chief apexes of moral and intellectual worth in the city. While giving, with headline, cut, and
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cartoon, the interesting news, - forg.. eries and accidents, society and sports, as well as business and politics,...,- the endowed newspaper would not dramatize crime, or gossip of private affairs; above all, it would not "fake," "doctor," or sensationalize the news. Too self-respecting to use keyhole tactics, and too serious to chronicle the small beer of the wedding trousseau or. the divorce court, such a newspaper could not begin to match the commercial press in circulation. But it would reach those ,\·ho reach the public through the weeklies and monthlies, and would inform the teachers, preachers, lecturers, and public men, who speak to the people eye to eye. What is more, it would be a corrective newspaper, giving a wholesome leverage for lifting up the commercial press. The big papers would not dare be caught smoth9ring or "cooking" the news. The revelations of an independent journal that everybody believed, would be a terror to them, and, under the spur of a competitor not to be frightened, bought up, or tired out, they must needs, in sheer self-preservation, tell the truth much oftener than they do. The Erie Canal handles less than a twentieth of the traffic across theStateofNew York, yet, byitsstanding offer of cheap transportation, it exerts a regulative pressure on railway rates which is realized only when the canal opens in the spring. On the same principle, the endowed newspaper in a given city might print only a twentieth of the daily press output and yet exercise over the other nineteen-twentieths an influence great and salutary.
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world of industry p·recisely the same position and fill precisely the same roles as were filled in the political world hy King Louis, who said, "I am the State." This power of concentrated wealth which rules America is known by many names. It is .,Wall Street," it is "Big Business," it is ''the Trusts." It is the "System" of Lincoln Stcffcns, the "Invisible Government" of Wood row Wilson, the "Empire of Business" of Andrew Carnegie, the "Plutocracy" of the populists. It has been made the theme of so much stump-oratory that in cultured circles it is considered good form to speak of it in quotation marks, with a playful and skeptical implication; but the simple fact is that this power has controlled American public life since the civil war, and is greater at this hour than ever before in our history.
[2] Excerpts from The Brass Check: A Study ofAmerican Journalism.
CHAPTER XXXV THE CAUSES OF THINGS
Hete is one of the five continents of the world, perhaps the richest of the five in natural resources. As far back as history, anthropology, and even zoology can trace, these natural resources have been the object of competitive struggle. For the past four hundred years this struggle has been ordained hy the laws and sanctified hy the religions o( man. ''Each (or himself," we say, ami. "the devil take the hindmost." "Dog eat dog," we say. "Do others or they will do you," we say. ''Business is business." we say. "Get the stuff," we say. "Money talks," we say. "The Almighty Dollar," we say. So, by a thousand native witticisms, we·Americans make clear our attitude toward the natural· resources of our continent. As a result of £our centuries of this attitude, ordained by law and sanctified hy religion, it has come about that at this beginning of the twentieth century the massed control of the wealth of America lies in .the hands of perhaps a score of powerful individuals. We in America speak of steel kings and coal barons, of lords of wheat and lumber and oil and railroads, and think perhaps that we are using metaphors ; but the simple fact is that the men to whom we refer occupy in the
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Journalism is one of the devices whereby industrial autocracy keeps its control over political democracy; it is the day-by-day, between-elections propaganda, whereby the minds of the people arc kept in a state of acquiescence, so that when the crisis of an election comes, they go to the polls and cast their ballots for either one of the two candidates of their exploiters. Not hyperbolically and contemptuously, but literally and with scientific precision, we define Journalism in America as the business and practice of presenting the news of the day in the interest of economic privilege. A modern newspaper is an enormously expensive institution. The day is past when a country printer could set up a hand-press and print news about the wedding of the. village blacksmith's daughter and the lawn-party of the Christian Endeavor Society, and so make his way as a journalist. Now-
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a-days people want the last hour's news from the battle-field or the council-hall. . If they do not get it in the local paper, they get it in the "e;xtras" from the big cities, which arc thrown off the fast express-trains. The franchise which entitles a paper to this news from all over the world is very costly; in most cities and towns it is an iron-clad monopoly. You cannot afford to pay for this service, and to print this news, unless you have a large circulation, and for that you need complicated and costly presses, a big building, a highly trained staff. Incidentally you will find yourself running an advertising agency and a public employment service; you will find yourself giving picnics for news-boys, investigating conditions in the countyhospital, raising subscription funds for a monument to Our Heroes in France. In other words, you will be an enormous and complex institution, fighting day and night for the attention of the public, pitting your composite brain against other composite brains in the struggle to draw in the pennies of the populace. Incidentally, of course, you are an institution running under the capitalist system. You are employing hundreds, perhaps thousands of men, women and children. You arc paying them under the iron law of wages, working them under the rule of 11 the devil take the hindmost." You have foremen and managers and directors, precisely as if you were a steel-mill or a coal-mine; also you have policemen and detectives, judges and courts and jailers, soldiers with machine-guns and sailors with battleships to protect you and your interests-precisely as does the rest of the predatory system of which you are a part. And, of course, you have the capitalist psychology; you have it complete and vivid-you being the livest part of that system. You know what is going on hour by hour; you are more class-conscious, more alert to the meaning of events than anyone else in the capitalist community. You know what you want from your wage-slaves, and you see that they ''deliver the goods." You know what you are furnishing to your advertisers, and your terms are "net cash." You know where you get your money, your "credit"; so you know ''Who's Who" in America, you know whom to praise and whom to hate and fear.
I realize fully the differences between newspapers. Some are dishonest, and some are more dishonest; some are capitalistic, and some are more capitalistic. But great as are the differences between them, and clever as are· the pretenses of some of them, there is no one which does not serve vested wealth, which has not for its ultimate aim the protection of economic privilege. The great stream of capitalist prosperity may flow irregularly, it may have eddies and counter-currents, stagnant places which deceive you for a while; but if you study this great stream long enough, you find that it all moves in one direction, and that everything upon its surface mov.es with it. A capitalist newspaper may espouse this cause or that, it may make this pretense or that, but sooner or later you realize that a capitalist newspaper lives by the capitalist system, it fights for that system, and in the nature of the case cannot do otherwise. Some one has said that to talk of regulating capital is to talk of moralizing a tiger; I would say that to expect justice and truth-telling of a capitalist newspaper is to expect asceticism at a cannibal feast. It would be instructive to take the leading newspapers· of America and clas!'ify them according to the nature of their financial control, showing precisely how and where this control shapes the policy of the paper. There will be certain immediate financial interests-the great family which owns the paper, the great bank which holds its bonds, the important local trade which furnishes its advertising. Concerning these people you observe that no impolite word is ever spoken, and the debut parties given to the young ladies of these families are reported in detail. On the other hand, if. there are inter-
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The Political Economy of the Media 11
ests aggressively hostile to the great family, the great bank, the important local trade, you observe that here the newspaper becomes suddenly and unexpectedly altruistic. It will be in favor of public ownership of the gas-works; it will be in favor of more rigid control of state banks; whatever its policy may be, you will, if you sit at the dinner-tables of the rich in that city, have revralecl to you the financial interests which lie behind that unexpected altruism.
Here is a picture of Mr. de Young, drawn by one of his wageslaves, a man. who for many years has helped to run his profit-machine :
I have heard a leading Hearst editor tell, quite simply and as a matter of course, how Mr. Hearst would come into the office at twelve o'clock at night and turn the batteries of the ''New York American" and ''Journal" upon the business and politics of August Belmont, becausr Mr. Belmont had slighted Mr. Hearst, or Mr. Hearst's wife-:-T rorg~:>t which-- at a clillllerparty. One year you would st>e Mr. Hcarst printing a cartoon every day, showing "Charlie" IvJ urphy, boss of Tammany Hall, in convict's stripes; next year Mr. Hearst would make a deal with Tammany-and the other newspapers of New York would be showing Mr. Hearst in convict's stripes I Or come to the other side of the continent, and consider the "San Francisco Chronicle," owned by "Mike" de Young.
17
He uses much perfume, and is extremely conceited. He is author of the remark tl?at no repo~ter is worth more than twenty dollars a ~eek •. or ever w11l be. l-Ie 1s a secret laugh-producer because of his mord1!1ate love for the camera ~potlight. Strangely enough, his likeness 1s seldom to be found 111 any paper except his own· the :·chronicle's" ca!nera men .have standing instructions at public g~ther mgs to pay as ltttle attenhon to other men as possible and to concentrate on de Young. On his own paper everybody is Jones or Smith except himself. He must always be referred to as Mr. de Young. Ow!1er of fl!UCh valuable real estate near Golden Gate park, he made a vigorous hght to have the Panama-l'acilic l!:xpositinn locall'
[225]
There are differences, of course, in the moral character of men. There are some men who do not take part in large-scale real-estate intrigues, and some who do not live with operasingers; there are capitalists who pay their debts, and regard their word of honor as their bond. And there have been newspapers owned by such men, and conducted according to such principles. You could not buy the editorial support of the "Springfield Republican" or the ''Baltimore Sun"; you could not buy the advertising space of these papers for the cheaper and more obvious kinds of fraud. But ask yourself this question: Is there a newspaper in America which will print news unfavorable to department-stores? If the girl-slaves of the local department-store go on strike, will the newspaper maintain their right to picket? Will it even print the truth about what they do and say? Some years ago a one-time teacher of mine was killed by falling down the elevator-shaft of a New York departmentstore. I noted that my newspaper did not give the name of the department-store. As a matter of curiosity, I bought all the newspapers, and discovered that none o_f them gave the name of the department-store. It was not absolutely essential, of course; my one-time teacher was just as dead as if the name of the store had been given. But suppose the accident had taken place at the People's House, owned by the Socialists-would all the newspapers of New York have with· [226] held the name of the place?
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The Political Economy of the Media 1/
The Political Economy of the Media 1/
Some years ago one of the girl-slaves of a New York department-store committed suicide, leaving behind her a note to the effect that she could not stand twenty cent dinners any longer. The ''New York V\7orld," which collects several thousand dollars every day from department-stores, judged it necessary to deal with this incident. "The World," you understand, is a "democratic" paper, a .,liberal" paper, an "independent" paper, a paper of ''the people." Said the "\Vorld":
CHAPTER XXXVI THE EMPIRE OF BUSINESS
There are some people who make too large a demand upon fortune. Fixing their eyes upon the standards of living flaunted by the rich, they measure their requirements by their desires. Such pcr{?ons arc easily afTectccl hy outsirlc influences, and pcrhaJIS in this case the n~ccnt discussions, more often silly than wise, concerning the relation of wages to vice, may have made the girl more susceptible than usual to the depressing effects of cheap dinners.
And do you think that is a solitary instance, the result of a temporary editorial aberration? No, it is typical of the capitalistic mind, which is so .frugal that it extracts profit even froin the suicide of its victims.
19
[227]
Let the reader not misunderstand my thesis. I do not claim that there exists in America one thoroughly organized and completely conscious business government. What we have is a mtmher of groups, struggling for· power; and sometimes I ht~sc groups fall out with one anolh<'r, and make war upon one another, and then we sec a modern application of the ancient adage, "\Vhcn thieves fall out, lu~nest men come into their own." If, for example, you had studied the press of New York City at the time of the life inst1rance exposures, you would certainly have concluded that this press was serving the public interest. As it happens, I followed that drama of life insurance with the one man in America who had most to do with it, the late J ames B. Dill. Judge Dill ran a publicity hurcau in New York for several months, and handed out the greater part of this scandal to the newspaper reporters. lie told me precisely how he was doing it, and precisely why he was doing it, and I knew that this whole affair, which shook the nation to its depths, was simply the Morgan and Ryan _interests taking away the control of life insurance money from irresponsible people like "J immy" Hyde, and bringing it under the control of people who were responsible-that is, responsible to Morgan and Ryan. The whole campaign was conducted for that purpose; the newspapers of New York all understood that it was conducted for that purpose, ami when that purpose was accomplished, the legislative investigations and the newspaper clamor stopped almost over-night. And all through this terrific uproar I noticed one curious thing-there was never in any single newspaper or magazine or speech dealing with the question the faintest hint of the one intelligent solution of the problem-that is, government insurance. I made several efforts to get something on the suhj('ct into the N cw York papers; I gave interviews-{ have forgotten now to what papers, but I know that these interviews never got by the blue pencil. It took the emergency of wartime to force government insurance-and now the lobby of
[228]
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The Political Economy of the Media li
the private insurance ~ompanies is busy in \Vashington, trying to scuttle government msurance, as government telegraphs and telephones, government railroads, government shipping, government employment agencies, have all one by one been ~cuttled. ·
[229]
Take one of our great centers of culture; take the Hub of the Universe, take Boston. The newspaper plight of Boston is beyond telling. There is the "Evening Transcript," owned by an extremclv· wealthy and reactionary family, serving every wealthy and r~actionarv interest, and incidentally taking advertising bribes, as I shail presently show. There is the "Boston American," owned by Hearst, and the "Boston Daily Advertiser,". also owned by Hearst. The latter is the oldest newspaper in Boston, and a year ago its circulation was cut down to a thousand copies, its puhlication heing cont inuecl merely in order that H earst may retain its Associated Press f ranchisc. There is the "Boston Globe," and its evening edition, controlled, I am informed, by Standard Oil. There is the "Boston Herald," and its evening edition, the "Travcler," owned by the Plant and United Shoe Machinery interests, with ex-Senator Crane holding the balance of power. There is the "Post," also heavilv in debt to Crane-who ·is one of the leading reactionaries~ of New England. The owner of the "Post" is described to me hy one who knows him as ''a sick man, who like all men who have accumulated a great deal of wealth, is inclined to be conservative and fearful of change."
[244]
Or take Cincinnati, where I happen to have friends on the ''inside." There is the "Cincinnati Inquirer" and "Post," owned hy the estate of McLcan, who made thirty million dollars out of street railway and gas franchises, obtained by bribery. This <'slate also owns the ''\Vashi1igton Post," whose knaveries I shall tell about later on. And there is the ••TimesStar," owned by Charles P. Taft, brother of our ex-president. "Charlie" Taft married twenty million dollars, and bought a newspaper, and started out as a valiant reformer, and everybody in Cincinnati thought how lovely that a fine, clean, young millionaire was going in for civic reform. But at the very outset he trod on the toes of Boss Cox, and Boss Cox showed how he could injure the Taft fortune; whereupon "Charlie" made a deal with the bo.ss, and since then his paper has been the leading champion of civic corruption. In most big cities you find papers owned by big local ••trusts," and one or two others belonging to a ''trust" of newspapers, apublishing-system like that of Catkins or Capper or Munsey or Scripps or Hearst. For the rule that the big fish swallow the little ones applies in the newspaper world as elsewhere: The publisher of a big newspaper comes upon a chance to buy a small newspaper in a neighboring city, rind presently he finds himself with a chain of newspapers. Then he learns of a magazine that is 11 0n the rocks,'' and it occurs to him that a magazine can help his newspapers, or vice vet·sa. So you find Munsey, a ·self-confessed stock-gambler, with three magazines and several newspapers; the Hearst niachine with a dozen newspapers, also "Hearst's Magazine," the ,.Cosmopolitan," and four other periodicals. Every month in the Hearst newspapers you read editorials which are disguised advertisements of these magazines.
21
[245]
22
The Political Economy of the Media Il
The Political Economy of the Media Il
In England we have seen great chains of publications built up in connection with the selling of cocoa and soap; in America we see them built up in connection with the selling of dress-patterns, as with the Buttericks ; with the boosting of moving pictures, as formerly done by "McCiure's"; with grocery-stores and stock-manipulation, as ''Munsey's"; with the selling of subscription-books, as "Collier's," or dictionaries, as the "Literary Digest." Or perhaps it will be a magazine run by a book-publisher, as~ means of advertising and reviewing his own books; and if you investigate, you find that the book-publisher in turn is owned by some great financial interest, which sees that he publishes commercial stuff and rejects all new ideas. This process of centralization has continued in England until now Lord Northcliffe owns fifty or sixty magazines and newspapers of all varieties. Northcliffe had a personal quarrel with Lloyd George, and that part of British "Big Business" which makes its profits ~u~ of the Lloyd. George policies felt the need of more pubhctty, and went mto the market and bought the "Chronicle" for several million dollars. v\'hen the masters of industry pay such sums for a newspaper, they buy not merely the building and the presses and the name; they buy what they · call the "good-will"-that is, they buy you.
23
CHAPTER XXXIX THE WAR-MAKERS
. ~h~t is the ,moral tone in .th~ offices of these great "kept" mstltutlons? 1 he best descnptlon I know of the inside of such a newspaper is found in an article, "The Blue Pencil " hy Maxwell At!derson, published. in the "New Republic" f~r Uccemb~r H, l.J18. It ts very evl(lent that Mr. Andcrson has work~d m tl~e o.ffice of some ne;vsl?aper; he doesn't give names, but Ius ~ext mdtcates that the ctty IS San Francisco. The name of t!1~ uua~inary owner ~s H. N: De Smith, and if you are fa.mdtar wtth San Franc1sco affairs, you don't have to be a w1zard to make your guess. Mr. Anderson portrays one after another of the staff of the p~pcr: ~he managing editor, the assistant managing editor, th~. ctty cdtto_r, the copy reader, the reporter, the dramatic cnhc, the artt.st, the desi~ner, th~ copy boy. Every one of these persons IS a slave with a cham about his neck; everyone of them clearly understands that his function in life is to sub~ serve the glory of his owner. [246]
. They t~tink ~u~kim.lly of Hank De Smith; they speak derisively of Ins park, Ius poltctes, ~nd the amount he is supposed to drink up in a day. ~ut. they obey hnn. _Pasted be£ ore each man is a typed schedule ?f prejttdtce, known techmcally as the son-of-a-bitch list, and consistmg of th.e names ?f men who must be given no free publicity. Here all pr<;mut~ent radtcals and the bus.iness men who have refused to advertise m the paper are lumped m an eternal obloquy of silence. "Refer to Dealer "Any copy containing name of: ,. ............. , ............. , ............. , "Names Not to Appear in Headlines :
.............
•
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"Use Title of 'Mr.' "Only in connection with H. N. De Smith." What smouldering envies or balked ambitions may lie behind this absurd catalogue they do not know. But when this same De Smith buys a block of charity stock, as a matter of course they run headlines acro~s th~ second title page to inform the city of it. Pratse Hank, from whom all blessings flow," the tall and heavy Texan sneers gravely.
[250]
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The Political Economy of the Media li
The Political Economy of the Media II
And here is the assistant managing editor; I have interviewed such a managing editor as this,· not once, but fifty times; and not only in San Francisco, but in a score of other American cities :
Is there any newspaper which does not show consideration for the business interests of its owners? Come to Los Angeles, which I happen to know especially well, because I live only twelve miles away from it. It calls itself the "City of the Angels"; I have taken the Jihcrty of changing the name to the "City of the Black Angels." This city gets its watersupply from distant mountains, and its great financial interests owned vast tracts of land between the city and the sources of supply. There \vere four newRpapers, all in a stale of moRt ferocious rivalry; but all of them owned some of this land, and all of them united in the campaig-n for an aqueduct. For years they kept the population terril.lcd hv pictures of failing water-supply; people say they had the \Vater run out of the reservoirs, and the city parks alJowed to dry up! So they got their aqueduct, and land that had cost forty dollars an acre became worth a thom;and dollars. A single individual cleared a million dollars by this deal.
Ile is acute ancl politic, as you discover when first you hear him call up Henry N. De Smith to ask for a decision. Such :action is very seldom necessary. The assistant managing editor knows the owner's prejudices and failings by long association. He is versed in a most essential knowledr,e of what may be printed in the paper, and what it would be dangerous for the public to know. Under his care comes the immense (lrohlem of general (lOiicy, the direction of opinion in the city in the paths most favorahle to his master's fame and fortune. Nothing unpleasing to friend or advertiser must by any chance appear. It means nothing to him that given such conditions, advertising becomes a kind of legitimate blackmail, for his mind is not attuned to delicate moral vibrations.
Such is San Francisco; and lest you think that is prejudice, or an anomaly, come to Chicago and have a glimpse of the insides of the "Chronicle," given in a book of confessions, "The Career of a Journalist," by William Salisbury: It was no easy matter, either, to be Copy Reader on the "Chronicle." In addition to the average Copy Reader's immense fund of knowledge, one had to know almost by heart the names of the sixteen corporations in which owner \Valsh was interested, such as banks and street railways and gas and contracting companies. He had to know, too, the names of the prominent men ::Hr. \\'alsh likl'rl or dislikerl, so as (I) treat them accordingly. A mistake in snrh things would much more ~1uirkly bring a telephone order from l\.Jr. Walsh's banking olliccs for changes in the staff than any other error.
It may seem an extreme statement; but I doubt if there is a newspaper-office in America in which such things as this do not happen. There may be newspapers whose owners sternly refrain from using them as a means of personal glorification; there may be newspapers which do not give special attention to the owner's after-dinner speeches, and to the social events that go on in the owner's home. But is there any paper which does not show consideration for the associates and intimate friends of the owner?
[251]'
25
[252]
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The Political Economy of the Media 11
The Political Economy of the Media I1
CHAPTER XL
to partic!'l-you find your dnmestk happiness has hecomc dependent upon your converting the whole family to your strange new rcvolutionarv whim! And what if your youngest daughter does not share your enthusiasm for · the "great unwashed"? 'Vhat if your wife takes the side of her darling? Jt is such hidden forces as this which account for much. of the snohhcrv in American newspapers; the fart that in every department and in every feature they favor the rich and powerf nl, and reveal themselves as priests of the cult of Mammon. I have watched the great metropolitan dailies, and those in many smaller cities and towns; I have yet to sec an American newspaper which does not hold money for its god, and the local masters of money for demi-gods at the least. The interests of these Olympian beings, their sports. their social doings, their political opinions, their c~mings and goings, are assumed hy the newspapers to he the ohjcct of the absorbed interest of every American who knows how to read. On every page and in every column of every page the American newspaper preaches the lesson: ''Get money, and all things else shall he added unto you--especially newspaper attention."
OWNING THE OWNERS
The second of the methods by which our Journalism is controlled is by far the most important of all the [our. 1 do not mean merely that the owilers are owned by mortgages, and such crude financial ties. They are owned by ambition, by pressure upoti their families, by club associations, by gentlemen's agreements, by the thousand subtle understandings which make the solidarity of the capitalist class. 1 have written elsewhere of tabor-leaders, otherwise incorruptible, who have accepted "the dress-suit bribe." These same bribes are J>ti.ssed in the business-world, and are the biggest bribes of all. When you have your shoes shined, you pay the bootblack ten cents; but can you figure what you are paid for having your shoes shined? ·when you buy a new suit of clothes, you pay the dealer, say, one hundred dollars; but can you figure what you are paid for being immaculately dressed, for having just the right kind of tie, just the right kind of accent, Just the right manner of asserting your own importance and securing your own place at the banquet-table of Big Business? If you are the publisher of a great newspaper or magazine, you belong to the ruling-class of your community. _You are invited to a place of prominence on all public occasions; your voice is heanl whenever you choose to lift it. You may become a senator like Medii! McCormick or Cappcr of Kansas, who owns eight newspapers and six magazines; a cabinet-member like Daniels, or an ambassador like Whitclaw Reid or \lllalter Page. You will noat upon a wave of prosperity, ancl in this prosperity all your family will share; your sons will have careers open to them, your wife ancl your daughters will move in the "best society." All this, of course, provided that you stand in with the powers that be, and play the game according to their rules. If by any chance you interfere with them, if you break their rules, then im;tantly in a thousand forms you feel the pressure o£ their displeasure. You arc ''cut" at the clubs, your sons and daughters arc not invited
A large part of what is called "conservatism" in our Journalism is this instinctive reverence for wcal_th, as _deeply rooted in every American as respect for a duke m an Enghsh butler. So the average American newspaper editor is a horse
[258]
27
[259]
28
The Political Economy of the Media II
The Political Economy of the Media II
that stands without hitching, and travels without a whip. But emergencies arise, a fork in the road a sudden turn a race with another vehicle ; and then a driver' is needed-and 'perhaps also a \vhip ! Every Hearst editor has stories to ~ell c;>f one-o'clock-it~-the-morning visits from the owner, resulttng 111 the 'yholc poltcy of the paper being shifted. And where the owner ts owned, maybe somebody will call hiui up and lay d?wn ~he law; maybe an agent will be set to keep watch over hts domgs, and to become the real master of his paper. I could name more than one famous editor and publisher who has been thus turned out of his job, and remains nothing but a name. For great .,interests" have a way of being wide-awake even at the late hour wh~n the forms of newspapers close; they have a way of knowmg what they want, and of getting it. "I am Cl; gre~t cl~morer for dividends," testified old RockefeJJer; and tmagme, tf you can, a publishing enterprise controlled by old RockefelJer -how closely the policy of that enterprise woul~ be attended to I Imagine, if you can, one controlled by Pterpont Morgan!
CHAPTER XLIII
29
THE OWNER AND HIS ADVERTISE RS
The third method by which the "kept" press is kept is the method of the advertising subsidy. This is the ''legitimate" graft of newspapers and magazines, the main pipeline whereby llig Business feeds its journalistic parasites. Financially speaking, our big newspapers and popular magazines are today more dependent upon their advertisers than they are upon their readers; it is not a cynicism, but the statement of a business fact, that a newspaper or popular magazine is a device for submitting competitive advertising to the public, the reading-:-matter being bait to bring the public to the hook And of course the old saying holds, that "he who pays the piper calJs the tune." The extent to which the bail used in the game of journalistic angling is selected: and treated by the business fishermen, is a subject which might occupy a volume by itself. Not merely is there general control of the spirit and tone of the paper; there is control in minute details, sometimes grotesque. For exari1ple, Arthur Brisbane wrote an article on dietetics, deploring the use of package cereals. The advertising men of the ''Evening Journal" came to him, tearing their hair; he had knocked ofi a hundred thousand dollars a year from the ''Journal's" income I Brisbane wrote an editorial pointing out that stifi hats caused baldness. and the "Journal"· office was besieged by the hat-dealers who advertised in the paper. llrisbane went to Europe and· wrote editorials supporting a municipal ·subway. Said the advertising man: - "Don't you know that Mr.-- at vVanamaker's is dead against that sort of thing?" Max Sherover, in his excellent little pamphlet, ''Fakes in American Journalism," writes:
[260]
The editor of a New York paper wrote an in!\lructive editorial on the right kind of shoes to wear. 'fhe editorial was not inspired by any advertiser. It was simply the result of the editor's study and investigation of the problem of footwear. He advised against the wearing of the shoe with the curved point and urged in favor of the square-toed shoe. One of the big advertisers somehow got wind of the shoe-editorial that was intended to appear on the following day. [282]
J
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The Political Economy of the Media li
The Political Economy of the Media li
It so happened that this storekeeper hud a shoe-sale scheduled for the following week. J le called up the business manager of the newspa(lcr on the '11hone. After five mmutes of conversation tJ1e editorial went to the waste-basket.
And if the advertisers censor the general ideas, needless to say they censor news about themselves. Henry Siege! ownccl a department-store in New York; his wife divorced him, and nothing about it appeared in the New York papers-that is, not until after the department-store failed! Our great metropolitan dailies arc, as you know, strong protectors of the sanctity of the home; you saw how they treated Upton Sinclait·, when he got tied up in the divorce-courts ; you saw how they treated Gorky and Herron. But how about the late C. \V. Post, of "Poslum'' fame, when he decided to divorce his wife and marry his stenographer? 1lan.lly a line in the newspapers throughout the country!
[283]
31
In the same way, when Wanamaker's was detected violating the customs laws, only one Philadelphia newspaper reported the circumstances. There was organized a league for honest advertising, and you might have thought that such a league would have appealed to our highly moral newspapers; but when this league prosecuted a merchant in New York for selling furs under false names, not one newspaper mentioned the circumstances. This merchant was convicted, and again not one New York newspaper mentioned it. In Chicago various firms were prosecuted for misbranding goods, and the local papers suppressed the news. In Milwaukee four firms were prosecuted for selling a potted cheese doped with chemicals, and the newspapers withheld the names of the firms. Says Wilt Irwin : "I have never seen a story of a shop-lifting case in which the name of the store was mentioned." Also he makes the following statement concerning the most august of the Brahmin newspapers of New England: The "llostoP Evening Transcript" published in its issue of April 8th the fact that a workman had fallen from a tree, that an aged pauper had been found dead in bed, that the Harvard Shooting Club was about to hold a meet, hut not the fact that "Harvard Beer," known to every consumer of malt liquors in Massachusetts, was in peril of the law for adulteration. Neither was the fact noted on l'vlonday April 10. But on Tuesday, April 11, "Harvanl Bcer-1,000 pure' 1 appeared in the pages of the "Transcript"-as a half-page advertisement I
Every newspaper editor feels this pressure-even though he feels it only hi his imagination. A horse that travels in harness does so, not because he likes to travel, but because he carries in his subconsciousness the memory of the whip and the bit which "broke" him in the days of his wild youth. And if, by any chance, he forgets this whip and bit, he is quickly reminded. William Winter, a dramatic critic who had served the ''New York Tribune" for forty-four years, was forced to resign because his reviews of plays injured the advertising business of the ''Tribune." Certain managers were making money out of producing indecent plays; Mr. Winter rebuked these plays, the
[2841
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The Political Economy of the Media//
The Political Economy of the Media//
advertisers protested to the "Tribune," and the managing editor of the "Tribune" censored Mr. Winter's reviews. !Juring the controversy, Mr. Winter wrote to the managing editor that he had desired to injure the business of the producers of indecent plays; to which the managing editor replied: ''My instructions with regard to that page arc that the articles are not to be framed with any such purpose."
CHAPTER XLIV
Everywhere in the world of Journalism, high and 10\v, you see this power of the advertiser. I live in the beautiful millionaire city of Pasadena, and every afternoon I get my news of the world from a local paper, which is in some ways among the hest. It publishes no scare headlines, and practically no scandal; but in its attitude toward its big commercial advertisers, the attitude of this newspaper is abject. There is a page of moving-picture advertisements, and side by side are columns of "write-ups" of these plays. Nine out of ten of these plays are unspeakable trash, but from the notices you would think that a new era of art was dawning upon Pasadena. All this is "dope," sent out by the moving-picture exploiters; such a thing as an independent and educative review of a moving-picture is not conceivable in my local newspaper. And it is the same with "write-ups" of bargain-sales, and new openings of departmentstores. It is the same with the chain of leisure-class hotels; the man who manages and finances these hotels is a local god, and everything he does and says takes the top of the column. This system of publicity in return for advertising is a fundamentally dishonest one, but it is inseparable from the business of publishing news for profit, and the legitimate and the illegitimate shade into one another so gradually that it would be hard for an honest editor to know where to draw the line. [285] The best-paying advertisements are those of automobiles and other leisure-class luxuries ; ns such advertisers will not publish alongside cheap patent medicine fakes, publications like "Collier's" and the ''Outlook" make a boast of censoring their advertisements. But when it comes to protecting their high-priced advertisers, these publications are, as I have shown, every bit as unscrupulous as the sellers of cancer-cures and headache-powders. [287]
33
THE ADVERTISING BOYCOTT
If the newspaper fails to protect its big advertisers, the big advertisers will get busy and protect themselves: Thts happe~s every now and then, and .every ne\~spaper edttor has seen. 1t happen. Sometimes an edttor gets stck of tl~e .game an_d qmts, and then we have a story. For example •. \Vtlham, L. C~tencry, who was editor of the "Rocky Mountam News durmg the Colorado coal-strike, tells me that "the b~siness men. of Denver attempted both an advertising and a soctal boycott m order to prevent the publication of strike news . . . . . I was told that the owner of the paper would not be admitted to the Denver Country Club so long as our editorials seemed to support the cause of the strikers." . Or take the case of Boston. George French, managmg editor of a Boston paper, t<;Jld how !1is pap~~. lost fo~f ·hundred dollars on account of one ttem whtch the mterests had forbidden. Says Mr. French, "That led to a little personal conversation, and to ·my retiring from the paper." He goes on to state: You cannot get anything into the newspapers that in any way rubs up against the !msines.s policy of. the banks and department stores, or of the publtc serv1ce corporations .. Those three great departments of business are welded together w1th !Jands t;ver so much stronger than steel and you cannot make any 1mpress10n on them. News of department !!tores that is discreditable, or in any way attracts unfavorable attention, is all squelched, all kept out of the papers. [289]
34
The Political Economy of the Media 1/
The Political Economy of the Media 1/
35
CHAPTER LXIII THE MENTAL MUNITION- FACTORY
. I ha~l ~n oppor~t~nity to watch, from the inside, the operation of thts advcrltsmg boycott, in the case of my article the "Condemned Meat Industry." :Many. pages o£ advertlsing were. ~vithdrawn from "Everybody's Magazine"- not merely ad.vert1sements of hams and. lard, l~ut of ferti.lizers, soaps and railways. Lawson several t1mes tned to pubhsh the names of these boycotting advertisers, but ''Everybody' s" would not Jet him. ."Everybody~s" poss.ibly reflected that it might not keep up th1s muck-rakmg busmess always;· when it had secured enough reader~, it migh~ let down and become respectable, and then all the b1g advertisers would come back to it-as they have done!
A solution that comes at once to mind is state·owned or municipal-owned newspapers. This is the ortJ10dox Socialist solution, and is also being advocated by \V illiam Jennings Hryan. Fortunately, we do not have to take his theories, or anyone's theories; we have facts-the experience of Los Angeles with its public paper, the "Municipal News," which was an entire success. 1 imtttire of the editor of the paper, Frank E. vVolf e, and he writes : The "Municipal News"? There's a rich story buried there. It· was established by an initiative ordinance, and had an ample appro:priation. It was launched in the stream with engiaies going full steam ahead. Its success was instantaneous. Free distribution; immense circulation; choked with high-class, high-rate advertising; well edited, and it was clean and immensely popular. Otis said : "Every dollar that damned socialistic thing gets is a dollar out of the 'Times' till." Every publisher in the city re-echoed, and the fight was on. The chief thing that rankled, however, was the outgrowth of a clause in the ordinance which gave to each political party &lolling a three per cent vote a column in each issue for what5oever purpose it might be used. The Socialist Lahor Party· iaosed out the Prohibitionists by a fluke. The Socialists had .a big margin in the preceding elections, so the Reds had two columns, and they were quick to seize. the opportunity for propaganda. The Goo-goos, who had always stoutly denied they were a political party, came forward and claimed space, and the merry war was on. Those two columns for Socialist propaganda were the real cause for the daily onslaught of the painted ladies of Broadway (newspaper district of Los Angeles). There were three morning and three evening papers. Six times a day they whined, ·barked, yelped and snapped at the heels of the "Municipal News." Never were more lies poured out from the mouths of these mothers o£ falsehood. The little, weakly whelps o£ the pornographic press took up the hue and cry, and Blanche, Sweetheart and Tray were on the trail. Advertisers were cajoled, browbeaten and blackmailed, until nearly all left the paper. The "News" was manned by a picked staff of the hest newspaper men on the coast. It was clean, well edited, and gave both sides to all controversies- using the parallel column system. It covered the news of the municipality better than any paper had ever covered it. It was weak and ineffective editorially, for the policy was to print a newspaper. We did not indulge in a [408] clothes-line quarrel-did not fight hack.
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The Political Economy of the Media ll
given, even as news, a fair account of the. Lc~gue's pt~rposes. Every daily paper in the state was filled wtth gros.s nusmformal iou and absurd lies." So the League started .a ltttlc wecl~ly paper of its own. With this single wee!dy, ~ga!nst the enttr; daily press of the state, it swept the pnmane.s 111 June, 1?16. Then the League decided to have a da1ly paper: fhe ''Courier-News" of Fargo had been for sale, but the owners would not sell to the League. The League went ahead to start a new paper, actually buying machi~ery and taking s~b scriptions; then the "Courier-New~" dectded to sell, and tts circulation under League ownershtp now exceeds the total population of Fargo. The League at present has weekly papers in seven states, with a total circulation of two hundred thousand, and another weekly, the "Non-partisan Leader," published in St. Pa~l, with a circulation of two hundred and fifty thousand. It ts starting co-operative country weekly papers, SUJ?en:ising t~eir editorial policy and furnishing them news and e(hlonal scrv~ce; over one hundred of these weekly papers are already gomg. There is another League daily in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and one at Nampa,· Idaho. Finally, the League is l?oin~ ahe.ad on its biggest venture, the establishment of a (~a•)Y m Mmneapolis. This paper is to be capitalized at a nulhon .doll.ars, and the stock is being sold to farmer and lahor orgamzattons throughout the state. Says Mr. Morris: "Many wealthy professional and business men, disgusted with the co~1trolled press, have purchased stock, and are warm boosters for the League publications." Also he says:
The "News" died under the axe one year from its birth. They used the initiative to kill it. The rabble rallied to the cry, and we foresaw the end. The paper had attracted attention all over the English-reading world. Everywhere I have gone I have been asked ahout it, hy people who never dreamed I had been an editor of the paper. Its death was a triumph for reaction, but its effect will not die. Some day the idea will pre\"ail. Then I might want to go back into the "game."
City-owned newspapers are part _of the solution, hut not the whole part. As a Socialist, I advocate public ownership of the instruments and means of production; but I do not rely entirely upon that method where intellectual matters arc concerned. I would have the stale make all the steel and coal· and oil. the shoes and matches and sugar; I would have it do the distributing of nC'wspapers, ancl perhaps even the printing; but for the editing of the newspapers I cast ahout for a method of control that allows free play to the development of initiative and the expression of personality. In a free society the solution will be simple; there will be many groups and associations, publishing their own paperst and if you do not like the papers which these ga·oups give you, you can form a group of your own. Being in receipt of the full product of your labor, you will have plenty of money. and will be surrounded hy other free and independent individuals, nlso receiving the full product of their lahor, and accustomed to combining for the expression of their ideas. The difference is that today the world's resources are in the hands of a class, and this class has a monopoly of self-expression. The problem of trnnsferdng such power to the people must be studied as the whole social problem, and not merely as the problem of the press. Fortunately there are parts of America in which the people have kept at least a tmrt of their economic independence, and have gone ahead to solve the prohlem of the ''kept" press in true American fashion-that is, by organizing and starting honest newspapers for themselves. The editor of the "Nonpartisan Leader," Oliver S. Morris, has kindly written for me an account of the experiences of the Nonpartisan League, which I summarize as follows : The League commenced organization work early in HH5 in North Dakota. By the summer of the next year it had forty thousand members, yet no newspaper in the state had
37
. One of the chic£ results of the establishment of a League press is a different attitude on the part of many existing l?apers. With !=ompetition ·in the field, many publishers who l!ave lu.therto_ heen h1ased and unfair ha,•e hcen forced to change their tactics. l•ew of these !Japers have gone 0\·er to the League side· of p~litical. and economic questions, but they have be<:n £~teed ~t least to prmt fa1r new~ repor!s on hoth sides of the. _question 111 thet~ ne\":S c.olumns, reserv}t.lg thetr opposition to the movetnl'llt for thetr ed1tonal columns.. J hat, .of course, is fair enough. The menace .of the controlled press 111 .Amenca is due to the fact that as a rule tlus press does not confine 1ts arguments and opposition to the editorial columns, hut uses. tl}e news columns for propaganda, and, failing to print the ue.w~, prmtmg only a part of it, distorting it or actually lying, sways opm1on through the news columns. [409]
Such is the procedure in places where Americans are free.
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The Political Economy of the Media If
But what about our crowded cities, ,\·itl1 their slum populations, speaking forty different languages, illiterate, unorganized, and clumh? Even in these cities there ha vc he en efforts made to start uewspapers in the interest of the people. I know few more heroic stories than the twenty-year struggle to establish and maintain the "New York Call." lt hegan as a wc>t•ldy, "The \\'orkt·r." Even that look <'tulle:-;~ l'ampaigns of begging, and night labor of devoted men and women who earned their livings by day-time tabor under the cruel capitalist grind. At last they managed to raise funds to start a daily, and then for ten years it was· an endless struggle with debt and starvation. lt was a lucl;:y wrek when the ''New York Call" harl motH'Y enough to pay its printing force; the reporters and editors would sometimes have to wait for months. A good part of the space in the pap~'r had to he devoted to ingenious hegging. The same altempt was made in Chicago, and .there had management and factional quarrels brought a disastrous failure. At the time of writing, there arc Socialist dailies in lluttc, in Seattle, and in Milwaukcc, also a few for<'ignlanguagc Socialist dailies. There are numerous weeklies and monthlies; but these, of course, do not take the place of newspapers, they are merely a way of pamphleteering. The people read falsehoods all week or all month, and then at last they get what portion of the truth the "Appeal to Hcason" or the "Nation" or the "Liberator" or "Pcarson's" can find room for. Jn the meantime the average newspaper reader has had his whole psychology made of lies, so that he cannot believe the truth when he secs it. There arc a f cw millionaires in America who have liberal tendencies. They have been willing to finance reform campaigns, ancl in great emergencies to give the facts to the people; they have hren willing now and then to hack radical magazines, and even to publish them. But~l slate the fact, without trying to explain it-there has not yet appeared in America a millionaire willing to found and maintain a fighting daily paper fo: .the abolition of exploitation. I have myself put the propostfton hcf ore several rich men. I have even known of cases where promises were made. and plans drawn up. :rvJy friend Gaylord \Vilshire intended to do it with the proceeds of his gold-mine, hut the gold-mine has taken long to develop. I had hopes that Henry Ford would do it, when I read of his pur~hase of the "Dearborn Independent." I urged the matter
upon him with all the eloquence I could muster; he said he meant to do it, but I have my fears. The trouble is his ignorance; he really does not know about the world in which he finds himself, and so far the intellectual value of the "Dcarborn Independent" has been close to zero. So our slum proletariat is left to feed upon the garbage of yellow journalism. Year hy year the cost of living increases, and wages, if they move at all, move laggingly, and after desperate and embittered strife. In the midst of this strife the proletariat learns its lessons; it learns to know the dubs of policemen and the bayonets and machine-guns of soldiers; it learns to know capitalist politicians and capitalist judges; also it learns to know Capitalist 1ournalism! vVherever in America the workers organize and strike for a small portion of their rights. they come out of the experience with a bitter and abiding hatred of the press. I have shown you what happened in Colorado; in \V est Virginia; in Paterson. New 1ersey; in Calumet, :Michigan; in Bisbee, Arizona; in Seattle, \Vashington. I could show you the same thing happening in every industrial cent er in America. The workers have come to realize the part which the newspapers play; they have come to know the newspapers as the crux of the argument, the key to the treasure-chamber. A modern newspaper, seen from the pojnt of view of the workers, is a gigantic munition-factory, in which the propertied class manufactures mental bombs and gas-shells for the annihilation of its enemies. And ju~t as in war sometimes the strategy is determined by the location of great munitionfactories and depots, so the class-struggle comes to center about newspaper offices.
[411]
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Today every class-conscious workingman carries about with him as his leading thought, that if only he and his fellows could get possession of the means of news-distribution, could take the printing-offices and hold them for ten days. they could end forever the power of Capitalism, they could make safe the Co-operative Commonwealth in America. I say ten days, and I do not speak loosely. Just imagine if the newspapers of America were to print the truth for ten days! The truth about poverty, and the causes of poverty; the tr~tth about corruption in politics and in all branches of government, in Journalism, and throughout the business world; the truth about profitccring and exploitation, about the banking graft, the plundering of the railroads, the colossal gains of the l3ccf Trust and the Steel Trust and the Oil Trust and their hundreds of subsidiary organizations; the truth about conditions in industry, the suppression of labor-revolts and the corrupting of labor movements; above all, the truth about the possibilities of production by modern machinery, the fact that, by abolishing production for profit and substituting production for use, it would be possible to provide abundance for all .b,y two or ·three hours' work a day! I say that if all this legttunate truth. could be placed before the American people for ten successive days, instead of the mess of triviality, scandal, crime and sensation, doctored news and political dope, prejudiced ('ditorials anti sordid and vulgar adv<'rtisements upon which the American people arc now fed-1 say that the world would be trans f ormcd, and Industrial Democracy would be safe. 1viost of our newspaper proprietors know this as well as I do; so, when they read of the sei?-ing of ucwspaper oniccs in Europe. they experience cold dulls, and one great newspaper in Chicago has already purchased half a dozen machine-guns and stored them away in its cellar!
[3] Excerpts from A Free and Responsible Press.
2 THE REQUIREMENTS F THE freedom of the pr~ss is freighted with the responsibility of providing the current intelligence needed by a free society, we have to discover what a free society requires. Its requirements in America today are greater in variety, quantity, and quality than those of any previous society in any age. They are the requirements of a self-governing republic of continental size, whose doings have become, within a generation, matters of common concern in new and important ways. Its internal arrangements, from being thought of mainly as matters of private interest and automatic market adjustments, have become affairs of .conflict and conscious compromise among organized groups, whose powers appear not to be bounded by "natural law," economic or other. Externally, it has suddenly assumed a leading role in the attempt to establish peaceful relationships among all the states on the globe. Today our society needs, first, a truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent account of the day's events in a context which gives them meaning; second, a forum for the exchange of comment and criticism; third, a
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means of projecting the opinions and attitudes of the groups in the society to one another; fourth, a method of presenting and clarifying the goals and values of the society; and, fifth, a way of reaching every member of the society by the currents of information, thought, and feeling which the press supplies. The Commission has no idea that these five ideal demands can ever be completely met. All of them cannot be met by any one medium; some do not apply at all to a particular unit; nor do all apply with equal relevance to all parts of the communications industry. The Commission does not suppose that these standards will be new to the managers of the press; they are drawn largely from their professions and practices. A TRUTHFUL, COMPREHENSIVE, AND INTELLIGENT ACCOUNT OF THE DAY'S EVENTS IN A CONTEXT WinCH GIVES THEM MEANING
The first requirement is that the media should be accurate. They should not lie. Here the first link in the chain of responsibility is the reporter at the source of the news. lie must be careful and competent. He must estimate correctly which sources are most authoritative. He must prefer firsthand observation to hearsay. He must know what questions to ask, what things to observe, and which items to report. His employer has the duty of training him to do his work as it ought to he done. 21
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Of equal importance with reportorial accuracy are . the identification of fact as fact and opinion as opinion, and their separation, so far as possible. This is necessary all the way from the reporter's file, up through the copy and makeup desks and editorial offices, to the final, published product. The distinction cannot, of course, be made absolute. There is no fact without a context and no factual report which is uncolored by the opinions of the reporter. But modem conditions require greater effort ·than ever to make the distinction between fact and opirlion. In a simpler order of society published accounts of events within the experience of the community could be compared with other sources of information. Today this is usually impossible. The account of an isolated fact, however accurate in itself, may be misleading and, in effect, imtrue. The greatest danger here is in the commUJJ.ication of information internationally. The press now bears a responsibility in all countries, and particularly in democratic countries, where foreign policies are responsive to popular majorities, to report international events in such a way that they can be understood. It is no longer enough to report the fact truthfully. It is now necessary to report the truth about the fact. In this country a similar obligation rests upon the press in reporting domestic news. The country has many groups which are partially insulated from one 22
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another and which need to be interpreted to one another. Factually correct but substantially untrue accounts of the behavior of members of one of these social islands can intensify the antagonisms of others toward them. A single incident will be accepted as a sample of group action unless the press has given a flow of information and interpretation concerning the relations between two racial groups such as to enable the reader to set a single event in its proper perspective. If it is allowed to pass as a sample of such action, the requirement that the press present an accurate account of the day's events in a context which gives them meaning has not been met.
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' By the use of this analogy the Commission does not intend to suggest that the agencies of communication should be subject to the legal obligations of common carriers, such as compulsory reception of all applicants for space, the regulation uf rates, etc.
assume the duty of publishing significant ideas contrary to their own, as a matter of objective reporting, distinct from their proper function of advocacy. Their control over the various ways of reaching the ear of America is such that, if they do not publish ideas which differ from their own, those ideas will never reach the ear of America. If that happens, one of the chief reasons for the freedom which these giants claim disappears. Access to a unit of the press acting as a common carrier is possible in a number of ways, all of which, however, involve selection on the part of the managers of the unit. The individual whose views are not represented on an editorial page may reach an audience through a public statement reported as news, through a letter to the editor, through a statement printed in advertising space, or through a magazine article. But some seekers for space are bound to be disappointed and 111ust resort to pamphlets or such duplicating devices as will spread their ideas to such public as will attend to them. But all the important viewpoints and interests in the society should be represented in its agencies of mass communication. Those who have these viewpoints and interests cannot count on explaining them to their fellow-citizens through newspapers or radio stations of their own. Even if they could make the necessary investment, they could have no assurance that their publications would be read or their pro-
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A FORUM FOR THE EXCHANGE OF COMMENT AND CRITICISM
The second requirement means that the great agencies of mass communication should regard themselves as common carriers of public discussion. 1 The units of the press have in varying degrees assumed this function and should assume the responsibilities which go with it, more generally and more explicitly. It is vital to a free society that an idea should not be stifled by the circumstances of its birth. The press cannot and should not be expected to print everybody's ideas. But the giant units can and should
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grams heard by the public outside their own adherents. An ideal combination would include general media, inevitably solicitous to present their own views, but setting forth other views fairly. As checks on their fairness, and partial safeguards against ignoring important matters, more ·specialized media of advocacy have a vital place. In the absence of such a combination the partially insulated groups in society will continue to be insulated. The unchallenged assumptions of each group will continue to harden into prejudice. The mass medium reaches across all groups; through the mass medium they can come to understand one another. Whethe r a unit of ti-le press is an advocate or a common carrier, it ought to identify the sources of its facts, opinions, and arguments so that the reader or listener can judge them. Persons who are presente d with facts, opinions, and arguments are properly influenced by the general reliability of those who offer them. If the veracity of statements is to be appraised, those who offer them must be known. Identification of source is necessary to a free society. Democracy, in time of peace, at least, has a justifiable confidence that full and free discussion will strengthen rather than weaken it. But, if the discussion is to have the effect for which democracy hopes, if it is to be really full and free, the names and the characters of· the participants must not be hidden from view. 25
The Political Economy of the Media 11 . THE PROJECT ION OF A REPRESE NTATIVE PICTURE OF TilE CONSTIT UENT GROUPS IN THE SOCIETY
This requirem ent is closely related to the two preceding. People make decisions in large part in terms of favorable or unfavorable images. They relate fact and opinion to stereotypes. Today the motion picture, the radio, the book, the magazine, the newspaper, and the comic strip are principal agents in creating and perpetu ayng these conventional conceptions. When the images they portray fail to present the social group truly, they tend to pervert judgment. Such failure may occur indirectly and incidentally. Even if nothing is said about the Chinese in the dialogue of a film, yet if the Chinese appear in a succession of pictures as sinister drug addicts and militarists, an image of China is built which needs to be balanced by another. If the Negro appears in the stories published in magazines of national circulation only as a servant, if children figure constantly in radio dramas as impertinent and ungovernable brats-th e image of the Negro and the American child is distorted. The plugging of special color and '11ate" words in radio and press dispatches, in advertising copy, in news stories- such words ~s "ruthless," "confused," "bureau cratic"- perform s inevitably the same image-making function. Responsible performance here simply means that the images repeate d and emphasized be such as are in total representative of the social group as it is. The 26
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truth about any social group, though it should not exclude its weaknesses and vices, includes also recognition of its values, its aspirations, and· its common humanity. The Commission holds to the faith that if people are exposed to the inner truth of the life of a particular group, they will gradually build up respect for and understanding of it. THE PRESENTATION AND CLARIFICATION OF TilE GOALS AND VALUES OF THE SOCIETY
The press has a similar responsibility with regard to the values and goals of our society as a whole. The mass media, whether or not they wish to do so, blur or clarify these ideals as they report the failings and achievements of every day. 2 The Commission does not ·call upon the press to sentimentalize, to manipulate the facts for the purpose of painting a rosy picture. The Commission believes in realistic reporting of the events and forces that militate against the attainment of social goals as well as those which work for them. We must recognize, however, that the agencies of mass communication are an educa• A striking indication of the continuous need to renew the basic ,·alues of our society is gi\'en in the recent poll of public opinion by the National Opinion Research Center at Denver, iri which one out of e\'<'ry three persons polled did not think the newspapers should be allowed to criticize the American form of government, e\·cn in peacetime. Only 57 per cent thought that the Socialist party should be allowed, in peacetime, to publish newspapers in the United States. Another poll revealed that less than a fourth of those questioned had a "reasonably accurate idea" of what the Bill of Rights is. Here is widespread ignorance with regard to the value most cherished by the pressits own freedom--whieh seems only dimly undt•rstood hy many of its consumers.
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tional instrument, perhaps the most powerful there is; and they must assume a responsibility like that of educators in stating and clarifying the ideals toward which the community should strive. FULL ACCESS TO THE DAY'S INTELLIGENCE
It is obvious that the amount of current informa-
tion required by the citizens in a modem industrial society is far greater than that required in any earlier day. We do not assume that all citizens at all times will actually use all the material they receive. By necessity or choice large numbers of people voluntarily delegate analysis and decision to leaders whom they trust. Such leadership in our society is freely chosen and constantly changing; it is informal, unofficial, and flexible. Any citizen may at any time assume the power of decision. In this way government is carried on by consent. But such leadership does not alter the need for the wide distribution of news and opinion. The leaders are not identified; we can inform them only by making information available to everybody. The five requirements listed in this chapter suggest what our society is entitled to demand of its press. We can now proceed to examine the tools, the structure, and the performance of the press to see I.ow it is meeting these demands. Let us summarize these demands in another way. 28
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The character of the service required of the American press by the American people differs from the service previously demanded, first, in this-that it is essential to the operation of the economy and to the government of the Republic. Second, it is a service of greatly increased responsibilities both as to the quantity and as to the quality of the information required. In terms of quantity, the information about themselves and about their world made available to the American people must be as extensive as the range of their interests and concerns as citizens of a self-governing, industrialized community in the closely integrated modern world. In terms of quality, the information provided must be provided in such a form, and with so scrupulous a regard for the wholeness of the truth and the fairness of its presentation, that the American people may make for themselves, by the exercise of reason and of conscience, the fundamental decisions necessary to the direction of their government and of their lives.
The Political Economy of the Media ll THE BIAS OF OWNERS
The agencies of mass communication are big business, and their owners are big businessmen. The American consumers just prior to the war paid the forty thousand mass communication establishments nearly two and a half billion dollars for their services, representing one dollar out of every twenty~seven spent that year for all goods and services. The press is a large employer of labor. With its total wage and salary bill in the same year nearly a billion dollars, it provided about 4 per cent of the country's total salary and wage expenditures. The newspapers alone have more than 150,000 employees. The press is connected with other big businesses through the advertising of these businesses, upon which it depends for the major part of its revenue. The owners of the press, like the owners of other big businesses, are bank directors, bank borrowers, and heavy taxpayers in the upper brackets. As William Alien White put it: "Too often the publisher of an American newspaper has made his money in some other calling than journalism. He is a rich 59
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man seeking power and prestige. He has the country club complex. The business manager of this absentee owner quickly is aHlicted with the country club point of view. Soon the managing editor's wife nags him into it. And they all get the unconscious arrogance of conscious wealth. Therefore it is hard to get a modem American newspaper to go the distance necessary to print all the news about many topics." In the last ~hirty years, in Mr. White's opinion, newspapers have veered from their traditional position as leaders of public opinion to mere peddlers and purveyors of news .... the newspapers have become commercial enterprises and hence fall into the current which is merging commercial enterprises along mercantile lines." The same point is made with equal force by another distinguished editor, Virginius Dabney of the Richmond Times-Dispatch writing in the Saturday Review of Literature: "Today newspapers are Big Business, and they are run in that tradition. The publisher, who often knows little about the editorial side of the operation, usually is one of the leading business men in his community, and his editorial page, under normal circumstances, strongly reflects that point of view. Sometimes he gives his editor a free hand but far often er he does not. He looks upon the paper primarily as a 'property' rather than as an instrument for public service." The typical American publisher, Mr. Dabney continues, "considers the important part of
the paper to be the business management, and is convinced that so long as high salaries and lavish expenditures are made available to that management, the editorial departmen t can drag along under a schedule of too much work and too little pay. Of course, such a publisher sees that the editorials in his paper are 'sound,' which is to say that they conform to his own weird views of society, and are largely unreadable.'' Neither indictment is of universal application nor was it intended by its author to be so. There are, as Mr. Dabney says, "brilliant and honorable exceptions." But another highly respected editor, Erwin D. Canham of the Christian Science Monitor, thinks upper-brac ket ownership and its big-business char.acter important enough to stand at the head of his list of the "short-comings of today's American newspapers." The published charges of distortion in the press resulting from the bias of its owners fall into the categories that might be expected. In 1935 the American Newspaper Publishers Association condemned the proposed Child Labor Amendment. The A.N.P.A. action with regard to the child labor provision of N.R.A. was characterized by the St. Louis Star-Times as "a disgrace to the newspaper industry." Bias is claimed against consumer co-operatives, against food and drug regulation, against Federal Trade Commission orders designed to suppress fraudulent advertis61
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ing, and against F.C.C. regulations affecting newspaper-owned broadcasting stations. Other claims involve affiliations with suppliers of- raw paper stock and their affiliations with electric. power companies. Still others arise from the ownership of outside businesses by the owners of the press. Many people believe that the press is biased in matters of national fiscal policy. ADVERTISING AND SALES TALK
One of the criticisms repeatedly made is that the press is dominated by its advertisers. The evidence of dictation of policy by advertisers is not impressive. Such dictation seems to occur among the weaker units. As a newspaper becomes financially stable, it becomes more independent and tends to resist pressure from advertisers. A recent illustration indicates the kind of pressure that may be exerted and the place it is likely to be applied. The American Press Association, advertising representative for about four thousand weeklies and small-town dailies, obtained from the United States Steel Corporation and American Iron and Steel Institute a big order of "policy" advertising in connection with the steel strike last winter, which was placed in fourteen hundred small-town newspapers. The advertising representative, thereupon, wrote a letter to the fourteen hundred publishers saying: "\Ve recommended that your newspaper be put 62
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on their [Steel Institute] schedule, as the best territory; and we are counting on you to give them all the support that your good judgment dictates. This is your chance to show the steel people what the rural press can do for them. Go to it, and pave the way for more national advertising." 3 The radio industry has peculiar problems in relation to advertising. Fewer than a hundred and fifty advertisers now provide all but 3 or 4 per cent of the income of the radio networks, and fewer than fifty provide half the total. The concentration of radio sponsorship goes further than that. Commissioner Durr of the F.C.C. is authority for the statement that in 1943 one-eighth of N.B.C.'s business came from one advertiser, that two advertisers supplied onefourth and ten advertisers 60 per cent of N.B.C.'s income. One advertiser gave the A.B.C. network oneseventh of its income; two gave it a quarter, and ten more than 60 per cent. In 1945 five companies accounted for nearly a quarter of the network income. The large advertisers on the air use a small number of advertising agencies; a dozen and a half provide about half the income of the three networks reporting these facts. These agencies not only place the contracts, but also write, direct, and produce the programs. The great consumer industries-food, to• It should be added that, according to Editor and Publisher, fewer titan 15 per cent of the papers receh·ing this ad\·ertisement carrit>d editorials or news stories on the subject.
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The Political Economy of the Media /1
bacco, drugs, cosmetics, soap, confectionery, and soft drinks, which in 1945 gave the networks threequarters of their income-determine what the American people shall hear on the air. Although the station owner is legally responsible to the government for what goes out over his station, he gets a large part of it from the networks. The networks get their programs from the advertising agencies. The advertising agencies are interested in just one thing, and that is selling goods. We are all familiar with the result, which is such a mixture of advertising with the rest of the program that one cannot be listened to without the other. (A special study of the radio industry by Llewellyn White of the Commission staff, entitled The American Radio, is being published by the Commission.) Advertising forms almost half the subject matter of the three media which carry it. It serves a useful purpose in telling people about goods that are for sale. Sales talk relies heavily on sheer repetition of stimuli, presents favorable facts only, exaggerates values, and suggests a romantic world part way between reality and a materialistic utopia. It does not discuss a product. It "sells" it. Much of what passes for public discussion is sales talk. At its best, however, public discussion can be a two-way process, with listening, response, and interchange, in which some at least of the participants are genuinely seeking for answers and feeling their way toward those answers which are supported by the
weight of the evidence. The American faith is that this is the way public opinion should be formed; it should not be manufactured by a central authority and "sold" to the public. People are used to these different kinds of discourse and often have no difficulty in distinguishing between them. They do not expect to rely on unnamed "medical experts" indorsing a toothpaste as they would upon a named authority writing a serious article on a medical subject in a serious publication. But if this distinction is to be maintained, sales talk should be plainly labeled as such; whether for toothpastes or tariffs, cosmetics or cosmic reforms, devices for reducing waists or raising prices. It should be separated from material which is not advertising or advocacy; and the control of the two kinds of content should be, so far as possible, in separate hands.
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THE NEED AND THE PERFORMANCE: QUALITY
Our society needs an accurate, truthful account of the day's events. We need to know what goes on in our own locality, region, and nation .. We need reliable information about all other countries. \Ve need to supply other countries with such information about ourselves. \Ve need a market place for the exchange of comment and criticism regarding public affairs. We need to reproduce on a gigantic scale the
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open argument which characterized the village gathering two centuries ago. We need to project across all groups, regions, and nations a picture of the constituent elements of the modem world. We need to clarify the aims and ideals of our community and every other. These needs are not being met. The news is twisted by the emphasis on firstness, on the novel and sensational; by the personal interests of owners; and by pressille groups. Too much of the regular output of the press consists of a miscellaneous succession of stories and images which have no relation to the typical lives of real people anywhere. Too often the result is meaninglessness, flatness, distortion, and the perpetuation of misunderstanding among widely scattered groups whose only contact is through these media. As we have said, the American press has great technical achievements to its credit. It has displayed remarkable ingenuity in gathering its raw material and in manufacturing and distributing its finished product. Nor would we deny that extraordinarily high quality of performance has been achieved by the leaders in each field of mass communications. 5 When we look at the press as a whole, however, we must conclude that it is not meeting the needs of our society. The Commission believes that this failure of the press is the greatest danger to its freedom. • The periodic awards for excellence in each medium repeatedly go to the same newspapers, stations, producers, writers, and directors.
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2. \Ve recommend that government facilitate neiV ventures in the communications industry, that it foster tlle introduction of new techniques, that it maintain competition among large units through the antitrust laws, but that those laws be sparingly used to break up sucl1 units, and that, .where concentration is necessary in communications, the government endcavor to see to it that the public gets the benefit of such concentration.
\Ve accept the fact that some concentration must exist in the communications industry if the country is to have the service it needs. People need variety and diversity in mass communication; they must also have service, a quantity and quality of information and discussion which can often be supplied only by large units. The possibilities of evil inherent in concentration can be minimized by seeing to it that no artificial obstructions impede the creation and development of new units. In the communications industry it is difficult to start new units because of the large investment required and because of the control of the existing units over the means of distribution. Little can be done by govemment or any other 83
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agency to reduce the cost of entering the. industry except to adjust governmental charges, such as tax laws and postal rates, to facilitate new enterprises, and to prevent established interests from obstructing the introduction of new techniques. Tax laws and postal rates should be restudied with a view to discovering whether they do not discriminate against new, small businesses and in favor of large, wellestablished ones. As for new teclmiques, an invention like FM radio offers the possibility of greatly increasing quantity and diversity in broadcasting. The cost of the equipment is low, and the number of frequencies large. We believe that the Federal Communications Commission should fully exploit the opportunity now before it and should prevent any greater concenti'ation in FM radio than the service requires. . Government can stop the attempt by existing units of the press to monopolize distribution outlets. The types of governmental action called for range from police protection and city ordinances which would make it possible for new newspapers and magazines to get on the newsstands to antitrust suits against motion picture companies which monopolize theaters. The main function of government in relation to the communications industry is to keep the channels open, and this means, in part, facilitating in every way short of subsidy the creation of new units in the industry. 84
The Commission believes that there should be active competition in the communications industry. It inclines to the view that the issue of the size of the units competing is not one which can best be dealt with by law. The antitrust laws can be invoked to maintain competition among large units and to prevent the exclusion of any unit from facilities which ought to be open to all; their use to force the breaking-up of large units seems to us undesirable. Though there can be no question that the antitrust laws apply to the communications industry, we would point out that these laws are extremely vague. They can be very dangerous to the freedom and the effectiveness of the press. They can be used to limit voices in opposition and to hinder the processes of public education. Since the Commission looks principally to the units of the press itself to take joint action to provide the diversity, quantity, and quality of information and discussion which a free society requires, it would not care to see such action blocked by the mistaken application of the antitrust laws. Honest efforts to raise standards, such as we suggest elsewhere in this chapter,2 should not be thwarted, even though they result in higher costs. Since the need for service is the justification for concentration, the government should see to it that, where concentration exists, the service is rendered; • Pp. 92-96 below.
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it should see to it that the public gets the benefit of the concentration. For example, the Federal Cornmunications Commission should explore the possibilities of requiring the radio networks to increase the number of their affiliated stations and of using clearchannel licenses as a means of serving all the less populous regions of the country. The extension of radio service of the quality supplied by the networks and the maintenance and multiplication of local stations are of the first importance. There are only two ways of obtaining these results: they can be achieved by the acceptance of responsibility by the industry, or they can be achieved by government ownership. We prefer the former.
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I. We recommend that the agencies of mass cornmunication accept the responsibilities of common carriers of information and discussion. Those agencies of mass communication which have achieved a dominant position in their areas can exert an influence over the minds of their audience too powerful to be disregarded. We do not wish to break up these agencies, because to do so would break up the service they can render. We do not wish
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to have them owned or controlled by government. They must therefore themselves be hospitable to ideas and attitudes different from their own, and they must present them to the public as meriting its attention. In no other way can the danger to the minJ of democracy which is inherent in the present concentration be avoided. 2. We recommend that the agencies of mass cornmunication assume the responsibility of financing new, experimental activities in their fields.
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Here we have in mind activities of high literary, artistic, or intellectual quality which do not give promise of immediate financial return but which may offer long-term rewards. Only in a few metropolitan areas can the citizen easily gain access to a wide .variety of motion pictures and radio programs. Elsewhere discriminating, serious minorities are prisoners of the estimate of mass taste made by the industry. Motion pictures, radio programs, newspapers, and magazines aimed at these minorities may not make money at the beginning. They require a considerable investment. They do not attract capital seeking quick profits. Nonprofit institutions can do something in this field, but they should not be expected to do the whole job. The responsibility. of the industry for diversity and quality means that it should finance ventures of this kind from the profits of its other business. 93
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[4] Capitalism and Control of the Press, 1800-1975 J ames Curran •
Introduction The orthodox interpretation of the formative development of the British press has remained unchanged and virtually unchallenged for over a century. 'The British press,' writes David Chaney, 'is generally agreed to have attained its freedom around the middle of the nineteenth century'. (Chaney, 1972 p. 71.) This view, first advanced in the pioneering Victorian histories of journalism, 1 has been uncritically reitereated in histories of modern Britain and historical studies of the British press ever since. 2 This watershed in British history allegedly came about partly as a consequence of the heroic struggle against state control of the press. The first major breakthrough is usually said to have occurred during the Interregnum with the abolition of the Court of the Star Chamber. It was followed by the abandonment of press licensing in 1695 and the introduction of a new and less repressive control system, based primarily on press taxes, in 1712. Further concessions were secured in the reign of George Ill, notably the relaxation of restrictions on the reporting of Parliament in the 1770s and Fox's Libel Act of 1792, which made juries the judges of seditious libel suits. But it was only in the Victorian era, according to the conventional wisdom, that the forces of progress finally triumphed with the reform of libel law in 1843 and the repeal of 'the taxes on knowledge' in the period 1853-61. An independent press emerged free of the legal and fiscal controls by which governments had sought to control it. 3 . • My thanks to the Royal Commission on the Press for permission to reproduce
parts of a research paper commissioned by them and to John Dennington for his assistance. 1 Sec:, in particular, Hunt (1850), Andrews (1859), Grant (1871), Bourne (1887). 2 The: following arc: merely selected examples, published since 1945; Aspinall (1949), Siebc:rt (1952), Altick (1957), Woodward (1962), Roach (1965), Crawley (1965), Williams, R. (1965), Webb (1969), Christie (1970), Asquith (1975). 3 The best modern general accounts in the: Whig tradition are Hanson (1936), Aspinall (1949), Siebert (1952), Altick (1957), Frank (1961), Cranfield (1962) Wiles (1965) and Christie (1970), each containing valuable information not ' available in the others.
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This constitutional struggle was accompanied by a development which is generally held to be of even greater significance for the emergence of a free press- the economic emancipation of the press from state control. . 'For the true censorship,' John Roach writes of the late Georgian press, 'lay in the fact that the newspaper had not yet reached financial . independence'. (Roach, 1965 p. 181.) It was only with the growth of news· paper profits, largely from advertising, that newspapers were supposedly able to free themselves from state and party subsidies and develop an independent organization for gathering news. This conventional wisdom, embedded in all the standard academic histories of the press,4 has been succinctly restated by Dr Ivon Asquith in a recent study of the early nineteenth century press: 'Since sales were inadequate to cover the costs of producing a paper, it was the growing income from advertising which provided the material base for the change of attitude fr~m subservience to independence. The chief methods by which governments could influence the press - a direct subsidy, official advertisements, and priority of intelligence - were rendered less effective because proprietors could afford to do without them .... The growth of advertising revenue was the most. important single factor in enabling the press to emerge as the Fourth Estate of the realm'. (Historical)ourna/1975 p. 721.) A number of important studies documentb:tg the rise of the early radical press provide evidence which, by implication at least, cast doubt on this conventional wisdom. 5 Unfortunately, in one sense, these studies are primarily concerned with the development of the British working class rather than with the history of British journalism. And, insofar as they are explicitly situated in the context of the historical development of the British press, they accept the Whig framework of a triumphant struggle to establish an independent press 6 (Wickwar, 1929 p. 310; Thompson, 1963 p. 772; Williams, 1965 p. 209; Wiener, 1969a p. xi; Hollis, 1970 p. 10.) In effect, they substitute for traditional Whig heroes new working-class ones. The only two historians in this tradition who pay any serious attention to the middle-class press also subscribe to the legend of advertising as the midwife of press freedom. (Williams, 1965 p. 209 et passim; Hollis, 1970 p. 27-8.) This historical legend is not of merely academic interest. It is a 4 See references in Note 3. 5 This is true even of Wiener (1969a) who more than any other historian provides evidence denting the traditional Whig thesis of a struggle for press freedom. Yet he writes 'Their [press taxes) removal in 1861 has been correctly regarded as a landmark in the history of journalism, comparable in its effects to the termination of press censorship in 1695 and to the modification of libel laws in 1843'. (Wiener, 1969 p. xi.) 6 The examination of the early development of the radical press, in this article, draws very extensively on these studies- notably Thompson (1963), Wiener (1969a), Hollis (1970) and Epstein (1976).
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persuasive interpretation of press history which legitimates the marketbased system. lt is explicitly invoked, for instance, by popular historians of the press to justify the role of advertising in the press. 'The dangerous dependence of newspapers on advertising,' writes Francis Williams, 'has often been the theme of newspaper reformers - usually from outside its ranks. But the daily press would never have come into existence as a force in public and social life if it had not been for the need of men of commerce to advertise. Only through the growth of advertising did the press achieve independence.' (Williams, 1957 p. 50; cj. Herd, 1952 p. 65.) The same historical theme was skilfully deployed by the Advertising Association in its evidence to the last two Royal Commissions on the Press, apparently with remarkable effect. (Advertising Association, 1949; 1961.) It partly explains the innocent view of the first Royal Commission that the receipt of advertising 'creates a relationship both remote and impersonal', a belief largely endorsed by its successor. (Report 1947-9, p. 143 and Report 1960-1, p. 87.) The portrayal of the mid-nineteenth-century British press that accompanies this historical legend serves a similar mythological purpose. According to the New Cambridge Modern History, for instance, financially independent newspapers became 'great organs of the public mind', amplifying the voice of the people rather than of governments and politicans. (NCMH vol. 8, p. 26.) The rise of an independent press, argues Professor Christie (1970), democratized British political institutions by exposing them to the full blast of public opinion. At the same time, the emergence of an independent press led to an increasingly non-partisan news coverage, enabling people to form balanced political judgements and to participate in a more mature political democracy. 'The period from 1855', writes Raymond Williams, 'is in one sense the development of a new and better journalism, with a much greater emphasis on news than in the faction-ridden first half of the century ... most newspapers were able to drop their frantic pamphleteering.' (Williams, 1965 p. 218.) Historical convention has thus encouraged a limited model of the role of the press ~s an independent mediator between government and governed, and as an mdependent channel of communication. This model has dominated public inquiries into the press in Britain, effectively excluding serious consideration of structural reform. 7 This article is a long overdue attempt to reappraise the standard interpr7ta~ion of press history during the formative phase of its development. It md1cates the need not only to re-examine critically the accepted view 7 ~oth Royal ConuniSsion Reports subscribed to the view of the press as an mdependent ~ediator and channel of communication. (Report 1947-9, pp. 100-6 et f?asstm; ~ep?rt 1,960-1, pp. 19-20 et passiT?.} This model inevitably generated Its p~escnpt1ve set of reforms- greater efficiency, higher professional standards and meffectual anti-monopoly measures. (Report 1947-9, Ch. 17 and Report 1960-1, pp. 112-18.}
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of the historical emergence of a 'free' press but to stand it on its head. The peri?d around the middle of the nineteenth century, it will be argued, did not maugurate a new era of press freedom and liberty: it introduced a new system of press censorship more effective than anything that had gone before. Market forces succeeded where legal repression had failed in establishing the press as an instrument of social control, with lasting consequences for the development of modern British society. Breakdown of the Control System Direct state censorship of the printed word in Britain was never fully effective. Even during the period of most systematic repression under the early Stuart monarchy when offending authors could be publicly whipped, their faces branded, their nostrils slit, and their ears chopped off (on alternate weeks, allowing for recuperation), the absence of modern law enforcement agencies prevented the effective control of print. As a number of specialist studies demonstrate, the state lacked the sophisticated ;tpparatus necessary to control production, monitor output, regulate distribution, stop the import of prohibited printed material and neutralize or destroy dissident elements in society - essential if coercive censorship were to be effective (Siebert, 1952; Frank, 1961; Rostenburg, 1971.) The celebrated termination of press licensing in 1695, as Hanson (1936) has shown, was prompted not so much by libertarian sentiment as by a realistiC recognition that the licensing system was unenforceable. Even the less ambitious control system introduced under Queen Anne was only partly effective. (Cranfield, 1962; Wiles, 1965; Haigh, 1968; Harris, 1974.) By the nineteenth century it had become illcreasingly inadequate, even when strengthened by the notorious Six Acts of 1819. The front line in the struggle for an independent press was occupied not by leading respectable publishers and editors, whose famous and much quoted proclamations of independence were belied by their covert attempts to secure illicit subsidies from government in the form of official advertising and by ~heir willingness to cooperate in the system of exclusive intelligence by which successive governments managed the flow of news. (See for instance History of The Times, vol. 1-2, 1936-9; and Hindle, 1937.) Ownership and control of the respectable press continued, in any case, to be inextricably linked to government through partisan political involvement in parliamentary politics well into the twentieth century. 8 And 8 Even within its own terms of reference, the traditional thesis of the emergence of an independent Fourth Estate in the nineteenth century, standing above party, is highly debatable. The 1906 Parliament contained, for ins~nce, thirty newspaper proprietors. (Thomas, 1958.} The nature of continuing editorial and proprietorial involvement in partisan politics in the twentieth century is Dlustrated by numerous biographies, diaries and memoirs (for instance, Spender, 1927; Wrench, 1955; Wilson (Ed.}. 1970; King 1972). And if the press is to be conce1ved of as a
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while respectable newspapers increasingly voiced criticism of government policy, this criticism was pragmatic rather than fundamental. Independent criticism was kept well within the confines of the moral framework legitimating the capitalist system. The principal challenge to hegemonic control came from an increasingly radical press appealing by the 1830s to a predominantly working-class audience. It was confronted not by the subtle systems of control based on exclusive information, official advertising and Treasury subsidies but by the direct force of legal repression. The first legal sanction available for controlling the press was the law of seditious and blasphemous libel, defined in such all embracing terms that it provided an infinitely flexible instrument of prosecution9 • Its effectiveness was seriously reduced, however, by Fox's Libel Act of 1792, since successive governments found it increasingly difficult to get juries to convict. lt.also became increasingly apparent that libel prosecutions, even when upheld, were often counter-productive. The circulation ofthe Republican, for instance, increased by over 50% in 1819 when its editor was prosecuted. (Wickwar, 1929 p. 94.) Seditious libel prosecutions became a valuable source of promotion for the radical press. 'A libeller,' concluded the disillusioned Attorney General in 1832, 'thirsted for nothing more than the valuable advertisement of a public trial in a Court of Justice.' (cit. Wiener 1969a p. 196.) For these reasons, the number of libd prosecutions fell sharply. Whereas there were 167 prosecutions for seditious and blasphemous libel in the period 1817-24, there were only 16 in the subsequent period 1825-34. (Wickwar, Appendix B, p. 315.) Libd law was no longer an effective instrument for gagging the press, and was substantially modified by Lord Campbdl's Act of 1843. The government relied increasingly, instead, upon the so called 'taxes on knowledge' -a stamp duty on each copy of a press publication sold to the public, a duty on each advertisement placed in the press, and a tax on paper. The system of control based on press taxes had two objectives: to restrict readership of the press to the .respectable members of society by forcing up the price of press publications; and to restrict ownership of newspapers to people who, in the words of Cresset Pelham, 'would conduct them in a more respectable manner than was likely to be the result of pauper management' by increasing the costs of publishing. (cit. Hollis, 1970, p. vi.) The last objective was further served by a state security system (£300 for London papers and £200 for provincial papers) ostensibly Fourth Estate, many papers were clearly rotten boroughs - like the Daily Express, bought by Beaverbrook to facilitate his entry into politics. (Taylor, 1972.) 9 It was supplement~d by·~ officio i~forma~ions' which was used principally as a method o~ harra~1~g. p~bl~her~ and Journalists and forcing them to incur legal expenses. Ex offrcro Sluts had to be prosecuted with in 12 months after 1819 and the: number of ex officio suits declined in common with seditious libel sui~.
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designed to provide guarantees for the payment of fines but, in reality, aimed to exclude 'pauper' management of newspapers. Yet, even press taxes, which had been sharply increased in the period 17 80-1815, proved increasingly ineffectual as an instrument of censo.rship. Ever since their introduction in 1712, individual publishers had evaded payment of press taxes and it had been necessary periodically to close loopholes in the law and strengthen law enforcement. By the 1830s, however, the ruling class was faced with a relatively new phenomenon - the systematic evasion of the stamp duty by a highly organized radical press with well developed distribution networks and relatively well endowed 'victim funds' to help the families of people imprisoned by the authorities. The government organized a relentless campaign of suppression, prosecuting publishers and printers, seizing supplies and smashing, wherever possible, networks of distributors. (At least 1,130 cases of selling unstamped newspapers were prosecuted in London alone during the period 1830-36.) By the summer of 1836, the government was forced to concede defeat. The Chancellor of the Exchequer informed the Commons on 20 June that the government 'had resorted to all means afforded by the existing law for preventing the .publication of unstamped newspapers. The law officers of the Crown at the same time stated that the existing law was altogether ineffectual to the purpose of putting an end to the unstamped papers'. (Hansard, vol. 34, 1836, col. 627-8.) A crisis had been reached. By the summer of 1836, the gross readership of the radical unstamped press published in London exceeded four million. 10 Its circulation exceeded even that of the respectable newspaper press. (Hollis, 1970.} Ironically the government's own actions had contributed to the very thing it wanted to prevent - the growth of a radical press with a mass audience - since its policy of systematic but ineffectual prosecution of tax evasion had materially assisted its expansion. 11 The Whig government responded to the crisis with a well-prepared counter-offensive against the radical press. New measures were passed 10 This estimate is derived from the combined total circulation of six leading unstamped papers in 1836 of 200,000 (Hollis, 1970 p. 124) which, on the basis of 20 readers per copy, amounts•to 4 million. The total unstamped readership was certainly larger, given the number of unstamped publications in 1836. (Wiener, 1969b.) 11 The rise of the radical press cannot be attributed, however, solely to an attificial price.differential and state prosecution. While radical unstamped papers undercut the prices of the established press because they paid no tax, it is extremely doubtful whether they took away readers from the established press since they were not competing for the same audiences. (Nor is the supposition supported by circulation trends.) Futthermore, radical unstamped papers very successfully competed against moderate unstamped papers selling at the same price. They did so with one hand tied behind their backs since the authorities seldom interfered with the distribution of moderate unstamped papers. And while state repression boosted sales, it also seriously disrupted both supplies and distribution.
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The Political Economy of the Media II 201
which strengthened the search and confiscation powers of the government; increased the penalties of being found in possession of an unstamped newspaper; and reduced the stamp duty by 75% in order to reduce the advantages of 'smuggling'. What has been widely hailed as a liberalizing measure, a landmark in the advance to press freedom, was manifestly repressive both in intention and effect. As Spring Rice, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, explained to the Commons, a strategic concession, combined with increased coercive powers, was necessary in order to enforce a system that had broken down. (Hansard, vol. 34, 20 June, 1836 col. 627631.) The aim of these new measures, he stated candidly, was 'to protect the capitalist' and 'put down the unstamped papers'. (Hansard, vol. 37, 13 April, 1837, col. 1165.) In the face of this fresh onslaught, the underground press capitulated. 'No unstamped paper can be attempted with success,' declared Hetherington, a leading radical publisher, shortly after being released from prison, unless 'some means can be devised either to print the newspaper without types and presses, or render the premises ... inaccessable to armed force.' (London Dispatch, 17 September 1836.) All the principal radical publishers felt unable to continue resisting the stamp duty. By 1837, the clandestine radical press had disappeared and with it cheap journalism. Compliance with the stamp duty, even though it was much reduced, forced radical newspapers to increase their prices sharply. Whereas most unstamped papers had sold at 1d in the early 1830s, their successors in the 1840s sold at 4d to 5d -a price that was-well beyond the means of individual working-class consumers. Yet, despite the seemingly insuperable obstacle that effective enforcement of the stamp duty created for the continuance of radical working-class newspapers, the Whig Government's counter-offensive failed to destroy the radical press. The working class organized and combined in the purchase of newspapers which the authorities sought to exclude from them. Informal groups of working men pooled their resources to buy every week a radical paper. Work people organized through the branches of their unions, clubs and political associations, the purchase of newspapers. Pressure was also successfully exerted on taverns to purchase radical papers through the threat of withdrawing custom. Despite the stamp duty, new radical papers emerged which attained even larger sales than the leading unstamped papers had achieved. The largest selling unstamped paper, the radical Weekly Police Gazette, had a circulation of 40,000. 1:% In 1839, the Northern Star reached over 50,000 12 Both Wiener (1969 p. 184) and Hollis (1970 p. 124) estimate the circulation of ~e W~ekly Police Gazette as 40,000. It may have been more, however, since Spnng ~lee told the Commons that 40,000 copies of an unstamped paper had been se1zed on a Thursday ,two days before it was due to be distributed (Hansard, vol. 34, 20 June 1836, col. 627). More copies would certainly have been produced in the extra two days.
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circulation setting a new record (Read, 1961 p. 101) which was surpassed by its successor, the Chartist Reynolds' News, in the 1850s. (Beveridge, 1975.) These circulations seem very small by modern standards. But then circulation provides a highly anachronistic guide to readership in the first half of the nineteenth century. The modal number of readers per copy of national newspapers in the first half of the 1970s has been 2 to 3 (JICNARS, 1970-75): the modal number of readers per copy of cheap unstamped papers in the 1830s was approximately 20 {Hollis, 1970) and was probably even higher in the case of its high-priced successors like the Northern Star. (Epstein, 1976.) 13 The Northern Star and Reynolds' News each reached, at their meridian, a million readers before the repeal of the stamp duty. 14 Furthermore, radical newspapers were the pace~etters in terms of circulation during the first half of the nineteenth century. Twopenny Trash broke all circulation records in 1816-17, with several times the circulation of leading respectable papers. 15 The Weekly Police Gazette broke all circulation records in 18 36 with over three times the circulation of its nearest rival, The Times. The Northern Star set a new record, also having at its peak more than three times the circulation of its nearest circulation rival. 16 And the Chartist Reynolds' News, only marginally behind the radical liberal Lloyds Weekly, the circulation leader of the early 1850s, also had a leading position in contemporary journalism. {Beveridge, 1965.) The extent of the dominance of radical newspapers in the first half of the nineteenth century is, moreover, understated by these comparative circulation figures since radical papers had a very much larger number of readers per sale than the respectable press. 17 The control system administered through the state had failed. Neither·libellaw nor press taxes had been able to prevent the rise of a radical popular press in the first half of the nineteenth century representing the interests and aspirations of the working class.
13 Other estimates of readers per copy of papers in the first half of the nineteenth century are as high as 50-80. (Read, 1961 p. 202 and Webb, 1955 pp. 31-4.) 14 Estimated at a ratio of 20 readers per copy. 15 Cole (1947 p. 207) estimates 40,000-50,000, although Hollis (1970 p. 95) estimates 20,000-30,000, probably the more reliable figure. 16 Read's estimate of 50,000 is based on a short term peak. (Read, 1961 p. 101.) The annual average circulation of the Northern Star in 18 39 was fractionally less than three times more than that of The Times. (House of Commons Accounts and Papers 1840.) 17 While individual radical papers set new circulation records, the radical newspaper press as a whole probably never attained ~efore 1855 the gross circulation it had attained in 1836. Nor did radical publishers make substantial inroads into family magazine journalism.
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The Impact of the Radical Press One of the most important, and least commented upon, aspects of the development of the radical press in the first half of the nineteenth century was that its leading publications rapidly developed a country wide circulation. Even as early as the second decade, leading radical papers like the Twopenny Trash, Political Register and Republican were read as fat afield as Yorkshire, Lancashire, the Midlands and East Anglia, as well as in the South of England. By the early 1830s, the principal circulation newspapers like the Weekly Police Gazette, Poor Man's Guardian and Dispatch had a d_istribution network extending on a North-South axis from Glasgow to Land's End and on an East-West axis from Carmarthen to Norwich. This distribution network was further developed by radical papers, notably the Northern Star and Reynolds' News, in the subsequent decades. Part of the impact of the radical press stemmed from this central fact - the extent of its geographical distribution. The radical press was important in reinforcing a growing consciousness of class and in unifying disparate elements of the working community partly because its leading publications were national media, providing national coverage and reaching a national working-class audience. It helped to extend the often highly (!Xclusive occupational solidarity of 'the new unionism' to all other secto.rs of the labour community by showing the common predicament of unionists in different occupations and in different trades throughout the country. Workers struggling to establish an extralegal union in their locality read in the radical press in 183 3, for instance, of similar struggles by glove workers in Yeovil, cabinet makers and joiners in Carlisle and Glasgow, shoemakers and smiths in Northampton, bricklayers and masons in London (to mention only some) as well as the struggles of workers in Belgium and Germany. Similarly, the radical press helped to reduce the geographical isolation of local labour communities by showing that localized agitation- whether against local Poor Law Commissioners, new machinery, long working hours or wage cutting- conformed to a common pattern throughout the country. The radical press carried .news tha,t none of the respectable papers carried; it focused attention on the common problems and identity of interest of working people as a social grouping; and it coalesced disparate groups fragmented by primitive communications and sectional affiliations into mass workingclass audiences. It was, in the words of the Chartist leader, Feargus O'Connor, 'the link that binds the industrious classes together'. (Northern Star, 16 January 1841.) Radical newspapers also profoundly influenced the institutional development of the working class because of their national circulation. They helped to transform local community action into nationally organized campaigns. The Poor Man's Guardian, for instance, provided a vital institutional link
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between the different branches of the National Union of the Working Classes during the early 1830s just as the Northern Star was to perform a similar function for the Chartist movement in the late thirties and forties. Both papers acted as important mediators between the leadership and the rank and file. They helped to create a common platform on which to unite; to give a national direction to local activities; and to make local activists conscious of their place in a wider national movement. The radical press helped, in short, to integrate powerful agencies for the development of working-class consciousness. The radical press also played an important part in promoting both directly and indirectly the growth of working-class political and industrial organizations. It provided material assistance in publicizing in advance notices of meetings and sometimes in raising funds. It brought into national prominence and conferred a new status on the vanguard of the workingclass movement. (The publicity given by the radical press to local unionists in Dorchester and Tolpuddle, for instance, helped to transform them into national working-class martyrs.) Radical press publicity attracted new recruits into the ranks of the activist working-class movement; it stimulated people into spontaneously setting up local branches; and, no less important, it fortified the commitment of working-class activists and sustained through publicity the belief that they were succeeding in the face of seemingly impossible odds. Without the Northern Star, declared one speaker at a local Chartist meeting, 'their own sounds might echo through the wilderness'. (Northern Star, 18 August 1833.) Above all, radical newspapers contributed to a major cultural reorganization of the working class. We have become so accustomed to the privatized pattern of newspaper consumption amidst a steady flow of information from a variety of institutionally mediated sources that it requires an effort of historical adjustment to understand the cultural meaning and importance of the newspaper in early nineteenth-century England. The arrival of a newspaper was often an eagerly awaited event. 'On the day', recalls Fielden, 'the newspaper, the Northern Star, O'Connor's paper, was due, the people used to line the roadside waiting for its arrival, which was paramount to everything else for the time being.' (cit. Epstein, 197 6 p. 71.) Newspaper reading was essentially a social activity: newspapers were usually read in a social setting outside the home or shared between friends. Above all, radical newspapers were often read out aloud (and indeed were written to be read aloud), providing a focal point of interaction. The messages transmitted by the radical press were mediated far beyond the immediate audiences of newspapers on a scale unknown to the twentieth century, although even today they significantly influence the content of personal interaction. (Curran and Tunstall, 1973.) The radical press, reflecting in the main the perspectives of the vanguard of the working-class movement, profoundly influenced the attitudes and
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beliefs of a whole generation of working people. It eroded passive adherence to the social order, based on cognitive acceptance of the world as natural and inevitable, by defining reality not as a series of more or less discrete events but as a process of exploitation. The early radical papers advanced a simplistic conspiracy definition of reality in which a corrupt and parasitic 'crew' of placemen and pensioners, royalty and priests, lawyers, monopolists and aristocrats, were portrayed as 'feeding upon' the productive class. This became fused with a more sophisticated proto-Marxist analysis in the 1830s, focusing on the ownership of capital as the means by which the capitalist class appropriated the wealth of the community. Reality was defined not as given - 'the way things are' - but as a system of oppression that could be replaced by a new social order organized on different principles. This was in itself an important catalyst to working-class resistance, eroding the legacy of fatalism that had inhibited organized action in the past. The radical press also helped to undermine normative support for the social order by challenging the legitimacy of the political and economic institutions on which it was based. The sanctity of property ownership was denied on the grounds that all land was the 'natural heritage' of the people stolen from them in a former age and on the grounds that capital accumulation was the product of the labour of working people, appropriated in profits. The law came to be portrayed as the means by which capitalists legitimated this 'fraud'. The 'property people', declared the Poor Man's Guardian, 'having all the law making to themselves, make and maintain fraudulent institutions, by which they continue (under false pretences) to transfer the wealth of producers to themselves.' (Poor Man's Guardian 26 July 1834.) Parliament was merely ·an instrument of oppression, controlled by people who had annexed the wealth created by working people. 'A million of individuals,' declared the Reynolds' News, 'qualified by the possession of a certain amount of that property which is either produced by the working classes or due to their natural heritage, will be called upon to elect law-makers and tax-imposers for twenty six millions at home and a hundred million abroad.' (Reynolds' News 5 January 1851.) Finally, the radical press helped to activate the working class by fostering a sense of corporate class consciousness and the belief that society could be changed through the force of combination. The way ahead, argued most of the leading radical papers by the early 1830s, lay in confrontation rather than in partnership. 'Don't believe those', declared the Poor Man's Guardian, 'who tell you that the middle and working classes have one and the same interest ... their respective interests (are) as directly opposed to each other as two fighting bulls.' The solution to poverty and oppression lay in the fundamental reconstruction of society based,JlS Reynolds' News was arguing in the early 1850s, on the capture of state power through universal suffrage and the public ownership of land and 'machinery'.
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The radical press never achieved a consistently appositional perspective of society: its appositional stance on a number of issues was contained within a 'negotiated' framework. Its analysis was often confused and contradictory, reflecting the ideological confusion of the emerging workingclass movement. Yet, it provided vital institutional support for the development of political consciousness amongst the working class that gave rise to organized political and industrial action of the second quarter of the nineteenth century .18 The change was symbolized by the General Strike of 1842 called to secure universal suffrage through the force of· industrial action. As John Foster (1974) has shown, it was not a momentary eruption of frustration but a carefully prepared bid for state power involving discussion and argument on a mass scale and receiving mass support, covering all of industrial Lancashire, much of Yorkshire and parts of the Midlands. While the st;rike was crushed, and fifteen hundred labour leaders imprisoned, it was a sign .of an increasingly unstable society in which the popular press had become a powerfully disruptive force. Economic Structure of the Radical Press 181S-18SS While the growth of radical journalism reflected the growth of working class agitation, the rise of the radical press can be understood only in the context of the prevailing economic structure of the press industry that permitted the rise of a radical press. Since this is an important aspect of the central argument that follows, it is worth examining in some detail the finan.ces of the early radical press. The initial capital required to set up a radical paper in the early part of the nineteenth century was extremely small. Most of the radical unstamped papers were printed not on a stealll press but on hand presses, costing anything from £10 to acquire. Metal type was often hired by the hour and print workers paid on a piece-work basis. The l~ading stamped radical papers after 1836 were printed on more sophisticated machinery and were forced to comply with the security system established by law. The London Dispatch, for instance, was printed on a Napier machine, bought with the help of a wealthy wellwisher and the retained profits from Hetherington's other publications. The Northern Star had a press especially constructed for it in London. Even so, launch costs were extremely small by comparison with the subsequent period. The Northern Star, for instance, was launched with a 18 The trend towards radicalization of the popular press was not continuous and uninterupted. The decline of the Northern Star in the 1840s and the rise of Lloyd's Weekly edited initially by two moral force Chartists, represented a setback. But the Northern Star was replaced by Reynolds' News, which achieved a meteoric rise of circulation in the early 1850s and once again laid the basis for repudiation of middle-class reform leadership.
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total capital of £690 raised by public subscription mostly in northern towns. (Glasgow, 1954.) The establishment costs of the radical press were also extremely small. Radical unstamped papers paid no tax; they relied heavily upon news reports filed by their readers on a voluntary basis; they recruited street sellers mainly from the army of unemployed; and they had a small newsprint bill due to their high readership per copy. Hollis estimates, for instance, that the Poor Man's Guardian, a leading newspaper of the early 1830s, broke even with a sale as small as 2,500. (Hollis; 1972 p. 132.) Compliance with the law after 1836 substantially increased the establishment costs of the radical press since a penny stamp duty had to be paid on each copy sold. Even so, the running costs of a newspaper, relying on the network of unemployed labourers as street sellers and a large team of worker-correspondents who normally gave their services free, were still ve~ small by later standards. The influential London Dispatch reported, for mstance, that 'the whole expense allowed for editing, reporting, reviewing, literary contributions, etc., in fact, the entire cost of what is technically.called 'making up' the paper is only six pounds per week'. (London Drspatch, 17 September 1836.) In the same issue, it reported that, at its selling price of 3!d, it could break even with a circulation of 16 000 Similarly, the Northern Star, which developed, unlike its predecesso'rs, a. substantial network of paid correspondents, claimed to be spending just over £9.10s a week on its reporting establishment in 1841. Selling at 4!d, Read (1966) reports that it was able to break even with a safe of about 6,200 copies a week. The limited money required to cover running costs before it broke even (which it did almost immediately) was probably met by its controller, Feargus O'Connor. (Epstein, 1976.) The low launch and establishment costs of newspaper publishing in the first half of the nineteenth century fundamentally affected the character of the British popular press. It. was still possible for newspapers to be financed from within the working class, and consequently for the ownership and control of newspapers to be in the hands of people committed, in the words of Joshua Hobson, an ex-handloom weaver and publisher of the Voice of West Riding, 'to support the rights and interests of the order and class to which it is my pride to belong'. (Hollis, 1970 p. 94.) Some newspapers like the Voice of the People, the Nortbern Star the Liberator and Trades Newspaper were owned principally by working' ~e? ~nd trade u?ion or~anizations. Other leading papers were owned by tndtvtdual propnetors hke Cleave, Watson and Hetherington, people most~y of humble origins who had risen to prominence through the workmg-class movement. While not lacking in ruthlessness or business acumen, the people they ~~trusted to edit their newspaper were all former manual workers like William Hill and Joshua Hobson or middle class activists like O'Brien and Lorymer whose experience had been
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shaped by long involvement in working class politics. Indeed, full-time correspondents of both the Nortbern Star and Reynolds' News sometimes acted in a double capacity as Chartist organizers. These men had very different conceptions of their role as journalists from those of the institutionalized journalists of the popular press in the subsequent period. Th.ey saw themselves as. representatives of a class rather than as professional gatekeepers; they sought to provide a total critique of society rather than act as neutral brokers and intermediaries; they spoke to rather than at their readers (something made possible only by the highly differentiated nature of their audiences and extensive interaction between journalists and readers); they involved their readers, as we have seen, as reporters; and they saw their function as that of ventriloquist rather than as mediator. As the editor wrote in the Northern Star on its fifth anniversary, 'I have ever sought to make it [the Northern Star] rather a reflex of your minds than a medium through which to exhibit any supposed talent or intelligence of my own. This is precisely my conception of what a people's organ should be'. (cit. Epstein, 1976 p. 85.) The second important feattire of the economic structure of the radical press in the first half of the nineteenth century was that it was selfsufficient on the proceeds of sales alone. The radical unstamped press carried very little commercial advertising and the stamped radical press fared little better. The London Dispatch complained bitterly, for instance, of the 'prosecutions, fines and the like et ceteras with which a paper of our principles is sure to be more largely honoured than by the lucrative patronage of advertisers'. (17 September 1836.) The grudge held by the London Dispatch and other radical newspapers against advertisers was more than justified. An examination of the official advertisement duty returns reveals a marked difference in the amount of advertising support received by the radical preSs compared with its more respectable rivals. Set out in Table 1, for instance, are the official returns for advertisement duties paid per 1,000 copies by the Northern Star and its principal rivals- Liberal and Tory weeklies in Leeds, where the Northern Star was published - and London dailies which, like the Northern Star, had a countrywide circulation. While the advertisement duty per 1,000 copies provides a useful index of comparison since it takes into account differences of circulation, it does not take into account the much lower advertising rates (and therefore revenue) of the Northern Star compared with its rivals and the much larger market it provided access to due to its more favourable readership per 1,000 copy ratio. 19 Yet even though these figures underestimate the true extent of the differences, they reveal a disparity of massive proportions. In 1840, for instance, the leading 19 Even at this early point, many contemporary advertisers were aware of the significance of readership per copy, and newspapers made claims about their readership as part of their sales pitch.
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country paper and the two middle-class papers, published in Leeds, each paid an advertisement duty per 1 ,000 circulation more than fifty times that of the Northern Star. Perhaps of even greater significance for the future development of the press, the Liberal reform Leeds Times, edited by Samuel Smiles, with a predominantly lower middle-class audience, but including also a working-class readership, paid twenty-three times more advertisement duty per 1,000 circulation in 1840 than the Northern Star. A similar pattern emerges in the case of other leading radical papers for which returns arc available. In 1817, for instance, Cobbett's Political Register received only three advertisements: its advertisement duty per 1,000 copies was less than a hundredth of rival periodicals like the Examiner, Age, National Register and Duckett's Weekly Dispatch, although this disparity was somewhat reduced by the 1830s. The London Dispatch in 1837 was only marginally better off: it paid per 1,000 copies less than one twenty-fifth of the advertisement duty paid by daily papers in London, also with a country circulation; and less than one twenty-fifth of the duty per 1,000 copies paid by leading middle-class weeklies in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and York. This lack of support. placed radical stamped newspapers at ·a serious disadvantage. They were deprived of the patronage which financed increased editorial and promotional expenditure by their competitors. They were forced to close down with circulations which enabled other papers, buoyed up wi.th advertising, to make a profit. This last factor severely inhibited the growth of a radical stamped press at a time when the price of contemporary newspapers, inflated by the stamp duty, was a major deten:ent against buying papers amongst the working class. Yet, despite these very substantial disadvantages, the absence of advertising did not force closure. While fortunes were noteasily made from radical newspaper publishing, radical newspapers - both stamped and unstamped - could be profitable. Without significant advertising patronage in 1837, Hetherington, the publisher of the stamped London Dispatch, was reported to be making £1,000 a year from his business. (Hollis, 1970 p. 135.) Similarly, the stamped Northern Star was estimated to have produced a phenom.enal profit of £13,000 in 1839 and £6,500 in 1840 (Schoyen, 1958 p. 133) which, as we have seen, was generated from sales rather than advertising revenue. This absence of dependence on advertising profoundly influenced the character and development of the radical press. Newspapers could attack industrial and commercial capitalism without the need to pander to the political prejudices of advertisers. They were able consistently to attack 'buy cheap and sell dear shopocrats', '.millocrats' and 'capitalists', yet still flourish and prosper without advertising patronage. Perhaps even more important, they could address themselvef; directly to the working class without the need to appeal to people who constituted a more valuable
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advertising market. The development of the early radical press was characterized by larger but more differentiated audiences. Whereas radical newspapers appealed to both middle and working-class readers in the early period, their more radical successors appealed primarily to working-class audiences. 20 These papers were able to project a polarized model of conflict, and substitute for the traditional rhetoric of populism the language of class, without fear of the consequences. They could afford to alienate potential middle-class readers which advertisers wanted to reach. For they depended upon their readers' pennies not the largesse of advertisers for their survival. The Ugly Face of Reform The middle-class campaign against 'the taxes on knowledge' was informed by a variety of special interests, not the least the concern of campaigners like Milner Gibson and Cobden in the 1850s to extend the influence of the liberal, free trade press. The central issue that divided middle-class supporters and opponents of press taxes, however, was how best to establish the press as an instrument of social control. Traditionalists argued that press taxes were the last line of defence holding back a flood of radical publications. The reduction of newspaper prices, following repeal, would result in the general dissemination of 'doctrines injurious to the middle and upper classes, and damaging to the real and lasting interests of the public ... their malignant influence will be immeasurably increased by the Repeal of the Stamp Duty'. (cit. Westmacott, 1836.) It would also facilitate the establishment of many more radical papers by reducing publishing costs. As Morris told the Select Committee on Newspaper Stamps, it is in 'the interest of the public that any branch of industry such as that of producing newspapers should be limited to a few hands, and be in the hands of parties who are great capitalists'. (cit; History ofThe Times vol. 2,1939 p. 205.) Middle-class opponents of press taxes argued that, on the contrary, press taxes prevented the dissemination of sound principles since it restricted the development of the press. Repeal of the advertisement duty would release and also redirect a flow of advertising patronage for the establishment of new newspapers. The repeal of the stamp and paper duties would increase access to 'sound doctrines' by reducing newspaper prices. It would dispel 'ignorance', argued the Spectator, and put an end to trade unions, rick-burning and machine-breaking. (Spectator, 1 August 20 For ~n assessment of the class composition of readers of unstamped papers, ;;ee Holhs (1970); and of readers of the Northern Star, see Epstein (1976). At least two-thirds of the urban Working class were literate (though not necessarily ·· possessing developed reading skills) during this period. See Webb (1950; 1955) and the more cautious estimates of Stone (1968) and Sanderson (1972).
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1835.) 'Readers are rioters: readers are not rick-burners,' Hickson told the Select Committee on Newspaper Stamps. (1851 p. 479.) The diffusion of sound principles, through the repeal, would prove a more effective · instrument of social control than state coercion. 'Is it not time to consider,' declared Bulwer Lytton in a famous speech against the stamp duty, 'whether the printer and his types may not provide better for the peace and honour of a free state than the gaoler and the hangman?' (cit. Wiener, 1969 p. 68.) The confidence placed by opponents of press taxes in the 'free' market place of opinion was more than justified. In the second half of the nineteenth century, following the repeal of the advertisement duty in 1853 and the stamp duty in 1855, the radical popular press was nearly eliminated. Why this happened has never been adequately explained. Market Forces as a Control System 1855-1920 The decline of radicalism in the popular press in the immediate post~stamp era can be attributed partly to the decline of working-class radicalism with the restabilization of the social order. Yet, as we shall see, the decline of the radical press was part of this process of restabilization. And ;the zeitgeist' theory does not explain why the revival of working-class radicalism after 1875 did not lead to a similar revival of radical journalism. Indeed, the national press was very much more radical in 1860, a period of relative tranquility, than it was fifty years later at a time of militant working-class agitation. There was manifestly no close correlation between the climate of opinion in the country and changes in the ideological perspectives mediated by the press in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Virginia Beveridge (1965) has recently advanced a plausible explanation for the change in popular journalism in a pioneering study of the popular Victorian press. The decline of radicalism, she argues, was due to the 'commercialization' of the popular press. Newspapers concentrated upon the easy arousal of sensationalism rather than taxing political analysis in order to maximize sales: reports of crime, scandal and sport displaced attacks on capitalism as more saleable commodities. This analysis implies a bigger departure from the tradition of radical journalism of the 1830s and 1840s than is justified. The growth of the radical press in this period had been based partly upon the skill with which some radical publishers exploited the street literature tradition of radical sensationalism and scandal. The shift from a periodical quarto to newspaper broadsheet format amongst unstamped papers in the early 1830s was accompanied by a marked trend towards 'general' and sensational news coverage. Hetherington, publisher of the Poor Man's Guardian, Destructive and London Dispatch, announced the change with characteristic aplomb, promising his readers 'all the gems and treasures, and fun and
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frolic and news and occurrences of the week .... Police Intelligence, Murders, Rapes, Suicides, Burnings, Maimings, Theatricals, Races, Pugilism, and all manner of moving accidents by flood and field. I.n short, it will be stuffed with every sort of devilment that will make it sell •... Our object is not to make money, but to beat the Government.' (cit. Hollis, 1970 p. 122.) While the great commercial entrepreneurs of the subsequent period carried this trend towards commercialization a stage further and included a higher proportion of general features and sensational material in their papers, this hardly constitutes an adequate explanation of an extraordinary phenomenon - the complete transformation of the popular press. For not only was the radical press progressively absorbed or eliminated, a whole new generation of national popular newspapers emerged which were predominantly on the right or the extreme right of the political spectrum. The commercialization thesis is, in effect, an historical version of one variant of the mass culture critique based on the assumption that material processed for a mass audience is inevitably trivialized and sensationalized in order to cater for the common denominator of mass taste (e.g. Wilensky 1964). Not only is this assumption sometimes a dubious one, and the cultural judgements that underly it open to question, as I have argued elsewhere (Curran, 1977), it obscures under the general heading of 'commercialization' the complex system of controls institutionalized by the consolidation of the capitalist press in mid-Victorian Britain. The Freedom of Capital One of the central objectives of press taxes :.._ to exclude pauper management of the press - was attained only by their repeal. The enormous expa-nsion of demand, following the abandonment of newspaper taxation, resulted in what A. E. Mus5on calls an 'industrial revolution' in the press. (Musson, 1954 p. -214.) Hoe printing presses were introduced in the 1860s and 1870s and were gradually replaced by rotary machines of increasing size and sophistication in late Victorian and Edwardian England. 'Craft' composing was revolutionized by Hattersley's composing machine in the 1860s, and this in turn was replaced by the Iinotype machine in the 1880s and 1890s. Imiumerable innovations were also made in graphic reproduction during the Victorian period. These developments led to a sharp rise in fixed capital costs. Northcliffe estimated half a ~illion pounds as 'the initial cost of m;1chinery, buildings, ink factones and the like, and this was altogether apart from the capital required for daily working expenses' in setting up the Daily Mail, although this figure almost certai~y includes the cost of the establishing the paper as a property around which other publications were grouped. (Pound and Harmsworth, 1959 p. 206.) The enormous increase in capital investment
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conferred considerable scale advantages on entrepreneurs who established multiple newspapers and jobbing companies making maximum use of shared plant and facilities. The profits from the economic integration of publishing - Edward Lloyd led the way in the 1870s and 1880s by establishing paper mills and growing esparto grass on 100,000 acres of plantation for the production of paper - were also reinvested in the development of newspaper enterprises. But the rising capital costs of newspaper publishing did not constitute an insuperable obstacle to the launch of new publications with limited capital resources even in the national market. Newspapers, like the Daily Herald in 1912, could be launched with only limited capital by being printed on a contract basis by an independent printer. Much more important was the effect of growing demand, released by the repeal of press taxes, on the running costs and cash flow requirements of newspaper publishing. Circulation levels in the mass market soared, enormously increasing the scale of production. Lloyd's Weekly had a circulation in 1896 about 15 times that of leading circulation papers fifty years before (although its audience was not proportionately larger due to the sharp reduction in the ratio of readers per copy). The increasing scale of production led to a sharp increase in newspri11t and production costs. At the same time, there was a progressive rise of paging levels (and therefore newsprint costs), a steady increase in expenditure on newsgathering and processing, and an increase in promotion costs (not only for advertising and publicity but also for s.ale-or-return agreements to distributors). This rise in costs led in turn to a· steady rise in the circulation levels which were necessary in order to break-even. The breakeven point was further raised by a progressive reduction in newspaper prices. New newspapers could be launched with limited funds and derelict newspapers could be bought relatively cheaply. It was the establishment of newspapers that required large capital resources. This important change can be illustrated by the history of individual newspapers in the period. In 1855, it required a capital investment of £4,000 to relaunch the then liberal Daily Telegraph and establish it as the circulation leader in the national daily press. (Burnham, 1955 p. 2.) By the 1870s, Edward Lloyd needed to spend £150,000 to re-establish the Daily Chronicle (Herd,1952 p. 185). During the period 1906-8, Thomasson spent about double that amount attempting to establiSh the liberal daily, Tribune. (Gibbs, 1946 p. 59.) In 1919-22, Beaverbrook invested £200,000 on the develppment of the Daily Express and took nothing out (Taylor, 1972 p. 171); and he invested a further £2 millions in the Sunday Express (even though it was able to take advantage of the plant facilities established for the Daily Express) before it broke even. (Taylor, 1972 p. 175.) Similarly, LordCowdray invested perhaps
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£750,000 attempting to convert the Westminster Gazette into a morning paper. (Seymour-Ure, 1975 p. 242.) These statistics illustrate the freedom of capital in the creation of the modern press. Even when the capital costs of launch and establishment were relatively low in the 1850s and 1860s, they still exceeded the resources available to the working class. The Bee-Hive, for instance, was launched in 1862 with a capital of less than £250 raised by trade union organizations and a well-to-do sympathizer. Its under-capitalization put it at a. serious disadvantage; it sold at a price twice that of its leading competitors; and it lacked the resources necessary to maintain its original commitment to providing general news coverage despite the small amount of additional capital put up by unions and other contributors. In effect, its lack of capital support condemned it to the margins of national publishing as a specialist if influential weekly paper. 21 (Coltham, 1960.) As the resources of organized labour increased, so did the costs of establishing a national paper. It was not until 1912 that papers controlled by activists in the working-class movement, and financed from within the working class, made their first appearance in national daily journalism, and then their belated appearance occurred long after most national daily papers had become well established. The brief career of the Daily Citizen, and the chequered early history of the Daily Herald, illustrate the economic obstacles to establishing papers under working-class control. The Daily Citizen, launched in 1912 with a capital of only £30,000 subscribed mainly by trade unions reached a circulation of 250,000 at its peak within two years and was only 50,000 short of overhauling the Daily Express established in 1900. Although it almost certainly had more working-class readers than any other daily in the country, subsequent capital support was insufficient to prevent its closure three years after its launch. (Hilton, 1974.) The more left wing Daily Herald, launched with a capital of only £300 and sustained by public donations (notably from two wealthy socialists, the Countess de la Warr and R. D. Harben, the son of the chairman of Prudential Insurance) lurched from one crisis to another despite also reaching a circulation of 250,000 at its meridian before 1914. On one occasion, it came out in pages of different sizes and shapes because someone 'found' old discarded paper supplies when the Daily Herald could no longer afford to pay for paper. On other occasions, it bought small quantities of paper under fictitious names from suppliers all over the country; the directors of the Daily Herald even threatened organized industrial action against paper manufacturers, a stratagem that secured paper supplies without a guarantee. (Lansbury, 1925.} While the Daily Citizen dosed, the DailY_#erald survived by switching from being a daily 21 Cottham (1960) suggests, however that a different approach might have secured more trade union funds for the Bee-Hive.
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to becoming a weekly during the period 1914 to 1919. From these humble beginnings emerged a paper that became, for a time, the biggest circulation daily paper in the world. The rise in publishing costs helps to explain why the genuinely radical press in the late nineteenth century survived only in etiolated form as lowbudget, high-price specialist weeklies like the Clarion and Labour Leader 2 (both of which attained surprisingly large circulations)" and in local community papers, an important but as yet undocumented aspect of the residual survival of the radical press. 23 The rise in costs of publishipg in the mass market, during its formative period of growth, ensured that · ownership and control of the popular press passed progressively into the hands of capitalist entrepreneurs with access to, or control over, large capital resources. This said, it provides only a partial explanation of the decline of the radical press. It does not explain the ideological absorption or elimination of radical newspapers already in existence before the repeal of press taxes. Nor does it adequately explain why small circulation radical newspapers did not evolve over time into mass circulation media and generate capital through retained profits for the launch of new radical publications. For an answer to these problems we need to look elsewhere. The New Licensing System The crucial element of the new control system was the role occupied by advertising in the development of the press after the repeal of the advertisement duty. The reduction of the advertisement duty from 3s to 1s 6d in 1833led to a 35% growth of London press advertising and a 27% growth of provincial press advertising in the space of one year. (Aspinall, 1950.) This increase, moreover, was sustained. Between 1836 and 1848, the total volume of press advertising in Britain, as measured by the number of advertisements, increased by 36%. (British Parliamentary Papers 1814-88.) Examination of the distribution of this increase shows, however, that a disproportionate amount went to established middle-class newspapers and to the London newspaper press rather than to the regional press in England and Wales. It did not transform popular newspaper publishing. It was not until the repeal of the duty in 185 3 that a radically different situation emerged. The advertisement duty, even in modified form, had influenced the structure of advertising expenditure. As John Cassell, the publisher of useful-knowledge publications complained to the Select Committee on Stamps 'It [the advertisement duty] entirely prevents a 22 Clarion had a circulation of 70,000 at its peak in 1906 and Labour Leader had a circulation of 40,000-50,000 by 1911. (Hilton, 1974.) 23 One of the few studies touching on this subject is Lee (1974).
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certain class of advertisements from appearing; it is only such as costly books and by property sales by auction that really afford an opportunity of advertising and for paying the duty' (Select Committee on Stamps, 1851 p. 236). Milner Gibson, chairman of the Select Committee, succintly summarized the point: 'the advertisement duty must really destroy all the advertisements that are not worth the duty' (Select Committee, 1851 p. 440). The end of the advertisement tax brought into being cheap press advertising. This led to an entirely new situation. Popular newspapers attracted an increasing amount of advertising. In the four years between 1854 and 1858, Reynolds' News, for instance, increased its volume of advertising by over SO%. (Beveridge, 1975.) This growth of advertising, in conjunction with the repeal of the stamp and paper duty, resulted in the modal price of popular newspapers being halved in the 50s and halved again in the early 60s. This transformed the economic structure of popular publishing. It had still been possible, as we have seen, for working-class newspapers in the 1840s to be profitable, with only marginal advertising support; because of their high retail price. With these massive reductions in price, all national newspapers in the mass market cost more to produce and distribute than the price at which they were sold. 24 Advertisers acquired a de facto licensing authority since, without their support, newspapers ceased to be economically viable. The old licensing system introduced by Henry VIII, and abandoned in 1695 as unenforceable, was restored in a new form. The falling price of newsprint and increasing scale economies offered no reli~f from dependence on advertising. There was a rapid growth of advertising in the period after 1860 as a result of the growth in domestic consumption and structural changes in the economy. By 1907, Critchley estimates that total advertising expenditure in the United Kingdom - most of which was spent on the press- had reached £20 million. (Critchley, 1974.) This flow of advertising to the press exerted an upwards pressure on costs: it led to a steady increase in editorial outlay and paging levels noted earlier. More important, it also contributed to a further halving of the price of most popular papers to td in the late Victorian period. National newspapers continued to depend upon advertising in order to be profitable. How advertising patronage was distributed consequently largely determined the structure of the press. There is some evidence that advertisers withheld their support from papers on political grounds. Certainly, succes24 There was nothing new, of course, about newspaper dependence on advertising. Even in the late eighteenth century the majority of newspapers depended on advertising for their profits. (See Cranfield, 1962; Haigh, 1965; Wiles, 1965; Christie, 1970; Asquith, 1972.) What was new was about the post-stamp press was that all national newspapers in the mass market depended on advertising.
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sive governments normally boycotted opposition papers when placing official advertisements and announcements throughout most of the nineteenth century. In the 1850s, a leading press proprietor like Lord Glenersk of the Morning Post expected as a matter of course to receive official advertising from a Tory Government in preference to liberal papers. (Hindle, 1937 .) Even as late as the 1880s, government advertisements were usually sent only to pro-government papers and, while the Liberals were in power, the Morning Post was not on the list. (Lucas, 1911 p. 113.) Some independent advertisers may also have discriminated against radical publications. Lord Crowther, for instance, urged his friends in 1832 to advertise in the Tory local press. (Aspinall, 1949, p. 367.) Charles Mitchell, the head of probably the largest advertising agency in the country in midVictorian Britain, clearly thought it relevant to document the political orientation of every newspaper in the country. As he explained in the introduction of his Directory in 1856 (5th edition), 'Till this Directory was published, the advertiser had no means of accurately determining which journal might be best adopted to his views, and most likely to forward his interests'. Even as late as 1925, Norman Hunter in Advertising Through . the Press, one of Pitman's practical handbooks, advised the advertiser to 'pick out those [publications] which by the soundness of their policy, the extent of their circulation and the price of their advertisements, appear most likely to be beneficial for his purpose' (Hunter, 1925 p. 50- my italics). Norman Hunter was the exception rather ihan the rule; by then it had become common for advertising texts to remonstrate against mixing politics with business. The trouble in practice was that it was very difficult to separate politics from commercial judgement since, in the absence of survey evidence about the social composition of a paper's readership, a paper's politics afforded one of the few guides there were to the purchasing power and class of its readers. This led to the stereotyping of 'socialist' papers as appealing to the working class rather than to a cross-sectional mass market. 25 While the extent of political discrimination (both conscious and unconscious) by ~dvertisers in the Victorian and Edwardian era can never be clearly established, it is clear that working-class media were consistently discriminated against on the grounds that their audiences did not constitute valuable markets to reach. As Mitchell declared in 1856, 'Some of the most widely circulated journals in the Empire are the worst possible to advertise in. Their readers are not purchasers; and any money thrown upon them is so much thrqwn away' (Mitchells, 1856 p. 7). The thinking underlying such judgements was simple. As one anonymous expert put it, 'Character is of more importance than number. A journal that circulates 25 The generally low opinion held of down-market mec;lia tended also to be confirmed by the analysis of coupon returns and keyed advertisements, developed in the late Victorian era, which put working-class media in an unfavourable light.
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a thousand among the upper or middle classes is a better medium than would be one circulating a hundred thousand among the lower classes' (Guide to Advertisers (anon.) 1851). The explicit preference expressed for middle-class media in advertising texts of the mid-Victorian period was modified in the latter part of the century with the development of mass marketing. But the stress on the disparity of income persisted in guides to media evaluation. This led to a crucial distinction being made between middle-market ;;J.nd down-market media, between papers which appealed to all classes alike and papers which appealed to the poor. Thus, as Cyril Fox, a lecturer in advertising at the Regent Street Polytechnic wrote ·in the classic advertising text of the early 1920s, 'for an average proposition, not a Rolls Royce motor car or a threepenny fire-lighter, you cannot afford to place your advertisements in a paper which is read by the down-at-heels who buy it to scan the situations vacant column .... The paper which appeals to the bulk of buyers is best for you' (Freer, 1921). The strategic control acquired by advertisers over the press profoundly shaped and influenced its development. In the first place, it exerted a powerful pressure on the radical press to move up market as an essential strategy for survival. It forced radical newspapers to redefine their target audience, and this in turn forced them to moderate their radicalism in order to attract readers that advertisers wanted to reach. This process is well illustrated by the career of Reynolds' News. It was founded in 1850 by George Reynolds, who was not only a member of the Chartist National Executive but also a member of its leftwing faction. Reynolds had ·urged a 'physical force' strategy in 1848 and consistently opposed middle-class collaboration in the early 1850s. His paper was in the Northern Star tradition of class-conscious radicalism, attacking industrial capitalism and the exploitation of labour. Like the Northern Star, it had close institutional links with the working-class movement, raising money for working-class causes and publishing reports sent in by readers. Yet, despite its radical origins, Reynolds' News progressively changed under the impact of the new economic imperatives of newspaper publishing. The fact that it never provided, even at the outset, a homogeneous theoretical and ideological perspective doubtless made it vulnerable to ideological incorporation. It inevitably responded to the decline of radicalism in the country during the 50s and early 60s. But an important factor in its absorption was the need to attract advertising revenue. The change was symbolized by the inclusion of a regular investment column on friendly societies in the year after the repeal of the advertisement duty as a ploy to attract advertising. A commercial enterprise that had been regularly attacked in radical newspapers as 'a hoax' to persuade working class people to identify with capitalism became a
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valuable and much needed source of revenue for the Reynolds' News. While Reynolds' News continued for a long time to take a radical stand on most major events of the day, it came increasingly to express the individualistic middle-class values of the readers it needed to attract. -lt adopted many of the tenents of political economy that it had so virulently attacked during the 1850s, even to the extent of accepting the palliatives of 'prudent marriage' ,(i.e. sexual·restraint) and emigration. It reverted to those common denominators of radicalism that united the lower middle and working classes- attacks on 'the vices' of the aristocracy, privilege, corruption in high places, the monarchy, placemen, and the Church. Attacks on industrial capital were modulated to attacks on monopoly and speculators: criticism of shopkeepers as the exploitive agents of capital were displaced by new consumerfeatures. Reynolds' News became a populist paper catering for a coalition of middle-class and working-class readers necessary for its survival. Under new ownership, it finally evolved without difficulty into becoming a liberal paper in the late nineteenth century. Reynolds was accused of commercial opportunism by his contemporaries, yet it is difficult to see what else he could have done- if the Reynolds' News was to survive the transition to an advertising-based system intact. Even the Chartist People's Paper stressed in an advertisement placed in Mitchell's Directory (1857-8) t.hat it circulated not only" among 'the working class generally' but also 'among high paid trades and shopkeepers'. Despite the fact that its circulation far exceeded that of most of its rivals selling at the same price, it was forced to close down. 26 Radical newspapers could survive in the new economic environment only if they moved up market to attract an audience desired by advertisers or remained in a small working-class ghetto, with manageable losses that could be me.t from donations. Once they moved out of that ghetto and attracted a growing working-class audience, they courted disaster. Each paper cost more to produce than the price at which it was sold, so that any increase in circulation meant increased losses unless supported by increased advertising. This fate befell the radical Evening Echo which was taken over by wealthy radicals in 1901 and given a further push to the left under its new editor in 1902. A special number was issued setting out the aims and policy of the paper under new management, firmly committing it to 'the interests of Labour as against the tyranny of organized capital '. In the period 1902-4, its circulation rose by a phenomenal 60%, leading to its abrupt closure in 1905. The growth of advertising had failed to keep pace with the growth of circulation, making the continuance of the paper 26 Its circulation exceeded that of the Leader, John Bull, Britannia, Empire, Atlas, Illustrated Times and the Spectator amongst others. (Mitchell's Newspaper Press Directory 1857-8.)
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impossible. (Pethick-Lawrence, 1943 p. 65.) The same thing almost happened to the Daily Herald, when it was relaunched as a daily in 1919 with a substantial capital support enabling it to spend £10,000 on promotion - a small amount by comparison with its rivals (the Daily Mail spent over £1 million alone on free gifts and other forms of below-the-line promotion during the 1920s) but sufficient to ensure that a paper like the Daily Herald with a naturally large potential readership sharply increased its circulation. ~Our success in circulation,' recalled George Lansbury, 'was our undoing. The more copies \Ve sold, the more money we lost.' (Lansbury, 1925 p. 160.) The situation became increasingly desperate when, partly aided by the unexpected publicity of attacks on the Daily Herald by leading member of the government alleging that it was financed with 'red gold', the Daily Herald's circulation continued to rise in 1920. 'Every copy we sold was sold at a loss,' mourned Lansbury. 'The rise in circulation, following the government's attacks, bought us nearer and nearer to disaster.' (Lansbury, p. 161.) The money raised from whist drives, dances, draws and the like was not enough to offset the short-fall of advertising. Even the strategem of increasing the paper's price by 100% did not compensate for lack of advertising, despite the fact that it meant charging twice the price of its rivals for a paper that was very much smaller. Money from the miners and the railwaymen stopped the paper from closing. But the only way the paper survived was by being taken over as the official organ of the Labour Party and TUC in 1922. A paper that had been a free-wheeling vehicle of the left, an important vehicle for the dissemination of syndicalist ideas in the early part of the twentieth century, became the official mouthpiece of the moderate leadership of the Labour movement. Lack of advertising forced it to become subservient to a new form of control. In short, one of four things happened to national radical papers that failed to meet the requirements of advertisers. They either closed down; accommodated to advertising pressure by moving up market; stayed in a small audience ghetto with manageable losses; or accepted an alternative source of institutional patronage. The obverse to this is that the section of the press which did prosper and expand consisted of publications which conformed to the requirements of advertisers - professional, trade and technical journals providing a valuable segmentation of the market; middle-class newspapers reaching the quality market; and, in popular journalism, middle-market newspapers straddling the social classes and subject to all the cultural and political constraints of catering for heterogeneous audiences. The rapid growth of advertising created the market opportunities for the launch of these categories of publicatio9; it subsidized their costs, financed their development, and created their profits. Its impact can be observed in the phenomenal growth of magazines in the Victorian era (many of them,
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trade, technical, professional and 'class' publications) from 557 magazines in 1866 to 2,097 in 1896; in the creation of a regional daily press which did not exist in England before the repeal of the advertisement duty but which numbered 196 regional dailies in 1900; in the rapid expansion of middleclass and middle-market community papers (there were 868 newspapers in 1860, compared with 2,355 in 1896) and, above all, in the development of a middle-market popular national press. 27 The basis was laid for the expansion of a powerful institution of social control reaching wide and deep into society. 28 Characteristics of the Post-Stamp Press 1855-1920 The development of the post-stamp press helped to.divide and fragment the working-class movement and facilitate its incorporation ·into the Liberal and Tory parties. Most radical papers during the first half of the nineteenth century consistently denounced the parliamentary parties and sometimes adopted a highly relativistic approach to the parliamentary system itself. In contrast, the majority of newspapers that sprung up after the repeal of the press taxes were closely affiliated to one or other of the political parties and almost unanimously portrayed parliament as the means of resolving conflict and effecting social change. Thus, ten of the new regional dailies that emerged between 1855 to 1860 were affiliated to the Liberal party; eighteen of the new regional dailies created between 1860 and 1870 we·re affiliated to the Tory or Liberal parties; and forty-one of the regional dailies created in the following decade were similarly linked to the two great parties. (Mitchells 1860-1880.) They played an important part in mobilizing working-class support for what had been essentially aristocratic factions in Parliament, converting them into mass political organizations. No less important, the popular press played a significant role, as John Vincent (1966) has shown in his study of the Liberal party, in invigorating the parliamentary parties themselves, by providing ~vitalizing channel of communication with their rank and file. The new popular national press that developed notably during the period 1880 to 1920 was also a powerful source, of social cohesion. The values and perspectives that it mediated were at total variance with those 27 The figures for regional dailies relate to Britain a?d f~r oth~r categories of publication to the United Kingdom, as reported mMrtcbell s Newspaper Press • Directory. 28 No reference has been made to the strategic control that W. H. Smith acqui~ed over the distribution of newspapers in mid-Victorian Britain. The extent of Its market ascendancy is indicated by Chilston (1965) and its ro~e in the cens'?rs~ip of books is suggested by Altick (1957) and Mumby and Noms (197~) .•Smiths may well have performed a similar role in relation to newspapers. This IS an aspect of the development of the press which shoul~ be !"ve~tigated ~nd which can be readily researched in view of the very extenSIVe histoncal archives retained by the company.
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mediated by early radical newspapers. A construction of reality as a, system of exploitation gave way to a new definition of society in which even the existence of class conflict was denied {a posltlon resolutely maintained even in relation to the General Strike of 1926).29 The portrayal of labour as the source of wealth was replaced by the portrayal of 'profits' as the source of wealth and the entrepreneur as the essential midwife of Britain's propserity. The stress on .collective action gave way to a stress on individual self-improvement and the myth that anyone through his own efforts could become successful. The political orientation of the national press can best be indicated by the support given to the different political parties in the 1922 General Election. The national government obtaining 50% of the vote received the endorsement of 96% of national daily papers and 86% of national Sunday papers sold in Britain. The Labour party obtaining 29.5% of the vote received support from 4% of national daily papers sold in Britain and no support from the national Sunday press. 30 The extent to which the press of Victorian Britain mediated the dominant ideology of society is illustrated by its portrayal of Britain's imperial role. Britain's imperial involvements were portrayed as great adventures, opening up new lands of opportunity in which ordinary people could become rich, and (in some sectors of the press) as evangelical missions for spreading civilization, Christianity and prosperity. The following excerpt from a report of the 1898 Sudan expedition in the Westminster Gazette conveys the ethos of the late Victorian press: A large number of the Tommies had never been under fire before ••• and there was a curious look of suppressed excitement in some of the faces .... Now and then I caught in a man's eye the curious gleam which comes from the joy of shedding blood- that mysterious impulse which, despite all the veneer of civilization, still 29 Press coverage in relation to the General Strike described the conflict largely in terms of 'a minority' against 'the majority'. For instance, The Observer declared 'Trade unionists in this country ••• are and always will be a minority, and if they seriously try to break the majority, they make it quite certain that the majority, if further provoked, will break them'. (The Observer, 16 May 1926.) The minority-majority paradigm contained an implicit explanation of why the conflict had arisen: it was the work of an extremist minority and their defeat was a victory not for the mine owners but for the majority. 'The defeat of the General Strike,' declared the Daily Mail,' . .. will end the danger of communist tyranny in Europe.' (Daily Mail, 14 May 1926.) Explicit in this formulation was an appeal to the moderate majority to protect themselves against the minority. 'Our people have shown during this crisis an immense courage, and undaunted spirit. They have come forward in their hundreds of thousands to resist the attack upon their hard-won freedom.' (Daily Mail, 14 May 1926.) The same labelling device was used in an even more extreme form by the press to delegitimate the National Union of Unemployed Workers during the 1930s, and extensively employed in media coverage of conflict in the 1960s. See the insightful study by Hall (1973) .."' 30 Derived from a content analysis of the press coverage of the 1922 General Election tabulated in terms of circulation.
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holds i~s own in man's nature, whether he is killing rats with a terrier, rejoicing in a prize fight, playing a salmon or potting Dervishes. It was a fine day and we were out to kill something. Call it what you like, the experience is .a big factor in the joy of living. (cit. Knightly, 1976 p. 41.)
The paper which celebrated 'potting Dervishes' was, in terms of the political spectrum represented by the national press, on 'the left' (i.e. Liberal) and one of the few papers not to join in the hysterical campaign of hatred against the Boers one year later. (Spender, 1927; Price, 1972.) The Modern Press 1920-76 Space does not permit a detailed examination of the press in the post First World War period, which in any case I have sought to provide elsewhere. (Curran, 1976.) 31 All that will be attempted is a brief outline of the salient developments of the last half-century. The structure of the British national newspaper was determined by the interplay of market forces before 1920. The rise of publishing costs became so prohibitive, and the market position of leading publications so well entrenched that only two new national papers, both with small circulations, have been successfully established in the last fifty years - the Communist Sunday Worker,. launched in 1925 and converted into the Daily Worker and subsequently Morning Star, and the Sunday Telegraph. The structure of the newspaper press has shrunk, however, ensuring that papers established before the First World War, and the multi-media conglomerates that now own most of them, dominate newspaper publishing in Britain. The three biggest newspaper enterprises before 1890 accounted for only a small fraction of newspaper sales; yet in 1973, the three biggest conglomerates controlled 81% of national Sunday sales and 72% of national daily sales. Underlying this trend towards concentration of ownership in the national press are a number of interacting factors of which the effect of scale economies and advertising finance in reducing the number of papers (by enabling market leaders to spend more to enhance their market appeal, thereby, forcing up the costs of their rivals) is perhaps the most important. The advertising licensing system has remained unchanged. Without exception, every single national paper in the period since-1920 has made a loss on its sales alone (except during the period of stringent newsprint rationing during and immediately after the Second World War). There have been, ·however, important changes in advertising media planning which have affected the character of the British press. The growth of domestic consumption during the inter-war period enhanced the value of workingclass media; the growth of market research, pioneered by the leading advertising agencies in the twenties and thirties, encouraged greater 31 A valuable examination of some of these themes in the post-war period is provided by Hirsch and Gordon (1975).
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awareness of the potential advertising value o_f papers like the Daily Herald; and the development of readership research and formalized criteria of media evaluation reduced subjective media judgements that tended to discriminate against radical publications. The change was symbolized by the relaunch of the Daily Mirror in 1934-6 as a radical paper, aimed deliberately 'down market'. Nonetheless, the shift was a gradual one. In 1936, for instance, the Daily Mail received nearly twice as much displayadvertising revenue per copy as the Daily Herald. And despite the mythology surrounding the re-launch of the Daily Mirror, its conversion to social democracy was tempered by sound commercial judgement and its ·move down market was a hesitant and cautious one. In 1937, the Daily Mirror devoted precisely 8% of its total news space to coverage of political, social and economic issues in Britain, less than half of'what it had done ten years before. Far from becoming a working-class paper, its readers more closely resembled a cross-section of the population than any other national daily in 1939: it was the perfect middle-market paper. The post war period witnessed further developments in advertisingmedia planning, which benefited working class media, notably the development of a new classification system, based on product categories, for analysing newspaper readership that emphasized the increasing purchasing power of working-class readerships. Its effects, as far as the national popular press were concerned, were neutralized by the impact of television, the growth of classified advertising (which mainly benefited the quality press) and the sharp rise in publishing costs encouraged by the non-price competitive strategies of market leaders with large advertising receipts. Myths die hard and it is a recurrent theme of journalists that, in the words of Sir Denis Hamilton (Chairman of Times Newspaper Ltd) 'the Herald was beset by the problem which has dogged nearly every newspaper vowed to a political idea: not enough people wanted to read it' (Hamilton, 1976). In fact, the Daily Herald, on its death-bed, was read by 4. 7 million people - nearly twice as many as the readership of The Times, Financial Times and Guardian added together. Its readers, as survey research shows, constituted the most committed and the most intensive readers, with the most favourable image of their paper, of any national paper audience in the country. (Curran 1970.} The Daily Herald, the lone consistent voice of social democracy in the national daily press, died because its readers were disproportionately poor working class and consequently did not constitute a valuable advertising market to reach. The effect of the economic structuring of the press is illustrated by the response of the press to the two events in the inter-war period that polarized opinion between social democrats and conservatives - the General Strike of 1926 and the General Election of 1931. Only one national daily paper (Daily Herald) out of eleven supported the General Strike (or the 'Strike Evil' as the Daily Mirror called it). Only two national daily papers (the
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Daily Herald and the newly created Daily Worker) supported the Labour Party in the 1931 General Election. Since then, the 'centrality' of the press has become more marked. Every single national daily and national Sunday paper in the country which expressed a preference in the Callaghan-Foot selection for the leadership of the Labour Party (and premiership) supported the right-wing candidate. 32
Conclusion The traditional system of control of the press administered through the state broke down in the early nineteenth century in the face of determined opposition from radical journalists sustained by an increasingly politically conscious working class. The ruling class was forced sharply to reduce the stamp duty in 1836 in order to re-establish the stamp as a contol. This arrested but did not prevent the continued development of the radical press which constituted an increasingly disruptive force in society. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the traditional control system over the press was replaced by a new and more effective control system based on remorseless economic forces which, unlike the law, could be neither evaded nor defied. The capitalist development of the press, with its accompanying rise in publishing costs, led to a progressive transfer of ownership and control of the popular press from the working class to capitalist entrepreneurs, while the advertising licensing system encouraged the absorption or elimination of the early radical press and effectively stifled its re-emergence. While the character of the modern press has been significantly modified by changes in the operation of market forces since 1920, the press remains a powerful integrative force in society. It has contributed materially to the remarkable stability and high degree of allegiance to British political institutions that has persisted in Britain despite her loss of empire and continuing economic crisis. 33
References Advertising Association, 1949: Evidence to the Royal Commission on the Press 1947-1949, Royal Commission on the Press 1947-9 vol. 5. London: HMSO. 32 Derived from a content amilysis of editorials in all national daily and Sunday newspapers. The text relates to the last round of the leadership contest. 33 Despite illusions to the contrary a wealth of empirical evidence documents the high degree of alligiance to British political institutions and the continuing stability of modern British society. See, for example, Almond and Verba (1963), Butler and Stokes (1969), Blurnler et al. (1971), Rose (1973) and Rose (1974).
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1962: Evidence to the Royal Commission on the Press 1961-2, Royal Commission on the Press 1960-1 vol. 3. London: HMSO. Almond, Gabrial and Verba, Sidney, 1963: The Civic Culture. Princeton: University Press. Altick, R. D., 19.57: The English Common Reader: a Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900. University of Chicago Press. Andrews, Alexander, 1859: The History of British journalism, 2 vols. London: Richard Bentley. Anon, 1935: History of the Times: 'The Thunder' in the Making 17851841 vol. 1. London: Times. 1939: History of the Times: The Tradition Establishment vol. 2. London: Times. 1851: Guide to Advertisers. London. Aspinall, Arthur, 1949: Politics and the Press, c1780-1850. London: Home and Van Thal. (Republished 1973 Harvester Press.) 1950: 'Statistical Accounts of London Newspapers 1800-1836'. English Historical Review, LXV. Asquith, Ivon, 197 5: 'Advertising and the press in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: James Perry and the Morning Chronicle 1790-1821 '.Historical journal, XVIII (4). Beveridge, Virginia, 1975: 'Political Attitudes and the popular Sunday press in rnid-Victorian England'. Acton Society Paper. Blumler, J. G. et al., 1971: 'Attitudes to the Monarchy' .Political Studies. XIX (2). Bourne, H. R. Fox, 1887: English Newspapers: Chapters in the History of the Press i vols. London: Chatto and Windus. Burn ham, Lord, 195 5: Peterborough Court: The Story of the Daily Telegraph. London: Cassell. Butler, David and Stokes, Donald, 1969: Political Change in Britain. London: Macmillan. Chaney, David, 1972: Processes of Mass Communication. London: Macrnillan. Chilston, Viscount, 1965: W. H. Smith. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Christie, Ian R., 1970: Myth and Reality in Late Eighteenth-Century British Politics and other papers. London: Macmillan. Cole, G. D. H., 1947: The Life ofWilliam Cobbett, 3rd ed. London: Home and Van Thai. Coltham, Stephen, 1960: 'The Bee-Hive Newspaper: Its c;>rigins and early development'. In Briggs, Asa, and Saville, John (Eds.), Essays in Labour History. London: Macrnillan. Crawley, C. W. (Ed.), 1965: War and Peace in an Age of Upheaval17931830. New Cambridge Modern History vol. 9. London: Cambridge University Press. Cranfield, George 1962: Development of the Provincial Newspaper Press 170D-1760. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Curran, James, and Tunstall, Jeremy, 1973: 'Mass Media and Leisure'. In Smith, M., Parker·, S. and Smith, C. (Eds.) Leisure and Society in Britain. London. Allen Lane.
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Curran, James, 1970: 'The Impact of Television on the Audience for National Newspapers 1945-68.' In Tunstall, Jeremy (Ed.), Media ·Sociology, London: Constable. 1976: 'The Impact of Advertising on the Structure of the Modern British Press'. Royal Commission on the Press Research Paper. 1977: Mass Communication as a Social Force in History. Mass Comcomunication and Society, Course DE353, The Open University Press. Epstein, J. A., 1976: 'Feargus O'Connor and the Northern Star',International Review of Social History vol. 22. Part 1. Foster, John, 1974: Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution: Early Industrial Capitalism in Three English Towns. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Frank, Joseph, 1961: The Beginnings of the English N_ewspaper 16201660. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. . Freer, Cryil, 1921: The Inner Side of Advertising: A Practical Handbook for Advertisers. London: Library Press. Glasgow, Eric, 1954: 'The Establishment. of the Northern Star Newspaper'. History, XXXIX.Grant, J ames, 1871: The Newspaper Press: Its Origins, Progress and Present Position 2 vols. London: Tinsley Bros. Gibbs, Philip, 1923: Advertisers in journalism. New York: Harper. Haigh, R. L., 1968: The Gazeteer 1735-97. Illinois: South Illinois University Press. Hall, Stuart, 197 3: 'Deviancy, Politics and the Media'. In Mclntosh, M. and Rock, P. (Eds.), Deviancy and Social Control, London: Tavistock. Hamilton, Sir Dennis, 1976: Who is to own the British Press? London: Birkbeck College. Hanson, 1936: Government and the Press, 1695-1763. London: Cambridge University Press. Harris, Michael, 1974: London Newspaper Press 1700-1750. Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, University of London. Herd, Harold, 1952: The March of journalism. London: George Alien and Unwin. Hindle, W., 1937: The Morning Post. London. Hirsch, Fred and Gordon, David, 1975: Newspaper Money: Fleet Street and the Search for the Affluent Reader. London: Hutchinson. Hollis, Patricia, 1970: The Pauper Press: A Study in Working-Glass Radicalism of the 1830s. London: Oxford University Press. Holton, R. J ., 1974: 'Daily Herald v. Daily Citizen 1912-15'.International Review of Social History. Hunt, Frederick Knight, 1850: The Fourth Estate: Contributions towards a History of Newspapers and of the Liberty of the Press, 2 vols. London: David Bogue. Hunter, Norman, 1925: Advertising Through the Press: A Guide to Press Publicity. London: Pitman. JICNARS (Joint Industry Committee for National Readership Surveys), National Readership 197D-76. London: Institute of the Practitioners in Advertising.
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King, Cecil, 1972: Diary, 1965-7. London: Jonathan Cape. Knightley, Philip, 1975: The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Myth Maker from the Crimea to Vietnam. London: Andre Deutsch. Lansbury, George, 1925: The Miracle of Fleet Street. London: Victoria House. Lee, Alan J., 1974: 'The Radical Press'. In Morris A. J. (ed.) Edwardian Radicalism 190D-14. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Lucas, Reginald, 1910: Lord Glenersk and the Morning Post. London. Mumby, F., and Norrie, L., 1974: Publishing and Bookselling. London: Methuen. Musson, A. E., 1954: The Typographical Association: Origins and History up to 1949. London: Oxford University Press. Mitchell's Newspaper Press Directory. London: Mitchell. Pound, Reginald and Harmsworth, Geoffrey, 1959: Northcliffe. London: Cassell. Pethick, Lawrence, F. W., 1943: Fate Has Been Kind. London: Hutchinson. Price, Richard, 1972: An Imperial War and the British Working Class: Working Class Attitudes and Reactions to the Boer War 1899-1902. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Read, Donald, 1961: Press and People, 179D-1850: Opinion in Three English Cities. London: Edward Arnold. Roach, John, 1965: 'Education and Public opinion'. In Crawley, C. W. (Ed.), War and Peace in an Age of Upheaval (1793-1830). London: Cambridge University Press. Rose, Richard, 1970: People in Politics: Observations Across the Atlantic. London: Faber and Faber. 1974: Politics in England. London: Faber and Faber. Rostenburg, Leona, 1971: The Minority Press and the English Crown: A Study in Repression 1558-1625. Nieuwkoop: De Graaf. Royal Commission on thf1 Press 1947-9 Report. London: HMSO, 1949. Royal Commission on the Press 196D-61 Report. London: HMSO, 1962. Sanderson, M., 1972: 'Literary and Social Mobility in the Industrial Revolution'. Past an to Present 5 (6). Schoyen, A. R., 1956: The Chartist Challenge: A Portrait ofGeorge ]ulian Harney. London: Heinemann. Select Committee on Newspaper Stamps, 1851: Report, Together with the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence, Appendix and Index. Parliamentary Papers. XVII. Seymour-Ure, Colin, 197 5: 'The Press and the Party System, Between the Wars'. In Peele, Gillan, and Cook, Chris (Eds.), The Politics of Reappraisa/1918-3 9. London: Macmillan. Siebert, Frederick S., 1952: Freedom of the Press i11 England 1479-1776: The Rise and Decline of Government Control. ·urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press. Spender, J. A., 1927: Life,] ournalism and Politics 2 vols. London: Cassell. Stone, Lawrence, 1969: 'Literacy and Education in England 1640-1900'. Past and Present 42.
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Taylor, A. J. P., 1972: Beaverbrook. London: Harnish Hamilton. Thomas, J. A., 1958: The House of Commons 1906-11. Cardiff. Thompson, E. P., 1963: The Making of the English Working Class. London: Victor Gollancz. Vincent, John, 1972: The Formation of the British Liberal Party 185768. London: Pelican. Webb, R. K., 1955: The British Working Class Reader, 1790-1848: Literacy and Social Tension. London: Alien and Unwin. Webb, R. K., 1950: 'Working Class Readers in Victorian England'. English Historical Review LXV. Westmacott, C. M., 1936: The Stamp Duties. London. Wickwar, William H., 1928: The Struggle for the Freedom of the Press 1819-32. London: Alien and Unwin. Wiener, Joel H., 1969a: The War of the Unstamped: The Movement to Repeal the British Newspaper Tax 183D-36. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Wiener, Joel H., 1969b: A Descriptive Findings List ofUnstamped Periodicals 1830-36. London: Bibliographical Society. Wiles, R. M., 1965: Freshest Advices: Early Provincial Newspapers in England. Ohio: Ohio State University Press. Williams, Francis, 1957: Dangerous Estate: The Anatomy of Newspapers. London: Longmans, Green. Williams, Raymond, 1965: The Long Revolution. London: Pelican. Wilson, Trevor (Ed.), 1970: The Political Diaries of C. P. Scott 1911-28. London: Collins. Woodwood, L., 1962: The Age of Reform 1815-70, Rev. edn. Oxford: . University Press. Wrench, John Evelyp, 1955: Geoffrey Dawson and our Times. London: Hutchinson.
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The Political Economy of the Media II The lnformalion Gap/ Information Poverty and Political Inequality
[5] Information Poverty and Polltical Inequality: Citizenship in the Age of Privatized Communications by Graham Murdock and Peter Golding "Where material inequality massively differentiates people's access to goods and services, and those goods and services are themselves a necessary resource for cltl:rensblp, then political rights are the victim of the vlcissltlules of the marketplace and Its lnegalltarlan structure." · The new market-oriented communications and information system that is currently gaining ground within liberal democracies is being sold to the general public on the promise that it will enlarge people's choices and increase their control over their lives, that it will be both liberating and empowering. This emerging order is the product of two major processes: technological innovation and convergence, and "privatization." The first is creating a range of new kinds of communications and information services and restructuring established media industries; the second is providing the essential social and ideological context in which these changes are being developed and promoted. "Privatization," with which we are primarily concerned in this article, operates on two main levels. Economically it involves moving the production and provision of communications and information services from the public sector to the market, both by transferring ownership of key facilities to private investors and by making success in the marketplace the major criterion for judging the performance of all communications and information organizations (including those that remain in the public sector). This reconstitution of production is accompanied by a parallel restructuring of consumption. First, nonwork activity becomes ever more securely rooted in the home. Second, the new market-oriented system of provision addresses people predominantly through their identity as consumers, both of the communications and information products they buy and of the products promoted in the expanded advertising system that finances many of the new services. In the process, the system marginalizes or displaces other identities, in particular the identity of citizen. Although a number of commentators have attacked the "privatization" of communications and information services and challenged the claim that the
new communications technologies are, in Ithiel de Sola Pool's phrase, "technologies of freedom," very few have linked these critiques to current debates on the nature of citizenship in complex democracies or asked what role communications plays in sustaining and extending it. Taking contemporary Britain as a particular case of a liberal democracy in the process of change, this article discusses the connections between the organization of communications and information facilities and the constitution of citizenship, arguing two basic points. First, we draw attention to debates on the nature of citizenship in political sociology and political philosophy that assign a central and complex role to communications, debates that media researchers need to explore both conceptually and empirically. We then go on to demonstrate that policies in the areas of communications, taxation, and welfare being pursued by the Thatcher administrations in Britain, and in varying degrees by a number of other liberal democratic governments, are combining to comprehensively undermine the resources required for full and effective citizenship.
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We begin with a brief exploration of current debates on the nature of citizenship. The starting point for most modern discussions in this area is T. H. Marshall's essay, Citizenship and Social Class, written in 1949 (17). Marshall distinguishes three basic dimensions of citizenship-civil, political, and social-and traces the development of the rights associated with them together with the institutions that promote and guarantee them. Civil rights are centrally concerned with an individual's freedom of action within the sphere of "civil society." They include freedom of speech, freedom of thought and religion, freedom of movement and association, and, centrally,
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Grnham Murdock Is Research Fellow at the Centre for Mass Communication Research, University of Leicester. Peter Goldlng is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Mass Communication Research, University of Leicester, and Professor of Sociology designate at the University of Loughborough.
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the freedom to own and dispose of property. Property rights are assigned a pivotal role in classical liberal theory as the major guarantor of individual choice. In this conception the market is unambiguously the sphere of liberty that the state threatens to erode whenever it goes beyond its assigned "nightwatchman" role of regulating the use of force and overseeing the legal system that guarantees individual rights. In the words of British Home Secretary Douglas Hurd, for Conservatives "private property is the natural bulwark of liberty'' (13). The second set of rights, political rights, is concerned with the conditions under which people participate in the exercise of political power-by holding public office, electing members of the national and local bodies· that formulate policies and pass laws, and involving themselves in the exercise of those laws through jury membership. The image of the citizen as a participant in the polit· ical process is of course at the center of the classical conceptions dating back to ancient Greece. It is what separates citizens from subjects. The latter may have the right to protection under the law, but only citizens can take part in determining the nature of the laws by which they will consent to be governed (33). Marshal! sees the third set of citizenship rights, social rights, as the distinctive product of the twentieth century. His presentation of them centers on the struggle to secure a basic standard of life and well-being for all through the institutionalization of the welfare state. For our purposes, however, we need to add the rights of universal access to communications and Information facilities, which emerged at the same time and were underwritten by public provision funded out of local and national taxes and institutionalized through the organizations responsible for continuing education, public libraries, and, later, public broadcasting. Although Marshal! does not stress the importance of communications rights, they are presupposed by his general definition of the social rights of citizenship, which cover "the whole range from the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security to the right to share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilised being according to the standards prevailing in the society'' (17, p. 11). This definition involves a substantial widening of the traditional conception of citizenship. It is no longer simply about participation in the political process; it is also about the conditions that allow people to become full members of the society at every level (15).
was an irreversible step toward securing the basic resources for citizenship. Forty years later, with the experience of a decade of radical conservative administrations headed by Thatcher to assimilate, it is clear that this optimism was premature and that these resources have been progressively eroded in ways that we shall detail presently. With the benefit of hindsight it is also clear that Marshall's argument suffers from a somewhat uncritical definition of the "social heritage" that provides the cultural and psychological glue binding citizens together in common member· ship of the society. Part of the problem is that the development of citizenship in its present form has been cotermlnous with the forn1ation of the modern nation-state (32). As a result, membership is identified with participation in the national culture as defined by authoritative political and cultural institutions. This ignores the extent to which the formation and maintenance of these definitions entailed the marginalization and suppression of other identities. As the fissures and cracks in this edifice have become more evident, with the resurgence of regional nationalisms and Britain's transition to a multiracial soci· ety, so it has become more than ever necessary to recognize diversity and dif· ference and to move toward "a new definition of solidarity and coexistence centred on mutual respect" (19, p. 178). This, in turn, implies a more pluralistic conception of social membership, one that makes room for particularity and difference and recognizes that the "reconciliation of rival claims and conflicting interests can only be partial and provisional" (21, p. 30). In ti1e present situa· tion, then, the social component of citizenship can no longer be defined in Marshall's terms as "the right to share in full in the social heritage." Rather, it must be thought of as the right of "individuals and social groups to affirm themselves and to be recognized for what they are or wish to be" (18, p. 258). In this light, it is clear that communications and information are central to the exercise of full and effective citizenship in the contemporary era (29). This is not in itself a new insight liberal democrats have long recognized that access to adequate information and to a diversity of debate and representations is a basic precondition for the effective functioning of a democratic polity and for the full exercise of citizenship rights (1). Accordingly, they have seen the communications system as an essentially public set of institutions charged with a duty to provide the necessary resources for effective citizenship. And they have applied this injunction equally to all organizations, whether publicly man· aged or privately owned.
Although Marshall's schema has done much to advance and broaden the discussion of citizenship, it is open to a number of criticisms. Conceptually, he presents the three dimensions of citizenship as a simple list without arranging them in order of priority. Yet it is clear from the overall thrust of his argument that he sees social rights as the essential precondition for the meaningful exercise both of political participation and of full social membership. Or, put another way, poverty is a powerful mechanism for excluding people from ti1ese entitlements (7). Marshal! was writing in 1949, after the Labour Government elected in 1945 had pushed through the reforms that complet~d the creation of tile modern British welfare state, anc:l he had good reason to think that this restructuring
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We can identify three main kinds of relations between communications and citizenship. First, people must have access w the information, advice, and analysis that will enable them to know what their rights are in other spheres and allow them to pursue these rights effectively. Second, they must have access to the broadest possible range of information, interpretation, and debate on areas that involve political choices, and they must be able to use communications facilities in order to register criticism, mobillze opposition, and propose alternative courses of action. And third, they must be able to recognize themselves and their aspirations in the range of representations offered within the
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central communications sectors and be able to contribute to developing those representations. These rights in turn imply that the communications and information system should have two essential features. At the level of production, it should offer the maximum possible diversity of provision and provide mechanisms for user feedback and partidpation. At the level of consumption, it should guarantee universal access to the services that can ensure the exercise of citizenship regardless of income or area of residence. The central question is, "Can these essential communicative resources for citizenship be guaranteed by a production and distribution system that is increasingly organized around market mechanisms?" Our answer has to be "no," at least not given the present organi· zations of the relevant markets and the distribution of income. Whenever access to the communications and information resources required for full citizenship depends upon purchasing power (as expressed directly through customer payments or indirectly through the unequal dlsttibution of advertising subsidies to production), substantial inequalities are generated that undermine the nominal universality of citizenship. As we ;;hall show, income differentials have widened considerably under the three Thatcher governments at the same time as .the communications and information system has been progressively "privatized" and tlte public sector eroded and commercialized. As a result, the poor suffer from a double disadvantage. They are priced out of the markets for new services and left with an infrastructure of public provision that is either unable or unwilling to provide the full range of resources for citizenship (22). The next section looks in more detail at the main political and economic dynamics that are currently restructuring the provision 9f information and communications services. We then chart the pattern of income differentials and indicate their consequences for access to communications and information goods in the new "privatized" marketplace.
Table 1: Percent of households In selected Income groups In 1986 that own communlcallons and Information facilities
TV Weekly Income £60-80 £100-125 £150-175 £225-250 £325-375 £550 and over
% 96.9 98.1 97.7 97.5 98.0 98.4
Telephone %
VIdeo recorder %
Home computer %
67.4 76.7 76.3 87.3 94.1 98.2
12.6 21.2 31.6 43.5 56.5 64.8
3.3 7.6 9.6 21.2 26.5 28.8
Source: Family Expenditure SuNey 1986 (37. Table 3).
"Privatization" is most usefully employed as a general description of economic initiatives that aim to increase the reach of market institntions and philosophies at the expense of the publlc sphere. Within this process we can identify four main movements: denationalization, which involves selling shares in public companies to private investors; liberalization, which introduces competition into areas that were previously public or private monopolies; tlte regearing of the regulatory regime to allow corporations more flexibility to maneuver; and the commercialization of those organizations that remain in the public sector, through the introduction of market mechanisms and commercial criteria of evaluation. From the outset of the Thatcher administrations, communications and information industries have been at the forefront of these shifts. Although a full survey would take us well beyond the scope of this article,. privatization's general impact on access to information and communications resources is well illustraled by recent changes in two central areas: telecommunications and television services.
The telephone is the hub of most people's interpersonal information system. Not only does it connect them with the informal networks offered by friends, neighbors, and relatives, it also provides a major point of access to the professional information services of organizations like Citizens' Advice Bureaus, voluntary and community groups, and welfare rights agenctes. Indeed, as public funding for these organizations has been steadily whittled away, forcing some to close branches or limit their hours, telephone access has become more important than ever. However, as Table 1 clearly shows, some of the groups most in need of inforntation and advice .on their rights are among those least likely to have access to a domestic telephone. And even those who do may find their use curtailed by the relatively high cost of making calls. When th~ Post Office administered the telephone network, its policy was to keep down the cost of local calls (which make up the bulk of poor households' use) by cross-subsidizing losses out of the profits generated by trunk and international traffic (most of which was accounted for by business users). In the early 1970s, however, concerted pressure from the corporate community, coupled with the high costs of modernizing the network, led to a relaxation of this policy. Between 1973 and 1978 the price of long-distance calls covering a distance of more than 35 miles dropped by 13 percent, while the real price of local calls at peak times rose by a massive 183 percent (30, pp. 121-146). This rebalancing of the tariff structure in favor of business users has been reinforced by the twin impact of liberalization and denationalization. In February 1982, the Mercury consortium was granted a license to compete with British Telecom (the renamed telecommunications sector of the old Post Office, hived off from the mail sector by the British Telecommunications Act of 1981). Mercury's main aim was to gain a slice of BT's lucrative business custom; BT responded by cutting the price of trunk and transatlantic calls and moving toward charging customers the full economic costs of local calls. This shift was further accelerated when the majority (50.2 percent) of BT's shares were sold to private investors in November 1984, transforming it from a public utility to a commercial corporation dedicated to maximizing its profits. A 1989
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survey revealed that, regulatory limits on pricing notwithstanding, Britain has the second most expensive local calls of any advanced country (25). Although those without ready access to a domestic telephone have the network of public call boxes to fall back on, here again recent changes have worked to-the disadvantage of the poor. BT is in the process of replacing its old stock of coin-operated boxes with metal and glass booths, many of which will accept only a major credit card or a special phone card that has to be purchased beforehand. Although this conversion will undoubtedly reduce vandalism from attempts to break open coin collection boxes, it further restricts access among those who do not have a credit card and are unable to tie up their discretionary spending in advance of making a call. Their problems are compounded by the fact that under the current regulatory arrangements, unlike domestic tariffs, rises in the cost of calls from public boxes are not subject to set limits but are free to respond to judgments of what the market will bear. The difficulties that low-income groups experience in gaining convenient and affordable access to basic telephone services are further compounded In the case of value-added services. Many of those most able to benefit from these facilities are least able to obtain them. Home shopping provides a case in point. The poor are already disadvantaged in regard to shopping. Since most do not have access to a car, they are unable to take maximum advantage of the choice and price advantages offered by supermarkets in city centers or hypermarkets on the edge of towns. Instead they are confined to the relatively limited choice and high prices of local shops. This problem is particularly acute for the elderly and the disabled, who have mobility problems. The ability to order goods from a central store and have them delivered to the home would do much to compensate for this situation. Yet the British experience to date clearly shows that such schemes will reach those most in need only if there is extensive public subsidy. Run on a straightforward commercial basis, these programs are invariably geared to servicing lhe better off, thereby extending the advantages they already enjoy. In this case, poverty not only excludes people from- the information and communications resources they need for full citizenship, it also inhibits them from exercising their full rights as consumers (22).
in the government's 1988 White Paper on broadcasting are implemented (41). The government will allocate the two remaining channels on Britain's fivechannel national direct broadcast satellite (DBS) system, operated by British Satellite Broadcasting. It also proposes to license a new national terrestrial service and a number of local multipoint video distribution systems. All of these initiatives would be financed out of varying combinations of spot advertising, sponsorship, and viewer subscriptions and would be regulated by a new body, the Independent Television Commission, which would oversee all commercial television services, including _cable. Unlike the present Independent ·Broadcast· ing Authority, which supervises tl;le I1V system, the new commission would operate with a "light touch," prioritizing the growth of television services as a business rather than defending and extending broadcasting as a public service in pursuit of diversiry. last, and most significant, the present license fee would be phased out and the BBC's funding switched to a predominantly subscription basis to bring the Corporation into line with the general movement toward a "pay-per" communications system (20). As the present cable services demonstrate, however, subscription systems operate against the poor by making people's range of choice directly dependent on their ability to pay. In mid-1988, it cost an average of £17.86 a month to buy into cable services (34). This represented a virtual doubling of the average household's expenditure on basic broadcast services. It will cost at least that much again to obtain the full range of new DBS services, over and above the initial outlay on equipment. Nor is a videocassette recorder necessarily a cheap way to extend the uses of the basic television set. Table 1 shows that there is a sti:ong linear relation between VCR possession and income. Moreover, the more affiuent can use their VCRs with greater versatility, for two reasons. First, they are more likely to be able to afford to subscribe to cable or DBS channels and so have access to a greater range of movies and other programs for time-shifting. Second, the recent shake-out in the videotape rental sector resulting in the disappearance of a number of smaller, local outlets has reduced the choices available to many poorer households. However, even if the effective threat to established broadcast services is less than the more pessimistic commentators are forecasting, the arriv-.!1 of new services and competition for subscription and advertising income is still likely to have an effect on the range of program production. And as the Report of the Committee on Financing the BBC recognized, those programs that are arguably most central to the provision of resources for citizenship are most at risk in the new commercial environment (40, pp. 127-128). They include investigative documentaries, ~nnovative contemporary drama, and programs for minorities who have low spending power.
A parallel situation obtains in the area of television services. Historically, television services in Britain have been seen as a public resource that should speak for and to the full range of social experiences and interests and should be available equally to everyone, regardless of level of income or area of residence. This ideal was guaranteed financially by noncompetitive funding, whereby the British Broadcasting Corporation received the whole of the compulsory license fee levied on the possession of a television set, and the Independent Television companies had exclusive rights to sell advertising on I1V and Channel 4 in their franchise areas. A comprehensive system of regulation obliged both the BBC and 11V to maintain a diverse production base capable of addressing a plurality of interests. This public service. duopoly will be dismantled when the plans announced
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One response to this new marketplace is to commerclallze public institutions from within. This entails exploiting resources to the maximum by generating spin-off products and merchandising opportunities based on pro· grams and by leasing out spare capacity (23). The BBC is currently pursuing
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this strategy with considerable vigor. It has purchased a publishing house to boost its growing stable of magazines based on programs. It also leases parts of its available spectrum space to companies wishing to advertise to clients and to a commercial consortium that downloads a regular medical program, supported by the large pharmaceutical companies, to VCRs in doctors' homes and offices. The rationale for these activities is that the revenue they generate can be plowed back into general program making. But there is a distinct danger that the tail will end up wagging the dog, so that production ideas come to be evaluated for their merchandising potential and the requirements of commercial clients come to shape the distribution of scarce resources, transferring some from the public to the corporate sector. At the same time, in a period when the real value of the income derived from the public purse ts·being reduced, there are considerable incentives to look for other ways to make money. Nor is this trend confined to broadcasting. It is evident across the range of public information services, including museums (where entry charges are now being reintroduced) and libraries. Public library services in Britain are provided and supervised by local government but are governed by legislation and policy set by the Minister of Ans within the Department of Education and Science. In early 1988 the government set out proposals "to enlarge the scope for library authorities to generate increased revenues by joint ventures with the private sector and charging for specialised services" (42, p. 1). These proposals were in line with a number of other initiatives requiring local authorities to put many of their services out to tender to priva.te contractors, including leisure facilities, refuse collection, and school catering. Compared to many of these services, public libraries are small in scale. In 1985-1986 the public library stock was 114 million books, and the service cost only £386 million per year. Nonetheless, it was with an eye toward increasing the minuscule £21.6 million income generated by library services that the proposals were ventured. In fact, the reception given to this policy was almost uniformly hostile, and in a ministerial announcement in February 1989 (39) most of the proposals were rejected, including suggestions for charging for more popular or recent books. Nonetheless, the door was left open to some of the more significant shifts in the commercialization of public library information services, including new powers to charge users for borrowing nonprint materials, using facilities such as computers, and getting assistance from library staff.
The argument that citizens need extensive access to information about poUcy initiatives and government activities takes on added urgency at a time when the balance between state and citizen is shifting to the dls· advantage of the latter. A number of observers see the growth of state power as an inevitable outcome of the development of capitalist democracies in the last two or three decades. As the role of the state in steering economic and social activities grows, so do the problems it faces in sustaining both the revenues and the legitimacy (cf. 10, 26) to perform this role. Paradoxically, as neoconservative governments have taken office in many
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advanced industrial societies, this crisis of state function has produced a rhetoric of reduced state activity coupled with strengthened statutory agencies and legislation to secure social and economic stability (cf. 4, 14). Not the least of the manifestations of this neoliberal strong state, particularly in the United Kingdom, has been a series of actions designed to control the flow of information from government to public. This takes two forms: the positive promotion of some government action, coupled with selective prevention of public access to information about other activities. All governments engage in public relations. Keeping the public informed of what they are doing while tacitly gilding the lily is far from sinister thought control. However, the scale and professionalism of public relations have very rapidly increased in the United Kingdom over the past decade (6). The most familiar mechanism of direct government public relations is the Lobby, a privileged and accredited group of journalists regularly briefed by senior politicians on a non-attributable basis. The system has both detractors and defenders, but it had become-so increasingly and assertively exploited by 1986 that two national newspapers withdrew from the Lobby entirely. The substantial advance in government public relations has suggested to some that we are entering a new phase in what Oscar Gandy has referred to as "information subsidies" (5). A weekly meeting in the Cabinet Office, chaired by the Prime Minister's Press Secretary, coordinates and supervises the work of departmental information officers, ensuring the proper "processing" of information (11). The British government's expenditure on publicity has grown from £20 million a decade ago to £120 million in 1988-1989. Concern about the scale of the increase and the uses to which these funds are being put had become so great by early 1989 that the National Audit Office launched a parliamentary investigation on behalf of the influential all-party Public Accounts. Committee. The corollary of positive promotion is the secretive retention of embarrassing or inconvenient information. Pressure on the media has been sustained and occasionally virulent in recent years, ranging from the faintly ludicrous attempt to suppress the memoirs of a former senior intelligence agent recorded in Peter Wright's Spycatcber to the (ultimately unsuccessful) banning of a BBC documentary on the zircon spy satellite, a lengthy battle over a radio series dealing.with security matters (only eventually broadcast after substantial vetting), and the implementation of the Home Secretary's ban on broadcasting interviews with members of named terrorist organizations in Northern Ireland. Although checkered and in many ways limited as a program of censorship, this sequence of .events is widely regarded as having had a major inhibiting effect on the adventurousness of critical and independent journalism. Continuing · demands for a Bill of Rights or major liberalization of secrecy legislation have merely resulted in an Official Secrets Bill that features "a presumption of secrecy in favour of the government; no provision for freedom of information.... In shorr the Government has put forward a carefully modulated deal which amounts to more secrecy and less information" (31, pp. 17, 20). At a less elevated level much concern has been aroused by the apparent cooption of government statistical resources into the service of state public
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relations (28). From the abstract view of Habermas this is a structural necessity: "The public realm, set up for effective legitimation, has above all the function of directing attention to topical areas-that is, of pushing other themes, problems, and arguments below the threshold of attention and, thereby, of witholding [sic] them from opinion-formation" (10, p. 70). Statistics describing the level and distribution of unemployment have been subject to well over twenty offidal redefinitions of terms and categories, making monitoring of data series well-nigh impossible. Regular publication of figures on the number of people living in poverty was discontinued in 1988 to be replaced by a new set of figures that the House of Commons Soda! Services Committee described in alarm as "likely to lead to an underestimate of the numbers on low income and distort any analysis of this group's standard of living" (16, p. 8). Clearly, if governments are in the business of positively promoting their oWil. perceptions and interpretations of policy developments while increasingly engaged in a war of attrition with independent media and research, the accessibility of a range of information sources becomes socially and politically vital for citizens. What opportunities exist, then, for people to have access to a range and diversity of communications and information resources?
Table 2: Average 1986 weekly expenditure on services by households In selected Income groups (In pounds)
If the provision of information is increasingly entrusted to the market,
then access to that information becomes dependent on economic as well as polldcai and technological constraints. "Tradeable information" is available to those individuals or groups who have the disposable spending power to make discretionary decisions about purchasing information goods and who_ may forego them without the opportunity costs being too high. The widening gap in disposable incomes in Britain raises concern about the social effects of this development. In 1988 average gross weekly earnings were £218. However, 7.1 percent earned less than £100 per week and 9.9 percent earned more than £350 per week. Two million men and 2.8 million women earned less than £150, while .7 million people earned more than £450 weekly (38, Part A, Table 1; Part B, Table XS). In the period 1981-1987 the real weekly earnings of the lowest paid decile rose by 11.5 percent, but for the top. decile the rise was 24.8 percent (36, Table 5.14). Independent calculations that allow for all taxes suggest a wider differential, with the poorest fifth only 1 percent better off and the best-paid fifth 24 percent better off (2). Not surprisingly, wealth differentials remain vast, the top 5 percent owning 40 percent of wealth in 1985 and the bottom 50 percent owning just 7 percent (36, Table 5.23). At the lower end, the number of people living on or below social security levels of income increased from 9.38 million in 1985 to roughly 11 million in 1988 (16, p. 35; 27). The c?nsequence of these movements in income differentials is a growing gap between different groups' expenditure choices and patterns. Table 2, which shows the levels of spending on services by income groups, illustrates the markedly higher spending power of better-off groups in this sector. In all wealthier societies, spending on services has been growing as a proportion of consumer expenditure.- But lower-income groups have a lower consumption 190
Weekly Income £60-80 £100-125 £150-175 £225-250 £325-375 £550 and over Ail households
Expenditure on services 8.70 11.35 19.80 19.86 32.08 68.14 22.67
Source: Family Expenditure Survey 1986 (37. Table 5).
elasticity for service goods than higher-income groups; their income is substantially committed to the necessities of food, clothing, fuel, and housing. In terms of aggregate demand this may not matter. After all, of the £274,318 million of disposable income available to the economy in 1986, the bottom fifth of households commanded only 5.9 percent, while the pockets of the top fifth were burning with 42.2 percent of the total (35, Table 5.18). However, for individual households the implications, not least for their access to information goods and services, are significant in the extreme. Communications and information goods and services consume a growing proportion of expenditure on services in general. Expenditure on video and television, for example, doubled between 1976 and 1987. (The differentiated pattern of this expenditure is highlighted by Table 3.) Expenditure on communications and information resources increased very rapidly up the income scale, with the partial exception of cinema admissions (which are of very limited importance at all income levels and are just as much differentiated by age and household type) and television (where the flat-rate BBC license fee has a levellog effect on the expenditure gradient). The outcome of this expenditure pattern displayed in Table 1 shows that the ownership of even traditional hardware like the telephone is severely limited among lower-income groups (and Is actually at its lowest among single-parent
Table 3: Average 1986 weekly expenditure on communications goods and services by households In aelecled Income groups (In pounds)
Weekly income £60-80 £100-125 £150-175 £225-250 £325-375 £550 and over
TV/vldeo/ audio equipment 0.57 0.91 2.73 4.51 5.33 10.19
Books/ newspapers/ magazines 1.51 2.00 2.48 2.98 3.50 5.54
Source: Family Expenditure Survey 1986 (37. Table 1).
191
Cinema 0.03 0.02 0.09 0.11 0.15 0.28
TV/video rental/ license 1.73 1.72 2.16 2.08 2.31 2.50
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and pensioner groups, arguably those in greatest need of s.uch a .communications resourc~): For video and home computers the differe'ntial is even more marked. As we have suggested elsewhere (9), this is unlikely to be relieved by the general tendency to "trickle down," familiar in the diffusion history of previous generations of new technologies and household durables. By their very nature, these goods cumulatively advantage their owners and provide access to expensive and extensive value-added facilities, so that poorer groups are chasing a moving and fast-receding target. This emerged particularly clearly in a 1989 survey of home computer penetration in the English Midlands (24). Not only were households in lowerincome groups less likely to have a computer, but those who did own one were much more likely to have a relatively low-powered and unsophisticated model. They were also much less likely to possess additional hardware such as printers and modems that are essential for a wide range of applications, including horizontal communications with other users. These economic barriers to developing computer competence were often reinfotced by social dynamics. Because there were fewer users in their neighborhoods and they generally worked in jobs that did not involve using computers, the less-well-off computer owners had only limited access to the kinds of advice and support networks enjoyed by more aiHuent users and therefore experienced more difficulty in sustaining commitment and developing skills. The general pattern of socioeconomic change, then, suggests that the shift to a more market-oriented provision of information and communications goods is emerging at a time when the ability of different groups in the population to dispose of their income on these goods is being markedly distinguished by widening gaps in income and wealth. Information poverty of society as a whole, generated by the growing power over information held by both state and corporate sectors, is complemented by the information poverty of lowerincome groups directly resulting from their material deprivation. Questions raised by the concept of citizenship are of crucial interest to researchers concerned with the commnnication,s media. The argument and evidence we have presented here are intended to point up the need to reestablish links between the concerns of communications scholars, especially tl1ose narrowly confined by an interest in novel technologies, and broader issues in social and political philosophy. The tension between the actual operations of capitalist markets and the promise of full and equal citizenship has been a prominent feature of social and political criticism since the beginning of the modern era (12, 33). Markets address people primarily in their role as consumers rather than as citizens. Indeed, they present the freedom to choose among competing products as the central and defining liberty of the modern age. As a consequence, "citizenship becomes less a collective, political activity than an individual,· economic activity-the right to pursue one's interests, without hindrance, in the marketplace" (3, p. 5). Clearly, people's economic rights as both producers and consumers
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are an essential component of their rights as citizens, but they certainly do not exhaust.those rights as we have defined them here. Nor can the right to purchase or not to purchase be equated with the right to participate in determining the rules that regulate market transactions. Moreover, as we have shown, for many people in contemporary Britain choices in the marketplace are purely nominal, since they lack the economic means to translate their needs and desires into purchases. This is the second major point of tension between the promise of citizenship and market dynamics. Where material inequality massively differentiates people's access to goods and services, and those goods and services are themselves a necessary resource for citizenship, then political rights are the victim of the vicissitudes of the marketplace and its inegalitarian structure. These concerns have been brought into sharp relief in recent years because of the rapid shift in social policy in countries like Britain as the underlying difficulties of the postwar social democratic welfare states have surfaced into radical political innovation and debate. As a consequence, many people are experiencing dislocation in their immediate life situation and uncertainty about their rights. Consequently, there is a greater need than ever for adequate and accessible information and communications resources. Yet people most adversely affected by these changes are the ones with least access to ~hese resources within the new privatized system of communications. This argument has implications, too, for our approach to research in the field of communications. At the very least we would wish to signal again (8) the dangers in allowing communications research to become too self-enclosed. The most powerful and significant issues to be addressed remain those questions of power, inequality, and social order that have been at the core of social philosophy and research throughout the modern period. We have argued here that the links between citizenship and the newly emerging communications order should occupy a central place in addressing those questions. Otherwise communications research risks betraying not only its own intellectual pedigree and promise but the community and society it serves.
References 1. Carey, J. W. "Reconceiving 'Mass' and 'Media.' " In Communicalfon as Culture: Essays on Media and Society. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989. 2. Cox, G. Tbe Pay Divide. Low Pay Briefing Paper, Number 10. Manchester: Greater Manchester Low Pay Unit, 1988. 3. Dletz, M. G. "Context Is All: Feminism and Theories of Citizenship." Daedalus, Fall 19117, pp. I24. 4. Gamble, A. Tbe Free Economy and tbe Strong State: Tbe Politics o/Tbatcberism. London: Macmillan, 1988. 5. Gandy, 0. Beyond Agenda Selling: Information Subsidies and Public Policy. Norwood, NJ.: Ab lex, 1982.
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6. Goldlng, P. "Citizenship and Political Communications: The Media and Democracy In an Inegali· tartan Social Order." In M. Ferguson (Ed.), Public Communications: The New Imperatives. New· bury Park, Cal. and London: Sage, fonhcomlng.
The Information Gap I Information Poverty and Political Inequality
31. Thomton, P. Decade of Decline: Civil Liberties in the Thatcher Year.t London: National Council for Clvll Liberties, 1988.
7. Goldlng, 1'. (Ed.). R:ccfuding tba l'oor. London: Child Poverty Action Group, 1986.
32. Turner, B. S. Citizenship and Capitalism: The Debate Over Reformism. London: Alien & Unwin, 1986.
8. Golding, P. and G. Murdock. "11leorles of Communication and Theories of Society." Commutlica· lion Research 5(3), 1978, pp. 339-356.
33. Vincent, A. and R. Plant. Philosophy, Politics and Citizenship: The Life and Thought of the British Idealists. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984.
9. Golding, P. and G. Murdock. "Unequal information: Access and Exclusion In the New Communi· cations Market-Place." In M. Ferguson (Ed.), New Communication Technologies and the Public Interest. Newbury Park, Cal. and London: Sage, 1986, pp. 71-83.
34. United Kingdom. Cable Authority. Annual Report and Accounts 1987-88. London: Cable Author· lty, 1988.
10. Habermas,J. Legitimation Crisis. London: Helnemann, 1976.
35. United Kingdom. Central Statistical Office. Financial Statistics, No. 322. London: Her Majesty's Sta· tionery Office, 1989.
11. Hillyard, P. and J. Percy·Smith. The Coercive State: The Decline ofDemocracy In Britain. London: Fontana, 1988.
36. United Kingdom. Central Statistical Office_. Social Trends, Volume 19. London: Her Majesty's Sta· tionery Office, 1989.
12. Hont, I. and M. lgnatielf (Eds.). lflealtb and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy In the Scot· tish Enlightenment Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
37. United Kingdom. Department of Employment. Family Expenditure Suroey 1986. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1988.
13. Hurd, D. "CitizenshiP. In the Tory Democracy." New Statesman, April 29, 1988, p. 14.
38. United Kingdom. Department of Employment. New Eamft1gs Suroey. London: Her Majesty's Sta· tionery Office, 1988.
14. Keane,J. Democracy and Civil Society: On the Predicaments of European Socialism, the Prospects for Democracy, and the Problem of Controlling Social and Political Power. London: Verso, 1988.
39. United Kingdom. Hansard Parliamentary Debates (Commons) 146, February 8, 1989, col. 988.
15. King, D. S. andJ. Waldron. "Citizenship, Social Citizenship and the Defence of Welfare Provision." Britisb]oumal of Political Science 18(4), 1988, pp. 415-443.
40. United Kingdom. Home Office. Report of the Committee on Financing the BBC Cmnd. 9824. Lon· don: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1986.
16. Low Pay Unit. Low Pay Review33, Spring 1988. 17. Marshall, T. H. Citizenship and Social Class. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950.
41. United Kingdom. Home Office. Broadcasting in the Nineties: Compelflfon, Choice, and Quality. Cmnd. 517. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1988.
18. Melucci, A. "Social Movements and the Democratisation of Everyday Life." In J. Keane (Ed.), Civil Society and the State. London: Verso, 1988, pp. 245-260.
42. United Kingdom. Office of Ans and Libraries. Financing Our Public Library Seroice: Four Subjects for Debate. Cmnd. 324. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1988.
19. Melucci, A. Nomads of the Present: Social Movements and Individual Needs in Contemporary Society. London: Hutchlnson Radius, 1989. 20. Mosco, V. "Introduction: Information In the Pay-Per Society." In V. Mosco and]. Wasko (Eds.), The Political Economy of Infonnation. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988, pp. 3-26. 21. Moulfe, C. "The Civics Lesson." New Statesman and Society, October 7, 1988, pp. 28-31. 22. Murdock, G. "Poor Connections: Income Inequality and the 'Information Society.'" In P. Gelding (Ed.), Excluding the Poor. London: Child Poveny Action Group, 1986, pp. 70-83. 23. Murdock, G. "Television and Citizenship: In Defence of Public Broadcasting." In A. Tomllnson (Ed.), Comumptiot~ Identity and Style. London: Routledge, forthcoming. 24. Murdock, G., P. Hartmann, and P. Gray. "Home Computers: The Social Consttuction of a Complex Commodity." Intemational Review of Sociology, In press. 25. National Utilities Services. Intemational Telecommunications Suroey. London: National Utilities Services, 1989. 26. Olfe, c. Contradictiom of the Welfare State. London: Hutchlnson, 1984. 27. Oppenhelm, C. Por•erty: The Fa.cts. London: Child Poveny Action Group, 1988. 28. Panting, C. \flbileba/1: Tragedy and Farce. London: Sphere, 1986. 29. Roche, M. "Citizenship, Social Theory, and Social Change." Theory and Society 16, 1987, pp. 363399. 30. Summerscale, J. and C. Wells. British Telecom. London: DeZoete and Bevan, 1984.
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[6] C. Capitalist Mode: 1.Hegemony: The Public
Jurgen Habermas
THE PUBLIC SPHERE (FRG, 1964)
1. THE CONCEPT By "the public sphere" we meat~ first of all a realm of our social life in which somethmg approaching public opinim:t can be formed. Access i~ guaranteed to all citizens. A portion of the 1_1ubl~c sph7re comes into being in every conversatton m whtch private individuals assemble to form a public body. 1 They then behave neither like busin~ or prof~s sional people transacting private affatr~, nor hke members of a constitutional order subject to the legal constraints of a state bureaucracy. Ci~izens behave as a public body when they confer m an unrestricted fashion - that is, with the guarantee of freedom of assembly and association and the freedom to express and publish their opinions -:about matters of general interest. In a !arge pu~hc body this kind of communication requt~es spec!fic means for transmitting information and mfluencmg those who receive it. Today newspapers and magazines, radio and television are the ~-edia of t~e public sphere. We speak of the poh~tcal pubhc sphere in contrast, for instance, to the hterary one, when public discussion deals with objects connect~d to the activity of the state. Although sta~: authon~y is so to speak the executor of the pohllcal public 2 sphere, it is not a part of it .. To ~ su~~: state authority is usually constd.ered pubhc authority, but it derives its task of can?g for the wellbeing of all citizens primarily from th!s aspect o_f _the public sphere. Only when the exerctse of pohu~I control is effectively subordinated to the democra~tc demand that information be accessible to the pubhc, does the political public sphere win an institutionalized influence over the government through ~he instrument of law-making bodies. The expresston "public opinion" refers to the tasks of _criticism and control which a public body of citizens mformallyand, in periodic elections, formally as ~ell -:practices vis-a-vis the ruling structure orgamsed m the form of a state. Regulations demanding th~t certain proceedings be public (Publit.itiitsvorschrif!en ), for example those providing for open cour: hea~:t~gs, are also related to this function of pubhc optmon. The public sphere as a sphere ~hich mediat:s between society and state, in whtch _the ~m.bhc organizes itself as the bearer of public optmon, accords with the principle of the public sphere 3 This text was originally publishe,d-·as an encycl"'?':"ia article in the Ftscher Lexicon, SIJUll unJ Politik, new edition, Frankfurt am Main, 1964. 11 was uanslated bySara Lenn?~ and Frank Lennox and published in the New qennan Crttl· que (Milwnukcc. Wise.). 3. Fnll 197~. Repnllled by permission ur the publisher.
C. Capitalist Mode: 1.Hegemony: The Public
198
that principle of public information which o?~e had to be fought for against the arcane pohctes of monarchies and which sinCJ: that time has made possible the democratic control of state activities. It is no coincidence that these concepts of the public sphere and public opinion arose for the fi;.;t time only in the eighteenth century. ~hey.acq~tre their specific meaning from a concrete hr;;t?nc~l sttu· ation. It was at that time that the t:.hstmctmn ~f "opinion" from "opinion publique·· and ''p~bhc opinion" came about. Though mere opmt~ns (cultural assumptions, nonnativc att!tudes. collecll~e prejudices and values) seem to per~tst unchan!led m their natural form as a kind of sedtment of htstory, public opinion can by definition only come into existence when a reasoning public is presupposed. Public discussions about the exercise of political power which are both critical in intent a~d insti· tutionally guaranteed have not always extsted -;they grew out of a specific phase of bourgeoiS society and could enter into the order of the bourgeois constitutional state only as a result of a particular constellation of interests.
2.HJSTORY There is no indication European society of the high middle ages possessed a publi~ sphere as a unique realm distinct from the pnvate ~phere. Nevertheless it was not coincidental that durmg that period symb~ls of sovereignty, for instance .the princely seal, were ?eemed "pub~ic". At that ttme there existed a pubhc representallon of power. The status of the feudal lord, at whatever level of t?e feudal pyramid, was oblivious to the categones "public" and "private•·, but the holder ?f the position represented it publicly: he showed htmself, presented himself as the embodiment of _an ever present "higher" power. The concept of thts repre· sentation has been maintained up to the most recent constitutional history. Regardless of the degree to which it has Ioosed itself from the old base, the authority of political power today still demands a representation at the highest level by a head of state. Such elements, however, derive from a pre· bourgeois social structure. Representation in the . 1. Habermas' concept of the public sp~er~ i~ not to be equated with thatof"the public,"t.e. of the md1~1du~ls ~ho assemble. His concept is directed instead at the mslltullon, which to be sure only assumes concrete form through.the participation of people. It cannot, howeve.r, be characterize
sense of a bourgeois public sphere,4 for instance the representation of the nation or of particular mandates, has nothing to do with the medieval representative public sphere - a public sphere directly linked to the concrete existence of a ruler. As long as the prince and the estates of the realm still "are" the land, instead of merely functioning as deputies for it, they are able to "re-present"; they represent their power "before" the people, instead of for the people. The feudal authorities (church, princes and nobility),.to which the representative public sphere was first linked, disintegrated during a long process of polarization. By the end of the eighteenth century they had broken apart into private elements on the one hand, and into public on ihe other. The position of the church changed with the reformation: the link to divine authority which the church represented, that is, religion, became a private matter. So-called religious freedom came to insure what was historically the first area of private autonomy. The church itself continued its existence as one public and legal body among others. The corresponding polarization within princely authority was visibly manifested in the separation of the public budget from the private household expenses of a ruler. The institutions of public authority, along with the bureaucracy and the military, and in part also with the legal institutions; asserted their independence from the privatized sphere of the princely court. Finally, the feudal estates were transformed as· well: the nobility became the organs of public authority, parliament and the legal institutions; while those occupied in trades and professions, insofar as they had already established urban corporations and territorial organizations, developed into a sphere of bourgeois society which would stand apart from the state as a genuine area of private autonomy. The representative public sphere yielded to that new sphere of "public a'uthority" which came into being with national and territorial states. Continuous state activity (permanent administration, standing army) now corresponded to the permanence of the relationships which with the stock exchange and the press had developed within the exchange of commodities and information. Public authority consolidated into a concrete opposition for those who were merely subject to it and who at first found only a negative definition of themselves within it. These were the "private individuals" who were excluded from public authority because they held no office. "Public" no longer referred to the "representative" court of a prince endowed with authority, but rather fo an institution regulated according to competence, to an apparatus endowed with a monopoly on the legal exertion of authority. Private individuals subsumed in the state at whom public authority was directed now made up the public body. 4. The expression "'represent" is used in a very specific sense in the following section, namely to "present oneself." The important thing to understand is that the medieval public sphere, if it even deserves this designation, is tied to the personal. The feudal lord and estates create the public sphere by means of their very presence.
199
117
HABERMAS
Society, now a private realm occupying a position in opposition to the state, stood on the one hand as if in clear contrast to the state. On the other hand, that society had become a conce~n of p~bl!c interest to the degree that the reproducuon of hfe m the wake of the developing market economy had grown beyond the bounds of private domestic authority. The bourgeois public sphere could be understood as the sphere of private individuals assembled into a public body, which almost immediately laid claim to the officially regulated "intellectual newspapers" for use against the public authority itself. In those newspapers, and in moralistic and critical journals, they debated that public authority on the general rules of social intercourse in their fundamentally privatized yet publically relevant sphere of labor and commodity exchange.
3. THE LIBERAL MODEL OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE The medium of this debate- public discussion - was unique and without historical precedent. Hitherto the estates had negotiated agreements with their princes, settling their claims to power from case to case. This development took a different course in England, where the parliament limited royal power, than it did on the contintent, where the monarchies mediatized the estates. The third estate then broke with this form of power arrangement since it could no longer establish itself as a ruling group. A division of power by means of the delineation of the rights of the nobility was no longer possible within an exchange economy-private authority over capitalist property is, after all, unpolitical. Bourgeois individuals are private individuals. As such, they do not "rule." Their claims to power vis-a-vis public authority were thus directed not against the concentration of power, which was to be "shared." Instead, their ideas infiltrated the very principle on which the existing power is based. To the principle of the existing power, the bourgeois public opposed the principle of supervision-that very principle which demands that proceedings he made puhlic ( l'ubliziliil). The principle of supervision is thus a means of transforming the nature of power, not merely one basis of legitimation exchanged for another. In the first modern C()nstitutions the catalogues of fundamental rights were a perfect image of the liberal model of the public sphere: they guaranteed the society as a sphere of private autonomy and the restriction of public aUihority to a few functions. Between these two spheres, the constitutions further insured the existence of a realm of private individuals assembled into a public body who as citizens transmit the needs of bourgeois society to the state, in order, ideally, to transform political into "rational" authority within the medium of this public sphere. The general interest, which was the measure of such a rationality, was then guaranteed, according to the presuppositions of a society of free commodity exchange, when the activities of private individuals in the marketplace were free from social compulsion and from political pressure in the public sphere.
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200
HABERJ\.tAS
Although the liberal model of the public sphere is still instructive today with res peel to the normative claim that information be accessible to the public,5 it cannot be applied to the actual conditions of an industrially advanced mass democracy organized in the form of the social welfare state. In part the liberal model bad always included ideological components, but it is also in part true that the social pre-conditions, to which the ideological elements could at one time
at least be linkeil, had been fundamentally transformed. The very forms in which the public sphere manifested itself, to which supporters of the liberal model could appeal for evidence, began to chang~ with the Chartist movement in England and the February revolution in France. Because of the dif· fusion of press and propaganda, the public bodv ex· panded beyond the bounds of the bourgeoisie. The public body lost not only its social exclusivity; it lost in addition the coherence created by bourgeois social institutions and a relatively high standard of education. Conflicts hitherto restricted to the private sphere now intrude into the public sphere. Group needs which can expect no satisfaction from a self· regulating market now tend towards a regulation by the state. The public sphere, which must now mediate these demands, becomes a field for the competition of interests, competitions which assume the form of violent conflict. Laws which obviously have come about under the "pressure of the street" can scarcely still be understood as arising from the consensus of private individuals engaged in public discussion. They correspond in a more or less unconcealed manner to the compromise of conflicting private interest. Social organizations which deal with the state act in the political public sphere, whether through the agency of political parties or directly in connection with the public administration. With the interweaving of the public and private realm, not only do the political authorities assume certain func. lions in the sphere of commodity exchange and social Jabor, but conversely social powers now assume political functions. This leads to a kind of "refeudaJ. ization" of the public sphere. Large organizations strive for political compromises with the state and with each other, excluding the public sphere whenever possible. But at the same time the large or· ganizations must assure themselves of at least plebiscitary support from the mass of the population through an apparent display of openness (demon· strative PubliziJat).6 The political public sphere of the social welfare state is characterized by a peculiar weakening of iU critical functions. At one time the process of making proceedings public (Publizitiit) was intended to subject persons or affairs to public reason, and to make political decisions subject to appeal before the court of public opinion. But often enough today the process of making public simply serves the arcane poJi. cies of special interests; in the form of "publicity" it wins. public prestige for people or affairs, thus making them worthy of acclamation in a climate of non-public opinion. The very words "public rela· lions work" (OeffentlichkeitsarbeiJ) betray the fact that a public sphere must first be arduously constructed case by case, a public sphere which earlier grew out of the social structure. Even the central relationship of the public, the parties and the parlia· ment is affected by this change in function.
S. Here it should be understood· that Habermas considers the principle behind tbe bourgeois public sphere as indispensable, but not its historical form. 6. One must distinguish between Habermas' concept of "making proceedings public" (Publivtiit) and the "public
sphere" (Oe!fl!llllichluit). The term Publir.iliil de.mibes the degree of public effect generated by a public act. Thus a situation can arise in which the form of public opinioa making is maintained, while the substance of the public sphere has long ago been undermined.
At the same time, daily political newspapers assumed an important role. In the second half of the eighteenth century literary journalism created serious competition for the earlier news sheets which were mere compilations of notices. Kart Biicher characterized this great development as follows: "Newspapers changed from mere institutions for the publication of news into bearers and leaders of public opinion-weapons of party politics. This transformed the newspaper business. A new element emerged between the gathering and the publication of news: the editorial staff. But for the newspaper publisher it meant that he changed from a vendor of recent news to a dealer in public opinion." The publishers insured the newspapers a commercial basis, yet without commercializing them as such. The press remained an institution of the public itself, effective in the manner of a mediator and intensifier of public discussion, no longer a mere organ for the spreading of news but not yet the medium of a consumer culture. This type of journalism can be observed above all during periods of revolution when newspapers of the smallest political groups and organizations spring up, for instance in Paris in 1789. Even in the Paris of 1848 every half-way eminent politician organized his club, every other his journal: 450 clubs and over 200 journals were established there between February and May alone. Until the permanent legalization of a politically functional public sphere, the appearance of a political newspaper meant joining the struggle for freedom and public opinion, and thus for the public sphere as a principle. Only with the establishment of the bourgeois constitutional state was the intellectual press relieved of the pressure of its convictions. Since then it has been able to abandon its polemical position and take advantage of the earning possibilites of a commercial undertaking. In England, France,. and the United States the transformation from a journalism of conviction to one of commerce began in the 1830s at approximately the same time. In the transition from the literary journalism of private individuals to the public services of the mass media the public sphere was transformed by the influx of private interests, which received special prominence in the mass media.
4. THE PUBUC SPHERE IN THE SOCIAL WELFARE STATE MASS DEMOCRACY
The Political Economy of the Media I! C. Capitalist Mode: 1.Hegemony: The Press Yet thiS trend towards the weakening of the public sphere as a principle is opposed by the extension of fundamental rights in the social welfare state. The demand that information be accessible to the public is extended from organs of the state to all organizations dealing with the state. To the degree that this is realized, a public body of organized private individuals would take the place of the nowdefunct public body of private individuals who relate individually to each other. Only these organized individuals could participate effectively in the process of public communication; only they could use the channels of the public sphere which exist within parties and associations and the process of making proceedings public (Publizitiit) which was established to facilitate the dealings of organizations with the state. Political compromises would have to be legitimized through this process of public communication. The idea of the public sphere, preserved in the social welfare state mass democracy, an idea which calls for a rationalization of power through the medium of public discussion among private individuals, threatens to disintegrate with the structural transformation of the public sphere itself. It could only be realized today, on an altered basis, as a rational reorganization of social and political power under the mutual control of rival organizations committed to-tbe public sphere in their internal structure as well as in their relations with the state and each other.
Appendix: Selected Bibliography C. THE FORMATION Or THE CAl'ITALIST MODE ·oF COMMUNICATION I. The Rise of Bourgeois Hegemony BARONE, Guilia; Armando PETRUCCI. Prima: Non leggere ( Biblioteche e pubblica letrura in ltalia dui 186/ ai nostri giorni)Milan: Mazzotta, 1976. COLLET, Collet Dobson. History of tire Taxes 011 Knowledge: Their Origin and Repeal. London: Watts, 1933. *DEBES, Dietmar, ed. Gepriese11es A11denken von Erfindung der Buclrdruckerie: Leipziger Stimmen zur Erfindung Gutenbergs. Leipzig: Reclam, 1968. ESCARPIT, Robert. The Book Revolution. Paris: London: UNESCO, Harrap, 1966. FEBVRE, Lucien; Henri-Jean MARTIN. The Comi11g of tire Book: Tire Impact of Priming 1450·1800. London: New Left Books, 1976. *"Gutenberg", an issue of L'arc (Aix-en-Provence, France), 50, nd (1973?). HABERMAS, Jurgen. Strukturwandel der 0/femlic/rkeit: Umersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der burgerliclren Gesellschaft. Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1971. (CN:I49)
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KUNZLE. David. The History of 1he Comic S1rip: Volume/. The Early Comic Strip (Narrative Strips and l'iclllres Stories in tire Early European Broadsheets 1450-1826), Berkeley, Ca: University or Calirornia, 1973. (CN:437) • Le livre fra/lcais: Hier, aujourd'lrui, demain. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1972. MARTIN, Henri-Jean. Livre, pouvoirs el societe ii Paris au XVlie siecle. Paris: Droz, 1969. WILUAMS, Raymond. 77ze Long Revolution. N. Y .: Harper & Row, 1966. (CN:603)
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Classic liberal theories of the media have been advanced so often that their central arguments seem almost wearisomely familiar. The traditional communist and marxist approaches are also wellestablished reference points in terms of contemporary debate. The same is not true, however, of radical democraticl perspectives of the media, at least in Britain. These surface in critiques of the capitalist media and advocacy of public-service broadcasting, in the working assumptions of radical journalists and, in a fragmentary form, in speeches, articles and academic commentary. When collated, these represent nevertheless a coherent and fruitful way of looking at the role of the media, which should take its place alongside the better-known liberal and marxist perspectives. This chapter seeks therefore to pull together the eclectic elements of the radical democratic tradition, and present it as a formal 'theory'. It does this by setting out in a .schematic way the differences between the radical approach and its principal rivals. (See Table 1 for a summary.) This schema cuts across the best-known modern representation of the media and the public sphere- the historical analysis advanced by Jiirgen Habermas. His study has rightly triggered widespread debate, and this essay follows a detour by evaluating his arguments in the light of subsequent historical research. This digression is hopefully justified in that it casts light on a seminal study; and it also brings out the way in which historical research the neglected grandparent of media studies- can contribute to the debate about the role of the media in liberal democracies. Implicit in rival theories and historical accounts of the media are alternative prescriptions for organizing the media. Both liberal and marxist approache~>·have major pitfalls. The essay concludes with
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an attempt to define a third route, which avoids the shortcomings and builds on the strengths of both liberalism and marxism. LIDERAL AND RADICAL APPROACHES
According to classical liberal theory, the public sphere (or, in more traditional terminology, 'public forum') is the space between government and society in which private individuals exercise formal and informal control over the state: formal control through the election of governments and informal control through the pressure of public opinion. The media are central to this process. They distribute the information necessary for citizens to make an informed choice at election time; they facilitate the formation of public opinion by providing an independent forum of debate; and they enable the people to shape the conduct of government by articulating their views. The media are thus the principal institutions of the public sphere or, in the rhetoric of nineteenth-century liberalism, 'the fourth estate of the realm'. Underlying the traditionalist version of this theory is a simplistic view of society as an aggregation of individuals, and of government as 'the seat of power'. 2 The key social relationship that needs to be policed by an ever-vigilant media is therefore the nexus between individuals and the state. Indeed, in some presentations of liberal theory, the media are on permanent guard duty patrolling against the abuse of executive power and safeguarding individual liberty. However, one problem with this approach is that it fails to take adequate account of the way in which power is exercised through capitalist and patriarchal structures, and consequently does not consider how the media relate to wider social cleavages in society. It also ignores the way in which interests have become organized and collectivized, and so does not address the question of how the media function in relation to modern systems of representation in liberal democracies. Consequently, it has nothing useful to say about the way in which the media can invigorate the structures of liberal democracy. The starting-point of the radical democratic approach is that the · role of the media goes beyond that defined by classic liberalism. The media are a battleground between contending forces. How they respond to and mediate this conflict affects the balance of social forces and, ultimately, the distribution of rewards in society.
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A basic requirement of a democratic media system should be, therefore, that it represents all significant interests in society. It should facilitate their participation in the public domain, enable them to contribute to public debate and have an input in the framing of public policy. The media should also facilitate the functioning of representative organizations, and expose their internal processes to public scrutiny and the play of public opinion. In short, a central role of the media should be defined as assisting the equitable negotiation or arbitration of competing ·interests through democratic processes. However, there is a basic ambiguity within the radical democratic · tradition. The less radical strand argues that the media should reflect the prevailing balance of forces in society: a 'representative' media system is tacitly defined in terms of existing structures of power. This has led to the construction of broadcasting systems which, in different ways, have sought to reflect the balance of social or political forces in society. In Sweden, this has taken the form of incorporating representative popular movements into the command structure of broadcasting; in Germany and Finland, a system of making broadcasting appointments informed in part by the principle of proportional political representation; in the Netherlands, allocating airtime and technical facilities to representative organizations; and, in Britain and elsewhere, imposing a public duty on broadcasting to maintain apolitical balance between the major political parties. But there is another strand within the radical democratic tradition which believes that the media should be a 'countervailing' agency (though within a framework that ensures representation of all interests). This is sometimes articulated in politically neutral, ethical terms: the media should expose wrongdoing, correct injustice, subject to critical public scrutiny the exercise of power (whether this be by trade unions or business corporations). Alternatively, it is formulated in more overtly radical terms: the media should seek to redress the imbalance of power in society. Crucially, this means broadening access to the public domain in societies where elites have privileged access to it. It also means compensating for the inferior resources and skills of subordinate groups in advocating and rationalizing their interests by comparison with dominant groups. Although this formulation can be made to sound elitist and opposed to a 'representative' media system, it has an underlying rationale. Since no 'actually existing'
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liberal democracy is a polyarchy in which power is evenly diffused or in perfect equipoise, it is legitimate for the media to function as an equilibrating force. The radical approach also differs from the traditional liberal one in the way it conceptualizes the role of the media in modern democracies. In traditional liberal theory, the media are conceived primarily as vertical channels of communication between private citizens and government: they inform individual choice at election time, and they influence governments by articulating the collective view of private citizens. In contrast, radical revisionism advances a more sophisticated perspective in which the media are viewed as a complex articulation of vertical, horizontal and diagonal channels of communicatio~ between individuals, groups and power structures. This takes account of the fact that individual interests are safeguarded and advanced in modern liberal democracies partly through collective organizations like political parties and pressure groups, and at a strategic level through the construction and recomposition of alliances and coalitions. The role of the media is to facilitate this intricate system of representation, and democratize it by exposing intra-organizational decision-making to public disclosure and debate. This can be illustrated by considering the media in relation to one small aspect of the contemporary system of representation -. decision-making in a trade union. A trade union journal should provide a channel of communication between the union's leadership and rank and file:3 it should inform members of decisions taken in their name, reveal the processes of power braking in the union and relay union members' reactions. More generally, it should facilitate a debate within the union about how best to advance members' broadly defined interests, so that initiatives and ideas can emerge from the grass roots and be the subject of collective debate. And since solidarity is vital to the welfare of union members, the journal should also project symbols of collective identification. Yet the union journal, along with circulars and union videos, are only some of the channels of mediated communication linking membership of the union. Bypassing these are a number of other, potentially more powerful communications - TV programmes, radio programmes, newspapers, magazines reaching different members of the union and delivering different messages. These different inputs should provide a communications environment whichadequately represents the wider context and
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wider implications of union decisions, and inform the internal debates that determine them. The divergence of approach between traditional liberal and radical perspectives also gives rise to different normative judgements about the practice of journalism. The dominant strand in liberal thought celebrates the canon of professional objectivity, with its stress on disinterested detachment, the separation of fact from opinion, the balancing of claim and counterclaim. This stems from the value placed by contemporary liberalism on the role of the media as a channel of information between government and governed.4 In contrast, the radical approach is more often associated with partisan or investigative styles of journalism. This springs from the emphasis placed within the radical tradition on the adversarial and countervailing role of the media. But it is also justified by a wide-ranging attack on· the tradition of 'objective' journalism. Disengagement encourages, it is argued, passive dependence on powerful institutions and groups as 'accredited' sources; it fosters lazy journalism in which journalists fail to ferret independently for information and evaluate truth from falsehood; and, above all, the conventional stress on 'hard news' and factual reporting disguises from journalists their own unconscious reliance on dominant frameworks for selecting and making sense of the news. This said, there are differences of approach within the radical camp. One school of thought stresses the need to balance alternative statements, perspectives and interpretations. Although this is not very different from the liberal approach, it can be justified within the terms of the radical tradition. The 'balanced' approach assumes that advocacy and group representation is secured through the internal pluralism of each medium; the partisan traditi?n, assumes that it is secured through the full spectrum of the medta. Thus far we have discussed the media in conventional political terms. But'an important difference between the traditional liberal and radical approaches is that the latter often adopts a broader and more inclusive definition of what is political. In many liberal accounts, the public sphere is equated with the political domain; and the public role of the media is defined in relation to government. In contrast, radical commentators often refuse to accept the conventional distinction between private and public realms that underpins the liberal definition of the public sphere. The mediational role of the press and broadcasting is said to extend
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is usually defined as promoting human understanding, mutuality and tolerance, either in classic humanistS or feminist9 terms. The more inclusive definition of what is political in the radical democratic approach also brings out more fully the latent ideological meanings of all media output. Entertainment can provide a way of exploring, experimenting with and expressing a concept of self in relation to others ('Whom am I like, whom do I identify with, whom do I have a shared interest with?') which can have important political consequences. Media fiction and human interest stories also provide a way of mapping and interpreting society. This can promote a conservative, common-sense view in which social action is explained primarily in terms of individual psychology and elemental human emotion, or it can offer a potentially more radical perspective in which social processes are explained primarily in structural terms. Some seemingly apolitical material also embodies ethical codes or expressive values that lie at the heart of political creeds (egalitarianism, mutuality and a belief in human perfectibility in the case of traditional social democracy, or possessive individualism, self-reliance and social pessimism in the case of neo-liberal conservatism). This sensitization to the ideological meanings embedded in entertainment also has programmatic implications. If the role of the media is to be conceived in terms of representing adequately different social interests, its entertainment needs to giv~ adequate expression to the full range of cultural-political values in society. Unlike the traditional liberal approach, therefore, which is silent or disapproving of media entertainment or defines it solely in terms of satisfying consumer demand, radical democrats make certain prescriptive demands in relation to entertainment. There is, however, an implicit tension between the demand for the promotion of feminist or humanist values and the demand for the representation of cultural diversity (including anti-feminist and anti-humanist values).- This is, in effect, a repeat of the division between those who seek to make the media a representative agency and those who seek to make it a progressive, countervailing one, noted earlier. The divergence between liberal and radical approaches is even more marked when it comes to a debate about how the media should be organized. This is something that will be discussed more fully later. It is sufficient, here, to signal one important difference. Traditional liberals believe that the media should be based on the
to all areas where power is exercised over others, including both the workplace and the home. And the influence exerted by the media is defined not merely in terms of government action but also in terms of effecting adjustments in social norms and interpersonal relationships. Partly for this reason, the traditional liberal and radical democratic approaches conceive entertainment differently. From a traditional liberal perspective, entertainment is problematic. It does not fit readily within the framework of liberal analysis since it is not an extension of rational-critical debate, and it is not part of the flow of information between government and governed, except in an oblique sense. Liberal commentators have tended to respond to this quandary in one of three ways. Some have criticized the growth of media entertainment as a regrettable diversion from the media's central democratic purpose and function, while others have·simply ignored the existence of entertainment and discussed the media as if its political content was its central or defining characteristic. s The third response has been to discuss entertainment as if it is a separate category unrelated to the political role of the media; and to define the liberal position as the provision of entertainment in a form that maximizes consumer gratification. 6 In contrast, media entertainment is accommodated without difficulty within a radical framework of analysis since it is not wedded to a narrow, state-oriented definition of politics. Most media output is, as Raymond Williams once put it, a way of 'talking together about the processes of our common life' .7 It offers a commentary on the nature of social relations between men and women, parents and children, young and old, the ethnic majority and minorities- on what they are and, by implication, on what they might become. It can also provide a means of obtaining a better understanding of others in a way that fosters empathetic insights between different sections of society and strengthens bonds of social association. Conversely, media entertainment can do the . opposite: it can foster misunderstanding and antagonism through the repetition of stereotypes that provide a focus for displaced fears. This has given rise to the contention that a distinction should be made between different forms of entertainment. While the provision of pleasure through the media is an important public good, entertainment should not be judged solely in terms of consumer gratification. Media fiction should also provide, it is argued, an adequate-way for society to commune with itself. This
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some extent a diversity of viewpoint.ll This wasparticularly true of the early period of Soviet history, when the Soviet press was alsc organized and conceptualized in a mor:e pluralistic way than it was to be later .12 But the communist conception of the media that took hold in the Soviet Union before the Gorbachev regime was deeply authoritarian; and the actual practice of the Soviet media was stunted by the underdevelopment of a civil society independent of the state. Even after negotiating the rapids of cold war scholarship, it is clear that the traditional communist approach is far removed from the radical democratic perspective that has been outlined. The marxist critique of the media in the west cannot be readily reproduced as a single set of ideas since Marx himself never formulated a fully fledged analysis of the capitalist press, and subsequent marxist interpretations have taken a number of divergent forms. But traditional marxism offers an understanding of the capitalist media that is at odds with the radical democratic approach. According to old-style marxism, the liberal concept of the public sphere .is a chimera, disguising the reality of bourgeois domination. The media are agencies of class control since they are owned by the bourgeoisie or are subject to its ideological hegemony. Indeed, the media should be viewed as an ideological apparatus of the state- the ideational counterpart to the repressive apparatus of the police, judiciary and armed forces through which the ruling order is ultimately sustained.13 The view that the media can be 'reformed' is dismissed as naive. Significant changes in the media can only be effected through the socialist transformation of society. This is opposed by a radical democratic view which offers a different understanding of the relationship of the media to power structures in society. Radical democrats usually argue that journalists have sometimes a considerable degree of day-to-day · autonomy, particularly in broadcasting corporations which have won a measure of autonomy from government and in commercial media with dispersed shareholdings, where there is no dominant owner. This relative autonomy enables jm~rnalists to respond to a variety of influences- a change in the general climate of opinion, a shift in the milieux in which journalists move, the recomposition of accredited sources (due to, for example, a change of government), the emergence of new market trends calling for a competitive response. These responses cannot be automatically dismissed as acts of repressive incorporation in which elements of popular
free market since this guarantees the media's independence from the state. Radical democrats usually argue, on the other hand, that the free market can never be an adequate basis for organizing the media because it results in a system skewed in favour of dominant class interests. RADICAL DEMOCRATIC AND TRADITIONAL MARXIST/COMMUNIST PERSPECTIVES Although the radical democratic approach owes a considerable debt to marxism, it can be differentiated from it both in terms of stalinist practice in the Soviet Union and also in terms of traditional marxist critiques of the media in western liberal democracies. The radical democratic concept of a public sphere as a public space in which private individuals and organized interests seek to influence the allocation of resources and regulate social relations has no place in a traditional communist conception of society. This assumes that the common ownership of the means of production has removed structural conflicts, and created the conditions in which the common interests of society can be realized through the application of the scientific precepts of marxist-leninist analysis. The Communist Party as the custodian of scientific materialism has 'a leading role'- a euphemism for exclusive political monopoly- in co-ordinating the different elements of society in the realization of its common interests. The role of the media is defined within this framework: it educates people in the tenets of marxist-leninism; it aids the co-ordination and mobilization of the people in the tasks that need to be fulfilled; even media· entertainment has an educational role in providing models for emulation and instruction and is expected not to subvert official definitions of Soviet society. Only one element of traditional communist theory of the media - the stress on its function as a safeguard against bureaucratic distortions of the state - allows it a free-wheeling, campaigning role. But the way in which the media was controlled before glasnost generally ensured that this remit was interpreted narrowly .to Admittedly, the functioning of the Soviet media before Gorbachev was at times more restricted in theory than in actual practice (thus reversing the pattern of the west where the media has long been more restricted in practice than in theory). When there were tensions and disagreements within the highe-r echelons of the Communist Party, the Soviet media expressed to
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This is not to adopt uncritically liberal pluralist arguments. The media systems in most liberal democracies are not representative. On the contrary, most under-represent subordinate interests and are canted more towards the right than their publics. This reflects the prevalence of capitalist media ownership, and consequent influence on personnel recruitment nnd promotion. mmkct dh:tortions limiting real choice, media dependence on powerrul groups and institutions as news sources and the unequal distribution of resources within society for the articulation and gencrnlizution of social interests. But the radical democratic approach believes that the media can be reorganized in a way that will make them more representative or progressive. One way in which this can be done is to secure democratic consent for their reform through the state.
consciousness are selectively assimilated in ways that leave the dominant ideology essentially unchanged. This familiar argument is usually based on a conception of the dominant ideology as a monolithic and faithful rationalization of dominant material interests. This generally overstates the .homology between ideas and economic interests, the internal consistency of dominant discourses, the homogeneity of dominant interests and the extent ·· · of ideological domination of subordinate classes. The radical democratic approach is also grounded in a different un~erstanding of the wider environment in which media organizatiOns operate. This is a subject on which it is difficult to generalize since circumstances vary considerably from one country to another, and from one period to another. But in general radical democratic analysis tends to argue that acceptance of the social order in Europe is based on pragmatic rather than ideological consent; t~at basic antagonisms persist, which .generate opposition to the hierarchy of power; and that, as a consequence, dominant interests have been forced to make political concessions, build cross-class alliances and modify their legitimating rhetoric in order to shore up their position. In many liberal democracies, an equivalent process of coalition building has occurred in 'opposition' to. the dominant alliance. Subor?inate interests have sought alternative ways of making sense of soctety; found common ground with other interests in a similar predicament; combined forces and formulated a programme of ref~rm as a b~~i~ for seeking wider support; and, very exceptionally, proJected a vtston of an alternative society that challenged the legitimacy of the social order and provided the basis for mobilizing a broad-based constituency of opposition. This perspective has the effect of 'repositioning' the place of the. media. in society. The media are assumed to be caught in an tdeologtcal crossfire rather than acting as a fully conscripted servant of the social order. By implication, the media have a greater potential to affect the outcome of social contests since these are no longer viewed as inevitably unequal and one-sided. Underlying this reorientation is the belief that certain reforms such as a pr~gre.ssive tax system and a strong welfare programme, a more egahtanan education system, eo-determination at work, legal guarantees of women's and union rights- which are dismissed from one perspective as minor concessions leaving the social system fundamentally unaltered - are important gains in their own right.
HISTORICAL ELUCIDATION: (1) BRITISH PRESS HISTORY History illuminates the debate about the role of the media in society. Indeed, one of the most influential contributions to this debate - Habermas's celebrated analysis of the media and the transformation of the bourgeois public sphere, first published in Germany in 196214- took t~e form of an historical analysis. Since the British historical experience loomed large in Habermas's study, it is worth reviewing his thesis in the light of subsequent historical research on the British media. Habermas's thesis can be briefly stated.15 In the late eighteenth century, the public sphere was composed of elite, private citizens who were reconstituted as a public body in the form of reasonbased, public opinion. An increasingly independent press was central to this process of reconstitution: it provided the main medium through which private opinions were transformed into public opinion, and the principal means by which government was subject to informal supervision. But in the era of mass politics, the public sphere was transformed by the extension of the state and the collectivization of private interests. Rational public discourse was supplanted by power politics in which large organizations made deals with each other and with the state, while excluding the public. The media were an accessory to this 'refeudalization' of society. They functioned as manipulative agencies controlling mass opinion, in contrast to the early press which had facilitated the formation and expression
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of organic, public opinion. The only available solution to this crisis of representation, Habermas argues, is to purify the channels of societal communication through the restoration of public reason . and open disclosure. ~abermas's characterization of the early British press was d~nved from th~ traditional Whig interpretation of British press history (for which there is a well-worn equivalent in French and German historiography). According to this view 16 an independent press came into being as a result of the ev~lution of the capitalist market and the dismantlement of state controls on the press. The new generation of free papers became, in the words of the New Cambridge History, 'great organs of the public mind' .17 They empowered the people, acted as a check on govern~ent and provided disinterested information enabling an expandmg electorate to participate responsibly in Britain's maturing democracy . . Thi~ interpr~tation has come under attack from two opposed duectwns - hberal revisionist and radical historians. Though Haber:"las has not been criticized directly (since, though he is a lummous presence in political science and media sociology, Habermas seems to be largely unknown to British historians), his central arguments have been tacitly repudiated in recent historical accounts of the British press. The radical attack on Whig history has centred on its assumption t~at the winning of press freedom from state control can be equated ~Ith ~opular cont~ol. Instead they offer a more complex narrative m which changes m the press are discussed in terms of how they relate~ to and att:ected the balance of social forces in society .Is Thus, m some radical accounts, a sharp contrast is drawn between the first half of the nineteenth century when the popular press reflected a wide spectrum of interests and views and the second half when it became more closely aligned to the vi~ws and interests of the _dominant class coalition. This transformation is explained partly m terms of structural changes in the press industry. Before t~e 1850~, the market system functioned in a way that promoted Wide social access to the public domain: newspapers cost little to start and could be profi_table without advertising. But. in the If of the nineteenth century, increased dependence on secon~ advertlsmg led to the closure of advertising-starved radical papers while rising publishing costs led to the steady transfer of control of the popular press to-capitalist entrepreneurs.I9
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This was followed, in the twentieth century, by the consolidation of newspaper chains, controlled by predominantly right-wing proprietors, and by the death of the Labour press- the bureaucratic voice through which working-class interests came to be represented in the 1920s. These changes reinforced the drift of the press to the .right. By 1987, Conservative dailies accounted for 72 per cent of national circulation, even though the Conservative Party won only 43 per cent of the vote in the general election. Even the non-Conservative press was close to the political centre, and joined in the stigmatization of dissidents-left-wing trade unionists, radical councils, militant students, peace and gay rights campaigners.zo At first glance, Habermas appears to have anticipated this critique. Thus he was at pains to emphasize the narrow social base of the early independent press rather than to portray it as an institution of the general public. But his analysis never escaped in practice from the terms of reference of Whig history. This is illustrated by the small walk-on part assigned by Habermas to the early radical press. Its rise in the early nineteenth century is briefly hailed by Habermas as part of the process by which the public sphere was expanded: its fall as marking the resumption of a more reasoned public discourse in which 'the press as a forum of rational-critical debate [was] released from the pressure to take sides ideologically' .2I This dismissal of the radical press as an ideological pollutant highlights the problematic nature of Habermas's conception of reasoned discourse. The newspapers celebrated by Habermas were engines of propaganda for the bourgeoisie rather than the embodiment of disinterested rationality. Their version of reason was challenged by radical papers which became the circulation leaders in the first half of the nineteenth century. The more militant of these developed a radical and innovatory analysis of society going far beyond the bourgeois critique of the aristocratic constitution (which would have left the reward structure fundamentally unchanged). They challenged the legitimacy of the capitalist order, arguing that poverty was rooted in the economic process and was caused principally by the profits appropriated by capitalists, as well as by a corrupt state controlled by the propertied classes. They also proclaimed a public opinion different from that asserted by the bourgeois press. In effect, the newspapers dismissed by Habermas as deviating from reasoned debate were merely repudiating the premises of this debate, and developing a, set of
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ideas that generalized the interests of a ·class excluded from the political system.22 The conventional categories of liberal history also caused Habermas to analyse changes in the material base of the nineteenth-century press in terms of differential individual rather than class access to the public sphere. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, argues Habermas, the British press became 'an institution of certain participants in the public sphere in their capacity as private individuals' .23 In other words, the press began to be dominated by chain-owning proprietors. This fails to comprehend the significance of the changes that took place. In 1837, a great national newspaper like the Northern Star was established with less than £1,000.24 By 1918, another national weekly paper - the Sunday Express - needed over £2 million to become established.25 Whereas in 1837 a modest subscription in radical northern towns had been sufficient to launch a national paper' it required the massive resources of a multinational conglomerate headed by Lord Beaverbrook to do the same thing some eighty years later. The escalation in publishing costs in the meantime did not just affect individual access to the public sphere: it debarred access for large sections of the community.26 Thus, radical press history implicitly challenges Habermas's thesis in three ways. It relativizes his conception of reason. It draws attention to the missing dimension of class struggle in his historical portrayal of press representation. And it points to his inadequate understanding of the way in which the market system filtered social access to the public sphere. But in some ways, liberal revisionist history has generated a still more fundamental assault on Habermas's analysis. A number of liberal revisionists have criticized the mythic idealization of the 'independent' eighteenth-century press. It was caught up, they point out, in an elaborate web of faction fighting, financial corruption and ideological management27 - a far cry from Habermas's idealized portrayal of the eighteenth-century press as the embodiment of the reasoned discourse of private individuals. However, the revisionists' more important argument is that a significant part of the press was subject to some form of political control by organized interests from the eighteenth century right through to the twentieth century.2B This refutes the contrast made by Habermas.between the early press as an extension of
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rational-critical debate among private citizens, and the later press as the manipulative agency of collectivized politics. Whatever view one takes of this historical revisionism, it is clear that Habermas's arguments need at the very least to be reformulated in the light of the new historical evidence that has come to light.29 HISTORICAL ELUCIDATION: (2) DEVELOPMENT OF BRITISH BROADCASTING If Habermas's account of the development of the early press is questionable, his characterization of the modern media is positively misleading. He claims that electronic mass communications were a new type of media that induced an uncritical torpor:
They draw the eyes and ears of the public under their spell but at the same time, by taking away its distance, place it under 'tutelage', which is to say they deprive it of the opportunity to say something and disagree. . . . The world fashioned by the mass media is a public sphere in appearance only.30 This view of modern media as a stupefying and narcotizing force is refuted by numerous empirical sociological and psychological studies.Jl These reveal the variety of filters that limit media influence - selective audience attention, comprehension, perception and retention of information against the wider context of the social mediation of communications. Audiences emerge as recalcitrant, responding to the media primarily in terms of the discourses that they bring to their media consumption. The mass public, in short, is neither as malleable nor as passive as Habermas feared. Habermas's implicit contrast between the demotic manipulation of the modern media and the ratiocination of the eighteenthcentury press is also difficult to reconcile with historical reality. His conception of reasoned discourse is closer, in fact, to the practice of British public-service broadcasting, with ·its ideology of disinterested professionalism, its careful balancing of opposed points of view and umpired studio discussions than it is to that of the polemicist and faction-ridden London press of the eighteenth century, operating in the context of secret service subsidies, opposition grants and the widespread bribing of journalists. The structure of the two media systems also differed in a way that had wider implications. The eighteenth-century London press was
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composed of 'conflicting public spheres', w}Jich structured reality according to the views of small, highly differentiated audiences. In contrast, British broadcasting was, until the rise of satellite TV, a 'unitary public sphere' in which millions of viewers with divergent views reguliuly watched the same programmes and were exposed to the same corpus of conflicting evidence and argument. One system fostered ideological reinforcement and factionalism, the other a consensual, anti-partisan, reasoned public discourse upheld by Habermas as a model. A major challenge to Habermas's pessimistic view of modern media also comes from historical research into the history of British broadcasting. This plays Habermas's own cards against him: it extends his arguments about the rise of the press to the development of broadcasting. Thus, historians have focused attention on the way in which broadcasting organizations gained an increasing measure of autonomy from government.32 Key landmarks in this emancipation are said to be the greatly increased independence won by the BBC during the Second World War, the BBC's symbolically important defiance ofthe Prime Minister during the Suez War, the ending of the fourteen-day rule (prohibiting studio discussion of issues due to be debated in parliament during the next fortnight) in 1956, the first so-called 'TV election' in 1959 and the lifting of the ban on televizing the Commons in 1989. Linked to this development was an enormous increase in the volume of news reporting and analysis. Broadcasting thus became an increasingly independent channel of information and discussion, which facilitated the formation of public opinion and democratic influence on government. This argument has not gone unchallenged. Some critical studies argue that broadcasters internalized external political pressure by censoring themselves, notably in relation to the conflict in Northern Ireland.33 Attention has also been drawn to the increasing skill and sophistication with which politicians, and their publicists, manipulated the airwaves. 34 This finds an answering echo in American studies which argue that presidential elections have become manipulated 'TV spectacles' in which meaningful public participation and political choice has been minimized.35 But in the context of Britain, the fine-tuning of the arts of TV management should be seen as a belated response by politicians to their loss of domination over broadcasting rather than an extension of it. Politicians now have much less control over the agenda and terms
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of reference of broadcasting coverage than they did in the 1950s.36 A second key theme of broadcasting history is that TV and radio helped to democratize the relationship between government and governed.37 The TV studio, it is argued, eclipsed parliament as a forum of national debate:38 consequently, politics became a continuous public activity rather than a closed affair between professional politicians followed closely only by a politicized elite between elections. Broadcasting also cultivated from the 1930s onwards a relaxed, 'domesticated' style of discussing politics that made it seem personal and accessible rather than abstract and technical. 39 A more aggressive style of interviewing politicians was also developed in the late 1950s, which symbolically asserted the accountability of political leaders to the electorate. A more egalitarian relationship was also promoted by the development of political satire on TV from the early 1960s onwards. The rise of broadcasting, like that of the press, is thus portrayed as an emancipatory force that empowered the people. However, some historians have embroidered this thesis by inserting a radical thread into the weave of its whiggish argument. Their central contention is that broadcasting broadened the social and political basis of popular representation in Britain because it was organized along public-service lines. The policies and views of the Labour Party were more fully represented on the airwaves than in the press because, it is argued, broadcasting was subject to a public-service duty to maintain a political balance. The public-service duty to inform also generated quality news and current affairs programmes at peak times, which won mass audiences. This helped to offset the knowledge gap between elites and the general public, promoted by Britain's class-stratified quality and popular press. Initially, radio was also organized in a way that widened social access to political knowledge, although this policy was first modified and then abandoned in the radio reorganizations of the 1940s and 1960s. Some historians point more dramatically to the way in which TV and radio have, at times, brought into public prominence the plight of the underclass or facilitated public debate in a form that questioned the status quo. During the 1930s, documentary radio programmes caused a political sensation by enabling the unemployed to speak directly to the nation about their predicament.40 During the Second World War, the BBC staged
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debates about peacetime reconstruction which, though carefully policed, called into question the basis of the pre-war political order.41 During the 1960s, radical plays like Cathy Come Home dramatized the problems of homelessness and poverty in a way that stirred the conscience of the nation. This broadening of political representation also had, it is argued, a cultural dimension. Cultural judgements, which both reflect and legitimate the leadership claims of the political middle class, have long shaped the definition of public-service broadcasting in Britain. But this became a less pronounced featJ.Ire of public-service broadcasting as it developed over time. The fictional portrayal of working-class heroes and heroines for the first time in radio serials in the 1940s, the projection of ordinary domestic life as an adventure story in 1950s TV soap opera, the breakthrough of young working-class music in the early 1960s and the greatly increased airtime devoted to working-class sports like snooker and darts in the 1980s, were only some of the key moments in the cultural democratization of broadcasting. Implicitly, they validated popular pleasures and affirmed the importance of preferences that did not correspond to 'the social hierarchy of taste' ,42 But although these historical accounts of public-service broadcasting appear to illustrate the way in which radical and liberal approaches can be interwoven, they in fact privilege a liberal approach at the expense of a radical interpretation. The selective nature of this approach is underlined by a number of sociological studies of TV programmes, some of which are now almost historical documents. Their common theme is that TV coverage has tended to be structured in terms of the assumptions of dominant groups in society, as exemplified by TV reporting of industrial relations, management of the economy, internal conflicts within the Labour Party, the Falklands War, images of east-west relations and of Northern Ireland. 43 Their implication is that broadcasting has functioned not as an open forum of public debate but as an agency privileging dominant discourses and sustaining dominant power groups in Britain. This perspective will doubtless be more fully developed, in due course, in relation to broadcasting history. There are perhaps two general observations to be derived from this review. The first is that alternative liberal and radical conceptions of the role of media are present,. to a lesser or greater extent, in histories of the British media. History thus puts flesh on the skeletal outlines,.that were sketched earlier.
46 Communication and citizenship
Second, Habermas's analysis- though stimulating and thoughtprovoking- is deeply flawed. It is based on contrasting a golden era that never existed with an equally misleading representation of present times as a dystopia. The contrast does not survive empirical historical scrutiny. THE THIRD ROUTE The two main approaches to organizing the media- the free-market liberal and collectivist-statist strategies- each have drawbacks. Yet they can be combined in ways that minimize their defects and capitalize on their strengths. One central deficiency of the market approach is that it produces an unrepresentative media system. The high level of capitalization in most sectors of the modern media restricts market entry to powerful capitalist interests. It also shields them from competition save from other capitalist entrepreneurs and large corporations. In Britain, for example, the establishment costs of a new national daily are at least £20 million; for a local cable TV station around £40 million; for a substantial commercial TV regional franchise well in excess of £100 million; and for a satellite TV service over £500 million. Only in marginal sectors of the media - low-circulation magazines, local free sheets and local community radio stations are entry costs still relatively modest. The second, related problem is that most media markets are distorted due to the large economies of scale that are an especially pronounced feature of the communications industries. A small number of 'majors' have long dominated the film and music production industries.44 Newspaper chains overshadow the press in most liberal democracies.45 Only in television has state action in some countries restricted the development of private monopoly power, but even in this sector things are changing fast. Government privatization policies and the commercial exploitation of the new TV industries are promoting the development of dominant TV companies. 46 The character of media oligopoly has also changed. Dominant producer companies in different sectors of the media have merged to produce multi-media conglomerates. These have expanded on a global scale, and in many cases have become linked through crossownership to core sectors of finance and industrial capital. 47 Their growth poses a problem for two reasons. It has increased the power
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of an unrepresentative capitalist elite, symbolized by Murdoch and Berlusconi, to control the distribution of information and ideas on an unprecedented scale. Second, their rise has been accompanied by an erosion of the competitive processes which in a limited but still important way made them publicly accountable. The third major defect of the market system is that it tends to lead to a narrowing in the ideological and cultural diversity of the media. This is not merely the by-product of market distortions restricted market entry and global concentration of ownership but is built into the 'normal' processes of media markets. Intense competition between a limited number of producers encourages common denominator provision for the mass market. This is particularly true of TV due to the peculiarities of the medium. Television can achieve higher sales in terms of larger ratings at minimum extra cost, which reinforces the economic advantages of targeting the middle market. Some TV companies are also funded entirely by advertising, which is less sensitive to intensities of consumer preference than direct consumer payments. This also encourages the production of bland programmes with a universal appeal to an undifferentiated, mass audience. 48 In short, the free-market approach has three central flaws. It excludes broad social interests from participating in the control of the main media. It leads to concentration of media ownership. And it promotes cultural uniformity, particularly in TV output. These shortcomings should be viewed in terms of what a democratic society should require of its media. At the very least, an adequate media system should enable the full range of political and economic interests to be represented in the public domain, and find expression in popular fiction. A market-based media system, in modern conditions, is incapable of delivering this. The advantage of the collectivist approach is that it can enable interests with limited financial resource - which are excluded in a market-driven system - to have a share in the control of the media. It can also prevent control of the media from falling into the hands of an unrepresentative, capitalist elite. And through collective arrangements, it can also ensure that media output is pluralistic and diverse. But the potential promise of collective provision has often been contrarlicted by its actual practice. This is partly because collective provision through the state can result in state control, as is illustrated notoriously by the stalinist experience. A multi-tiered
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system of control was evolved in the Soviet Union - based on formal legal censorship, control over the materifil production and distribution of communications, control over senior appointments, indoctrination in journalism schools and, more indirectly, control over the flow of information - which turned the media into an instrument of the state and the Communist Party. The collectivist approach proved more successful in European countries with a tradition of liberal democracy. Even so, a number of problems recurred. State pressure was sometimes brought to bear on broadcasters, through control over appointments, public funding and the allocation of franchises.49 Even when the direct abuse of state power was minimized, effective control over broadcasting was exercised, to a lesser or greater extent, by a professional elite integrated into the hierarchy of power. Their domination was legitimized in some countries by a paternalistic definition of public-service broadcasting which emphasized the leadership role of cultural bureaucrats in educating and informing the masses. This led to insensitivity and lack of responsiveness to the diversity of public taste, particularly in situations where there was no effective competition. so These defects in the functioning of the collectivist approach draw attention to the positive aspects of the market mechanism. A market-based system does not guarantee the autonomy of the media from the state since the same interests that dominate the media can also dominate the state. But it does minimize the exercise of state leverage through control of funding and appointments. Similarly, the processes of the free market do not ensure, as we have seen, that the media mirror the ideological and cultural diversity of the public. But when competition is not deformed by oligopoly and restricted entry, it does result in greater reponsiveness to audience preferences. The question then qecomes how can one combine collectivist and market approaches in a synthesis that incorporates the strengths of both. To judge from the European experience, there are four alternative answers to this question (though each has a number of different variations). One model is the centrally controlled market economy. Its underlying rationale is that the terms of and rules by which competition is conducted should be centrally determined according to the public interest. One example of this approach is provided by the British TV system, in which free-market
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competition is tempered in a numbe~ of ways. The largest organization, the BBC, is publicly owned and is expected to set quality standards since it is run for the public good rather than private gain. The other main players in the system - ranging from a regionally based commercial network (Channel3), a public trust corporation (Channel4), local TV stations (cable TV) and a national commercial consortium (B Sky B) - are differentiated in organizational terms in order to promote choice. The principal TV channels are also funded mainly by different sources of revenue (licence fee, advertising and subscriptions) in order to avoid the uniformity induced by direct competition. And all TV channels are subject to content controls, though with varying degrees of stringency and policed in different ways. The full complexity of the system need not be descriqed here. Built into its design are a number of central objectives: quality defined in terms of a negotiation between elite norms and audience ratings; diversity defined in terms of a mix of different types of programme rather than of values; and political representation defined in terms of Westminster consensus rather than popular dissensus. However, these objectives can be changed and modifications can be made in the system to achieve this. Thus, a number of reforms have been proposed which would strengthen broadcasters' autonomy from politicians, and extend the ideological and cultural range of programme output.Sl Indeed, one of the advantages ofthe centrally controlled approach is that systemic modifications can be effected relatively easily: the disadvantage is that this facility can be abused. An alternative approach represented by the Dutch broadcasting system takes the form of a mandated market economy. Both airtime and the use of publicly owned production facilities, with technical staff, are allocated in the Netherlands to different groups on the basis of the size of their membership defined by the sale of their programme guides. This results in a plurality of organizations from commercial groups like TROS to VARA (with close links to the Labour Party) and the NCRV (a conservative, protestant organization), each providing a comprehensive package of services. None of these groups, unlike the central news service, is required to adopt a bi-partisan approach. The intention is to produce a broadcasting system that reflects a wide spectrum of political opinion and cultural values. But although the concept behind this system is seductive, it is not without problems.
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Broadcasting organizations which lost audiences to TROS began to imitate its commercial entertainment formula, thereby weakening the diversity of the broadcasting system as a whole. 52 The relatively high level of Dutch audiences attracted to cable TV, with a heavy diet of US programmes, also indicates a certain level of consumer dissatisfaction with Dutch broadcasting.53 The third approach is the regulated market economy, represented by the Swedish press system. The thinking behind this is that the market should be reformed so that it functions in practice in the way it is supposed to in theory. Its most important feature is that it lowers barriers to market entry. The Press Subsidies Board provides cheap loans to under-resourced groups enabling them to launch new papers if they come up with a viable project. The Board has acted as a midwife to seventeen new newspapers between 1976 and 1984, most of which have survived. The second important feature of the system is that it tries to reconstitute the competitive market as a level playing field in which all participants have an equal prospect of success. Since market leaders have the dual advantage of greater economies of scale and, usually, a disproportionately large share of advertising, low-circulation papers receive compensation in the form of selective aid. The introduction of this subsidy scheme has reversed the trend towards local press monopoly.54 A number of safeguards are built into the system in order to prevent political favouritism in the allocation of grants. The Press Subsidies Board is composed of representatives from all the political parties. The bulk of its subsidies - over 70 per cent in 1986 - is allocated to low-circulation papers, with less than 50 per cent penetration of households in their area, according to automatically functioning criteria fixed in relation to circulation and volume of newsprint, irrespective of editorial policy. Beneficiaries from the subsidy scheme include publications from the marxist left to the radical right: the paper which has the largest subsidy is the independent Conservative Svenska Dagbladet, which ·has been a consistent critic of successive Social Democratic governments. The subsidy scheme is funded by a tax on media advertising.ss The twin precepts on which the Swedish press system is based the facilitation of market entry and the equalization of competitive relationships - could be extended to broadcasting, even though spectrum scarcity prevents the creation of a full broadcasting market. Indeed, this is already in the wind. In 1989 the European
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Commission issued a directive calling for member countries to introduce a system whereby broadcasting organizations are required to commission a proportion of programmes from independent companies. Although the directive set no date, this policy has already been adopted in some countries. 56 Market entry could be further facilitated, it has been argued, by establishing the broadcasting equivalent of the Swedish Press Subsidies Board, which would assist the funding of under-resourced groups, with viable projects, to compete in the radio or TV sectors. A policy of market equalization is also being considered in a European context. The ability of national agencies to shape the ecology of broadcasting systems so that they are a democratic expression of the societies they serve is threatened, it is maintained, by economies of scale in the global TV market. US programmes are sold for foreign transmission at a fraction of their original cost, and at a price that is much lower than the cost of making original programmes in Europe. The threat posed by cheap US syndication to national broadcast systems has been blocked hitherto by official and unofficial quotas limiting the import of American programmes. But this protectionism is being breached by the emergence of satellite TV enterprises which\ transmit quota-breaking US programmes across national borders. This has prompted the call for satellite TV to be brought within the ambit of a regulated market economy through the auspices of the Council of Europe and European Coijlmission. So far, both bodies have proposed an undefined limitation on non-European imported programmes to be policed by national agencies at the point of up-link to satellite TV delivery systems. 57 This lack of definition ensures, however, that it will have no practical effect. The fourth approach arises from the current debate in Poland about how broadcasting should be reorganized, with similar discussions occurring elsewhere within social democratic parties. It takes the form of a proposal for a regulated mixed economy, composed of public, civic and market sectors. 58 One version of this proposal entails having a major, publicly owned sector committed to public-service goals, including the provision of mixed, quality programmes and politically balanced reporting. The market sector would be subject to minimum controls, and would be established through the sale of franchises to commercial companies which would also pay an annual spectrum fee. This would help fund, ·in turn, a civic sector whose role would be
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to extend the ideological range and cultural diversity of the system. The civic sector would have assigned frequencies and an Enterprise Board which would help fund new and innovatory forms of ownership and control, including employee ownership, subscribers with voting rights, consumer ·co-ops and stations linked to organized groups. The Enterprise Board would function not as a traditional regulatory body, policing programme content, but as an enabling agency assisting financially the emergence of new voices in the broadcasting system. These four approaches represent alternative responses to the question of how a media system can be constructed that enables divergent interests to be fully represented in the public domain. They all have one thing in common: they marry a collectivist approach to market processes. They thus represent an attempt to define a third route which is superior to failed market and. collectivist policies. Their aim is to recreate the media as a public sphere in a form that is relatively autonomous from both government and the market. NOTES 1 An alternative term, perhaps more recognizable in a broad European context, would be 'social democratic'. But this has been rejected because in Britain social democratic has a narrowly denominational meaning, ever since a right-wing splinter group from the Labour Party formed the Social Democratic Party. 2 George Boyce, 'The Fourth Estate: the reappraisal of a concept', in George Boyce, James Curran and Pauline Wingate (eds), Newspaper History: from the 17th Century to the Present Day, London: Constable, 1978. 3 For a gloomy assessment of the role of trade unions in reality, see Tony Grace, 'The trade-union press in Britain', Media, Culture and Society, . vol. 7, no. 2 (1985). 4 In nineteenth-century liberalism there was an important strand which celebrated advocacy as a means ofarriving at the truth, but this became a much less prominent feature of liberal conceptions of journalism during the twentieth century. See Fred Siebert, 'The libertarian theory' and Theodore Peterson, 'The social responsibility theory', in F. Siebert, T. Peterson and W. Schramm, Four Theories of the Press, Urbana and Chicago: University of lllinois Press, 1956, and Michael Schudson, Discovering the News, New York: Basic Books, 1978. 5 These two divergent positions are taken respectively by the first Royal Commission on the Press 1947-9 Report, London: HMSO, 1949, and the third Royal Commission on the Press 1974-7 Final Report, London: HMSO, 1977.
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6 Samuel Brittan, 'The case for the consumer market', in Cento Veljanovski (ed.), Freedom in Broadcasting, London: Institute of. Economic Affairs, 1989. 7 Cited in Richard Sparks and Ian Taylor, 'Mass communications', in Philip Brown and Richard Sparks (eds), Beyond Thatcherism, Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1989, p. 59. 8 Jay Blumler, Multi-Channel Television in ·the United States: Policy Lessons for Britain, Markle Foundation Report (mimeo), 1989. 9 Melissa Benn, 'Campaigning against pornography', in J. Curran, J. Ecclestone, G. Oakley and A. Richardson (eds), Bending Reality, London: Pluto Press, 1986. 10 Mark Hopkins, Mass Media in the Soviet Union, New York: Pegasus, 1970; Gayle Hollander, Political Indoctrination in the USSR, New York: Praeger, 1972. 11 Ellen Mickiewicz, Media and the Russian Public, New York: Praeger, 1981; Ellen Mickiewicz, Split Signals: Television and Politics in the Soviet Union, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. 12 Brian McNair, Glasnost, Perestroika and the Soviet Union, London: Routledge, 1991. 13 Louis Althusser, Essays in Ideology, London: Verso, 1984. 14 Jiirgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990. This has inspired numerous commentaries, of which two are particularly interesting for our purposes since they focus on the media. Frands Mortensen advances what is in some respects a similar critique to what follows but in the context of Danish history in 'The bourgeois public sphere - a Danish mass communications research project', in M. Berg, P. Hemannus, J. Ekecrantz, F. Mortensen and P. Sepstrup (eds), Current Theories in Scandinavian Mass Communication Research, Grenaa, Denmark: GMT, 1977. For an interesting 'alternative' take which seeks to divest Habermas of his more questionable historicai assumptions but rehabilitate his central analysis as a justification for public-service broadcasting, see Nicholas Garnham, 'The media and the p~blic sphere', in Peter Golding, Graham Murdock and Phi lip Schlesmger (eds), Communicating Polities, New York: Holmes & Meier; Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1986. 15 T.here_ is a basic ~mbiguity in what Habermas himself calls his 'stylized' h1stoncal analysis. It hovers uncertainly between a normative account (what it ought to have been like) and a descriptive account (what it ~as actual.ly like). Thus, his portrayal of the early press is presented tn normative terms; his critique of the modern media in descriptive terms; and, to confuse things further, this critique contains references back to an idealization of the early press as something approximating to descriptive reality. 16 For representative versions of this view, see Arthur Aspinall, Politics ~nd the ~ress, c. 1780-1850, London: Home & Van Thai (Repub~Ished Bng~ton: Harvester, 1973), and Ian Christie, Myth and Reality m Late Etghteenth Century British Politics London: Macmillan ' ' 1970.
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54 Communication and citizenship 17 C. W. Crawley (ed.), War and Peace in the Age of Upheaval (1793-1830), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 18 For example, E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, London: Gollancz, 1963; Patricia Hollis, The Pauper Press, London: Oxford University Press, 1970; Dorothy Thompson, The Chartists, Temple Smith; 1984. 19 James Curran, 'Capitalism and control of the press, 1800-1975', in James Curran, Michael Gurevitch and Janet Woollacott (eds), Mass Communication and Society, London: Edward Arnold, 1977; cf. James Curran and Jean Seaton, Power Without Responsibility, 4th edn, London: Routledge, 1991. 20 Stuart Hall, 'Deviancy, politics and the media', in Mary Mcintosh and Paul Rock (eds), Deviance and Social Control, London: Tavistock, 1973; Mark Hollingsworth, The Press and Political Dissent, London: Pluto Press, 1986; Media Coverage of London Councils, Goldsmiths' Media Research Group Interim Report, London: Goldsmiths' College, University of London, 1987 (mimeo); Simon Watney, Policing Desire, London: Methuen, 1987. 21 Habermas, op. cit., 1989, p. 184. Habermas is not alone in following the trajectory of Whig argument, against his own instincts. Thus, Raymond Williams wrote: 'the period from 1855 is in one sense the development of a new and better journalism, with a much greater emphasis on news than in the faction-ridden first half of the century ... most newspapers were able to drop their frantic pamphleteering' (Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution, London: Penguin Books, 1965, p. 218), though Williams at least later changed his view. See Raymond Williams, 'The press and popular culture: an historical perspective', in Boyce, Curran and Wingate (eds), op. cit., 1978. 22 Curran and Seaton, op. cit., 1991, eh. 2. 23 Habermas, op. cit., 1989, p. 185. 24 Donald Read, Press and People, 1790-1850, London: Edward Arnold, 1961. 25 A. J. P. Taylor, Beaverbrook, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1972. 26 The rise of the Daily Herald, a working-class newspaper established by a small group of radicals in 1912 which became the largest circulation daily in Britain in the early 1930s, appears at first glance to show that there continued to be broad, unqualified access to the public sphere. In fact, its detailed history (currently being researched by my doctoral student, Huw Richards) reveals the opposite. The Daily Herald's early development was blighted by lack of resources, causingit to charge double the price of its rivals for a paper half the size, without offering the inducements like reader insurance then widely deployed to promote sales, and with the further major disadvantage of lacking a northern printing plant. It was saved in 1922 by the TUC but only became a mass-circulation paper when it was given a massive infusion of cash by the Odhams group in 1929. In other words, what its history indicates is that working-class access to the public sphere could be negotiated by drawing upon the collective resources of trade unions and a major publishing group. But this negotiation entailed a heavy
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price: acceptance of highly restrictive, right-wing Labourist editorial control. 27 See, especially, L. Werkmeister, The London Daily Press, 17221792, Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska, 1963, and Jeremy Black, The English Press in the Eighteenth Century, London: Croom Helm, 1987. 28 Boyce, op. cit., 1978; Colin Seymour-Ure, 'The press and· the party system between the wars', in Gillian Peele and Colin Cook (eds), The Politics of Reappraisal, London: Macmillan, 1976; S. Koss, The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain, vols 1 and 2, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1981 and 1984; Lucy Brown, Victorian News and Newspapers, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985; Black, op. cit., 1987. 29· Habermas's thesis on the press can perhaps be reconstructed in two ways. First, his characterization of the early press most closely corresponds to the provincial press in England before the bourgeoisie became politically organized. (See, in particular, John Brewer, Party, Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George Ill, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.) Second, the decline of political control celebrated by liberal revisionists was replaced by conglomerate control, about which they say little. 30 Habermas, op. cit., p. 171. 31 A useful summary of predominantly US research is provided by Alexis Tan, Mass Communication Theories and Society, 2nd edn, New York: Wiley, 1985. For a survey of European research, see lames Curran, 'The new revisionism in mass communication research: a reappraisal', European Journal of Communication, vol. 5, nos 2-3 (1990). 32 Asa Briggs, The BBC: The First Fifty Years, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985; Asa Briggs, Governing the BBC, London: BBC, 1979; Asa Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, vols 1-4, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961-79; Grace Wyndam Goldie, Facing the Nation: Television and Politics, 193676, London: Bodley, Head; Bernard Sendall, Independent Television in Britain, vols 1 and 2, London: Macmillan, 1982 and 1983. 33 Philip Schlesinger, Graham Murdock and Philip Elliott, Televising 'Terrorism', London: Pluto Press, 1983. 34 Michael Leapman, The Last Days of the Beeb, 2nd edn, London: Coronet, 1987; Michael Cockerell, Peter Hennesy and David Walker, Sources Close to the Prime Minister, London: Macmillan, 1984. 35 For example, Joe McGinnis, The Selling of the President, New York: Trident, 1969. 36 Michael Cockerell, Live from Number 10, 2nd edn, London: Faber & · Faber, 1989. 37 For a general statement of this argument, see Paddy Scannell, 'Public service broadcasting and modern public life', Media, Culture and Society, vol. 11, no. 2 (1989) to which I am indebted. 38 Colin Seymour-Ure, 'Prime Ministers' reactions to television: Britain, Australia and Canada', Media, Culture and Society, vol. 11, no. 2 (1989). 39 David Cardiff, 'The serious and the popular: aspects of the evolution
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of style in the radio talk, 1928-1939', Media, Culture and Society, vol. 2, no. 1 (1980). Paddy Scannell, 'Broadcasting and the politics of unemployment, 1930-1935', Media, Culture and Society, vol. 2, no. 1 (1980). David Cardiff and Paddy Scannell, 'Radio in World War 2', in The Historical Development of Popular Culture in Britain, Block 2, Uriit 8, U203, Open University Popular Culture Course, Milton Keynes: Open University, 1981. Scannell, op. cit., 1989; cf. Curran and Seaton, op. cit., 1991. David Morley, 'Industrial conflict and the mass media', reprinted in Stan Cohen and Jock Young (eds), Manufacture of News, 2nd edn, London: Constable, 1981; Ian Connell, 'Television news and the social contract', in Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe and Paul Willis (eds), Culture, Media and Language, London: Hutchinson, 1980; Glasgow University Media Group, Bad News, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976; Glasgow University Media Group, More Bad News, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980; Glasgow University Media Group, Really Bad News, London: Writers and Readers, 1982; Glasgow University Media Group, War and Peace News, Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1985; Brian McNair, Images of the Enemy, London: Routledge, 1988; Schlesinger et al., op. cit., 1983. · Nicholas Garnham, C(lpitalism and Communication, London: Sage, 1990; Robert Burnett, 'Economic aspects' of the phonogram industry', in Ulla Carlsson (ed.), Ekonomiska Perspektiv i Forskning Massmedier, Goteborg: Nordicom-Sverige, 1988. Svenik Hoyer, Stig Hadenius and Lennart Weibull, The Politics and Economics of the Press: A Developmental Perspective, Beverly Hills: Sage, 1975; Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Boston: Beacon Press, 1983; Keith Windschuttle, The Media, Ringwood, Victoria: 1985; J. Farnsworth, 'Social policy and the media in New Zealand', Report of the Royal Commission on Social Policy, vol. 4, Wellington: Government Printer, 1989; Facts in Figures, London: Press Council, 1989;Ingela Strid and Lennart Weibull, Mediesverige 1988, Goteborg: University of Goteborg, 1988. Graham Murdock, 'Redrawing the map of the communications industries: concentration and ownership in the era of privatization', in Marjorie Ferguson (ed.), Public Communication, London: Sage, 1990. Graham Murdock, 'Large corporations and the control of the communications industries', in Michael Gurevitch, Tony Bennett, James Curran and Janet Woollacott (eds), Culture, Society and the Media, London: Methuen, 1982. In Britain, this arises from the fact that programmes do not generally organize audiences into consumer categories that facilitate advertising targeting. (See James Curran, 'The impact of advertising on the British mass media', in R. Collins et al. (eds), Media, Culture and Society: A Critical Reader, London: Sage.) But this could change with the proliferation of channels and fragmentation of the TV audience.
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49 For a cautionary analysis of French broadcasting during a highly authoritarian phase, see Ruth Thomas, Broadcasting and Democracy in France, Crosby Lockwood Staples, 1976. 50 For example, the BBC failed to adapt to the transformation of popular music taste until a large section of its youth audience tuned into illegal radio stations in the 1960s. 51 These are summarized in Curran and Seaton (eds), op.cit., 1991, eh. 19. 52 K. Van Der Haak, Broadcasting in the Netherlands, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977. 53 Richard Collins, 'The language of advantage', Media, Culture and Society, vol. 11, no. 3 (1989). 54 Mass Media in Sweden, Stockholm: Swedish Institute, 1988. 55 For a description of how the system operates, see Olof Hulten, Mass Media and State Support in Sweden, Stockhohn: Swedish Institute, 1984. For a more critical account in Swedish (with readily comprehensible statistical tables), see Strid and Weibull, op. cit., 1988. 56 Thus the 1990 Broadcasting Act requires both the BBC and the third TV channel to commission 25 per cent of its programmes (with some exemptions) from independent companies. 57 Council Directive (3 October 1989), Official Journal of the European Communities, no. L298/23; European Convention on Tranifrontier Television, Council of Europe (text adopted 15 March, 1989), Article
7.
58 I am indebted to Karol Jakubowicz, currently advising the Polish government about the reorganization of Polish broadcasting, for information about the broadcasting debate in Poland. The concept of a tripartite broadcasting system closely resembles proposals discussed in a British Labour Party policy committee in 1989.
[8] Further Reflections on the Public Sphere ]ilrgen H abermas
Translated by Thomas Burger
Rereading this book after almost thirty years, I was initially tempted to make changes, eliminate passages, and make emendations. Yet I became increasingly impressed with the impracticability of such a course of action: the first modification would have required me to explain why I did not refashion the entire book. This, however, would be asking too much of an author who in the meantime has turned to other matters and has recalled that the original study emerged from the synthesis of contributions based in several disciplines, whose number even at that time almost exceeded what one author could hope to master. There are two reasons that may justify the decision in favor of an unrevised new printing of the eighteenth edition, which had gone out of print. 1 For one, there is the continuing demand for a publication that in a variety of programs of study has become established as a sort of textbook. For another, there is the contemporary relevance bestowed on the structural change of the public sphere by the long-delayed revolution occurring before our eyes in central and eastern Europe. 2 The current relevance of this topic-and of its multifaceted treatment-is confirmed by the reception of the book in the United States, where an English translation 3 finally appeared last year. 4 I want to use this occasion for a few .comments intended less to downplay the temporal distance created by the span of a generation than to throw it into clear relief. It is trivial to state that research and theoretical problems are different now from
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what they were in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when this study originated. Since the Adenauer regime, the contemporary scene has changed, i.e., the extrascientific context that shapes the horizon of experience from which social-scientific research derives its perspective. My own theory, finally, has also changed, albeit less in its fundamentals than in its degree of complexity. On the basis of a first and certainly only superficial acquaintance with current thinking on some relevant topics, I want to remind the reader of those changes, at least by way of illustration and in the hope of stimulating further studies. I shall proceed by following the structure of the book in that I shall first deal with the historical genesis and the concept of the bmn·gcois public sphere (chapters 1 to 3), then with the structural change of the public sphere with regard to the transformation toward the social welfare state and the change of the structures of communication through the mass media (chapters 5 and 6). After that, I shall discuss the study's theoretical perspective and its normative implications (chapters 4 and 7), where my focus will be on the possible ·contribution of the study to the newly relevant questions of the theory of democracy. This is the aspect in relation to which the book has received most attention, not so much at the time of its first publication but in connection with the student rebellion and the neoconservative reaction it triggered. In the process it has occasionally been the object of polemical treatment coming equally from the right and from the left. 5 I The Genesis and Concept of the Bourgeois Public Sphere (1)
As was stated in the preface to the first edition, my first aim had been to derive the ideal type of the bourgeois public sphere from the historical context of British, French, and German developments in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The formation of a concept specific to an epoch requires that a social reality of great complexity be stylized to give prominence to its peculiar characteristics. As is the case with any
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sociological generalization, selection, statistical relevance, and weighting of historical trends and examples pose a problem involving great risks, especially for someone who, unlike the historian, does not go back to the sources but instead relies on the secondary literature. Historians have rightly complained of empirical shortfalls. Yet I have been put somewhat at ease by Geoff Eley's friendly assessment in his extensive and comprehensively documented contribution to the conference: "On rereading the book ... , it is striking to see how securely and even imaginatively the argument is historically grounded, given the thinness of the literature available at the time. "6 The basic lines of my analysis have been corroborated by H. U. Wehler's summarizing presentation of a wide body of literature. By the end of the eighteenth century there had emerged, in Germany, "a public sphere, although a small one, where critical-rational discussion was carried on."7 With the growth of a general reading public that transcended the republic of scholars and the urban bourgeoisie and who no longer limited themselves to a careful reading and rereading of a few standard works but oriented their reading habits to an ongoing stream of new publications, there sprang from the midst of the private sphere a relatively dense network of public communication. The growing number of readers, increasing by leaps and bounds, was complemented by a considerable expansion in the production of books, journals, and papers, an increasing number of authors, publishers, and book sellers, the establishment of lending libraries, reading rooms, and especially reading societies as the social nodes of a literary culture revolving around novels. The relevance of the associationallife that began to take off late in the German Enlightenment has by now been acknowledged, although its significance for future developments lay more with its organizational forms than with its manifest functions. 8 The societies for enlightenment, cultural associations, secret freemasonry lodges, and orders of illuminati were associations constituted by the free, that is, private, decisions of their founding members, based on voluntary membership, and characterized internally by egalitarian practices of sociability, free discussion, decision by m~jority, etc. While these societies certainly remained an exclusively hour-
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geois affair, they did provide the training ground for what were to become a future society's norms of political equality.9 The French Revolution eventually triggered a movement toward the politicization of a public sphere that at first revolved around literature and art criticism. This is true not only of France, but holds for Germany as well. 10 A "politicization of associationallife," the rise of a partisan press, the fight against censorship and for freedom of opinion characterize the change in function of the expanding network of public communication up to the middle of the nineteenth century.ll The policies of censorship, with which the states of the German Federation fought against the institutionalization of a political public sphere and managed to delay its advent untill848, only made it more inevitable that literature and criticism would be sucked into the whirlpool of politicizations. Peter U. Hohendahl has used my concept of the public sphere to trace this process in detail, although for him it is the collapse of the revolution of 1848 that marks the turning point for the beginning structural t1·ansformation of the early liberal public sphere. 12 Eley has directed attention to several recent studies in English social history that fit well into the proposed theoretical framework for the analysis of the public sphere. With reference to the popular liberalism of nineteenth-century Great Britain, 13 these studies investigate the processes of class formation, urbanization, cultural mobilization, and the emergence of new structures of communication along the lines of those voluntary associations that became constituted in the eighteenth century.14 Raymond Williams's studies in the sociology of communications are particularly illuminating on the transformation of a public sphere characterized initially by an educated bourgeoisie interested in literature and the critical discussion of cultural issues into a sphere dominated by mass media and mass culture. 15 At the same time, Eley repeats and substantiates the objection that my overly stylized depiction of the bourgeois public sphere leads to an unjustified idealization involving more than an overdrawn emphasis on the rational aspects of a public communication whose .. basis is reading and whose main vehicle is conversation. It is wrong to speak of one single public even if
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we assume that a certain homogeneity of the bourgeois public enabled the conflicting parties to consider their class interest, which underneath all differentiation was nevertheless ultimately the same, as the basis for a consensus attainable at least in principle. Apart from introducing a greater internal differentiation of the bourgeois public, which by means of a more detail-oriented focus could also be accommodated within my model, a different picture emerges if from the very beginning one admits the coexistence of competing public spheres and takes account ·of the dynamics of those processes of communication that are excluded· from the dominant public sphere.
(2) We may use "excluded" in Foucault's sense when we are dealing with groups that play a constitutive role in the formation of a particular public sphere. "Exclusion" assumes a different and less radical meaning when the same structures of communication simultaneously give rise to the formation of several arenas where, beside the hegemonic bourgeois public sphere, .additional subcultural or class-specific public spheres are constituted on the basis of their ·own and initially not easily reconcilable premises. The first case I did not consider at all at the time; the second I mentioned in the preface but left it at that. With regard to .the Jacobin phase of the French Revolution and the Chartist movement, I spoke of the beginnings of a "plebeian" public sphere, and considering it merely a variant of the bourgeois public sphere that remained supressed in the historical process, I believed neglecting it to be justifiable. However, in the wake of E.". P. Thompson's pathbreaking The Making of the English Working Class there appeared a multitude of investigations concerning the French and English Jacobins, Robert Owen and the activities of the early socialists, the Chartists, and also the left-leaning populism in early-nineteenth-century France. 16• These studies have provided a different perspective on the political mobilization ofthe rural lower classes and the urban workers. Giinter Lottes, in direct confrontation with my concept of the public sphere, studied the theory and practice of English radicals in the late eighteenth century, as exempli-
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ficd by the London Jacobins. He shows how under the influence of radical intellectuals and under the conditions of modern communication, the traditional culture of the common people brought forth a new political culture with organizational forms and practices of its own. "The emergence of the plebeian public sphere thus marks a specific phase in the historical development of the life relations of the petite bourgeoisie and the strata below it. It is, on the one hand, a variant of the bourgeois public sphere, for it takes it as a model. On the other hand it is more than a mere variant, since it develops the bourgeois public sphere's emancipatory potential in a new social context. The plebeian public sphere is, in a manner of speaking, a bourgeois public sphere whose social preconditions have been rendered null." 17 The exclusion of the culturally and politically mobilized lower strata entails a pluralization of the public sphere in the very process of its emergence. Next to, and interlocked with, the hegemonic public sphere, a plebeian one assumes shape. Within the traditional forms of representative publicness, the exclusion of the pe.ople operated in a different manner. Here the people functioned as the backdrop before which the ruling estates, nobility, church dignitaries, kings, etc. displayed themselves a,nd their status. By its very exclusion from the domination so represented, the people are part of the constitutive conditions of this representative publicness. I continue to believe that this type of publicness (only sketchily described in section 2 of Structural Transformation) constitutes the historical background to modern forms of public communication. Had he kept this contrast in mind, Richard Sennett might have been able to avoid orienting his diagnosis of the collapse of the bourgeois public sphere toward a wrong model. For Sennett makes certain features of representative publicness an integral part of the classical bourgeois public sphere; he does not grasp the specifically bourgeois dialectic of inwardness and publicness that in the eighteenth century, through the ascendancy of the audience-oriented privateness of the bourgeois intimate sphere, begins to capture the literary world as well. Since he does not sufficiently distinguish between the two types of publicness, he believes that he can document the cor-
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rectness of his diagnosis of the end of "public culture" by reference to the decline in the forms of an impersonal, ceremonialized role-playing esthetic of self-presentation. However, staging the presentation of oneself behind a mask that removes private emotions and everything subjective from sight should properly be considered part of the highly stylized framework of a representative publicness whose conventions had already crumbled in the eighteenth century, when bourgeois private people formed themselves into a public and therewith became . the carriers of a new type of public sphere. 18 I must confess, however, that only after reading Mikhail Bakhtin's great book Rabelais and His World have my eyes become really opened to the inner dynamics of a plebeian culture. This culture of the common people apparently was by no means only a backdrop, that is, a passive echo of the dominant culture; it was also the periodically recurring violent revolt of a counterproject to the hierarchical world of domination, with its official celebrations and everyday disciplines. 19 Only a stereoscopic view of this sort reveals how a mechanism of exclusion that locks out and represses at the same time calls forth countereffects that cannot be neutralized. If we apply the same perspective to the bourgeois public sphere, the exclusion of women from this world dominated by men now looks different than it appeared to me at the time. (3)
No doubt existed about the patriarchal character of the conjugal family that constituted both the core of bourgeois society's private sphere and the source of the novel psychological experiences of a subjectivity concerned with itself. By now, however, the growing feminist literature has sensitized our awareness to the patriarchal character of the public sphere itself, a public sphere that soon transcended the confines of the reading public (of which women were a constituting part) and assumed political functions. 20 The question is whether women were excluded from the bourgeois public sphere in the same fashion as workers, peasants, and the "people," i.e., men lacking "independence."
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Both women and the other groups were denied equal active participation in the formation of political opinion and will. Under the conditions of a class society, bourgeois democracy thus from its very inception contradicted essential premises of its self-understanding. This dialectic could still be grasped within the categories of the Marxist critique of domination and ideology. Within this perspective I investigated how the relationship between public and private spheres changed in the course of the expansion of the democratic right of participation and the social-welfare state's compensation for class-specific disadvantages. Nevertheless, this structural transformation of the political public sphere proceeded without affecting the patriarchal character of society as a whole. Equality of civil rights, finally attained in the twentieth century, has no doubt created for hitherto underprivileged women the opportunity to improve their social status. Yet women who, through equal political rights, also managed to come to enjoy increased socialwelfare benefits did not therewith accomplish the modification of the underprivileged status tied to gender. The progress toward emancipation, for which feminism has struggled for two centuries, has by now been set into motion on a broad front. Like the social emancipation of wage workers, it is a phenomenon of the universalization of civil rights. However, unlike the institutionalization of class conflict, the transformation of the relationship between the sexes affects not only the economic system but has an impact on the private core area of the conjugal family. This shows that the exclusion of women has been constitutive for the political public sphere not merely in that the latter has been dominated by men as a matter of contingency but also in that its structure and relation to the private sphere has been determined in a gender-specific fashion. Unlike the exclusion of underprivileged men, the exclusion of women had structuring significance. This is the thesis advocated by Carol Pateman in an influential essay first published in 1983. She deconstructs the contract-theoretical justifications of the democratic constitutional state to demonstrate that rationalist legal criticism of the paternalistic exercise of dominatiQn. merely functions to modernize patriarchy in the form of a rule of brothers: "Patriarchalism has
two dimensions: the paternal (father versus son) and the masculine (husband versus wife). Political theorists can represent the outcome of the theoretical battle as a victory for contract theory because they are silent about the sexual or conjugal aspect of patriarchy, which appears as nonpolitical or natural."21 Pateman remains skeptical concerning women's integration on equal terms into a political public sphere whose structures continue to be wedded to the patriarchal features of a private sphere removed from the agenda of public discussion: "Now that the feminist struggle has reached the point where women are almost formal civic equals, the opposition is highlighted between equality made after a male image and the real social position of women as women" (p. 122). Of course, this convincing consideration does not dismiss rights to unrestricted inclusion and equality, which are an integral part of the liberal public sphere's self-interpretation, but rather appeals to them. Foucault considers the formative rules of a hegemonic discourse as mechanisms of exclusion constituting their respective "other." In these cases there is no communication between those within and those without. Those who participate in the discourse do not share a common language with the protesting others. This is how one may conceive of the relationship between the representative publicness of traditional domination and the devalued counterculture of the common people: people were forced to move and express themselves in a universe that was different and other. In this system, therefore, culture and counterculture were so interlinked that one went down with the other. Bourgeois publicness, in contrast, is articulated in discourses that provided areas of common ground not only for the labor movement but also for the excluded other, that is, the feminist movement. Contact with these movements in turn transformed these discourses and the structures of the public sphere itself from within. From the very beginning, the universalistic discourses of the bourgeois public sphere were based on self-referential premises; they did not remain unaffected by a criticism from within because they differ from Foucaultian discourses by virtue of their potential for self-transformation.
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(4) The two shortcomings remonstrated by Eley have implications for an ideal-typical model of the bourgeois public sphere. The modern public sphere comprises several arenas in which, through printed materials dealing with matters of culture, information, and entertainment, a conflict of opinions is fought out more or less discursively. This conflict does not merely involve a competition among various parties of loosely associated private people; from the beginning a dominant bourgeois public collides with a plebeian one. From this it follows, especially if one seriously tries to make room for the feminist dynamic of the excluded other, that the model of the contradictory institutionalization of the public sphere in the bourgeois constitutional state (developed in section 11 of Structural Tmnsfonnation) is conceived too rigidly. The tensions that come to the fore in the liberal public sphere must be depicted more clearly as potentials for a self-transformation. As a result, the contrast between an early political public sphere (lasting up to the middle of the nineteenth century) and the public sphere of the mass-democratic social-welfare states, which has been subverted by power, no longer has the ring of a contrast between an idealistically glorified past and a present distorted by the mirror of cultural criticism. This implicit normative gradient bothered many reviewers. As I shall discuss, it was a consequence not only of the ideology-critical approach as such but also of the blocking out of aspects that I mentioned, to be sure, but whose significance I underestimated. Still, a mistake in the assessment of the significance of certain aspects does not falsify the larger outline of the process of transformation that I presented. 2 The Structural Transfonnation of the Public Sphere: Three Revisions
The structural transformation of the public sphere is embedded in the transformation of state and economy. At the time, I conceived of the-latter within a theoretical framework that had been outlined in Hegel's. philosophy of right, had been
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elaborated by the young Marx, and had received its specific shape in the German constitutional-law tradition since Lorenz von Stein. The constitutional construction of the relationship between a public authority that guarantees liberties and a socioeconomic realm organized on the basis of private law has two sources: on the one hand, the liberal theory of constitutional rights developed during the period of German history known as Vormiirz (pre-March), insisting (with obvious political intention) on a strict separation of public and private law; on the other hand, the consequences of the failure of the "dual German revolution of 1848/9" (Wehler), that is, the-development of a state based on the rule of law but without democracy. E. W. Bockenforde highlights this specifically German retardation in the gradual enactment of political equality for all citizens as follows: Once "state" and "society" have begun to confront each other, the problem of society's share in the state's decision-making power and its exercise arises . . . . The state put individuals and society into a condition of civil liberty, -and it maintained them in this condition through the creation and enforcement of the new general legal order. Yet individuals and society did not attain political freedom, that is, no share in the political decision-making power concentrated in the state, and no institutionalized possibility to exert an active influence upon it. The state as an organization of domination rested as it were within itself, that is to say, sociologically speaking, it was supported by the monarchy, the civil service and the army, and partially also by the nobility, and thus was "separated" both organizationally and institutionally from the society represented by the bourgeoisie. 22
This historical background also supplies the context for the specific interest in a public sphere. The latter is capable of assuming a political function only to the extent to which it enables the participants in the economy, via their status as citizens, to mutually accommodate or generalize their interests and to assert them so effectively that state power is transformed into a fluid medium of society's self-organization. This is what the young Marx had in mind when he spoke of the reabsorption of the state into a society that has become political in itself. The idea of such a self-organization, channeled through the public communication of freely associated members of society,
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demands (in a first sense) that the "separation" of state and society, as sketched by BockenfOrde, be overcome. Connected with the conception of this separation on the level of constitutiona,l law is another, more general one: the emergence, through differentiation, of an economy controlled through market mechanisms from the premodern orders of political domination. Since the early-modern period, this differentiation had accompanied the gradual ascendency of the capitalist mode of production and the emergence of modern state bureaucracies. In the retrospective view of liberalism, these developments are interpreted as having their point of convergence in the autonomy of a "bourgeois society" in Hegel's and Marx's sense, that is, in the economic self-regulation of an economic society organized through activities under private law upheld by a constitutional state. This model of a progressive separation of state and society, no longer specially geared toward the specific development in the German states ?f the nineteenth century but informed more by the prototypIcal development in Great Britain, supplied the foil for my analysis of the reversal of this trend that began in the latter part of the nineteenth century. For this interlinking of state and economy removes the ground from under the model of society assumed by bourgeois private law and the liberal view of the constiLulion. 23 The de facto negation of the tendency toward a separation of state and society I conceptualized, by reference to its juridical reflections, as a neocorporatist "societalization of the state," on the one hand, and as a "state-ification of society," on the other, both occurring as a result of the interventionist policies of a now actively interfering state. All this has by now been investigated with much greater precision. I merely want to bring back to mind the theoretical perspective that emerges when the normative meaning of the self-regulation of a society characterized by a radical democratic elimination of the separation between state and economic sphere is compared with the functional interlinkage of the two systems as it actually became reality. My guiding point of view was that of the potential for societal self-regulation inhering in the political public~·sphere, and I was interested in the repercussions of those complex developments toward the social-
welfare state and organized capitalism in the Western type societies. In particular, I was concerned with the repercussions on the private sphere and the social bases of private autonomy (subsection I below), the structure of the public sphere as well as the composition and behavior of the public. (subsection 2), and finally, the legitimation process of mass democracy itself (subsection 3). With regard to these three aspects, my presentation in chapters 5 to 7 of Structural Transformation exhibits a number of weaknesses. (I)
In the modern natural-law conceptions, but also in the social theories of the Scottish moral philosophers, civil society (bilrgerliche Gesellschaft) was always contrasted with public authority or government as a sphere that is private in its entirety. 24 According to the self-conception of early modern bourgeois society, stratified by occupational groupings, the sphere of commodity exchange and sociallabor as well as the household and the family relieved from productive functions without distinctions were deemed to belong to the private sphere of "civil society." Both were structured in a like sense; the position and decision-making latitude of private owners involved in production constituted the basis for a private autonomy whose psychological flip side, so to speak, lay in the conjugal family's intimate sphere. For the economically dependent classes, a tight structural connection of this sort never existed. But only with the onset of the social emancipation of the lower strata and with the politicization of class conflicts on a massive scale in the nineteenth century did awareness also arise in the lifeworld of the bourgeois social strata that the two realms, the family's intimate sphere and the occupational system, were structured at cross-purposes. What a later literature conceptualized as the tendency toward an "organizational society," as the progressing autonomy of the level of the organization vis-a-vis the network of basic interactions, I described in section 17 as the "polarization of the social sphere and the intimate sphere."
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The real~ of pr~vate life, defined by family, neighborly contacts, soctal occasiOns, and all sorts of informal relations, does ~lot. merely become a distinct entity through differentiation; it Is sunultaneously transformed differently for each social stra. turn in the course of long-term tendencies such as urbanization burea~cratization, the concentration of enterprises, and finall; the s~tft to mass consumption accompanied by ever more leisur~ ttme. Yet I am interested here not in the empirical aspects (whtch need to be supplemented) of this structural transformati.on of the circumstances of life experience but in the theoretical point of view from which I described at the time the changing status of the private sphere. After the universali?:ation of equal civil rights, the private ~utonomy of the masses could no longer have its social basis m the control over private property, in contrast to those private people who in the associations of the bourgeois public sphere had come together to form the public of citizens. To be sure the actualization of the potential for societal self-regulatio~ presumpti~ely contained in an expanding public sphere would have requtred that the culturally and politically mobilized masses make effective use of their rights to communication and participation. But even under ideally favorable conditions of communication, one could have expected from economically dependent masses a contribution to the spontaneous formation o~ opinion and will only to the extent to which they had attamed the equivalent of the social independence of private property owners. Obviously, the propertiless masses could no lo~ger gain control of the social-preconditions of their private exts.tence through part~cipation in a system of commodity and capttal markets orgamzed under private law. Their private autonomy had to be secured through reliance on the status guarantees of a social-welfare state. This derivative private autonomy, however, could function as an equivalent of the original private autonomy based on control over private property only to the degree to which the citizens, as clients of the social-welfare state, came to ef1ioy status guarantees that they themselves bestowed on themselves in their capacities as citizens of a democratic state. This in turn appeared to become possible
in proportion to the expansion of democratic control to the economic process in its entirety. This consideration had its place in the context of a drawnout controversy among scholars of constitutional law in the 1950s. Ernst Forsthoff and Wolfgang Abendroth were protag-. onists in this dispute over an issue of legal systematics, i.e., the compatibility of the social-welfare principle with the handeddown architectonics of the constitutional state. 25 )'he Carl Schmitt school argued that the preservation of the structure of the constitutional state required the unconditional priority of the protection of the classical legal freedoms over the demands of social welfare provisions. 26 Abendroth, in contrast, interpreted the social-welfare principle simultaneously as the preeminent hermeneutic governing the interpretation of the constitution and as a policy-shaping maxim for the political legislator. The idea of the social-welfare state was to provide the leverage for a radical democratic reformism that preserved at least the possibility for a transition toward democratic socialism. Abendroth maintained that the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany aimed at "extending the idea of a substantively democratic constitutional state (which means especially the principle of equality and its combination with the notion of participation in the idea of self-determination) to the entire economic and social order" (Structural Transformation, pp. 226-227, my emphasis). Within this perspective, of course, the political public sphere is reduced to function as a sort of adjunct for a legislator whose judgment is theoretically and constitutionally predetermined and who knows a priori in what fashion the democratic state has to pursue "the substantive shaping of the social order" that is incumbent on it, namely through "the state's interference with that ownership ... that makes possible private control over large means of production and therewith control over economic and social positions of power that cannot be democratically legitimated." 27 · As much as the insistence on the dogmas of the liberal constitutional state has failed to do justice to the changed social conditions, one cannot but be struck by the weaknesses of a Hegelian-Marxist style of thought, all wrapped up in notions of totality, as is evidently the case with Abendroth's fascinating
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program. Even though in the meantime I have distanced myself more from such an approach, this circumstance does nothing to diminish my intellectual and personal debt to. Wolfgang Abendroth, which I acknowledged in my dedication. I must state my conviction, however, that a functionally differentiated society cannot be adequately grasped by holistic concepts of society. The bankruptcy of state socialism now witnessed has once again confirmed that a modern, market-regulated economic system cannot be switched as one pleases, from a monetary mechanism to one involving administrative power and democratic decision making, without threatening its performance capacity. Additionally, our experiences with a socialwelfare state being pushed to its limits have sensitized us to the phenomena of bureaucratization and intrusive legalism (Verrechtlichung).28 These pathological effects are consequences of the state's interventions in spheres of activity structured in a manner that renders the legal-administrative mode of regulating them inappropriate.
of communication became more regulated, and the opportunities for access to public communication became subjected to ever greater selective pressure. Therewith emerged a new sort of influence, i.e., media power, which, used for purposes of manipulation, once and for all took care of the innocence of the principle of publicity. The public sphere, simultaneously prestructured and dominated by the mass media, developed · into an arena infiltrated by power in which, by means of topic selection and topical contributions, a battle is fought not only over influence but over the control of communication flows that affect behavior while their strategic intentions are kept hidden as much as possible. A realistic description and analysis of the power-infiltrated public sphere certainly prohibits the uncontrolled infusion of valuing points of view. Yet by the same token, it is too high a price to pay if, in exchange for such a prohibition, empirically important differences are paved over. Therefore, I introduced a distinction between, on the one hand, the critical functions of self-regulated, horizontally interlinked, inclusive, and more or less discourse-resembling communicative processes supported by weak institutions and, on the other hand, those functions that aim to influence the decisions of consumers, voters, and clients and are promoted by organizations intervening in a public sphere under the sway of mass media to mobilize purchasing power, loyalty, or conformist behavior. These extractive intrusions into a public sphere no longer perceived as anything else than an environment of one's own system of reference encounter a public communication whose spontaneous source of regeneration is to be found in the lifeworld.80 This was the meaning of the thesis that "publicity operating under the conditions of a social-welfare state must conceive of itself as a self-generating process. Gradually it has to establish itself in competition with that other tendency which, within an immensely expanded public sphere, turns the principle of publicity against itself and thereby reduces its critical efficacy" (Stritctural Transformation, p. 233). While on the whole I would stick to my descriptions of the changed infrastructure of a public sphere infiltrated by power, its analysis needs to be revised, especially my assessment of the
(2) The central topic of the second half of the book is the structural transformation, embedded in the integration of state and society, of the public sphere itself. The infrastructure of the public sphere has changed along with the forms of organization, marketing, and consumption of a professionalized book production that operates on a larger scale and is oriented to new strata of readers, and of a newspaper and periodical press whose contents have also not remained the same. It changed with the rise of the electronic mass media, the new relevance of advertising, the increasing fusion of entertainment and information, the greater centralization in all areas, the collapse of the liberal associationallife, the collapse of surveyable public spheres on the community level, etc. It seems that these tendencies were assessed correctly, even if in the meantime more detailed investigations have been presented.29 In conjunction with an ever more commercialized and increasingly dense netwo~k of communication, with the growing capital requirements and organizational scale of publishing enterprises, the channels
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changes in the public's behavior. In retrospect, l discern a number of reasons for the insufficiency of my interpretation: the sociology of voter behavior was only in its beginnings, in Germany at least. What I came to grips with at the time were my own first-hand experiences with the first election campaigns run along the lines of marketing strategies on the basis of opinion polls. I presume that the population of the German Democratic Republic has been similarly shocked by the campaigns of the West German parties currently invading its territory. Also, at the time television had barely made its start in the Federal Republic. I became acquainted with such sociology only years later in the United States; thus I was not able to check the literature with experiences of my own. Furthermore, the strong influence of Adorno's theory of mass culture is not difficult to discern. Additionally, the depressing results of the just-finished empirical investigation for Student und Politik may have contributed to an underestimation of the positive influence of formal schooling, especially of its expanding secondary level, on cultural mobilization and the promotion of critical attitudes. 31 It should be remembered, however, that the process later called the "educational revolution" by Parsons, had not yet started up in the Federal Republic. Finally there is the glaring absence of anything belonging to the dimension that by now has come to attract great attention under the label of "political culture." As late as 1963 Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba had still attempted to capture the "civic culture" by means of a few attitudinal variables. 32 Even the more broadly conceived research on value change, initiated by Ronald Inglehart's Silent Revolution (Princeton 1977), did not yet extend to the entire spectrum of political mentalities that are firmly engrained in a culture and in which a mass public's repertory of responses is historically rooted. 33 In fine, my diagnosis of a unilinear development from a politically active public to one withdrawn into a bad privacy, from a "culture-debating to a culture-consuming public," is too simplistic. At the time, I was too pessimistic about the resisting power and above all the critical potential of a pluralistic, internally much differentiated mass public whose cultural usages have begun to shake off tl;le constraints of class. In co~unction
with the ambivalent relaxation of the distinction between high arid low culture, and the no less ambiguous "new intimacy between culture and politics," which is more complex than a mere assimilation of information to entertainment, the standards of evaluation themselves have also changed. I cannot even begin to comment on the diversified literature in the sociology of political behavior, since I have paid only sporadic attention to it. 34 Just as relevant to the topic of the structural transformation of the public sphere is the research on the media, 35 especially the investigations in the sociology of communication concerned with the social effects of television. 36 At the time, I had to rely on the results of the research tradition established by Lazarsfeld, which in the 1970s was heavily criticized for its individualist-behaviorist approach constrained by the limitations of small-group psychology.37 At the opposite pole, the ideology-critical approach has been continued in a more empirical vein. 38 It has directed the attention of communication researchers to. the institutional context of the media, on the one hand, 39 and, on the other, to the cultural context of their reception. 40 Stuart Hall's distinction between three different interpretive strategies on the part of spectators (who either submit to the structure of what is being offered, take an appositional stance, or synthesize it with their own interpretations) illustrates well how the perspective has changed from the older explanatory models still assuming linear causal processes. (3)
In the last chapter of the book I had attempted to bring the two strands together: the empirical diagnosis of the breakdown of the liberal public sphere and the normative aspect of a radical democratic vision that takes into account and turns to its own purpose the functional intertwining of state and society that objectively goes on above the heads, as it were, of the participants. These two aspects are reflected in two diverging conceptualizations of "public opinion." As a fictitious construct of constitutional law, public opinion continues, in the normative theory of democracy, to be endowed with the unitariness
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Jiirgen Habermas of a conterfactual entity. In the empirical investigations of media research and the sociology of communication this entity has long since been disassembled. However, both aspects must be kept in mind if one wants to grasp the mode in which the creation of legitimacy has actually collie to operate in mass democracies constituted as social-welfare states, yet does not want to gloss over the distinction between genuine processes of public communication and those that have been subverted by power. This intention provides the rationale for the provisional model, sketched at the end of the book, of a mass-mediadominated arena in which opposing tendencies clash. The degree of its infusion with power was s"upposed to be measured by the extent to which the informal, nonpublic opinions (i.e., those attitudes and assessments that are taken for granted within a culture and that make up the lifeworld constituting the context and ground of public communication) are not fed into the circuits of formal, quasi public opinion making by the mass media (which state and economy, considering them system environments, try to influence) or by the degree to which both realms are brought into conflict by means of a critical publicity. At the time, I could not imagine any other vehicle· of critical publicity than internally democratized interest associations and parties. Intraparty and intra-associational public spheres appeared to me as the potential centers of a public communication still capable of being regenerated. This conclusion was derived from the trend toward an organization society in which it is no longer associated individuals but rather members of organized collectivities who, in a polycentric public sphere, compete for the assent of passive masses in order to achieve a balance of power and interests against each other and especially against the massive complex of state bureaucracies. As recently as the 1980s, Norberto Bobbio, for example, has proposed a theory of democracy based on the same premises.41 However, this model again ran up against that pluralism of irreconcilable interests that already moved the liberal theoreticians to object to,the "tyranny of the majority." Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill were perhaps not so mistaken in their
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belief that the early liberal notion of a discursively accomplished formation of opinion and will was nothing but a veiled version of majority power. From the point of view of normative considerations, they were at most prepared to admit public opinion as a constraint on power, but in no way as a medium for the potential rationalization of power altogether. If "a structurally ineradicable antagonism of interests would set narrow boundaries for a public sphere reorganized . . . to fulfill its critical function" (Structural Transformation, p. 234), it would certainly be sufficient simply to charge liberal theory with an ambivalent conception of the public sphere, as I did in section 15 of Structural Transformation. 3
A Modified Theoretical Framework
In spite of the objections raised, I continue to stay with the intention that guided the study as a whole. The mass democracies constituted as social-welfare states, as far as their normative self-interpretation is concerned, can claim to continue the principles of the liberal constitutional state only as long as they seriously try to live up to the mandate of a public sphere that fulfills political functions.· Accordingly,. it is necessary to demonstrate how it may be possible, in our type of society, for "the public . . . to set in motion a critical process of public communication through the very organizations that mcdiatizc it" (Structural Transformation, p. 232). This question drew me back, at the close of the book, to the problem on which I had touched but failed to address properly. The contribution of Stmctural Transformation to a contemporary theory of democracy had to come under a cloud if "the unresolved plurality of competing interests ... makes it doubtful whether there can ever emerge a general interest of the kind to which a public opinion could refer as a criterion" (Structural Transformation, p. 234). On the basis of the theoretical means available to me at the time, I could not resolve this problem. Further advances were necessary to produce a theoretical framework within which I can now reformulate the questions and provide at least the outline of an answer. I want to recall, by way of a few brief remarks, the major way stations of this development.
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(1)
municative rationality in favor of an empirical approach in which the tension of the abstract opposition between norm and reality is dissolved. Furthermore, unlike the classical assumptions of historical materialism, it brings to the fore the relative structural autonomy and internal history of cultural systems of interpretation. 45
Only to a superficial glance would it have appeared possible to write Structural Transformation along the lines of a developmental history of society in the style of Marx and Max Weber. The dialectic of the bourgeois public sphere, which determines the book's structure, wears the ideology-critical approach on its sleeve. The ideals of bourgeois humanism that have left their characteristic mark on the self-interpretation of the intimate sphere and the pubic and that are articulated in the key concepts of subjectivity and self-actualization, rational formation of opinion and will, and personal and political self-determination have infused the institutions of the constitutional state to such an extent that, functioning as a utopian potential, they point beyond a constitutional reality that negates them. The dynamic of historical development too was to be fueled by this tension between idea and reality.. Unfortunately, this thought makes it tempting to idealize the bourgeois public sphere in a manner going way beyond any methodologically legitimate idealization of the sort involved in ideal-typical conceptualization. But it is also propped up, at least implicitly, by background assumptions belonging to a philosophy of history that have been refuted by the civilized barbarisms of the twentieth century. When these bourgeois ideals are cashed in, when the consciousness turns cynical, the commitment to those norms and value orientations that the critique of ideology must presuppose for its appeal to find a hearing becomes defunct. 42 I suggested, therefore, that the normative foundations of the critical theory of society be laid at a deeper level. 43 The theory of communicative action intends to bring into the open the rational potential intrinsic in everyday communicative practices. Therewith it also prepares the way for a social science that proceeds reconstructively, identifies the entire spectrum of cultural and societal rationalization processes, and also traces them back beyond the threshold of modern societies. Such a tack no longer restricts the search for normative potentials to a formation of the public sphere that was specific to a single epoch. 44 It r~moves the necessity for stylizing particular prototypical manifestations of an institutionally embodied corn-
(2) The perspective from which I inquired into the structural transformation of the public sphere was linked to a theory of democracy indebted to Abendroth's concept of a socialist democracy evolving out of the democratic, constitutional welfare state. In general, it remained captive of a notion that became questionable in the meantime, i.e., that society and its selforganization are to be con~idered a totality. The society that administers itself, that by means of a legal enactment of plans writes the program controlling all spheres of its life, including its economic reproduction, was to be integrated through the political will of the sovereign people. But the presumption that society as a whole can be conceived as an association writ large, directing itself via the media of law and political power, has become entirely implausible in view of the high level of complexity of functionally differentiated societies. The holistic notion of a societal totality in which the associated individuals participate like the members of an encompassing organization is particularly ill suited to provide access to the realities of an economic system regulated through markets and of an administrative system regulated through power. While in Technik und Wissenschaft als "Ideologie" ( 1968) I had still tried to differentiate between the action systems of state and economy on the level of a theory of action, proposing the predominance of purposive and rational (or success-oriented) action versus that of communicative action as a distinguishing criterion, this all-toohandy parallelization of action systems and action types produced some nonsensical results. 46 This caused me, in Legitimation Crisis (1973), to link the concept oflifeworld, introduced in On the Logic of the Social Sciences ( 1967), to that of the boundary maintaining system. From this emerged, in The Theory of
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Communicative Action (1981), the two-tiered concept of society
as lifeworld and as system.47 The implications for my concept of democracy were considerable. From that time on I have considered state apparatus and economy to be systemically integrated action fields that can no longer be transforn~ed democratically from within, that is, be switched over to a political mode of integration, without damage to their proper systemic logic and therewith their ability to function. The abysmal collapse of state socialism has only confirmed this. Instead, radical democratization now aims for a shifting of forces w~thin a "separation of powers" that itself is to be maintained in principle. The new equilibrium to be attained is not one between state powers but between different resources for societal integration. The goal is no longer to supersede an economic system having a capitalist life of its own and a system of domination having a bureaucratic life of its own but to erect a democratic dam against the colonializing encroachment of system imperatives on areas of the lifeworld. Therewith we have bid a farewell to the notion of alienation and appropriation of objectified essentialist powers, whose place is in a philosophy of praxis. A radical-democratic change in the process of legitimation aims at a new balance between the forces of societal integration so that the social-integrative . power of solidarity-the "communicative force of production"48--can prevail over the powers of the other two control resources, i.e., money and administrative power, and therewith successfully assert the practically oriented demands of the lifeworld. (3)
The social integrative power of communicative action is first of all located in those particularized forms of life and lifeworlds that are intertwined with concrete traditions and interest constellations in the "ethical" sphere ("Sittlichkeit"), to use Hegel's terms. But the solidarity-generating energies of these fabrics of life do not directly carry over into democratic procedures for· the settling of,competing interests and power claims on the political level. This is especially so in posttraditional societies
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in which a homogeneity of background convictions cannot be assumed and in which a presumptively shared class interest has given way to a confused pluralism of competing and equally legitimate forms of life. To be sure, the intersubjectivist formulation of a concept of solidarity that links the establishment of understandings (Verstiindigung) to validity claims that can be criticized, and therewith to the ability on the part of individuated subjects fully in a position to make up their own minds (zurechnungsfiihig) to announce their disagreement (Neinsagenkonnen), already does away with the usual connotations of unity and wholeness. However, even in this abstract formulation the word "solidarity" must not suggest the false model of a formation of will a la Rousseau that was intended to establish the conditions under which the empirical wills of separate burghers could be transformed, without any intermediary, into the wills, open to reason and oriented toward the common good, of moral citizens of a state. Rousseau based this expectation of virtuousness (illusory from the beginning) on a separation of the roles of "bourgeois" and "citoyen," which made economic independence and equality of opportunity a precondition of the status of autonomous citizen. The social-welfare state negates this role separation: "In the modern Western democracies this relationship has been severed. The democratic formation of the will has become instrumental to the promotion of social equality in the sense of maximizing the even distribution of the national product among the individuals."49 Preuss justifiably underscores that nowadays the public role of the citizen and the private role of the client of the social-welfare state's bureaucracies are interlinked in the political process. "The mass democracy established as a social-welfare state [has] produced the paradoxical category of the 'societalized private person,' whom we commonly call 'client' and who becomes one with the role of citizen to the extent to which he becomes societally universal" (ibid., p. 48). Democratic universalism flips over into "generalized particularism." In section 12 of Structural Transformation I criticized Rousseau's "democracy of non public opinion" because he conceives of the general will as a "consensus of hearts rather than of
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arguments." The morality with which Rousseau demands the citizens to be imbued and that he places in the individuals' motives and virtues must instead be anchored in the process of public communication itself. The essential aspect here is pinpointed by B. Manin: IL is necessary to alter radic~lly the perspective commor~ _to bot~l liberal· theories and democratic thought: the source of legltunacy 1s not the predetermined wi_ll of i~div!duals, but rathe~ _the proce~s. of its formation, that is, deliberation Itself. ... A legitimate decision does not represent the will of all, but i~ one that r~sul.ts _from the deliberation of all. •t is the process by wh1ch everyone swill Is forme~ that confers its legitimacy on the outcome, rather than the sum of already formed wills. The deliberative principle is both individualist and democratic.... We must affirm, at the risk of contradicting a long tradition, that legitimate law is the result of general deliberation, and not the expression of general will. 50
Therewith the burden of proof shifts from the morality of citizens to the conduciveness of specific processes of the democratic fonuation or opinion and will, presumed to have the potential for generating rational outcomes, of actually leading to such results.
(4) This is why "political public sphere" is appropriate as the quintessential concept denoting all those conditions of communication under which there can come into being a discursive formation of opinion and will on the part of a public composed of the citizens of a state. This is why it is suitable as the fundamental concept of a theory of democracy whose intent is normative. In this sense Jean Cohen defines the concept of deliberative democracy as follows: "The notion of a deliberative democracy is rooted in the intuitive ideal of a democrative association in which the justification of the terms and conditions of association proceeds through public argument and reasoning among equal citizens. Citizens in such an order share a commitment to the resolution of problems of collective choice through public reasoning, and regard their basic institutions as legitimate insofar as they establish a framework for free
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public deliberation." 51 This discou~~e-center~? c~ncept of~~ mocracy places its faith in the political mobthzauon _and utilization of the communicative force of production. Yet, consequently, it has to be shown that social issues liable to generate conflicts are open to rational regulation, that is, re~ ulation in the common interest of all parties involved. Additionally, it must be explained why e_ngaging. in publ~c arguments and negotiations is the ~ppropnate ~edmm f~r this rational formation of will. Otherwise, the premise of the hberal model would be justified, that the only way in which irreconcilably conflicting interests can be "brought to terms" is through a strategically conducted struggle. In the last two decades John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, Bruce Ackermann, Paul Lorenzen, and K.-0. Apel have contributed arguments intended to clarify how practical-poli_tical qu~stions, insofar as they are· of a moral nature, can be decided rationally. These authors have made explicit the. "monl point of view" that permits an impartial assessment of what, in a particular case, is in the general interest. Regardless of how they have formulated and justified their universalizing principl~s an? moral axioms, this much seems to have become clear m this wide-ranging discussion: there are solid reasons available that can provide a foundation for a universalization of interests and for an appropriate application of norms embodying such general interests.s2 Beyond that, with K.-0. Apel, 53 I developed a discourse-centered approach to ethics that views the exchange of arguments and counter-arguments as t?e most suitab~e procedure for resolving moral-practical questiOns. 54 Therewith the second of the two above-mentioned questions receives an answer. The discourse-centered approach to ethics does not limit itself to the claim that it can derive a general principle of morality from the normative content of the indispen~abl~ p~ag matic preconditions of all rational deb~te. Rather, th~s pnn:1~le itself refers to the discursive redemption of normative vahdny claims, for it anchors the validity of norms in the possihility of a rationally founded agreement on the part of all tho~e. who might be affected, insofar as they take on the ro~e of partzczf~nts in a rational debate. In this view, then, the settlmg of politiCal
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questions, as far as their moral core is concerned, depends on the institutionalization of practices of rational public debate. Of course, although issues of political principle almost always also have a moral dimension, by no ~eans all questions institutionally defined as part of the bailiwick of political decision makers are of a moral nature. Political controversies frequently concern empirical questions, the interpretation of states of affairs, explanations, prognoses, etc. Also, certain problems of great significance, so-called existential issues, often concern not questions of justice but, as questions concerning the good life, have to do .with ethical-political self-image, be it of a whole society, be it of some subcultures. After all, the majority of conflicts have their sources in the collision of group interests and concern distributive problems that can be resolved only by means of compromises. Yet this differentiation within the field of issues that require political decisions negates neither the prime importance of moral considerations nor the practicability of rational debate as the very form of political communication. Empirical and evaluative questions are frequently inseparable and evidently cannot be dealt with without reliance on arguments. 55 The ethical-political process of coming to an understanding about how, as members of a particular collectivity, we want to live must at least not be at odds with moral norms. Negotiations must rely on the exchange of arguments, and whether they lead to compromises that are fair depends essentially on procedural conditions subject to moral judgment. The discourse-centered theoretical approach has the advantage of being able to specify the preconditions for communication that have to be fulfilled in the various forms of rational debate and in negotiations if the results of such discourses are to be presumed to be rational. Therewith this approach opens up the possibility of linking normative considerations to empirical sociological ones.
conditions of ma:ss democracies constituted as social-welfare states, a discursive formation of opinion and will can be institutionalized in such a fashion that it becomes possible to bridge the gap between enlightened self-interest and orientation to the common good, between the roles of client and citizen. Indeed, an element intrinsic to the preconditions of communication of all practices of rational debate is the presumption of impartiality and the expectation that the participants question and trans~end whatever their initial preferences may have been. Meeting these two .preconditions must even become a matter of routine. Modern natural law's way of coming to terms with this problem was the introduction of legitimate legal coercion. And the subsequent problem entailed by this solution, how the political power required for the coercive imposition of law could itself be morally controlled, was met by Kant's idea of a state subject to the rule of law. Within a discoursecentered theoretical approach, this idea is carried further to give rise to the notions that additionally the law is applied to itself: it must also guarantee the discursive mode by means of which generation and application of legislative programs are to proceed within the parameters of rational debate. This implies the institutionalization of legal procedures that guarantee an approximate fulfillment of the demanding prec~nditions of communication required for fair negotiations and free debates. These idealizing preconditions demand the complete inclusion of all parties that might be affected, their equality, free and easy interaction, no restrictions of topics and topical contributions, the possibility of revising the outcomes, etc. In this context the legal procedures serve to uphold within an empirically existing community of communication the spatial, temporal, and substantive constraints on choices that are operative within a presumed ideal one. 56 For instance, the rule to abide by majority decisions can he interpreted as an arrangement squaring a formation of opinion that seeks truth and is as discursive as circumstances permit with the temporal constraints to which the formation of will is subject. Within a discourse-centered theoretical approach, decision by majority must remain internally related to a practice of rational debate, which entails further institutional arrange-
(5) Since the discourse-centered concept of democracy first of all has to be clarified and made plausible within the framework of a normative theory, the question remains of how, under the
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IIICJJLs (such as the requirement to state one's reasons, rules allotting the burden of proof, repeated readings of legislative proposals, etc.). A majority decision must be arrived at in such a fashion, and only in such a fashion, that its content can be claimed to be the rationally motivated but fallible result of a discussion concerning the judicious resolution of a problem, a discussion that has come temporarily to a close because coming to a decision could no longer be postponed. Other institutions too may be interpreted from this same perspective of a legal institutionalization of the general conditions of communication for a discursive formation of will, as, for example, the regulations concerning the composition and mode of opi~ration of parliamentary bodies, the responsibilities and immunities of elected representatives, the political pluralism of a multiparty system, the necessity for broad-based parties to package their programs so that they appeal. to various interest constellations, etc. The deciphering of the normative meaning of existing institutions within a discourse-centered theoretical approach additionally supplies a perspective on the introduction and testing of novel institutional arrangements that might counteract the trend toward the transmutation of citizens into clients. These must reinforce the gradation between the two roles by interrupting the short circuit that abandons the field to the play of immediate personal preferences and the generalized particularism of interests organized in special-interest associations. The novel idea of connecting the vote to a "multiple preference ordering" is a case in point. 57 Such suggestions must be based on an analysis of the inhibiting factors at work in the existing arrangements that condition citizens to an unpolitical follower mentality and prevent them from reflecting and being concerned with anything but their own short-term personal interests. In other words, the unlocking of the democratic meaning of the constitutional state's institutions within a discourse-centered theoretical approach must be supplemented with the critical investigation of the mechanisms that in democracies constituted as social-welfare states function to alienate citizens from the political process. ss
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(6) To be sure, the normative content of a concept of democracy that refers to processes of norm and value formation taking the form of discursive public communications is not restricted to appropriate institutional arrangements at the level of the democratic constitutional state. Rather, it pushes beyond formally instituted processes of communication and decision making. Corporatively organized opinion formation resulting in responsible decision making can serve the goal of a cooperative search for truth only to the extent to which it remains permeable to the free-floating values, topics, topical contributions, and arguments of the surrounding political communication. Such opinion formation must be facilitated by the constitution, but it. cannot be formally organized in its entirety. Instead, the expectation deriving from a discourse-centered theoretical approach, that rational results will obtain, is based on the interplay between a constitutionally instituted formation of the political will and the spontaneous flow of communication unsubverted by power, within a public sphere that is not geared toward decision making but toward discovery and problem resolution and that in this sense is nonorganized. If there still is to be a realistic application of the idea of the sovereignty of the people to highly complex societies, it must be uncoupled from the concrete understanding of its embodiment in physically present, participating, and jointly deciding members of a collectivity. There may actually be circumstances under which a direct widening of the formal opportunities for participation and involvement in decision making only intensifies "generalized particularism," that is, the privileged assertion of local and group-specific special interests that, from Burke to Weber, Schumpeter, and today's neoconservatives, has provided the arguments of a democratic elitism. This can be prevented by procedurally viewing the sovereignty.· of the people as comprising the essential conditions that enable processes of public communication to take the form of discourse. The one remaining "embodiment" of the altogether dispersed sovereignty of the people is in those rather demanding forms of subjectless
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communication that regulate the flow of the formation of political opinion and will so as to endow their fallible results with the presumption of practical rationality. 59 This sovereignty turned into a flow of communication comes to the fore in the power of public discourses that uncover topics of relevance to all of society, interpret values, contribute to the resolution. of problems, generate .good reasons, and debunk bad ones. Of co.urse, these opinions must be given shape in the form of decisions by democratically constituted decision-making bodies. The responsibility for practically consequential decisions must be based in an institution. Discourses do not govern. They generate a communicative power that cannot take the place of administration but can only influence it. This inHuence is limited to the procurement and withdrawal of legitimation. Communicative power cannot supply a substitute for the systematic inner logic of public bureaucracies. Rather, it achieves an impact on this logic "in a siegelike manner." If the sovereignty of the people is in this fashion dissolved into procedures and attempts, the symbolic place of power-a vacuum since 1789, that is, since the revolutionary abolishment of paternalistic forms of domination-also remains empty and is not filled with new identity-conveying symbolizations, like people or nations, as Rodel, following Claude Le fort, would have it. 60
transformation of the public sphere and those long-term trends that the theory of communicative action conceives as a rationalization of the lifeworld. A public sphere that functions politically requires more than the institutional guarantees of the constitutional state; it also needs the supportive spirit of cultural traditions and patterns of socialization, of the political culture, of a populace accustomed to freedom. The central question in Structural Transformation is nowadays discussed under the rubric of the "rediscovery of civil society." The global reference to a "supportive" spirit of differentially organized lifeworlds and their potential for critical reflection is not sufficient. It must be made more concrete, and not only with regard to patterns of socialization and to cultural traditions. A liberal political culture rooted in motives and value orientations certainly provides a favorable soil for spontaneous public communications. But the forms of interchange and organization, the institutionalizations of support of a political public sphere unsubverted by power, are even more important. Here is the point of departure for Claus Offe's most recent analyses. Offe uses the concept of "relations of association," intending "to confront the global categories of lifeworld and form of life that are to provide the discourse ethic with an anchorage in the social realm, ·with rather more sociological categories."61 The vague concept "relations of association" is not by accident reminiscent of the "associational life" that at one time constituted the social stratum of the bourgeois public sphere. It also recalls the now current meaning of the term "civil society," which no longer includes a sphere of an economy regulated via labor, capital, and commodity markets and thus differs from the modern translation, common sine~ Hegel and Marx, of "societas civilis" as "bourgeois society" ("bilrgerliche Gesellschaft"). Unfortunately, a search for clear definitions in the relevant publications is in vain. However, this much is apparent: the institutional core of "civil society" is constituted by voluntary unions outside the realm of the state and the economy and ranging· (to give some examples in no particular order) from churches, cultural associations, and academies to independent media, sport and leisure clubs, debating societies, groups of concerned citizens, and grass-roots petitioning drives
4
Civil Society or Political Public Sphere
Having thus changed my premises and upgraded their precision, I can finally return to the task of describing a political public sphere characterized by at least two crosscutting processes: the communicative generation of legitimate power on the one hand and the manipulative deployment of media power to procure mass loyalty, consumer demand, and "compliance" with systemic imperatives on the other. The question that had been left pending concerning the basis and sources of an informal formation of opinion in autonomous public spheres now can no longer be answered with reference to the status guarantees of the social-welfare state and with the holistic demand for the political self-organization of society. Rather, this is the place where the circle closes between the structural
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all the way .to occupational associations, political parties, labor unions, and ''alternative institutions." John Keane attributes to these associations the following task or function: "to maintain and to redefine the boundaries between civil society and state through two interdependent and simultaneous processes: the expansion of social equality and liberty, and the restructuring and democratization of the state."62 In other words, he refers to opinion-forming associations. Unlike the political parties, which to a large extent have become fused with the state, they are not part of the administrative system but manage to have a political impact via the public media because they either participate directly in public communications or, as in the case of projects advocating alternatives to conventional wisdom, because the programmatic character of their activities sets examples through which they implicitly contribute to public discussion. Similarly, Offe endows the relations of associations with the function of establishing contexts conducive to a political communication that, through sufficiently convincing arguments, readies citizens to engage in "responsible behavior": "To behave responsibly means for the actor to adopt toward his own actions, in the futurum exactum, the e:valuative perspectives of the expert, the generalized other, and his own self all at once, thus subjecting the criteria governing the behavior to functional, social, and temporal validation."63 The concept of civil society owes its rise in favor to the criticism leveled, especially by dissidents from state-socialist societies, against the totalitarian annihilation of the political public sphere. 64 Here Hannah Arendt's concept of totalitarianism, with its focus on communication, plays an important role. It provides the foil that makes it understandable why the opinion-shaping associations, around which autonomous public spheres can be built up, occupy such a prominent place in the ch·il society. It is precisely this communicative praxis on the part of citizens that, in totalitarian regimes, is subjected to the control of the secret police. The revolutionary changes in eastern and central Europe have confirmed these analyses. Not coincidentally, they were triggered by reform policies initiated under the banner of gla!inost. As if a large-scale experiment in
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social science had been set up, the apparatus of domination was overthrown by the increasing pressure of peacefully proceeding citizen movements; the Gennan Democratic Republic is the primary case in point. In a first step, out of these citizen movements grew the infrastructure of a new order, whose outline had already become visible in the ruins of state socialism. The pacesetters of this revolution were voluntary associations in the churches, the human rights groups, the appositional circles pursuing ecological and feminist goals, against whose latent influence the totalitarian public sphere could from the beginning be stabilized only through reliance on force. The situation is different in Western-type societies. Here voluntary associations are established within the institutional framework of the democratic constitutional state. And here a different question arises, one that cartnot be answered without considerable empirical research. This is the question of whether, and to what extent, a public sphere dominated by mass media provides a realistic chance for the members of civil society, in their competition with the political and economic invaders' media power, to bring about changes in the spectrum of values, topics, and reasons channeled by external influences, to open .it up in an innovative way, and to screen it critically. It seems to me that the concept of a public sphere operative in the political realm, as I developed it in Structural Transformation, still provides the appropriate analytical perspective for the treatment of this problem. This is why Andrew Arato and Jean Cohen, in their attempt to make the concept of civil society fruitful for an up-to-date theory of democracy, adopt the architecture of "system and lifeworld" as it was proposed in The Theory of Communicative Action. 65 I conclude with the reference to an inventive study dealing with the impact of electronic media on the restructuring of basic interactions. Its title, No Sense of Place, stands for the claim of the dissolution of those structures within which individuals living in society have hitherto perceived their social positions and have placed themselves. Now even those social boundaries that defined the lifeworld's coordinates of space and historical time have begun to move:
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Many of the features of our "information age" make us resemble the most ·primitive of social and political forms: the hunting and gathering society. As nomadic peoples, hunters and gatherers have no loyal relationship to territory. They, too, have little "sense of place"; specific activities are not totally fixed to specific physical settings. The lack of boundaries both in hunting and gathering and in electronic societies leads to many striking parallels. Of all known societal types before our own, hunting and gathering societies have tended to be the most egalitarian in terms of the roles of males and females, children and adults, and leaders and followers. The difficulty of maintaining many separate places or distinct social spheres tends to involve everyone in everyone else's business.66
siderable evidence attesting to the ambivalent nature of. the democratic potential of a public sphere whose infrastructure is mar.ked by the growing selective constraints imposed by electronic mass communication. Thus if today I made another attempt to analyze the structural transformation of the public sphere, I am not sure what its outcome would be for a theory of democracy-maybe one that could give cause for a less pessimistic assessment and for an outlook going beyond the formulation of merely defiant · postulates.
An unforeseen confirmation of this somewhat overblown thesis is again provided by the revolutionary events of 1989. The transformation occurring in the German Democratic Republic, in Czechoslovakia, and in Romania formed a chain of events properly considered not merely as a historical process that happened to be shown on television but one whose very mode of occurrence was televisional. The mass media's worldwide diffusion had not only a decisive infectious effect. In contrast to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the physical presence of the masses demonstrating in the squares and streets was able to generate revolutionary power only to the degree to which television made its presence ubiquitous. With regard to the normal conditions of Western societies, Joshua Meyrowitz's thesis that the mass media induced the dismantling of socially defined boundaries is too linear. There are obvious objections. The dedifferentiation and destructuring affecting our lifeworld as a result of the electronically produced omnipresence of events and of the synchronization of heterochronologies certainly have a considerable impact on social self-perception. This removal of barriers, however, goes hand in hand with a multiplication of roles becoming specified in the process, with a pluralization of forms of life, and with an individualization of life plans. Deracination is accompanied. by the construction of personal communal allegiances and roots, the leveling of differences by impotence in the face of an impenetrable systemic complexity. These are complementary and interlocking developments. Thus the mass media have contradictory effects in other dimensions as well. There is con-
Notes I. The question of a new printing has arisen for rather extrinsic reasons. The sale of the Luchterhand-Verlag, to which I am· much obliged for the promotion of my early books, necessitated a change of publishers. At the same time, this edition by the Reclam-Verlag in Leipzig represents the first publication of any of my books in the Germ.an Democratic Republic.
2.
J. Habermas, Die nachholende Revolution (Frankfurt, 1990).
3. The Structural Transfonnation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989). 4. This provided the occasion for a conference at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in September 1989. In addition to sociologists, political scientists, and philosophers, there were participants from the disciplines of history, literature, communication, and anthropology. I found the meeting extraordinarily instructive, and I am grateful to the participants for suggestions. 5. W. Jliger, Offentlichkeit und Parlamentarismus: Eine Kritik a11 Jiirgen Habermas (Stuttgart, 1973). For a listing of reviews, see R. Gtirtzen, J. Habennas: Eine Bibliographie seiner Schriften und der Sekundiirliteratur, 1952-1981 (Frankfurt, 1981). 6. G. Eley, "Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures: Placing Habermas in the Nineteenth Century" (manuscript, 1989). 7. H. U. Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. I (Munich, 1987), pp. 303-331. 8. R. v. Diilmen, Die Gesellschaft der Aufkliirer (Frankfurt, 1986). 9. K. Eder, Geschichte als Lemprozefl (Frankfurt, 1985), pp. 123 ff. 10. For France, see the contrilnuions by Etienne Franc;ois, Jack Censer, and Pierre Reuu in R. Koselleck and R. Reichanlt, Die jra11zosiche Rlil'olulitm alr /Jrur.h tlt•s g"sl"ilrchaftlicheu Blilt'llfltseins (Munich, 1988), pp. 117 IT. 11. H. U. Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 2, pp. 520-546.
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12. P. U. Hohendahl, Building a National Literature: The Case of Germany, 1530-1870 (lthaca: Comcll University Press, 1989), especially chapters 2 and 3.
27. W. Abendroth, "Zum Begriff des demokratischen und sozialen Rechtsstaates," in Forsthoff Rechtsstaatlichheit und Sozialstaatlichheit, pp. 123 ff.
13. l'atricia Hollis, ed., Pt·essure from Without (London, 1974).
28. F. Kubler, ed., Verrechtlichung von Wirtschaft, Arbeit und sozialer Solidaritiit (BadenBaden, 1984); J. Habermas, "Law and Morality," in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, vol. 8 (Salt Lake City and Cambridge, 1988), pp. 217-280.
14. J. 11. Plumb, "The 1'ublic, Literature, and the Arts in tht! Eighteeilth Century," in M. R. Marrus, ed., The Emergence of Leisure (New York, 1974). 15. R. Williams, 71rc Ltmg lkrto/uticm (London, 1961); R. Williams, Commrmicatioi!S (London, I 962). Ili. F.. Thompson, 11re Jl;lnking of the English Working Class (London, 1963). 17. G. Lottes, Politische Aujk{jjrung und plebejisch~ Publikum (Munich, 1979), p. 110. Sec also 0. Negt and A. Kl~ge, Erfahrung tmd Offentlichkeit. Zur Organisationsanalyse /Jiit-gn-lir.her muljJroletarisr.her Offentliclrkeit (Frankfurt, 1972). 18. R. Scnncll, "/1re Fall of J>ublfc Man (New York, 1977). 19. N. Z. Davis, Humanismus, Narrenherrschaft und Riten der Gewalt (Frankfurt, 1987), especially chapter 4. On traditions of countercultural festivals going way back before the Renaissance, see J. Heers, Vom Mwnmensclumz zum Machttheater (Frankfurt, 1986). 20. C. Hall, "Private Persons versus Public Someones: Class, Gender, and Politics in England, 1780-1850," in C. Steedman, C. Urwin, V. Walkerdine, eds.; Language, Gender, and Childhood (London, 1985), pp. 10 ff.; J. B. Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revollllion (lthaca, 1988). 21. C. Pateman, "The Fraternal Social Contract," in J. Keane, ed., Civil Society and the State (London, 1988), p. 105. The same point is made by A. W. Gouldner, The Dialectic of Ideology and Technology (New York, 1976), p. 103: "The integration of the patriarch-
ical family system with a system of private property was the fundamental grounding of the private; a sphere that did not routinely have to give an accounting of itself, by providing either information about its conduct or judification for it. Private property and patriarchy were thus indirectly the grounding for the public."
29. R. Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form (London, 1974); R. Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (London, 1983); D. l'rokop, ed., Medimforschung, vol. 1, Konzerne, Macher, Kontrollettre (Frankfun, 1985). 30. See W. R. Langenbucher, ed., Zur Theorie der politischen Kommunikotion (Munich, 1974). 31. J. Habermas, L. v. Friedeburg, C. Oler, and F. Weltz, Student und Politik (Neuwied, 1961). 32. The Civic Cullure: Political Altitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton, 1963). Also see G. Almond, S. Veba, eds., The Civic Culture Revisited (Boston, 1980). 33. See, however, R. N. Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart (Berkeley, 1985). 34." See, for example, S. H. Barnes, Max Kaase, eds., Political Action: Mass Participation in Fitte Westem Democracies (Beverly Hills, 1979).
35. See the anniversary issue "Ferment in the Field," Journal of Gommwrimticm 33 (1983). For this reference my thanks go to Rolf Megersohn, who himself has been active for decades in the fields of the sociology of mass media and of mass culture. 31i. A summary of results is provided by J. T. Klapper, The Effects of MtL5S Comrmmicaticm (Glencoe, 1960). 37. T. Gitlin, "Media Sociology: The Dominant Paradigm," Theory and Society 6 (1978): 205-253. For a response, see the rebuttal by E. Katz, "Communication Research since Lazarsfeld," Public Opinion Quarterly, Winter 1987, 25-45.
22. E. W. Bockenforde, "Die Bedeutung der Unterscheidung von Staat und Gesellschaft im demokratischen Sozialstaat der Gegenwart," trans. in E. W. BockenfOrde, State, Society and Liberty: Studies in Political Tlreory and Constitutional Law (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991 ).
38. C. Lodziak, The Power of Television (London, 1986).
23. D. Grim m, Recht un Staat der burgerlichen Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1987).
Instructive from the point of view of society as a whole is C. Calhoun, "Populist Politics, Communications Media, and Large Scale Societal Integration," Social Theory 6 (1988): 219-241.
24. J. Habermas, "Die klassische Lehre von der Politik in ihrem Verhaltnis zur Sozialphilosophie," also "Naturrecht und Revolution," both trans. inj. Habermas, Theory and Practice, trans. John Viertel (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973). In addition, see J. Keane, "Despotism and Democracy: The Origins and Development of the Distinction between Civil Society and the State, 1750-1850," in Keane, Civil Society and the State, pp. 35 IT.
39. T. Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching (Berkeley, 1983); H. Gans, Deciding What's News (New York, 1979). A survey is provided by G. Tuckmann, "Mass Media Institutions," in N. Smelser, ed., Handbook of Sociology (New York, 1988), pp. 601-625.
40. S. Hall, "Encoding and Decoding in the TV-Discourse," in S. Hall, ed., Culture, Media, Language (London, 1980), pp. 128-138; D. Morley, Family Television (London, 1988).
25. E. Forsthoff, ed., Rechtsstaatliclrkeit und Sozialstaatlichkeit (Darmstadt, 1968).
41. N. Bobbio, The Future of Democracy (Oxford, 1987).
26. E. Forsthoff, "Begriff und Wesen des sozialen Rechtsstaates"; E. R. Huber, "Rechtsstaat und Sozialstaat in der modernen lndustriegesellschaft"; both contained in Forsthoff, Rechtsslaatlichkeit und Sozialstaatlichkeit, pp. 165 ff. and 589 ff.
42. For a critique of Marx's concept of ideology, see J. Keane, Democracy and Civil Society: On the Predicaments of European Socialism (London, 1988), pp. 213 ff. 43. S. Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia (New York, 1987).
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44. J. Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2, Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, trans. T. McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989).
62. Keane, Democracy and Civil Society (1988), p. 14. 63. C. Offe, in Honneth et al. Zwischenbetrachtungen, p. 758.
45. J. Habermas, "Historischer Materialismus und die Entwicklung normativer Strukturen," in J. Habermas, Zur Rekonstruktion des Historischen Materialismus {Frankfurt, 1976), pp. 9-48.
64. See the contributions by J. Rupnik, M. Vajda, and Z. A. Pelczynski in Keane, ed., Ciuil Society a11d the State (1988), part 3.
46. A. Honneth, Kritik der Macht {Frankfurt, 1985), pp. 265 ff.
65. A. Arato and J. Cohcn, "Civil Society and Social Theory," Thesis Elevm, no. 21 (1988), pp. 40-67; Arato and Cohen, "Politics and the Reconstruction of the Concept of Civil Society," in Honneth et al., Zwischenbetrachtungen, pp. 482-503.
47. Sec my Reply to objections in A. Honneth and H. Joas, eds., Kommunikativts Handeln {Frankfurt, 1986), 377 ff.
66. J. Meyrowitz, No Sense of Place {Oxford, 1985). 48. See my interview with H. P. Kriiger in J. Habermas, Die .nacholemle Revolution, pp. 82 IT. 49. U. Preusss, "Was· heiOt radikale Demokratie heute?" in Forum fiir Philosophic, ed., Die ldeen von 1789 {Frankfurt, 1989), pp. 47-67. 50. B. Manin, "On Legitimacy and Political Deliberation," Political Theory 15 {1987): 351 ff. Manin's explicit reference is not to Structural Transformation but to "Legitimationsprobleme" (see note 36, p. 367). 51. J. Cohen, "Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy," in A Hamlin, P. Pettit, eds., The Good Polity (Oxford, 1989), pp. 12-24. Cohen too refers not to Structural Transformation but to three of my later publications (in English) (see note 13, p. 33). 52. K. Giinther, Der Sinn filr Angemessenheit {Frankfurt, 1987). 53. See K.-0. Ape!, Diskurs und Verantwortung (Frankfurt, 1988). 54. J. Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, trans. T. McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975); J. Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990). 55. J. Habermas, "Towards a Communication Concept of Rational Collective WillFormation," Ratio juris 2 {1989): 144-154. 56. See my "Law and Morality," pp. 246 ff. 57. The paraphrase is based on R. E. Goodin, "Laundering Preferences," inJ. Elster and A. Hylland, eds., Foundations of Sociol Science Theory (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 75101. C. Offe develops this consideration in his ingenious essay "Bindung, Fessel, Bremse: Die Uniibersichtlichkeit von Selbstbeschriikungsformeln," in A. Honneth, T. McCarthy, C. Offe, A. Wellmer, Zwischenbetrachtungen (Frankfurt, 1989), pp. 739-775.
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58. C. Offe and U. K. Preuss, "Can Democratic Institutions Make ·Efficient Use of Moral Resources?" manuscript. 59. J. Habermas, "Volkssouveriinitl!t als Verfahren: Ein normativer Begriff der Offentlichkeit?" in Die Jdeen von 1789 (1989), pp. 7-36. 60. U. Rode!, G. Frankenberg, and H. Dubiel, Die demokratische Frage {Frankfurt, 1989), chapter 4. 61. Offe, in Honneth et·al., Zwischenbetrachtungen, p. 755.
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[9] Was There Ever a Public Sphere? If So, When? Reflections on the American Case Michael Schudson
Critiques of American politics and culture are sometimes posed as if contemporary life represents a decline from some great and golden age. Christopher Lasch, for instance, bemoans "the transformation of politics from a central component of popular culture.into a spectator sport." What once existed but has been lost, in Lasch's view, is "the opportunity to exercise the virtues associated with deliberation and participation in public debate." What we are seeing is "the atrophy of these virtues in the common people-judgment, prudence, eloquence, courage, self-reliance, resourcefulness, common sense." 1 Different images of the good old days appear without consensus about just when the good old days happened. George Anastaplo, among many others, has blamed much of the recent decline on television, and he successively offered two datings of the golden age. First, impressed that people would stand in the hot sun for several hours listening to "tight, tough arguments," he suggests the Lincoln-Douglas debates as a contrast to the TV era. He argues that the trouble with TV is not only that it fails to inform but also that it deceives people into believing they are informed. In contrast, "a generation ago"-not, I note, an era when people listened to hours of tight, tough argument in any forum-"you would know that if you had not read certain things, you were not able to talk about issues properly, and you might defer to those who had taken the trouble to inform themselves." 2
If liberals see atrophy, so too do conservatives. Allan Bloom is the most celebrated to discuss a straight-line decline of civility in an age characterized by lack of character, lack of seriousness, lack of discipline, lack of nerve by those in positions of authority, the advance of a superficial and relativistic democratic ethos ultimately inimical to a good society. Both liberals and conservatives often see television as the cause, or at any rate the chief symptom, of the decline of a public sphere. It is an almost reflexlike, parenthetical explanatory catchall, as in the claim of New York Times media and politics reporter Michael Orcskes that "the first generation raised with tele~ision is a generation that participates less in the democracy than any . before it.":1 In fact, Oreskes is referring to the second generation raised with television, not the first, and he is wrong that it participates less in the democracy than any before it. Voting rates were just as miserable in 1920 as in 1984, and were worse in the 1790s. But let me offer as the main foil for this discussion an observation in the very important and influential research of American political scientist Waiter Dean Burnham. In a 1974 essay he offers the example of the Lincoln-Douglas debates as evidence of the character of the mid nineteenth century American voter. He infers, from the fact that rational campaigners seekit~g election would engage in what seem to us unusually sophisticated and erudite debates on national issues before rural publics and the fact that party newspapers with similar rational inclinations to advance the interests of their candidates would reprint these debates in their entirety,. that mid~nineteenth century voters were literate, attentive, and interested in issues of transcendent importance. 4 Are these safe inferences to make? I do not think so. Burnham himself all but declares them faulty in his next paragraphs. For he goes on to hold that nineteenth-century American politics was characterized by what he terms "political confessionalism." That is, mid-nineteenth-century Americans were devoutly attached to political parties. They tended to live in "island communities" surrounded by other people like themselves. Ethnic and religious communities provided the basis for political allegiances and very often were closely connected to
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the ideological content of political parties. 5 Political campaigns were, in a sense, more religious revivals and popular entertainments than the settings for rational-critical discussion. It is true that the voters who attended or read of the Lincoln-Douglas debates in their party newspapers were literate. It is true that they attended, but it is not at all apparent what·in those debates they attended to. It is true that they participated, but it is not dear that they were "interested in issues of transcendent importance" (or that even if they were in 1858, a moment of particularly heightened political conflict, this has any bearing on their political interests in 1848 or 1868). A point of comparison may help clarify this. Lawrence Levine has shown that Shakespearean drama was enormously popular in nineteenth-century America. But do we know from this how audiences related to it? No. What Levine's research suggests is that audiences enjoyed Shakespeare because they could read him as a creator of just the sorts of melodramas to which they were most partial. They saw Macbeth or Lear as rugged individualists up against the dangers of time ·and nature, warring against fate with all the larger-than-life energy Americans liked to see on the stage. Audiences saw Shakespeare's plays as a set of moral lessons: Thomas Jefferson saw Lear as a study of the importance of filial duty; Abraham Lincoln saw Macbeth as a study of tyranny and murder; John Quincy Adams saw Othello as a tale cautioning against interracial marriage. In popular American ideology and in the Shakespeare that Americans enjoyed, the individual bore responsibility for his own fate; if he failed, it was only through lack of inner discipline and control. All of these lessons came draped in the kind of expansive oratory that Americans liked in both their theater and their politics. 1; What does this say of Lincoln-Douglas? It reminds us, as does a great deal of contemporm·y literary theory, that what the audience receives from the texts it approaches is not obviously encoded in the texts themselves. Did the Lincoln-Douglas audiences attend the debates because they sought to rationally and critically follow the arguments? Did they attend because they were thinking through the questions of slavery and states' rights? Were they out for a good time? Were they
connoisseurs of oratory who admired the effectiveness of Lincoln and Douglas at skewering each other but lacked much concern for whether their arguments were right or wrong? Did they simply enjoy the spectacle of solitary combat? Had they already made up their political minds and come out only to show support for their man? The longing of contemporary critics of our political culture to stand in the sun for three hours to listen to political speeches is selective. If there is nostalgia for the Lincoln-Douglas debates (not that they left any words, phrases, or ideas anyone can recall), there is no hankering for dramatic readings of Edward Everett's hours-long address at Gettysburg. Instead, it is Abraham Lincoln's sound-bite-length address that has left a lasting impression. (As it happens, not long ago people did listen to literally hours of political address, interspersed with music, at antiwar rallies in the 1960s, If it is any measure, I can say from personal experience that there is a big difference between attending a rally and actually listening to the speeches.) This is not to deny that the Lincoln-Douglas debates were an impressive exercise of democracy. But it is well to remember that they were strikingly unusual even in their own day. The id~a that a public sphere of rational-critical discourse flourished in the eighteenth or early nineteenth century, at least in the American instance, is an inadequate, if· not incoherent, notion. Its empirical basis, in the American case, seems to me remarkably thin. When we examine descriptions of what public life was actually like, there is not much to suggest the rationalcritical discussion J iirgen Habermas posits as central to the public sphere. Perhaps more distressing, for some periods there is not much to indicate even very general interest, let alone participation, in public affairs. What I want to focus on in the rest of this paper are two defining features of the political public sphere. First, what is the level of participation in the public sphere: who is legally eligible for political activity and what portion of those eligible actually participate? Second, to what extent is political participation carried out through rational and critical discourse? This is a vital part of the concept of the public sphere as Habermas has presented it. No plebiscitary democracy, for instance,
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would qualify for Habermas as having a functioning public sphere; not only does participation need to be widespread, but it must be rational. One of the great contributions of the concept of a public sphere is that it insists that an ideal democratic polity be defined by features beyond those that formally enable political participation. It is not only the fact of political involvement but its quality that the concept of the public sphere evokes. There are, certainly, other conditions or preconditions of a public sphere, but these two are undoubtedly central, and I will limit my discussion in this paper to these alone. 7 This discussion is inspired by Habermas more than it is directly responsive to his work. That is, I am not engaged in criticizing the historical evidence he adduces for the emergence (and later disintegration) of a public sphere. His historical account concerns European affairs, ~nd I do not presume the American case either confirms or contradicts·European developments. I am concerned with Habermas's model of the public sphere not so much as "a paradigm for analyzing historical change," as Pet~~ Hohendahl put it, but more as "a normative category for political critique.'~8 That is, I think historians should examine a.s a central question of political history the rise or fall, expanSion or contraction (the appropriate metaphor is not clear) of a public sphere or, more generally, what the conditions have been in different periods that encourage or discourage public participation in politics and public involvement in rationalcritical discussion of politics.
franchise as a reasonable, though certainly incomplete, index of inclusion in the political world but also what percentages of those groups actually exercise their political rights. Contemporary commentators regularly observe that present voting participation rates are significantly lower than they were in the mid nineteenth century. This is so. There was a sharp decline in voter turnout from the 1880s to a low in the 1920s; during the New Deal and after, voting rates increased, but there has been a striking decline again from 1960 to the present. This should be viewed, however, in the longer perspective of American history. Jane Mansbridge found in her study of a New England town meeting in the 1970s that only some 35 percent of eligible voters turned out to this archetype of democratic decision making. How did this compare, she asked, to the New England town meetings of. the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? In Dedham, Massachusetts, where records are quite complete for the mid seventeenth century, attendance varied. From 1636 to 1644, 74 percent of eligible voters typically attended meeting. While this turnout is much higher than in town meetings today, its significance is mitigated by the fact that every inhabitant lived within one mile of the meeting place, there were fiJ?.es for lateness to town meeting or absence from town meeting, a town crier visited the house of every latecomer or absentee half an hour into the meeting, and only some sixty men were eligible in the first place. In Sudbury, a town that did not impose fines, attendance averaged 46 percent in the 1650s. In many towns for which we have good evidence, attendance in the eighteenth century was lower still. Mansbridge estimates that 20 to 60 percent of·potential voters attended meeting in eighteenth-century Massachusetts. The figures for the nineteenth century are similar except for periods of particularly intense conflict, when turnout rose to as high as 75 percent. In the town she studied, ninteenth-century attendance was 30 to ·35 percent while in the current period it is around 25 percent or as high as 66 percent in times of special conflict. 9 John Adams told a friend while visiting Worcester in 1755, "This whole town is immersed in politics.'' Yet as historian Robert Zemsky concludes, "The average provincial seldom en-
1 Citizen Participation in Politics The more people participate as citizens in politics, the closer one comes to the ideal of a public sphere. By this criterion, in American history the period since 1865 is an improvement upon all prior periods, with the enfranchisement of Negroes; the period since 1920 is better than any prior period, with the enfranchisement of women; and the period since 1965 is better still with the civil rights laws that made the Fifteenth Amendment a substantial reality. But the question is not only what segments of the population are legally eligible to participate in politics (I am taking the
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gaged in political activity. He had little desire to hold office; his attendance at town meetings and participation in provincial elections was sporadic; and when he did join in political campaigns, he rarely lent more than his moral support to the cause." 10 In revolutionary America, 10 to 15 percent of white adult males voted at the beginning of the Revolution, 20 to 40 percent during the 1780s. 11 In Massachusetts the first Congressional elections of 1788 and 1790 brought out 13 percent and 16 percent of eligible voters. The high point of turnout in state elections in the decade came in 1787 after the "near civil war" of Shays Rebellion-a 28 percent turnout. 12 In eighteenth-century New England, the most democratic culture in colonial North America, p~ople participated in politics occasionally at best. "Apathy prevailed among citizens until they perceived a threat to their immediate interests," according to historian Ronald Formisano's analysis of eighteenth-century Massachusetts. 13 The nineteenth century, before party mobilization began in the 1840s, was no better. "In the 1820s the vast majority of citizens had lost interest in politics. They had never voted much in presidential elections anyway, and now they involved themselves only sporadically in state and local affairs."14 There is not much to be said in favor of any time in America's past before the 1840s in terms of political participation and political interest. William Gienapp characterizes American political life before the 1820s as follows: "Previously deference to social elites and mass indifference characterized the nation's politics; despite suffrage laws sufficiently liberal to allow mass participation, few men were interested in politics, and fewer still actively participated in political affairs. Politics simply did not seem important to most Americans." 15 With the rise of mass-based political parties in the Jacksonian era, political participation took a new turn. Voting rates shot up dramatically. For example, the percentage of the potential electorate that voted in Connecticut was 8 percent in 1820 and 15 percent in 1824.. By 1832 this rose to 46 percent and by 1844 to 80 percent. 16 Turnout figures of around 80 percent were common outside the South until the turn of the century, when they began to d.ecline, reaching a lower point in the 1920s than at any time since before Andrew Jackson. If we take voter
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turnout as the measure (and it seems to me a good one), there is no question that in terms of political participation, there was a golden age of American political culture, the period from 1840 to 1900. This period, then, merits close consideration. What was the character of political culture in this period? What was the nature of political discourse? What features of the era supported mass political involvement? And was this involvement or a type or quality we might reasonably long for, or at least learn from, today? 2 Rational-Critical Political Discourse It is difficult enough to know voter turnout rates for the nineteenth century. To try to learn how eighteenth- or nineteenthcentury voters conceived of politics, came to political views, and arrived at political choices and actions is substantially harder. There is so much here we would need to know and that we never will know in any complete way. Did people talk about politics in their homes? Was the talk of politics at taverns or coffeehouses "rational-critical," or was it gossipy, incidental background to sociability rather than its center? What connection did people feel to politics? Was voting a proud act of citizenship or a deferential act of social obligation to community notables? When people read about politics, what did they look for? What frameworks of meaning did they possess for absorbing new information? Did they have coherent ideologies or patchwork sets of beliefs with little connection among the pieces? None of this is easy to discover. Still, there are some important clues available. For purposes of exposition, I will distinguish between the internal resources of citizens for participation in political discourse and the external resources available for their use-specifically, parties, the press, and electoral procedures. Internal Resources of Citizens American colonists of the eighteenth century were not well read. If they owned a book at all, it was the Bible. If they owned a second book, it was likely to be a collection of sermons
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or possibly John Bunyan's Christian allegory, Pilgrim's Progress, or some other religious work. Where we have comprehensive inventories of communities, even in New England 50 to 70 percent of households owned no books at all. The most active bookseller in Virginia in the mid eighteenth century sold books to 250 customers a year in a colony with a white population of 130,000.17 In New England, where literacy rates were somewhat higher than elsewhere in the colonies, popular reading was severely restricted and was almost exclusively religious. Works of science or literature reached only a small audience made up almost entirely of the very small group of people who were college graduates. 18 The one class of deeply literate people, the clergy, almost exclusively read religious literature and played relatively minor roles ·(judging, for instance, from their insignificance at the Constitutional Convention) in the great political debates of their time. 19 That Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson read widely in contemporary philosophy is not a trait they shared with many contemporaries. That Franklin read books at all was itself a social calling card; he reports in his autobiography that when he first journeyed to Philadelphia, he met a physician at an inn who "finding I had read a little" became sociable and friendly. Readers were relatively rare birds, not participants in a broad, ongoing, and institutionalized rationalcritical discourse. The best-seller success of Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense in 1776 was due, in Paine's own estimation, not only to its being issued at a time of intense political conflict but also to its being addressed to the common republican reader. Political pamphlet literature in the colonies was ordinarily addressed to the small, educated elite and was written in a florid style full of classical references that had meaning only to a few. Paine purged his writing of the classics, used as reference primarily the Biblical tradition, and sought "language as plain as the alphabet." 20 In the nineteenth century the intellectual resources of the population expanded. Literacy shifted from being intensive to being extensive, schooling became much more accessible, and the secularization ofculture, along with the democratization of religion, spread a wider range of ideas to more and more
people. This is not to say that the growth of literacy and the growing market for printed literature, including political li~- . erature, was necessarily a force for liberation at each moment. H
One critical feature of the bourgeois public sphere is the availability of public media for carrying on and informing public discussion. There is a distinction to be made between "carrying on" and "informing." Habermas distinguishes between an early press devoted to political controversy and a later, commercial press that pursues the commodification of news. While the commercial press is not without its virtues, actively engaging the public in political debate is not one of them. In the terms of James Carey, there has been a shift from a "conversation" model to an "information" model of the press, and it has been an unhappy shift at that. 23 James Lemert has shown that the contemporary mainstream commercial American press in a sense prevents the political activity of its readers. It avoids publishing what Lemert calls "mobilizing information." That is, it will report about a political demonstration but it will not
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announce it the day before and provide a phone number or other information on how to reach the organizers. Where there is a celebration or demonstration that unites the community (the Fourth of July parade), in contrast, "mobilizing information" is ready at hand, with parade routes and locations for watching fireworks.2 4 Tocqueville's .notion of a newspaper as a creator of associations accurately described the reform journals of the 1830s and 1840s, has some application to the party papers that remained strong into the late nineteenth century, and also describes a large number of newsletters of voluntary associations even today. But the commercial model ofjournalism that dominates general, public discourse today and grew out of the penny press of the 1830s seeks a market, not an association or a community. The leading early editor of a penny paper, James Gordon Bennett, boasted that his press was "subservient to none of its readers-known to none of its readersand entirely ignorant who are its readers and who are not." 25 This market ideal of the new journalism is the antithesis of association or community. That journalism shifted toward a more and more fully commercial model during the nineteenth century should not lead us to romanticize the conversation model of the early press or to assume that it dominated uniformly in the era before the modern commercial newspaper pushed it to the sidelines. As Stephen Botein has argued, the colonial newspaper scrupulously avoided controversy on almost all occasions up to the decade before the Revolution, when the printers were dragged, sometimes kicking and screaming, into taking sides with the loyalists or the patriots. 26 When news was printed, it was generally chosen because it avoided controversy. The beginnings of the infonnation press, in a sense, lie far back in the eighteenth century, when news was self-consciously regarded as a safe alternative to political debate and polemic. In l~tct, the more remote the news~ the better. News of other colonies was more useful, because it was reganled with g•·eate•· incliiTe•·ence, than news of one's own colony; news of European affairs were better still, because they had even less connection to local affairs.
So the colonial press was not, generally speaking, a press of political conversation except as political drama dragged it into the arena. Politics sometimes made of newspapers and pamphleL'i a public ((>nun, but it was rare indeed that editors of their own volition created a public forum that stimulated political action. This is not to diminish the importance of the press at moments of heightened political activity, as during the Stamp Act crisis of 1765 or in the years leading up to the Revolution. But the colonial press was not a permanent resource for political discussion; its politicization was a sometime thing. By the early nineteenth century the politicahiess of the Ame.-ican press receded-just as party competition evaporated in the Era of Good Feelings. The relevance of the press to political discourse rose and fell with the fortunes of formal political-organization, close electoral competition, and intense community conflict. In any case, there were limits to what the press could provide. Eighteenth-century colonial assemblies conducted much of their business in secret. In Massachusetts the House began· publishing a journal of its proceedings annually in 1715, though it was published twice a week after 1717. But the journal only rarely published roll-call votes (17 between 1739 and 1756), which made it difficult to know the policy stands of one's own representative. Any newspaper or other commentator who revealed business of the House not printed in the journal was subject to fine. Boston's half-dozen newspapers and its pamphleteers therefore usually just paraphrased what the journal already published. In times of crisis, enough information might percolate out to enable rational voting; in ordinary times, this was rarely the case. 27 One could reasonably argue that Massachusetts towns were homogeneous enough so that the legislator "ordinarily voiced his community's aspirations and grievances because he shared its prejudices." 28 If this was democracy, it was nonetheless far from a democracy based on rational-critical discussion. And Massachusetts was not unusual. From the 1740s to the Revolution, the New York Assembly regularly restated its right to prohibit the publication of its pwceedings. Only two state constitutions drafted in the years after the Revolution opened the doors of the legislature to the public.
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Through the 1780s, historian Thomas Leonard has written, "when Americans found a speech in their newspapers it was more likely to have been made in the Parliament of the kingdom they had rejected than in the assemblies of the new nation they hadjoined."29 In Congress, reporters were forbidden until 1800. Even when reporters gained access, few newspapers took advantage. Until the 1820s no newspaper outside Washington maintained a regular Washington correspondent. 30 In contrast, the press of the heyday of American political participation, from 1840 to 1900, was of a different color altogether. Somewhere between the world of conversation and the world of information, these papers were typically loyal to political parties; they .served as information-promoting boosters of a particular political organization. American politics saw its highest level of participation begin just as party organizations moved self-consciously away from ideological stances. As Richard Hofstadter documents, from the 1840s on, political parties shifted from ideological institutions within an elite to organizational combat units competing for masses of voters.:11 They sought voter loyalty on the basis of program but even more on the basis of social and communal solidarity. American politics in this era has been described as divided along ethnocultural lines-people voted in solidarity with their ethnic and religious communities, not in allegiance to a political theory or philosophy and not with careful discussion or consideration of alternatives. People did not normally choose a political party or political philosophy any more than they chose a religion. On election day, most voters did not conceive of their having a choice between alternatives any more than the Methodist imagined he had a choice Sunday morning between the Methodist Church and the Congregational Church across the street. (If people had sought to make rational choices among parties, it would not have been an easy matter. Parties in the nineteenth century showed relatively little ideological consistency. By the 1890s, Ballard Campbell reports, the most consistent separation of Republicans and Democrats on the state level in Midwestern legislatures was over the liquor issue. This was the kind of "quasi-confessional" matter, to recall Burnham's terms, that parties did clearly represent with some consistency, but no
major party represented a coherent political program or philosophy.:!2) Correspondingly, newspapers boosted the parties they represented. The press, in Michael McGerr's terms, "imposed a coercive cultural uniformity" on its readers. The press encouraged citizens to see politics in partisan terms. While this helped citizens to understand politics, it also helped them to see politics in the most simplified light: "By reducing politics to black-andwhite absolutes, the press made partisanship enticing. The committed Republican or Democrat did not need to puzzle over conflicting facts and arguments; in his paper he could find ready-made positions on any candidate and every issue."33 Later, when more than one position could be found in a single newspaper, editors feared readers would find this bewildering. In the median political paper for the mid nineteenth century, ifone can imagine such a thing, a one-sided view of the political battleground was maintained not only by attacking the opposition party and its candidates but, for the most part, by failing to mention them altogether. The aggregate of political newspapers, read side by side, might well have approximated some form of rational-critical discourse, or at least the kind of caricatured, zany "Point/Counterpoint'' that "Saturday Night Live" used to lampoon. But there is nothing to indicate that papers were read in this way, no more than one would expect the Baptist to peruse the church newsletter of the Presbyterian. Party
In any event, without some way of limiting debate, defining issues, and restricting alternatives, no debate can be rational. To be sensible, political debate cannot be a set of simultaneous equations that only a computer could handle. It has to be a small set of identifiable, branching alternatives that can be examined reasonably enough one at a time. The party helped make that possible. "Parties," as Maurice Duverger put it, "create public opinion as much as they express it; they form it rather than distort it; there is dialogue rather than echo. Without parties there would be only vague, instinctive, varying tendenc;ies dependent on character, education, habit, social position and so on."3-t Parties do not distort raw opinion but
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make possible real opinion. Critics, as Duverger wrote, "fail to realize that raw opinion is elusive, that formed opinion alone can be expressed, and that the method of expression necessarily imposes on it a frame which modifies it." 35 If this is so, then modern democracies owe a great deal not only to the bourgeoisie in general but to the United States in particular for its invention of the mass-based party in the 1840s. At the same time, party politics does not necessarily mean rational, informed voting. In William Gienapp's description of politics from 1840 to 1860 there is niore evidence of participation than of serious discussion. Gienapp notes the widespread popularity of campaign songs whose purpose was to "provide entertainment and generate enthusiasm while lampooning·the opposition." 36 Political barbeques were popular in Western states, and politics provided relief from social isolation. Was this good political education? That would be harder to affirm. "Campaign hoopla generated popular interest, but at times this pageantry took precedence over the dissemination of political information." 37 If that is the kind of politics as popular culture that Christopher Lasch fondly looks back on, not all contemporaries felt the same. Edward Everett Hale, for one, complained that the 1856 Republican campaign with a tent, traveling blacksmith orator, and glee club "is putting politics on just the level of Circus Riding." 38 It should be noted that the Lincoln-Douglas kind of campaign had its critics in Lincoln's day. Hale felt stump speaking "one of the downward tendencies" of the age, favoring the young and able-bodied over more seasoned, and presumably wiser, leaders and giving too much room to mere adventurers.39 In an era suspicious of television, and suspicious in part because television seems to favor certain superficial traits of good looks and the ability to invent a catchy sound bite, it is important to remember that an era of oratory had related problems. To be a winning public speaker was no guarantee that one could be a wise leader in office. The public speech before a live audience uses a "medium" with special properties just as much as the interview before a camera. (As it happens, live public speech~s by the candidates were not very common, at least in presidential campaigns, in the nineteenth century.
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The campaign of I 888, for instance, had an incumbent president, Gmver Cleveland, who made exactly one speech, to accept his nomination, and a challenging candidate, Bettiamin Han-ison, who gave quite a number of speeches, but every one of them from the front porch of his home.in Indiana.) In any event, it is also true that in a day of intensely strong party loyalties, the people who listened to Lincoln and Douglas were not listening to make up their minds. They were there to rally for their candidate, whatever he might say. It was neither a personality contest nor a debate whose winner would be declared by people weighing the best arguments. Electoral Procedu1·es
Stanley Kelley wrote in a 1960 study of political campaigning that the basic assumption of his work is that "campaign discus:.. sion should help voters make rational voting decisions." 40 That seems a useful assumption. Can we characterize when over American history campaign discussion most closely ·approximated that ideal? Michael McGerr examines this subject in The Decline of Popular Politics. McGerr examines political campaigning in the American North from the middle of the nineteenth century through the 1920s. In short, he chronicles campaigning from the era of the greatest participation of citizens in American politics through its rapid decline to low levels in the 1920s that it had not reached since before 1840 and would not reach again until the 1970s. While McGerr recognizes a variety of factors that contributed to the decline of voter turnout, he draws attention to the influence of a conception of politics among an elite of reformers that decried the party-dominated and emotionally extravagant campaign of the Civil War era. These reformers decried "spectacular" politics and sought to replace it with "educational politics." Pamphlets, not parades, was their idea of the rational way to run a campaign. Perusing, not parading, is what they sought to encourage. In the spectacular style of politics, local party organizations created special clubs, marching groups, and civic organizations that engaged in parades, demonstrations, picnics, and other outdoor forms of political entertainment. These forms were
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widely participatory, more so than any other form of American politics before or since, but this does not mean they were altogether democratically participatory. Members of the upper class held the most important local offices, and parades, as Michael McGerr observes, "stopped at the homes of the wealthy to serenade them and to hear their wisdom." 41 The spectacle of nineteenth-century politics helped establish, McGerr argues, "the upper class's right to rule." 42 Politics, then, was more a communal ritual than an act of individual or group involvement in rational-critical discussion. This extended all the way to the ballot box. Ballots were drawn up by parties, not by a common state agency, and voters would very often deposit them in separate ballot boxes. Until the late nineteenth century there was no secret ballot in the United States, and the act of balloting was relatively public. Your neighbors knew not only if you voted but also which party you voted for. The party-printed ballots made it difficult for individuals to split their tickets; they also made it easy for bribery to be effective, since the party leaders could determine whether the bribed voter did or did not follow through on his voting pledge. The election, as a form of political communication, was itself a very different experience than it is today. It was organized much less with the rational choice of the individual voter in mind. The voter, in a sense, was not conceived of as an individual but as an entity enveloped in and defined by social circumstance and party affiliation. The transformation of the election campaign from a communal ritual to a political marketplace, a transformation that took place primarily in the period 1880 to 1920, was in part a self-conscious effort of reformers to root out the corruption of the party systembribery and multiple voting-and to improve upon the election as a voice of people rationally seeking their interests on the basis of informed judgment. The reformers promoted what they called "educational" campaigns that replaced parades with pamphlets and replaced outdoor rallies with in-home newspaper reading. The reformers, who were remarkably successful as McGerr tells their story, helped to create the electoral campaign as an if!stitution that pictures as the ultimate o~ject of its efforts the isolated individual, gathering information
from different sides, rationally evaluating it, and conscientiously making up his mind. The irony about contemporary longing for nineteenth-century politiCs is that it seeks the realization of an ideal that itself was formulated only on the funeral pyre of participatory, communal, ritualistic politics. 3
Conclusion
It does not appear that in any general sense rational-critical discussion characterized American politics in the colonial era. The politically oriented riot was a more familiar form of political activity than learned discussion of political principles. If some contemporary authors write with fondness of the spon- · taneity of such political expression,43 others shed doubt that these riots were very often spontaneous at all. 44 In the nineteenth century, when political participation increased substantially, political discourse did not become markedly more rational and critical. To infer eighteenth-century politics from the fact that the Federalist papers appeared in the newspapers or to infer nineteenth-century politics from the Lincoln-Douglas debates would be something like characterizing American politics of the 1970s by the fact that the impeachment debates in the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 were broadcast live on television and discussed widely and fervently among people of all walks of life. All these events were extraordinary; none of them represents the normal political discourse of its era. 1 find the concept of a public sphere indispensable as a model of what a good society should achieve. It seems to me a central notion for social or political theory. I think it is also enormously useful as a model that establishes a set of questions to ask about politics past and present. What I have tried to do here is just that and, in the process, to raise questions about how well a model of the public sphere was approximated in earlier periods of American history. Obviously, tl1is essay is more a provocation than a settled position; it relies on the judgments of other scholars more than it carves out its own comprehensive position. If I have used my questions more as a club than a beacon, I have done so to dispel the retrospective wishful thinking that beclouds too much contemporary political and cultural analy-
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sis. Our place in the world is different from that of eighteenthcentury or nineteenth-century Americans, but not, I think, fallen. Thinking through the conditions and possibilities for more rational and critical, fair and fair-minded, political practices in our own day will not profit from maintaining illusions about the character of the public sphere in days gone by.
14. Fonnisano, TrallSjoroUJ.lion of Political Culture, p. 17. 15. William <:icnapp, '"l'olitics Seem to Enter into Everything': Politiml Cuhm·c in the North, 1840-1860," in Stephen E. Maizlish and John J. Kushma, cds., Essays ou Aml'limn AulfiJrllmn Politics, 1810-1860 (College Station, Texas: Texas A&M Press, 1!182) p. 15. 16. Waiter Dean Burnham, Thl' Current Crisis in American Politics (New York: Oxford, 1982) p. 129.
Notes
17. David Hall, "The Uses of Literacy in New England, 1600-1850," in David Hall, ed., Printing and Society in Early America (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1983) pp. 27-28.
I. Christopher Lasch, "A Response to Joel Feinberg," Tikkun 3 (1988): 43.
18. Harry S. Stout, The New England Soul (New York: Oxford University l'ress, i986) p. 87.
2. George Anastaplo, "Education, Television, and Political Discourse in America," Center Magazine, July-August 1986, p. 21. 3. New York Times, January 31, 1988, p. IV-5.
1!1. Fmm 17!111 to ocratic culture. In had not matured. (New Haven: Yale
4. Walfer Dean Burnham, "Theory and Voting Research," in Waiter Dean Burnham, The Current Crisis in American Politics (New York: Oxford Unive!"sity Press, 1982) p. 83.
20. Quoted in Eric Forier, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).
5. Burnham, "Theory and Voting Research," pp. 84-86.
21. Harvey Graff, The Literacy Myth (New York: Academic Press, 1979).
6. Lawrence Levine, Higlibrow/Lowbrow: Tile Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). 7. Other dimensions of the public sphere would f?cus on. t!le ex~ent t? which a .l~gal or constitmional framework exists to pi"eserve rauonal-cnucal d1scuss1on and cmzen participation; the degree to which public-minde?ness is ~ncoumge<~ in the ~thnic :n~d value system of public servants; the extent to wh1ch relauve econom1c equahty prevails or to which a political system prevents the undue inll~e-:ce o~ tl~e wealthy_; the extent to which social life (family, church, and private assocmuons) IS 1mbued wuh a democratic, rather than deferential, spirit that would socialize individuals into readiness for public participation. 8. Peter Hohendahl, "Critical Theory, Public Sphere, and Culture: J iirgen Habernms and His Critics," New Gennan Critique 6 (1979): 92.
1830 evangelical Christianity became a powerful !inn' lin· a dem1776 or 1787, however, the democratic revolution in the churches See Nathan 0. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity University Press, 1989).
22. Lawrence C. Stedman and Cart F. Kaestle, "Literacy and Reading Performance in the United States, from 1880 to the Present," Reading Research Quarterly 22 (1987): 846. 23. James Carey, "The Press and Public Discourse," Center Magazine 20 (1983): 4-16. 24. James Lemert, "News Context and the Elimination of Mobilizing Information: An Experiment," Jounwlism Quarterly, 1984, 243-249, 259. 25. Quoted in· Michael Schudson, Discovering tile News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1978) p. 21. For a discussion of the model of jourmilism as the center of an association of readers, see David Nord, "Tocqueville, Garrison, and tl1e Perfection of Journalism," jounwlism History 13 (1986): 56-63.
9. .Jane Mansbridge, Beyond Adversary Democracy (New York: Basic Books, 1980) pp. 130-131.
26. Stephen Botein, "'Meer Mechanics' and an Open Press: The Business and Political Strategies of Colonial American Printers," Perspectives in American History 9 (1975) pp. 127-228.
10. Robcrt Zemsky, Merchants, Fanners, and River Gods: An Essay on Eighteenth-Ceutury American Politics (Boston: Gambit, 1971) p. 37.
27. Robert Zemsky, Merchants, Farmers, and River Gods, pp. 239-241.
11. J Morg-.m Kousser, "Suffrage;" in Jack Greene, ed. Encyclopec!ia of American Political History, vol. 3 (New York: Charles Scribner's, 1984). 12. Ronald Formisano, The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 17905-l840s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983) p. 30 13. Formisano, Transforn.wtion of Political Culture, p. 27.
2H. Rohcrt Zcmsky, Mr1·duwL<, Farmrr.<, and /liver Gods, p. 252. 29. Thomas Leonard, The Power of the Press: The Birth of American Political Reporting (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) p. 65. 30. Leonard, The Power of /he Press, p. 70. 31. Richard llofstadter, The Idea of a Party System (Berkeley: University of California l'ress, 1972).
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The Political Economy of the Media ll 163 Was There Ever a Public Sphere? 32. Ballard Campbell, Representative Democracy: Public Policy and Midwestern Legislatures in the Late Niueteenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 92. 33. Michael McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 2 I. 34. Maurice Duverger, Political Parties (London: Methuen, 1954), p. 378. 35. Duverger, Political Parties, p. 380. 36. Gienapp, '"Politics Seems to Enter into Everything,"' p. 33. 37. Gienapp, "'Politics Seems to Enter into Everything,'" p. 35. 38. Gienapp, '"Politics Seems to Enter into Everything,'" p. 35. 39. Gienapp, '"Politics Seems to Enter into Everything,'" p. 40. 40. Stanley Kelley, Jr., Political Campaigning: Problems in Creating an lnfonned Electorate (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1960), p. 3. 4 I. McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics, p. 3 I. 42. McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics, p. 32. 43. Benjamin Ginsberg, The Captive Public (New York: Basic Books, 1986). 44. Gary Nash, "The Transformation of Urban Politics, 1700-1765," journal of American History 60 (1973): 605-632.
Partii Public Broadcasting and the Public Interest
[10] Excerpts from Broadcast over Britain.
THE FUNCTION OF BROADCASTING HERE is a grumble and a cause of complainT ing if the crofter in the North of Scotland or the agricultural labourer in the West of England has been unable to hear the King speak on some great national occasion, the Prime Minister at the Lord Mayor's Banquet, or the President of the British Association tell of the latest explorations in the borderlands of scientific knowledge. The music and the news and the other happenings of the great cities must be brought to them as a matter of course. This, and much else besides, is what broadcasting not only makes possible, but has actually achieved. It has, indeed, already become commonplace. It no longer excites comment, and the novelty has worn off. Even in so simple and straightforward an illustration something of the great potentialities of broadcasting is revealed. · Those who come to inquire about our organization and its activities are astounded at the rapid growth, but almost in the same breath they will point out the vastness of the field before us. " Of course," they say, "you are only at the very beginning." The keen interest in broadcasting is due in large measure to the essential directness of the service, in whatever line it may be. Till the advent of this universal and extraordinarily cheap medium of communication, a very large proportion of the people were shut off from first-hand knowledge of 15
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the events which make history. They did not share in the interests and diversions of those with Fortune's twin-keys : Leisure and Money. They could not gain access to the great men of the day, and these great men could deliver their message to a limited number only. To-day all this is changed. He who really has something to tell his country.:. men, something which it shall be to their profit to hear, can command an audience of millions ready to hand. An event, be it speech, or music, or play, or ceremony, is certainly broadcast for any and all to receive ; but it seems to be personal to the individual hearer, and is brought to his very room. It is not even left, like the milk, on the doorstep ; still less has he to go outside into the rain, or put himself to any sort of inconvenience, to receive it. It is carried to him among all the accustomed and congenial circumstances and surroundings of his own home, and in his leisure hours. It comes in such a way that enjoyment on the one hand, or assimilation on the other, is induced with comparatively little effort. There need be none of the ordinary distractions and discomforts which militate against satisfaction and real effect. Less time and trouble are involved. The appeal of the ear, in matters such as these, is at least as quick as that to the eye. It is true that no appeal is made to the eye ; but when to the hearing of the ear is super-added the intelligent, spontaneous or assisted exercise of the imagination, little prejudice need remain from the absence of physical vision. How few can attend
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a great function, or hear the utterances of statesmen which are heavy with significance to us all I We will often listen to a speech, but not read one. Owing to the sensitiveness of the microphone a great part of the personality of the speaker may be conveyed. It is probable, moreover, that there will be an absence of much that in normal circumstances is superfluous and wearisome. A wireless talk is concentrated essence ; it is also direct, so that each listener may feel that he is being personally addressed. Entertainment, in the accepted (but erroneous) sense of the term, may at one time have been considered the sole function of the service. It may still be, in the full sense, the primary function. To the exten·t to which the idea of entertainment, as commonly understood, may have gained currency, there may be an explanation for the original holding aloof of many men and women in various walks of life, artistic and professional, whose cooperation and sympathy were needed, and whose lack of interest was for a time a matter of some irritation and concern. It was not altogether surprising. There was nothing to show what manner of people we were, nor in what way we were to handle our work. I think it will be admitted by all, that to have exploited so great a scientific invention for the purpose and pursuit of " entertainment " alone would have been a prostitution of its powers and an insult to the character and intelligence of the people. To have left unexplored the innumerable 2
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paths along which might pass influences, other than those normally associated with entertainment, would have ·stamped as sorry fellows those to whose care the administration of the invention had been committed. A closer inspection of the word "entertainment" is sufficient to show how incomplete is the ordinarily accepted meaning. To entertain means to occupy agreeably. Would it be urged that this is only to be effected by the broadcasting of jazz bands and popular music, or of sketches by humorists ? I do not think that many would be found willing to support so narrow a claim as this. Enjoyment may be sought, not with a view to returning refreshed to the day's work, but as a mere means of passing the time, and therefore of wasting it, or of relieving the tedium of life which is induced by deficiency, mental or physical. On the other hand, it may be part of a systematic and sustained endeavour to re-create, to build up knowledge, experience and character, perhaps even in the face of obstacles. Broadcasting enjoys the co-operation of the leaders of that section of the community whose duty and pleasure it is to give relaxation to the rest, but it is also aided by the discoverers of the intellectual forces which are moulding humanity, who are striving to show how time may be occupied not only agreeably, but well. Broadcasting brings relaxation and interest to many homes where such things are at a premium. It does far more ; it carries direct information on a hundred subjects to innumerable men and women,
who thereby will be enabled not only to take more interest in events which were formerly outside their ken, but who will after a short time be in a position to make up their own minds on many matters of vital moment, matters which formerly they had either to receive according to the dictated and partial versions and opinions of others, or to ignore altogether. A new and mighty weight of opinion is being formed, and an intelligent concern on many subjects will be manifested in quarters now overlooked. I have heard it argued that, in so far as broadcasti!lg is awakening interest in these hitherto more or less sheltered or inaccessible regions, it is fraught with danger to the community and to the country generally. In other words, I gather that it is urged that a state of ignorance is to be preferred to one of enlightenment. This smacks of the Middle Ages. No doubt incalculable harm has been wrought by the apostles of strife. Such is, however, their stated object. Knowledge is not of itself dangerous. To disregard the spread of knowledge, with the consequent enlargements of opinion, and to he unable to supplement it with reasoned arguments, or to supply satisfactory answers to legitimate and intelligent questions, is not only dangerous but stupid.
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F the responsibilities are of a high order, to whom are ~ey entrusted? For good or ill, they are ours, subject to ·a general control from a Government Department. The Postmaster-General is the· ultimate authority, and incidentally there have been five. Of r.ecent days an Advisory Committee 1 has also been appointed to which, at his discretion, th~ Postmaste~-Gen:rai may refer any special pomts for cons1derat1on. When the first appointments were made, the magnitude of the undertaking was not fully recognized ; as I have said, nobody really knew anything about broadcasting, or the extent to which it might so quickly develop. Securing an appointment is one thing ; dischargit;~ ~~e duties of the post i~ another. The responS1b1ht1es were not taken hghtly, nor was the line of least resistance adopted at the outset. No ~arly popularity was sought in ways where it 1s soonest found ; a greater measure of it might have been attained immediately, had the general make-up of the transmissions been of a different order, and had everything been framed for the ready appeal. I wonder if many have paused to consider the incalculable harm which might have been done, had different principles guided the conduct ·of the service in the early days ? It is easier to drop into inferior ways of doing things than to get out of them. It would not have been diffi-
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cult to make the service a clearing-house for sensationalism. We have endeavoured to indicate a high conception of the inherent possibilities of the service by continually developing new lines, and by supplementing from the outside our own knowledge and experience, which is necessarily limited in some directions. We have set out to secure, and have succeeded in securing, the co-operation and advice of recognized authorities and experts in all branches of our work. When it comes to questions of general policythe fixing of standards and the setting up of ideals -to decisions as to what shall or shall not be broadcast, we are obviously on dangerous ground. There is no national reference book, dogmatic or empirical, to which one may turn for guidance on things ethical. At the risk of being charged with posing as judge or educator; or with deciding matters outside our province, we must make the decision since ours is the responsibility for the conduct of the service. Anything in the nature of a dictatorship is the subject of much resentment in these days. Well, somebody has to give decisions ; it is always possible to replace those who give wrong ones, or. who have not the courage to give any, by others in whom people will have greater confidence. In the meantime, if there has to be an accusation at all, the broadcasters would rather be accused of taking too much on themselves, than too little. The preservation of a high moral standard is obviously of paramount importance. Few would
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question the desirability of refraining from anything approaching vulgarity or directing attention to unsavoury subjects. Beyond that lies a wide range of debatable subjects, which, while in no way within our province to decry, we certainly do not .feel justified in aiding or abetting ; there are, indeed, very good reasons for withholding assistance. For the sake of illustration only, I will refer to gambling, and this with respect to horse-racing. The result of a race is news, and should in itself be of sporting interest to many. It is therefore our practice to give the names of the winners of the more important races. It is not our practice to give either talks on racing form, or to .quote the starting prices. For this we have been subjected to a considerable amount of criticism. We have even been informed that receiving sets have been installed for the express purpose of receiving such news with the least delay. If that be so, then I regret the disappointment which must have ensued, and I trust that all the other activities of the service put together may have compensated for what they miss in this one direction, and may have been a deterrent to the casting out of the apparatus. It should be remembered that children of all ages listen to the news bulletins and to the programme in general ; talks on racing form and the broadcasting of starting prices might be the first inducement to systematic gambling. The liberty of one becomes the stumbling block of another. If it be considered advisable to put opportunity of this kind before the young people of our country, the broadcasters do not care 3
BROADCAST OPER BRITAIN
I
to take the responsibility for it, and if encouragement be desired it must be obtained, as at present, in other ways. The responsibility weighs heavily with us ; let there be no misunderstanding on that score. It is realized to the full ; it is apt to become an obsession. It is a burden such as few have been called upon to carry. Whether we are fit or not, is for reasoned judgment only, but at any rate it is relevant and advisable that our recognition of the responsibility should be known. Pronouncement may be reserved till the proofs of the efforts are established. As we conceive it, our responsibility is to carry into the greatest possible number of homes everything that is best in every department of human knowledge, endeavour and achievement, and to avoid the things which are, or may be, hurtful. It is occasionally indicated to us that we are apparently setting out to give the public what we think they need-and not what they want, but few know what they want, and very few what they need. There is often no difference. One wonders to which section of the public such criticism refers. In any case it is better to over-estimate the mentality of the public, than to under-estimate it. . I have already mentioned that we are securing the co-operation of experts in several departments of activity, either in the form of advisory committees, or by more direct participation~ This step is important, and it is significant that apart from the cautious attitude of a limited number to which I shall refer, very few individuals or organizations, to whom an
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THE RESPONSIBILITY
appeal for assistance has been made, have failed to respond. Benevolent neutrality has given place to sympathetic interest, and this in turn to active co-operation. One might mention the Board of Education and the Ministries of Health and Agriculture as representative of Government Departments, and practically all the learned Societies might be cited also. In this way there is official and recognized authority in the work. With all this, however, a great deal depends on the staff who are chosen to carry out the· great responsibilities which the service involves. The vocation, it has been said, goes up or down according to those who fill it. They have it to make or mar. With us this applies to the men and women at headquarters and in the provincial offices alike, for neither can function adequately without the other. Whereas, as I shall indicate later, it is our policy to exercise a consi4erable degree of central control, and to maintain certain experts in London whose services are available wherever required, a very great deal depends on the representative in charge at each centre. He can materially advance or materially retard. On his personality and tact to a great extent depends the measure of interest and co-operation which will be given locally by those with influence, and on his personality the extent to which, in local affairs, the station will develop in importance. With work of an entirely new character, and with no experienced men available, the suitability of Station Directors was at first, and to some extent, a
The Political Economy of the Media 11
. BROADCAST OPER BRITAIN
matter of trial and error. An exceptional range of qualifications is demanded of them ; diversity of gifts, but the same spirit. They must be capable of negotiating with many different kinds of meh and women ; social, business and educational standards are required in them. They must carry on, as those in headquarters do, the everlasting struggle for acceptability and balance in programmes. Abounding energy, initiative, tact, human understanding, imagination-these are essentials to success. Men of these qualities do not crowd the waiting-rooms. Not infrequently some musical knowledge is also required, but in all the later appointments it has been found advisable to lay the musical responsibility upon a separate, though subordinate, officer. At headquarters, departmentalization is naturally developed to a much greater extent than is possible in the provinces. So far as personnel is concerned the B.B.C. is a much bigger organization than is generally known. It is not a matter of any consequence, but I have found interest and amusement in some of the ideas which have been expressed on such little points as the number of staff at headquarters and in the stations. It is a much more difficult matter to conduct the general affairs of the Company, to erect and operate all the stations and to arrange for and transmit six or eight hours of varied programme per day than would perhaps be imagined. A little consideration is all that is required. There is a staff of about one hundred and fifty at Head Office,
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excluding London Station, and fifteen to twenty at each main station. Of these a large proportion are University undergraduates. The amount of work which the three chief departments, programme, engineering and secretarial, have to cover would be a revelation to the average listener. At headquarters, operate a Control Board and Central Programme Board, the underlying motive being that whatever is done shall be well done, wherever it is, and that all the activities shall be supervised, and if necessary co-ordinated, with a view to maximum effect. Before passing from the subject of the organization I must refer to the Board of Directors. The ways of Boards with their executive officials vary greatly. I know full well that many capable and enterprising executives are sore let and hindered by .their Directors, subjected to continuous interferences and questionings, confidence in themselves undermined and destroyed, and consequently their whole usefulness prejudiced. I have, in my time, had experience of almost every possible variety of chief. Of some of them I have fortunately succeeded in shutting out practically all recollection. It is both stimulating and gratifying to feel that one's whole loyalty goes out to a chief, and that nothing but the best and the utinost is good enough. It is in the power of some.rare individuals to call forth such service, but frequently one finds one's efficiency and enthusiasm worn thin by the limitations of those whom one is eager to serve. Suspicion instead of confidence, criticism in place of
i!
BROADCAST OJ?ER BRITAIN
encouragement, appropriation of credit but repudiation of responsibility for errors which they themselves have caused, are too often typical of the attitude of seniors. When called to the position· of General Manager of the new Broadcasting Company, I was naturally anxious to discover what degree of responsibility the Board proposed to put upon me. The result of the inquiries gave me every satisfaction, perhaps also some alarm. But things do not always work out according to schedule ; much more may depend on the spirit in which arrangements are carried out than on the letter of their original expression. I speak from experience, and sad experience of this nature is common. There is therefore the more delightin reviewing the manner in which the Chairman and Board of Directors have from the outset dealt with their chief executive, first as General Manager and later as Managing Director. I hope they were justified in their confidence .in leaving so much to me. I am sure that on innumerable occasions they must have longed to step in and to cause certain things to be handled differently. This broadcasting is unlike any other kind of work. In most businesses there are technicalities of which Directors can know nothing, but broadcasting is everybody's concern, and everybody has opinions on how it should be done. It has been a great comfort to know that to any of them I could refer in any special difficulty, in the assurance of receiving whatever time and help might be required. It is unusual to speak or write of one's superiors.
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39
Even the most genuine tribute is liable to misinterpretation. I shall therefore content myself with saying that for Lord Ga~nford . a.nd t~e other Directors, 1 it has been a htgh pnvdege to work. Their method is perhaps unfortunate in this single respect-it may induce the feeling that one is insufficiently appreciative of, or responsive to, the confidence and the consideration which have uniformly been shown, unless one works the round of the clock.. 1
See Appendix.
HE Company operates as a public utility service, and it is of great importance that this should be definitely recognized. In other words, the Company is not out to make money for the sake of making money ; by its constitution it is debarred from doing so. It is true that the B.B.C. is an association of manufacturers, and that the success of their sales depends in large measure on the range and acceptability of the transmissions. Fears were soon expressed that a combination of manufacturing interests was, or might easily become, inimical to public service. These fears, if still extant, are groundless. I doubt if they now exist. I believe they were laid long ago, and laid in an obvious and logical manner. In this business, the interests of the public and the interests of the trade happen to be identical, even though this may not be apparent at first sight. The greater the extent to which, as a public service, the Company is able to give satisfaction, the greater the benefit to the new British industry. Certain readjustments of outlook from the original one on the part of some sections of the manufacturing interests were undoubtedly necessary, but these have been achieved. I think they have all come to the conclusion that, since the Broadcasting Company regards itself as a public service, and is catering for the public interest, it behoves the trade to adapt their manufacturing and selling policy to the requirements of the public as reflected in B.B.C. policy.
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It must be remembered that in 1922 the then existing manufacturers (only some two or three hundred in number) were invited by the Post Office to join together, pool all their transmission patents, .and forn;. one Cm~ pany to undertake the broadcastmg service for thiS country, at a time when success was entirely problematical. Capital was r~quired, and had to be provided by the manufacturers, and the obvious risks were to be offset by compensating privileges, which, as things turned out, cannot be said to have materialized to any degree. Not only was the capital to be guaranteed, but the continuance of the service for a period of two years was to be guaranteed as well. The British Thomson-Houston, General Electric, Marconi's Wireless Telegraph, Metropolitan-Vickers, Radio Communication, and Western Electric Companies undertook these responsibilities, and each contributed £ro,ooo. It is only right that we should remember that it was with their money that the service was initiated, and also that but for the long and difficult labours of the Manufacturers' Committee in 1922, broadcasting would not have been started when it was. Such elements of commercialism, however, as there may have been when the Company was first constituted, have one by one disappeared. The original regulations governing the use of receiving apparatus were calculated to give preference to the British manufacturing members,not simply to those who formed the Company at the outset, but to any who came in later, and membership was open to all. But these regulations have since been subjected to one modification after
another, till from the Ist July of this year member firms, the number of which has now risen to one thousand seven hundred, are not only in open competition among themselves, as they always have been, but have now no sort of advantage over any other British manufacturer who is not a member, if there be such. The Company voluntarily suggested simpler and cheaper regulations to the Post Office. These involved considerable financial concessions by the Cornpany as an operating concern, and by its trading members in the surrender of the degree of protection which they had nominally enjoyed before. This action may be taken as evidence of the desire to make the service as accessible as possible. Beyond a maximum dividend of seven and a ha1f per cent., payable as interest on the capital invested by member firms, there are no profits to be obtained from the conduct of this service, except such as the manufacturers or dealers may individually make in their normal business. No matter how large the revenue, it may all be spent, and spent efficiently, in the development and improvement of broadcasting. If it be not so spent during the period of the Company's licence, then the surplus is returnable to the Post Office for such use as is considered desirable and right. It has frequently been urged that a service, fraught with such potentialities, should be under the direct care of either the State, or a Board composed of representatives of the public, with no other interests at stake. It would be fatuous to deny a strong element of rationality in this con-
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tention. One must, however, keep in mind the circumstances and extreme difficulties which prevailed in I 922 before broadcasting could be inaugurated. A number of companies wished to operate independently, and the patent position was serious. But it is more important to review the manner in which the responsibilities have been discharged, and to inquire whether they show any taint of interested bias, and whether in any single respect the interests of the public have been subordinated to those of the trade. There are occasions on which it is well to allow performance and results to Justify means, even if the means be not generally understood or appreciated. Until the end of this year, according to the regulations, it is not permissible to use material of other than British origin in the construction of receiving apparatus. (By British is implied United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.) The same proviso applies to sets bought complete. This general protection was promised in I 922, in order that the new industry might have a chance to become established. The extent to which such conditions are observed obviously depends at least as much upon the cooperation and loyalty of the public as upon any measures which might be adopted by the Post Office for their enforcement. British industries are in a parlous state to-day, and it is particularly desirable that this most recent one of all should be given a fair opportunity to consolidate itself. Till July Ist, I924, manufacturing members) in
6z
A PUBLIC SERP'ICE
addition to contributing capital to the Company, were also obliged to assist in the maintenance of the service by means of a tariff on their sales. Competition from abroad is very keen, and importers have connived at the infringing of the regulations, and have prospered through the introduction of goods from other countries, contributing nothing to the expenses of the programmes. Apart from the fact that it is illegal to use foreign parts, it is grossly unfair. The B.B.C. trade-mark is the guarantee of British goods. If no measure of protection against the foreigner be extended after the end of this year, the mark will still be used by member firms, and it will retain its present significance. We trust that the custom of the public will continue to he placed with those who have observed the Government regulations, often to their own loss, instead of with those who have fostered their evasion and have handicapped this young industry. The country was to be served by broadcasting, and eight stations were originally considered sufficient, and this was all that the Company had undertaken to provide. ·These stations were soon in working order, but naturally large tracts of country were left with facilities only available to those who were in a position to buy comparatively powerful, and therefore expensive, apparatus. The Company early announced its willingness to extend its operations so as to make that which was broadcast receivable in the greatest possible number of homes. Here is a very important principle, and involves a radical departure from the original scheme, and on
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together unfortunate that there should be this demand for London programmes in the relay stations, and I believe there will be a change of opinion on the subject. It seems absurd that Swansea, for instance, should relay from London instead of from Cardiff, or Dundee from London instead of from a Scottish main station. Stations will, I imagine, eventually be grouped by areas according to the characteristics, national or local, of the people, and a much more satisfactory service be given. Long land lines are treacherous. Any main station programme should be good enough to relay, and on the special London nights the programme is sent to main as well as relays, so the relays would still secure the most important metropolitan events. The selection of cities to be equipped with relays· depends on such considerations as their population, civic importance, distance from existing stations, and some technical elements such as geographical " shielding " or "jamming " · by other services. With the nine main stations and ten relay stations, between sixty and seventy per cent. of the total population can receive, on simple and cheap apparatus, the broadcast programme from the nearest centre and, by means of the system of simultaneous broadcasting which has been developed, the great national events are available to them all as well, wherever these may take place. There remain the smaller towns and the great rural areas, at least thirty per cent. of the population still to be served on cheapest sets. Even an indefinite extension of the relay system could not cover this, and
this account it was not altogether appreciated by certain sections of the trade, their manufacturing and selling programmes having already been planned on the old basis, involving high-powered apparatus. In pursuance of the Company's policy, however, relay stations have been, and are still being established in many cities where there are large industrial centres of population. I do not think it has been realized that nine stations were opened in I 9 2 3 and one new station per month is being opened in 1924 ; and even if that be known, I am quite sure that very few appreciate what is involved in adhering to this programme. A relay station has a much smaller range than a main station. This is necessary in order to avoid i~terference benyeen stations. f!. relay is a peculiarly local affa1r. The first 1dea was that it should be connected either by wireless or by land lines with the nearest main station, and so re-:-transmit the programmes from that station on a power sufficient to cover the area where the population was dense. The factor of inter-civic jealousy had, however, not been reckoned on. It appears that no city counted sufficiently important to have a relay station could listen to the programme of any stat1on other than London without loss of dignity. It was also perhaps felt that the best programmes come from the metropolis. In any event interest was centred there, and hence most relay stations take the greater part of their programmes from London, with correspondingly heavier land line costs to us, and, in addition, a great deal of work and worry in the matter . of their efficient functioning. Personally I think it al-
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so we saw the need for a station of many times greater power, to serve the who~e country, indep~nden~y of the existing network, m order that the mhabitants even of the most distant places might listen on comparatively cheap apparatus. Highly successful experiments were conducted in July of this year, and permission was given to .procee~ with !he establishment of a super-broadcastmg station which will be by far the most powerful in the world. This station will shortly begin a regular service, and it will be possible to offer alte~native programmes,: a ~ighly desirable end, and by different systems of lmkmg of the high- and low-power stations-wireless,. v:ri:~d, and a combination of both-all sorts of possibilities are available. . I think there can be little doubt that the organization is being conducted on the lines of a I?ublic service, the maximum benefit to the maximum number being kept in view. Service is one of the essential characteristics of friendship. There are few words in the language which are subjected to such gross abuse as "friendship " or made to bear such an amazing variety of interpretations. It is, however, not altogether beyond the point or absurd to claim that, from the evidence of their endeavour to serve, the Broadcasting Company may claim to be regarded as the friends of the people of these Islands, and have indeed come to be so accepted. "Yes, it's a friendly thing," I heard an old lady say wistfully, as she switched off her set after the announcer's courteous and friendly " Good night ! " There is a power of significance in her remark.
T has been instructive to watch the birth and the growth of interest in broadcasting. ·From the outset those who were gifted with prescience recognized that here was an in~uence of vast po:ver for good or ill, the degree of mfluence dependmg on the manner in which the whole conduct of the service was handled. As I have mentioned earlier, it was perhaps natural that some should withhold an active support until such time as they were satisfied that their dignity would not be compromised, or until standards and ideals had been made manifest. There are, on the other hand, some men who, believing in the high dest~ni7s of an und~r taking, throw the weight of therr mflll:ence on Its side even when its stock is low ; by their sympathy and' disinterested advice they help to achieve the success they feel to be merited. . Here I refer, however,· not to the response which the broadcasters met when they invited co-operation in their work but to the attitude of mind which they sensed on' the part of the general public. There are only two real attitudes .possible towards broadcasting-.the one, that of mterest, and th~ other, that of lack of interest. These are defimte and distinct, whereas there is comparatively little difference in the familiar variations of the former, acclamation and condemnation, each of which is normally counted as an independent attitude, whereas they are but modifications of the same thought. With the attitude of interest, and all its manifes-
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tations, I shall deal later on. As for indifference, it may exist in some limited quarters for a time, but it cannot persist indefinitely. Broadcasting is much too big a thing to be ignored for long. Sooner or later it will cross all paths. It has crossed most already. It will eventually force itself on the attention of any who may have succeeded for a time in overlooking it. It is quite common for disregard and even a measure of contempt to fall to the lot of inventors and discoverers and of those who seek to exploit the fruits of the labours of these men in the public interest. A catch is suspected somewhere. There is no catch in most of the " crazes " which disturb routine, and indeed very little of anything, so they can be taken up without fear. This conservatism of mental attitude has been evident in all ages. We have, however, civilized methods of showing it nowadays. Indifference and ridicule have taken the place of bodily tortures. Broadcasting is not a passing craze ; one does not hear that said of it to-day. It is true that the novelty soon wears off, and the listener becomes more critical. This is perfectly natural. He is not intended to listen to every single item that is broadcast, though he probably does so for the first few weeks. If he expects to do this with uniform satisfaction, he will be disillusioned, and may perhaps then say that the programmes are not as good as they used to be, and that broadcasting is overrated. Broadcasting touches life at every angle. It must, and does, appeal to every kind of home. Perhaps in the early days it was felt that it would
be of interest only to those who, for reasons of distance, infirmity or poverty, were unable to participate in the activities of others more favoured than they. It may be that this conception still obtains in certain quarters. It is an entirely mistaken one, and must be attributed to lack of imagination, to ignorance of the wide range of things which are transmitted, or to a deliberate and supercilious disregard of them. With all the imperfections of which we are desperately conscious, I believe that there is no home, however favoured, to which some quota of additional interests, new and live, may not be borne through this amazing medium. Neither by superior individuals, nor by organizations can it be, dismissed as beyond their ken and interest, or as· capable of doing neither harm nor good. The squire may suffer some embarrassment when he finds that his ploughman is better informed than he is on events of national significance. Over and above what it may be able to bring to men and women as individuals, the part which it is destined to play in the life of the community is much too definite and extensive for it to be disregarded. The progress which has been made in this country in eighteen months is certainly remarkable, and may be taken as a fair indication of the momentum which has been acquired. I am not speaking of the development of the service itself, nor of the extension of its operations, but simply of the number of homes in which wireless is already installed. Continuous lines of aerials are to be seen in the
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the dishonesty of refraining from making his contribution to the service which probably provides him with a considerable amount of satisfaction in one line or another. There is surely sufficient interest in· and return from the service per annum to justify the expenditure of the ten shillings charge. In America . broadcasting had been initiated more than a year earlier than in this country ; with characteristic energy it had been developed wholesale, largely on a commercial basis, and without any method of control whatsoever. There is no co-ordination, no standard, no guiding policy ; advertising, direct or indirect, is usually the sole means of revenue. I gather from many American visitors that they consider that the delay which took place before a service was begun in this country, is more than justified by the progress subsequently made. There is scarcely a civilized country of which representatives have not visited us, usually staying for a period, to absorb something of the procedure and methods of operation. We are always glad to see them. We make no copyright of our experience, however valuable or unique it may be. In October, 1923, we decided to start a weekly magazine, the primary object bei1,1g that the programmes of all stations for the ensuing week should be clearly displayed. The success of The Radio Times is, I understand, without parallel in journalism. A quarter of a million c~pies of the first issue were printed and speedily sold out. To-day the· circulation is over six hundred thousand per
great towns ; they are to be found in the most inaccessible and remote regions of the country. In the places where there are broadcasting stations the number of aerials is not a fair criterion, as so many homes are equipped with internal wires and frames, requiring, however, more powerful apparatus. An aerial need not be a disfigurement, and one regrets that it so frequently is. I meet many men and women in all walks of life, and it is becoming increasingly rare to happen on any not possessed of receiving apparatus. I hear the whole subject discussed with engaging candour in clubs, restaurants and trains. It is almost impossible to get away from it. It is difficult, and indeed impossible, to speak with any assurance of the number of people who listen to broadcasting. In our first twenty-one months, that is, till the end of September, I 924, approximately 9 so,ooo licences had been issued, over so,ooo new licences being taken out in September alone. It is natural to assume that there are several people involved in each licence. The difficulty is to know what average figure to take. Taken at five, the audience is already over four million. For any special occasion an infinitely greater number can gather. I hope it will not be thought out of place if I here mention that there is definite evidence of a certain amount of evasion of the licence fee. It is rather difficult to comprehend the mentality of the individual on whose behalf such labour is expended, but who can reconcile with his conscience
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week. In addition to programmes this paper contains many interesting articles b~ well-known writers, and frequently statem~nts w1th respec~ to B.B.C. policy. It is the medmm of more detalled and familiar communication between the broadcasters and their audience than is possible or desirable on wireless. Attention is directed to special programme events and notes are given on some of the outstanding musical items which are to be broadcast. Several of the talks of particular appeal are reproduced, and advance information of all kinds is given. It is an essential to .the due ~ppre ciation and application of the serv1ce. It 1s the connecting link of. the service? a_nd .the success of the publication 1s another md1cat10n of the popularity of broadcasting.
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HE policy of the Company being to bring the best of everything into the greatest number of homes, it follows that if this policy be carried out, that many educative influences must have been stirred. It was early realized that there were very great educational possibilities in broadcasting. It was also realized that in this direction it was advisable to proceed with caution. Entertainment was the stated function of the Company, and many apparently considered that all its operations and the whole of the time available should be confined to purposes of entertainment alone. I ha-ye en~e~v oured to indicate how narrow a concept10n th1s 1s; in fact it is .impossible of execution. It is impossible to occupy all the available hours. in transmissions which would normally be descnbed as of an entertaining nature. Entertainment, pure and simple, quickly grows tame ; dissatisfa~tion and boredom result. If hours are to be occup1ed agreeably, it would be a sad reflection on hum~n intelligence if it were contended that entertamment, in the accepted sense of the ~er:m, was the onlY' ·means for doing so. The susp1c1ous and the hesitant have, however, to be dealt with gently. Short lectures were introduced, lectures intended to cover a wide range of subjects of general interest, delivered in a popular manner. In. certai~ quarters these were hailed as the most mterestmg part of the programme. No doubt mistakes were made. Sub147
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jects were not always of sufficient interest ; the lecturers were not always sufficiently attractive. As time went on efforts were made to co-ordinate . these talks, and to arrange them on some sort of systematic basis. Greater attention is now being · paid to the choice of subject and speaker. Already series of talks have been given on various subjects, and this idea will be developed in so far as it is found practicable or acceptable. It will be necessary to decide whether a speaker or a subject is of interest enough to warrant being broadcast simultaneously all over the country. It may be that one lecturer may be heard by several stations, and another lecturer on .the same subject by the remainder. It is our object that there should be a recognition of the local standing of suggested speakers, but that there should also be taken into account the status of the lecturer from a national point of view. A man should be of pre-eminent and recognized position if he is to speak to the whole country, outweighing the advantages of local authorities on the same subject. There are many who would prefer to hear a professor from their nearest U niversity, or a local man of affairs, rather than a man of greater status from any other town ; and so the relative merits have to be assessed. There has been a certain, but comparatively slight, amount of opposition to the Company's educational activities. We have been informed that people have no desire to be educated, and that in any case it is no function of ours to assume responsibilities of this order. The narrow and
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limited conception conveyed in the former part of the objection carries its own condemnation. With regard to the latter part it is reasonable to insist that if we venture on so important a :field, we should make quite sure that we are competent to discharge the responsibilities which we have undertaken ; little knowledge is proverbially dangerous, and in some respects a state of ignorance is preferable to one of incomplete and partial enlightenment. Whether or not, in ourselves, we be so competent is of small account, since much of our activity in this direction is subject to the ruling advice of recognized experts and authorities, individual and corporate. It became obvious, however, that our educational activities should be put under the specific charge of one who, by knowledge and experience, was capable of handling them, if they were to reach the maximum degree of efficiency. It is, I believe, without precedent that the Board of Education, or indeed any Government Department, should transfer a member of their staff for service with a public company. The appointment of a Director of "Education is, in itself, evidence of the fact that we take this department of our work seriously, and intend to handle it satisfactorily. The duties of this officer are manifold. In brief, they will include the co-ordination of the work of all stations on such matters as pertain to the transmission of general and particular information. There are three separa~e lines of educational activity. There is the broadcasting of talks of general information in the course of the evening
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programme ; there is, secondly, the broadcasting of lectures for reception in schools ; and, thirdly, a line of activity which has not yet been started, but which will be begun in the coming winter-a systematic series of lectures for adults at some convenient hour which will not interfere with the normal work. Under the first heading there is included the series of fortnightly or monthly bulletins supplied by various Government Departments, such as the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. The former are given by the Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry or by one of his senior assistants who may be an expert in some particular branch of medical knowledge. One of his significant remarks, which may indeed be taken as justification for the place which is given to these talks, is that a large proportion of the deaths which occur annually-four hundred and forty-four thousand in I 92 3-is due to crass ignorance of fundamental principles of national health, and as such are easily preventable. The information which is broadcast in this series is authentic and official, and represents the latest word on the different subjects which will be discussed. It comprises the consensus of medical opinion throughout the country, gathered together by the Ministry of Health. In addition, it has been arranged that under the general supervision of the Ministry, Medical Officers of Health shall have access to the nearest station in times of special local emergency. In similar manner the talks which have been
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arranged by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries will be of specific interest to those engaged in the occupations which are implied in the name of this Department of the State. They also will be full of counsel born of experience and given by outstanding authorities in the affairs which most concern them, and the services which will be rendered should be valuable. In the evenings are given fortnightly musical, dramatic, and literary criticisms·. These, being of rather more limited interest than many other subjects, are broadcast in the early part of the programme, that is, approximately at 7. I 5. The agricultural talks will also be at this hour, except where the matter is of wider interest than usual. The monthly health talks will ·be between 9 and I o p.m., which is considered the time of maximum attendance. Subjects which are of limited interest are given at a time when some effort to hear is probably involved, as those who are specially interested will take the trouble, in this way leaving room for matters of more general interest later. I mention this in order that it may be seen that efforts are made to study the convenience of the majority, and yet to provide also information which is of great interest to minorities. With us, " minorities " are very important sections of the community, and a " limited appeal " may still involve many hundreds of thousands. Broadcasting brings the whole country into contact with the great achievements of men and · women in all departments of physical as
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well as mental activity. Spasmodic interest is often aroused by the records of explorations in unknown countries. Epoch-making inventions may have their little meed of excitement. Great discoveries have their day of flitting attention, but interest soon languishes through absence . of a personal understanding, for want of further information, and perhaps particularly for the lack of the translation of the importance of the result into terms which the average men can understand and appreciate. The story of many wonderful experiments and discoveries, vast in their potentiality, are to-day too frequently confined to the deliberations of select groups of experts and meetings of learned societies ; little or no effort is made to carry to the mass of the people the significance of these events. They are couched i:r: language . which the average man cannot understand, and ip a form which is devoid of interest to him. We believe that broadcasting will enlighten millions of people about ma.ny great achievements in which general interest would be aroused were any real effort made in this direction. Talks on popular lines by eminent scientists, physicists, chemists, astronomers, have already been found eminently acceptable. Introductions to the study of Natural History, the habits and the ways of familiar animals and birds and fishes, have proved intensely human in their appeal. Historians have removed dullness from the stories of olden times. All this range of activity is perhaps better termed informative rather than educative.
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It has been said that the industries of the country suffer from the ignorance which prevails concerning them. If that be so, then there are means at hand whereby the ignorance may be dispelled. It has already been arranged, in conjunction with representative associations, that talks on such matters may be given if they are of sufficient general interest to warrant inclusion in the programme. Official bulletins by Government Departments on matters which are not the concerns of party politicians, but are of national or international moment, can also be .communicated, and a monthly impartial survey of foreign politics has been arranged by the British Institute of International Affairs. However objectionable such items may appear to a limited arid suspicious section of the audience, they are highly "entertaining" to others, and their continuance is more than justified, not alone by the realization of the benefits which are conveyed, but by the overwhelming testimony of t~e hearers expressed in correspondence and otherWISe.
The lack of interest in, and acquaintance with, good literature is frequently deplored. It seems to be that whatever has the readiest appeal and is most simple stands the best chance of being absorbed and of gaining popularity, even though there be nothing of permanent value in it. People who most intensely dislike poetry or serious literature are generally those who have never made any real effort to read it. There is apparently nothing to commend it ; there is no excitement, nothing to
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hold the attention, and so the masterpieces of literature are neglected. I shall allude to the possibility of the popularizing of the works of Shakespeare by means of wireless. Short readings of poetry and . other literature have also been transmitted regularly by wireless. In many cases the selections have been read by the authors themselves. Comment on the whole has been highly favourable. People come to the conclusion that it is perhaps worth while listening once, and the result is that they listen again, and find that works for which they had so insensate a dislike before, can make a direct appeal to them.
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THE BREAD UPON THE WATERS HERE are two kinds of idealist: the dreamer T who sees the ultimate vision and has no conception of how to overcome or circumvent the difficulties lying in the way, and the practical idealist who builds up his Utopia on the foundations, and with · the materials, already to hand. The first, the dreamer, is generally broken against the brick wall of prejudice which always confronts the man who dares to express openly his belief in the goodness of his neighbour. This basic obstacle to all development is due to ignorance, blind and devastating. Sooner or later, every man interested in the welfare of others, whether his interest be on national, parochial, or indeterminate lines, is brought up· short by the ignorance and hostility with which he is faced. It is not a platitude to say that ignorance is due in every case to limited education, when the word is used not only with reference to schooling but to response in the school of life. . The practical idealist, therefore, looks to education as the hope of the nation. He sees in the boys and girls of to-day the citizens of to-morrow, and the ancestors of the citizens of the future. Seed sown in the twentieth century will bear its fruit in centuries to come, and the practical idealist is he who, loving his kind, is willing to toil unremittingly on their behalf during life, and die without seeing the first fruits of his labour. There can. be little doubt that most men are interested in the development of civilization, and though there be 181
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some whose interest does not advance further than a supreme and abiding pessimism, a solemn disbelief in and discouragement of the efforts of the rest, yet few would deny that the only real hope for the future lies in eradicating the weed ignorance, if the garden of civilization is to flourish and grow beautiful. Let us, then, turn to the children and consider what effect broadcasting is likely to leave upon them, and what part broadcasting is to play, if any, in the war against ignorance. I have already spoken of the direct educational developments, and of the success attending the efforts made to introduce broadcasting into schools. How may this be expected to affect the children ? I think that when the novelty has worn off, the wireless lessons will become, to the child-mind, an integral part of its schooling, and it will be impossible to dissociate its immediate effect from the general effect of the school routine on each child's work. That will be as it should be. The wireless lesson, as I have said, is intended to be supplementary to the school curriculum, but it should become an integral part of that curriculum. It is not meant to be an " extra," but a special course, which has its set place in the end-of-term report, and in which progress in each ind,ividual case can be estimated. The effects of broadcasting on the individual mind, whether adult or juvenile, are subtle and secret. Older people who regularly listen to the programme cannot indicate that thus and thus
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have they benefited. They cannot estimate the extent to which they have allowed broadcasting to colour their opinions or influence their actions. . As the effects of extensive reading, though undoubtedly important, are difficult to assess, so the effects of regular listening, though obviously considerable, are impossible to compute. The mental influences of wireless broadcasting are sufficient proof that it will have a permanent effect upon those who have come in contact with it, just as the mental influence of a noble writer, such as Ruskin or Arnold for example, may be realized without any concrete instance being given of the extent of this influence. Again, we may be told that the circulation of a public lending library has increased by so much, and that of this such and such a percentage is due to the demand for educational works ; but no one can tell us, for no one can estimate, the causes of such increase. It has to suffice that seed, somewhere sown, has at last fallen on fruitful ground and is giving forth increase. Thus, though I write on the influence of broadcasting on the minds of children, I would not have it imagined that I am endeavouring to compute, in concrete terms, the extent of such influence. I am only advancing my conviction that there is an influence, and a great one. I believe that the need which wireless listening makes manifest for exercising the imagination is of first importance in the consideration of its influence. Ignorance is born of lack of intelligent imagination, and the hostility inseparable as a rule from
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ignorance is constantly found to be rooted in a mental incapacity to appreciate data or reasonings outside a prescribed mental limit. Thus we still :find Englishmen who seem unable to appreciate the fact that the Romans had a :fine old language of their own, and who are hostile to any suggestion that it will repay trouble taken in learning it. Their hostility is born of ignorance, their ignorance is based on obstinacy, their obstinacy is the outcome of habit, and habit is an attribute of the adult mind. The child-mind is unaffected by such considerations. Life as yet holds nothing stale, for nothing has been tried and found wanting. The development of the children of well-to-do parents is, generally speaking, closely supervised by all those with whom they are allowed to come in contact. For these, wireless listening may be considered to take its place as an integral part of that development, just as, in the schools, the wireless lesson must become an integral part of the routine. Lessons, recreations, pastimes, hobbies, all are supervised by careful parents, and if in some cases the supervision is over-strict, the blame is immediately applicable to the right source. The building up of character is the main idea behind the supervision, and here broadcasting can play its part. For the youngest the Children's Hour is as a spoken fairytale, a satisfying entertainment at the close of a happy day; for the older, there is music and tales of travel, words on hobbies and a score of other things for all ages and interests. Our thoughts also turn to the poor, that vast
majority whose children look on the streets as their playground and attend when they can the performances of the nearest Picture House. The possibilities of the " pictures " were enormous, and at the outset it was :firmly believed that here was to be found the means of educating the masses. The ethical and educational value of the cinematograph was allowed to be superseded by sensationalism, and one does not contemplate with equanimity the effect upon the minds of· young children of seeing twice and sometimes three times weekly, :films of a morbid, if not actually vicious, nature. I do not mean to infer that all :films are thus sweepingly to be condemned, for I have, seen great stories .:finely depicted, but far too few of these are shown, and practically none :find their way to the poorer districts, the back doors of civilization. Interest in broadcasting, and love of the Children's Hour, is a definite and certainly desirable rival interest to the hold of such " pictures" on such children's minds, and a happy alternative to the squalor of streets and back-yards. If, therefore, noble conceptions can be inculcated by wireless, broadcasting may serve as an antidote to the harm which is being wrought on the children of the present day by the conditions under which they live. To these children, therefore, the Children's Hour must come as a wonderment, truly a voice from another world. The most casual sentiments with regard to " playing the game " and being thoughtful for others must strike deep, and if a
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tale of other lands and peoples rouses one spark of curiosity to know more, or sets one single small mind rummaging out more facts to add to the speaker's, then that tale has not been told in vain. It is the aim of those who plan the Children's Hour to provide an hour of clean, wholesome humour, some light music and a judicious sprinkling of information attractively conveyed. Children-like grownups-hate to feel that they are being " educated," but they do like stories of adventure and descriptions of foreign lands. Tell them therefore a story of adventure, and let them realize after it is told that it is a relation of actual facts, and that they will find it in the history books ; cover up the pill of information with a sufficient coating of the sugar of imaginative description and they will absorb any amount of facts. In this way the young intelligence is quickened and the young idea begins to sprout. Home surroundings may cherish or contemn it, school surroundings strengthen or undermine it, but once the desire to know more has been instilled in a child's mind, or his imagination has been kindled, it would take much to kill such desire or extinguish such imagination ; the foundations of knowledge have been laid. Special efforts have been made to interest children in music. It has been found that from the age of five, children are usually susceptible to musical appreciation. A child's brain can more easily assimilate new ideas in any line, and the next generation has every likelihood of being bett-er equipped to understand and enjoy good music than its fore-
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runners. Practical illustrations are given of the various instruments of which the orchestra is composed, and corn parisons in tone-colour are indicated. It is found that the children are interested and can learn to make distinctions. The little slum-child has for sole music the local cinema band, a stray barrel-organ or two and the Salvation Army band, none of which, it may fairly be estimated, are likely to rouse any deep-rooted enthusiasm for music. By the little music-lectures it is hoped that not only will the more fortunate children benefit but also their less-favoured fellows, who, though they may not acquire a vast appreciation of tone-colour, may yet be taught good taste. Even a certain amount of technical instruction in the correct manner of playing and · singing has been given, and demonstrations of how the works of the great masters and the modernists should be performed give opportunity for correction and self-tuition. There is one way in which broadcasting exercises a definitely calculable influence upon the childmind. It teaches concentration. There is still too little real practice in the art of concentration. In days gone by people had time to give up their minds entirely to what they were doing, to the learned book they were reading or the weighty sermon to which they listened once a week. Now we have less leisure in which to develop our minds, and the art of concentration is rapidly disappearing. True, we learn to compress much into little, many things into short spaces of time, but such dimensional concentration differs in many
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respects from mental concentration. If we, who have almost lost the art, can sow the desire to practise it in the minds of the coming generation, let us do so, helping others to profit by our own loss.
IN TOUCH WITH THE INFINITE READ recently," The danger of democracy is Iknowledge not so much ignorance and violence, as half and conceit, the invariable companions of the beginnings of intelligence," and again : " It is hard for the school to defeat the home, and all the forces of heredity are against the teacher of humane culture." Here then is an ally of immense potency in the campaign for a general intelligence and a higher culture. Broadcasting is a servant of culture and culture has been called the study of perfection. The whole service which is conducted by wireless broadcasting may be taken as the expression of a new and better relationship between man and man. It is a reversal of the natural law, that the more one takes, the less there is left for others. This obtains in almost all the commonplace happenings of life, but the broadcast is as· universal as the air. There is no limit to the amount which may be drawn off. It does not matter how many thousands there may be listening ; there · is always enough for others, when they too wish to join in. It is ·the perquisite of no particular class or faction. Most of the good things of this world are badly distributed and most people have to go without them. Wireless is a good thing, but it may be shared by all alike, for the same outlay, and to the same extent. The same music rings as sweetly in mansion as in cottage. It is no respecter of persons. The genius and the fool, the wealthy and the poor listen simul217
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ta:neously, and to the same event, and the satisfaction of the one may be as great as that of the other. The wisdom of the wise and the amenities of culture are available without discrimination. No sort of test as to :fitness to receive is instituted. No one can tell the nature of the audience. There need be no :first and third class. There is nothing in it which is exclusive to those who pay more, or who are considered in one way or another more worthy of attention. First-corners are certainly served at once, but so also are those who come last. For parallels we must turn to Nature, and even here the analogy may be faulty. When the sun shines and the sky is blue, it is for all to enjoy ; the beauties of the summer country-side are free ; but there is no common opportunity to participate. We may say, however, that in the realms of the things which are highest, there is no lack. Even here with the light and the stars and the flowers, there is enough beauty left for the glory of the sunsets, for unseen skies and for blooms in the desert. Surrounded ·as we are with evidences of limitation and shortage, in money, food, clothes, houses, we may turn to regions where limitation is unknown. No doubt we may derive a measure of comfort from the thought. It is, however, of much greater satisfaction if we can :find something actually present with us which offers at least a few of the essential characteristics of the other world, and here it is to be found. Broadcasting may help to show that mankind is a unity and that the mighty heritage, material, moral and
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spiritual, if meant for the good of any, is meant for the good of all, and this is conveyed in its operations. So our desire is that we may send broadcast through the ether, which is universal, the universality of all that is good in whatsoever line we may ; and so all may receive without let or hindrance, and without encumbrance or care. There is certainly not much limitation about wireless. It ignores the puny and often artificial barriers which have estranged men from their fellows. It will soon take continents in its stride, outstrip.. ping the winds ; the divisions of oceans, mountain ranges, and deserts will be passed unheeded. It will cast a girdle round the earth with bands that are all the stronger because invisible. Broadcasting is a national service the full importance of which will in due course come to be recognized, even if it be not adequately appreciated already. A writer points out that there is "a return of the ear," but that now a single voice can accomplish in a moment that which of old took many thousands of messengers and many weeks .of journeying. Its message is instantaneous and direct, and even in these times of rapid and cheap communication and huge newspaper circulations, it surpasses all other means of delivery. In entertainment or edification, in enlightenment or education, in all the manifold phases of its activity there is a consolidating influence at work. The universal dissemination of standard time is in itself a service of considerable importance. We are all familiar with the unfortunate results attendant
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on discrepancies of time as recorded by watches and clocks, not only in rural districts, but even in large cities as well. There is now no excuse forinaccurate time-keeping, as time signals are broadcast direct from the clock which tells the time for the world in the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. As an alternative, and more romantic, means of time-indicating there are also the regular transmissions from Big Ben, sufficiently accurate for all practical purposes. It is interesting to note the effect produced by small things. To hear the Greenwich clock, but more ·particularly the chiming of Big Ben, in the remotest villages of the United Kingdom has evoked a degree of sentiment and romance which most people would consider out of proportion with the cause. It is, however, in large measure understandable. Rural areas are brought into direct contact with these Empire institutions, the clock which beats· the time over the Houses of Parliament, in the centre of the Empire, is heard echoing in the loneliest cottage in the land. It has been said that there are two kinds of loneliness : insulation in space and isolation of spirit. These are both dispelled by wireless. The country is brought to the town and the town to the country. Whether it be the momentous utterance of a statesman, the exposition of a scientist, the eloquence of a preacher, or a great ceremony of widespread interest, such, for instance, as the service at the Cenotaph to which the thoughts of all the country are directed, all these may be heard and shared alike by the favoured few who are present
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as by others hundreds or thousands of miles away, and as in due time by our countrymen in the very outposts of the Empire. Among the great paradoxes oflife come the companionship of solitude and the voice of silence. To men and women confined in the narrow streets of the great cities shall be brought many of the voices of Nature, calling them to the enjoyment of her myriad delights. There is some peculiar quality about certain sounds, since they may be considered not incompatible with the conditions of silence. Already we have broadcast a voice which few have opportunity of hearing for themselves. · The song of the nightingale has been heard over all the country, on highland moors and in the tenements of great towns. Milton has ·.said that when the nightingale sang, silence was pleased. So in the song of the nightingale we have broadcast something of the silence which all of us in this busy world unconsciously crave and urgently need. The time is not far distant when for those to hear who care to listen voices from the ends of the earth shall be brought to all the homes of Britain. A stumbling-block is the difference in the time and the hour of day between the various countries, but some will consider it worth while to make adjustments in the hours of work or sleep in order that on occasions they may hear the messages or the music of the East or the West, or may attend to that sent in return. The public affairs of the Empire will sooner or later be debated in the hearing of the Empire, and the Statesmen of the Home Country and of the Dominions and
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Colonies be enabled to listen to the expositions of policies and aspirations as they are delineated in the Parliaments or great assemblages. Whatever is practicable within the Empire is practicable also between all the countries of the world. In such a realization of world-unity, music will play its exalted part ; further, the greatest achievements in art and science will be made known, for national frontiers cannot have or hold them ; best of all, perhaps, the message of peace on earth, proclaimed in the first Christmas to a few shepherds, can reach the hearts of all men of goodwill. All these elements are neither merely national nor international, but supra-national. Broadcasting in itself, therefore, presents for reflection characteristics which are unique in their constitution and significance. It is not subject to the limitations which handicap so many of the great endeavours which are instituted to promote unity of thought or action in matters of high moment, national or international, or undertaken on behalf of individual or corporate intelligence. It operates on a plane of its own, and is therefore the more commanding in its interest for those who are associated with its development. The interest is enhanced by the knowledge that the operations of broadcasting are dependent for their propagation on the mysterious and fasci?ating medium we call ether. When we speak of the ether, we speak more or less as fools, for the more is discovered, the more apparently contradictory facts are revealed. It would seem to have proper-
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ties which formerly were regarded as mutually exclusive. While it fascinates, it mystifies ; and the more it fascinates and the more it is explored the more it mystifies. With all manner of its characteristics and properties definitely and mathematically proved, it is still only a conception of the mind. When we attempt to deal with ether we are immediately involved in the twilight shades of the borderland ; darkness presses in on all sides, and the intensity of the darkness is increased by the illuminations which here and there are shed, as the investigators, candle in hand and advancing step by step, peer into the illimitable unknown. As knowledge increases, so does ignorance, and some say that ignorance is advancing faster than knowle~ge. This is a compliment to knowledge. There 1s a system in every star, a world in every atom. . Wireless is in particular league with ether ; th1s has been recognized from the outset, for there was no other explanation possible. The dependence of all things upon etheric vibrations is not so obvious, and material suppositions were formerly good enough. Now we have the most so~id "mat~rial" bodies described as faults or bubbles m the umversal ether. We are confined on every hand by the limitations of human intellect, and have no more understanding of the physical universe than a telephone exchange operator has o~ the su?scribers in her area. In order that some 1mpress10n may be conveyed to us of what is happening all around, we have to take the interpretations which our· senses adopt. And so we speak of sounds and colours,
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and therewith are content, till we realize that these are merely the forms in which the ear or the eye has interpreted a situation for our brain to understand it. We are missing infinitely more than we are receiving, and we shall continue to function defectively until, with limitations overcome and with the necessity for interpreting senses removed, we shall be introduced to fresh and amazing realms of activity, and shall know as we are known. To be carried to distant villages the music of an orchestra requires a microphone and .much intricate apparatus. But the music of an orchestra is unreal, symbolic and transitory. Thought is probably permanent, and a means may be found to ally thought with ether direct and to broadcast and communicate thought without the intervention of the senses or any mechanical device, in the same manner as a receiving set is to-day tuned to the wave-length of a transmitter so that there may be a free passage between them. It is well that we should be conscious of the relativity of all things, and remember that complete dissolution of the manifested universe would quickly follow on any suspension of the functionings of the universal ether. We should also be aware of the feebleness and errors of our own perceptions and intelligence, and from this awareness, turn to the contemplation of the Omnipotence holding all things together by the word of power, in Whom, as in the ether, we live and move and have our being.
[11] ----~~~·----
DEVELOPMENT AND CONTROL OF RADIO BROADCASTING
When I became head of the Department I found that one of its duties was to develop and regulate the use of radio. At that time radio was still little more than a ship-to-shore telegraph system. Broadcasting the human voice was only experimental-we called it the radio telephone then-but it was quickly to emerge from this stage to a new and universal art profoundly modifying every aspect of human life. In this creation the Department was destined to play a part. Only the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company at Pittsburgh and the General Electric Company at Schenectady had erected experimental voice broadcasting stations. There were at this time probably fewer than 50,000 receiving sets, and they were not too good. The American boy, however, had taken enthusiastically to radio and, with his crystal set and- earphones, was spreading interest widely over the country. Suddenly a great public interest awoke, and in six months there were 320 broadcasting stations, most of them of low power and short range. . The law authorizing the Secretary of Commerce to regulate rad10 had been enacted prior to voice broadcasting. It was a very weak rudder to steer so powerful a development. I was early impressed with three things: first, the immense importance of the spoken radio; second, the urgency of placing the new channels of communication under public control; and, third, the difficulty of devising such control in a new art. Radio men were eager for regulation to prevent interference with one another's wave lengths, but many of them were insisting on a right of permanent preemption of the channels through the air as private prop[ 139]
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erty-a monopoly of enormous financial value. Their argument was that the necessary capital could not be provided without permanent tenure. It was in a fashion comparable to private ownership of a water navigation channel. Therefore in our usual fashion of solving problems wherever possible by cooperation rather than by law, I called a conference of representatives of d1e industry and various government agencies on February ·27, 1922. A few paragraphs from my opening address to the conference will illustrate the situation at that time: It is the purpose of this conference to inquire into the critical situation that has now arisen through the astonishing development of the wireless telephone; to advise the Department of Commerce as to the application of its present powers of regulation, and further to formulate such recommendations to Congress as to the legislation necessary. We have witnessed in the last four or five months one of the most astounding things that have come under my observation of American life. This Department estimates that today over 600,000 persons (one estimate beipg 1,000,000) possess receiving sets, whereas there were fewer than 50,000 such sets a year ago. We are indeed today upon the threshold of a new means of widespread communication of intelligence that has the most profound importance from the point of view of public education and public welfare. The comparative cheapness •.. of receiving sets ••• bids fair to make them almost universal in the American home. I think that it will be agreed at the outset that the use of the radio telephone for communication between single individuals as in the case of the ordinary telephone is a perfectly hopeless notion. Obviously if ten million telephone subscribers are crying through the air for their mates they will never make a junction...• The wireless spoken word has one definite field, and that is for broadcast of certain predetermined material of public interest from central stations. This material must be limited to news, to education, and to entertainment, and the communication of such commercial matters as are of importance to large groups of the community at the same time. It is therefore primarily a question of broadcasting, and it becomes of primary public interest to say who is to do the broadcasting, under what circumstances, :>nd with what type of material. It is inconceivable that we should allow so great a possibility for service to be drowned in advertising chatter. _,·
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Congress some few years ago authorized the Secretary of Commerce to ••. impose certain conditions ••• designed to prevent interference between the stations •.• This legislation was drawn before the development of the wireless telephone. . • • The time has arrived • • . when there must be measures to stop the interferences ••. between even the limited number of sending stations. . . • The problem is one of most intensely technical character •.. Even if we use all the ingenuity possible I do not believe there are enough permutations to allow unlimited numbers of sending stations. One of the problems •.• is who is to support the sending stations. In certain countries, the government has prohibited the use of receiving instruments except upon payment of a fee, out of which are supported governmentsending stations. I believe that such a plan would most seriously limit the development of the art and its social possibilities. . . . This is a problem of regulation . . . Regulations will need to be policed • •• and thus the celestial sy~tem-at least the ether part of it-comes within the province of the policeman. Fortunately the art permits such a policeman by listening in to detect those ether hogs that are endangering the traffic. There is in all of this the necessity to establish public right over the ether roads. . . . There must be no national regret that we have parted with a great national asset.
The Conference agreed, irrespective of the legal authority of the Department, to abide by my decisions as umpire until we could devise needed legislation. We set aside certain parts of the wave bands for public broadcasting, certain parts for the Army and Navy and public services. We assigned a definite wave band for boys. Because there were, as far as the art had developed, insufficient wave lengths for all the purposes then known, we forbade the use of person-to-persqn telephone except in restricted instances. Then with the skillful help of Stephen Davis we set about the picture puzzle of so allotting the wave lengths that the broadcasting stations would not interfere with one another. Fortunately, the weak sending power at that time enabled the same wave lengths to be used in different cities at some distance from one another, and so we were able to accommodate everybody for a while. To sustain this cooperative action I called a second conference of the inJustry in March, 1923, a third in October, 1924, the fourth in Novem-
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ber, 1925. The delegates-mo re than 1,000 at each session-took a most constructive attitude, and the majority of them supported our legisla~ tive proposals. Their cooperative spirit contributed enormously to the development of methods for handling the difficult technical prob~ lems. From 1921 to 1923 we felt we should have more experience before drafting legislation. With the approval of the Congressional committees we carried on until1924. At that time we proposed a draft bill but soon found that Congress, overburdened with more urgent work, was loath to take up such a complex subject, especially since we should have to resist pressure from some interests which still hoped for private rights in broadcast frequency channels. One of our troubles in getting legisla~ tion was the very success of the voluntary system we had created. Mem~ hers of the Congressional committees kept saying, "It is working well, so why bother?" A long period of delay ensued. One bill died in transit between the House and Senate in 1925. Finally a Chicago station broke away from our voluntary regulation, preempted a wave length for itself, and established its contention in the courts against the weak legal authority of the Secretary of Commerce. Then Congress woke up and finally, in February, 1927, passed the law which we recommended, and which established the public ownership and regulation of the wave
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Finally our tactful inspector persuaded her to employ a radio manager of his own selection, who kept her upon her wave length. I made many public addresses and statements during a period of six years in the course of advocating legislation and obtaining public sup~ port for it, both abjuring and defending broadcasters. Some paragraphs from these expressions indicate the growth of the art, of the industryand of the problems: (March 10, 1924) ... I can state emphatically that it would be most unfortunate for the people of this country, to whom b_roadcasting has become an important incident of life, if its control should come into the hands of any single corporation, individual, or combination. It would be in principle the same as though the entire press of the country were so controlled. The effect would be identical whether this control arose under a patent monopoly or under any form of combination or over a wave channel.... In the licensing system put in force by this Department the life of broadcasting licenses is limited to three months, so that no vested right can be obtained either in a wave length or in a license. I believe, however, that everybody should be permitted to send out anything they like. The very moment that the government begins to determine what can be sent, it establishes a censorship through the whole field of clashing ideas ....
channels. A vivid experience in the early days of radio was with Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson of Los Angeles. One of the earliest to appreciate the possibilities in radio, she had established a small broadcasting station in her Temple. This station, however, roamed all over the wave band, causing interference and arousing bitter complaints from the other stations. She was repeatedly warned to stick to her assigned wave length. As warnings did no good, our inspector sealed up her station and stopped it. The next day I received from her a telegram in these words:
(March 26, 1924) The amateurs, as you all know, have a certain wave band assigned to them, but within this band they do much of their own policing. In discussing with one of their leaders-a youngster of about sixteen-the method of preventing interference between them, he stated with some assurance that there would be no difficulties about enforcement if left to them. I pressed him as to the method they would employ. He showed a good deal of diffidence but finally came through with the statement, "If you leave it to us and if anybody amongst the amateurs does not stick to the rules, we will see that somebody beats him up." So far I have heard of no cases of such assault.
Please order your minions of Satan to leave my station alone. You cannot expect the Almighty to abide by your wavelength nonsense. When I offer my prayers to Him I must fit into His wave reception. Open this station AIMEE SEMPLE McPHERSON at once.
(November 9, 1925) We have great reason to be proud of the results of these conferences. From them have been established principles upon which our country has led the ~orld in the development of this service. We have
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accomplished this by a large measure of self-government in an art and industry of unheard-of complexity, not only in its technical phases, but in its relations both to the government and to the public. Four years ago we were dealin.g with a scientific toy; today we are dealing with a vital force in American life. We are, I believe, bringing this lusty child out of its swaddling clothes without any infant diseases. . • • Some of our major decisions of policy have been of far-reaching importance and have justified themselves a thousandfold .•.. We hear a great deal about the freedom of the air, but there are two parties to freedom of the air, and to freedom of speech for that matter. There is the speechmaker and the listener. Certainly in radio I believe in freedom for the listener. He has much less option upon what he can reject, for the other fellow is occupying his receiving set. The listener's only option is to abandon his right to use his receiver. Freedom cannot mean a license to every person or corporation who wishes to broadcast his name or his wares, and thus. monopolize the listener's set.... So far as opportunity goes to explain one's political, religious, or social views, it would seem that 578 independent stations might give ample latitude in remarks; and in any event, without trying out all this question, we can surely agree that no one can raise a cry of deprivation of free speech if he is compelled to prove that there is something more than naked commercial selfishness in his purpose. The ether is a public medium, and its use must be for public benefit. The use of a radio channel is justified only if there is public benefit. The dominant element for consideration in the radio field is, and ~lways will be, the great body of the listening public. . . . We have in this development of governmental relations two distinct problems. First is the question of traffic control. This must be a Federal responsibility.•.• The second question is the determination of who shall use the traffic channels and under what conditions. This is a very large discretionary or quasijudicial function which should not devolve entirely" upon any single official. ..• Today there are nearly six hundred stations and about twenty-five million listeners. (October 21, 1925). Four million of our families have radio receiving sets ..• ; one-half of the nation can now receive the inspiration of a speech from our President and a score of millions throb with the joys and sorrows
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of the dramatic presentation of minute-to-minute events in the last World Series. They have knowledge • • . more quickly than some people in the grandstands. • • • Incidentally I wish our engineers and inventors would invent a·nother knob on our receiving sets by which we could express our feelings to the fellow who is broadcasting. Tuning out in disgust is an uncompleted mental reaction. (December 26, 1925) A statement in one of this morning's newspapers seems to indicate a lack of information as to the basis I have proposed for radio control. The implication is that I have sought to have the job placed in my hands. Far to the contrary. I have both before Congressional Committees and in at least a half-dozen public addresses stated that no one official should dictate who is to use the radio wave lengths, and I have for years advocated that this, as a quasijudicial function, should be placed in the hands of an independent commission. Moreover, for five years I have reiterated that these wave lengths are public property to be· used by assignment of public authority. This view has been enforced by the Department of Commerce for the past five years. It was again reaffirmed by the last Radio Conference. This principle, together with a provision for a commission to control assignments, was incorporated into bills introduced to Congress . . . and approved by me. Somebody needs to find out what has already taken place before he starts something.
The legislation .finally enacted required the appointment of a quasijudicial commission to administer the act. President Coolidge asked me to select its members, which I did. They were all men of technical and legal experience in the art, and none of them were politicians. The act worked very well except in one particular, to remedy which I secured its amendment in 1929. THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL RADIO CONFERENCE
It had become evident over the years that much radio interference rose from beyond our own borders and that there must be international regulation. Through the State Department we called an international conference which assembled in Washington, October 4, 1927, attended by the delegates of seventy-six nations. I presided at these meetings.
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The task proved so difficult that it required sessions extending over several months. We finally signed the treaties which established world order, certain principles, and the assignment of wave lengths. They have lasted except in the Communist states until this day in spite of all wars and murrain. THE ASSETS AND LIABILITIES IN RADIO
With the background of interest in radio I had also the experience of making addresses by the hundred on various subjects and observing their effect upon the listeners. They do not hesitate to express themselves pro or con. I have also listened to thousands of other people's speeches and programs. With this experience, I have naturally often tried to weigh the social, political, and economic effect of this new instrument. It has not been an unmixed good. On the good side it has been a powerful educational force. It has stimulated the appreciation of good music, despite the fact that it gives tenfold time to the worst of music. It has made science, the arts, the professions, the daily lives of other men and. women familiar to all the people. It has vastly enriched the lives of shut-ins and residents of remote places. It has made transmission of news instantaneous. It has brought into every household the voice and views of the men who create thought and command action. But truth is far less carefully safeguarded on the radio than in the press. The control of slander, libel, malice, and smearing is far more difficult. The newspaper editor has a chance to see a statement before it goes to the press. But on the radio it is often out before tl1e station can stop it. A misstatement in the press can be corrected witl1in twenty-four hours, and it reaches approXimately the same people who read the original item and is open to all who have a grievance. There is little adequate answer to a lying microphone. The audience · is never the same on any two days or hours, and it takes days to arrange time for an answer even when the station consents. At tl1at, no matter how grave the injustice, the broadcasting companies will seldom sacrifice time for tl1is privilege. Action under American law as to slander is doubly futile against the radio. Also radio lends itself to propaganda far more easily than the press.
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And propaganda is seldom the whole truth. The officials currently in office have preponderant time at the microphone, and theirs becomes the dominant voice. Propaganda, even when it sticks to fact, is often slanted by the magic in the human voice. And propaganda over the air raises emotion at the expense of reason far more than the printed word. Often enough, no one is much interested in providing a counterpropaganda; or at least few are able to organize it. Not only is domestic propaganda poured on us, but it has become a special function of foreign governments and persons. Crooked propaganda has become an insidious instrument of international politics. In the debate over going into World War II British speakers deluged our radio with their propaganda. When some of us who were opposed · wished to present ·our views, we were refused time by the British authorities. Some of the evils. of libel and slander could be corrected by a revision of our laws in those matters. They are not adapted to the radio and they have been watered down from the original English common law by American court decisions, until they provide little protection. Unlike the British, they seldom give moral damages for misrepresentation and wrongful injury to reputation. As I pointed out in my first statement in 1922, broadcasting, then just beginning its use of advertising, could go wild in this direction. It has often done so. The dignified presentation of the sponsor has too often been abandoned for hucksters' tattle, interlarded into the middle of programs and tiresomely continued at the end. Sensitive people refuse to buy an article because of the inept persistence of the announcer. Yet advertisers, paying $500 a minute, seemingly cannot bear to hear any minute lost in the barking of their wares or names. The danger is that some day the public will revolt against all these misuses of radio and put programs into the hands of a government agency. That is a sorry thing to contemplate. With all its faults the private ownership has proved far superior in its enterprise, its .entertainment, and its use in public debate and in public service to the government-owned systems of Europe. Some of these evils could be cured by the industry itself. Many radio directors deplore them. No one station or chain can alone stamp them
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[12] Excerpts from Report of the Committee on Broadcasting 1960
out. They might be much reduced by resuming the annual conferences of the early twenties and by making an effort to develop codes of ethics to apply not only to stations, but to speakers.1 1 A list of my more important statements on radio while Secretary of Commerce is given in the Appendix, under the heading Chapter 20.
APPENDIX On radio: 1921: Aug. 30, Radio Convention. 1922: Feb. 27, address opening first Radio Conference; May 4, article in Boston Evening Transcript; July, article in Popular Science Monthly; August, article in Scientific American. 1923: Jan., article in Radio Broadcast; Jan. 2, House Hearings on Radio Act; March 20, address opening second Radio Conference; April 2, on Radio Conference. . 1924: March 10, Control of Radio Broadcasting; March 11, House Hearings on Regulating Radio; March 16, article in New York World; March 22, article in Radio Digest; March 26, broadcast from Washington; May 18, Radio Improvement; Aug. 16, address at San Francisco; Oct., article in Radio Netvs; Oct. 6, address to third Radio Conference; Oct. l6, press .release on Radio Monopoly; Dec. 4, to Congressman White on Radio Regulation. 1925: Jan., article in Radio Retailing; Jan. 1, Radio and the Public; Feb. 8, Radio Situation; May 281 Special Privilege in Radio; Sept. 12, address to Radio Exposition; Nov. 9, address opening fourth Radio Conference; Nov. l2, broadcast from Washington; Dec. 3, message to American Radio Relay League; Dec. 26, Radio Control. 1926: Jan. 6, House Hearings on Radio Regulation; April 20, Radio Legislation; April 30, Radio Manufacturers; July 9, on Radio Legislation. 1927: Feb. 24, Radio Situation; March 6, Radio Legislation; Oct. 4, address opening International Radio Conference; Oct. 15, address at New York; Nov. 25, address at Washington to International Radio Conference. 1928: Jan. I, International Radio Conference; March 15, letter to Federal Radio Commission.
43. Whereas the disquiet about television arose from " sins of commission "-from the conviction that its capacity to influence people was often misused-the dissatisfaction, the other main element in the submissions made to us, arose from "sins of omission "--from the conviction that many of the best potentialities of television were simply not being realised. The theme common to nearly all those submissions which expressed dissatisfaction was that programme items were far too often devised with the object of seeking, at whatever cost in quality or variety, the largest possible audience ; and that, to attain this object. the items nearly always appealed to a low level of public taste. This was not, of course, to say that all items which attracted large audiences were poor. But in far too many the effect was to produce a passively acquiescent or even indifferent audience rather than an actively interested one. There was a lack of variety and originality, an adherence to what was " safe" ; and an unwillingness to try challenging, demanding and, still less, uncomfortable subject matter. It was put to us that, in television as elsewhere, one man's meat ought to be another man's poison ; that too often viewers were offered neither meat nor poison but pap-because, presumably, though no-one much likes it, at least no-one will get indigestion. . Against this, it has been said that in fact people watch these items ; that the justification lies precisely in the fact that they are mass-appeal items. In a free society, this is what people freely choose ; they do not have to watch ; they can switch off. In short, by these tests, these items are "what the public wants", and to provide anything else is to impose on people what someone thinks they ought to like. Indeed~ it has been held that, for this reason, it is not of great relevance to criticise television at all. We found this last a deflating thought. 44. We were bound to examine these alternative and opposing views. "To give the public what it wants " seems at first sight unexceptionable. But when applied to broadcasting it is difficult to analyse. The public is not an amorphous, uniform mass ; however much it is counted and classified under this or that heading, it is composed of individual people ; and " what the public wants " is what individual people want. They share some of their wants and interests with all or most of their fellows ; and it is necessary that a service of broadcasting should cater for these wants and interests. There is in short a considerable place for items which all or most enjoy. To say, however, that the only way of giving people what they want is to give them these items is to imply that all individuals are alike. But no two are. Each is composed of a different pattern of tastes, abilities and possibilities ; and even within each person the emphasis on this or that part of the pattern is not always the same. Some of our tastes and needs we share with virtually everybody ; but most-and they are often those which engage us most intensely-we share with different minorities. A service which caters only for majorities can never satisfy all, or even most, of the needs of any individual. It cannot, therefore, satisfy a:ll the needs of the public. 45. Television has not of course the time to cater for all tastes. If all programmes excited in us an equal intensity of interest it might, therefore, be wrong to use its limited time to appeal to interests shared
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only by a few, at the expense of those common to most. But they do not. A television viewer may be acquiescent or indifferent ; he may be enthusiastic. It is by no means obvious that a vast audience watching television all the evening will derive a greater sum of enjoyment from it than will several small audiences each of which watches for part of the evening only. For the first may barely tolerate what it sees ; while the second might enjoy it intensely. 46. No one can say he is giving the public what it wants, unless the public knows the whole range of possibilities which television can offer and, from this range, chooses what it wants to see. For a choice is only free if the field of choice is not unnecessarily restricted. The subject matter of television is to be found in the whole scope and variety of human awareness and experience. If viewers-" the public " -are thought of as " the mass audience ", or "the majority ", they will be offered only the average of co:mt:p.on experience and awareness ; the " ordinary " ; the commonplace-for what all know and do is, by definition, commonplace. They will be kept unaware of what lies beyond -the average of experience ; their field of choice will be limited. In time they may come to like only what they know. But it will always be true that, had they been offered a wider range from which to choose, they might and often would have chosen otherwise, and with greater enjoyment. 47. It might be said that this is a theoretical argument ; that in fact there is no point in offering the public the whole range of experience from which to choose. For much of it will not be understood, far less enjoyed, by more than a very few ; and, though television is to cater for minorities, the line must be drawn somewhere. There is of course some truth in this ; and those who draw the line have to make a judgment of the public's capacity for interest and enjoyment. No one can claim to know what this is ; and it would be presumptuous to make the claim. We have seen in the past thirty years the development of a widespread interest in symphony concerts which could never have been predicted: competitive swimming, both as a pursuit and as a spectacle, has captured the public's interest in an even shorter time: where interest in classical literature was all but dead, now there has been a sudden demand for pocket translations of the classics. In each instance, to have denied the public the chance to develop the taste would have deprived many of pleasures-in short, would have deprived them of " what they want." The point was neatly made to us as follows: " Those who say they give the public what it wants begin by underestimating public taste, and end by debauching it." 48. In summary, it seems to us that " to give the public what it wants" is a misleading phrase: misleading because as commonly used it has the appearance of an appeal to democratic principle but the appearance is deceptive. It is in fact patronising and arrogant, in that it claims to know what the public is, but defines it as no more than the mass audience ; and in that it claims to know what it wants, but limits its choice to the average of experience. In this sense we reject it utterly. If there is a sense in which it should be used, it is this: what the public wants and what it- has the right to get is the freedom to choose from [17]
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the widest possible range of programme matter. Anything less than that is deprivation. 49. The alternative is often presented as this ; that the broadcaster should " give the public what he thinks is good for it." This philosophy too we would reject as patronising and arrogant. ·But it was never advocated to us in evidence ; and it is not, as is sometimes suggested, the only alternative. The choice is not between either " giving the public what it wants ". or " giving the public what somecne thinks is good for it ". and nothing else. There is an area of possibility between the two ; and it is within this area that the choice lies, The broadcasting authori· ties have certainly a duty to keep sensitively aware of the public's tastes and attitudes as they now are and in all their variety ; and to care about them: But if they do more than that, this is not to give the public "what someone thinks is good for it". It is to respect the public's right to choose from the widest possible range of subject matter and so to enlarge worthwhile experience. Because, in principle, the possible range of subject matter is inexhaustible, all of it can never be presented, nor can the public know what the range is. So. the broadcaster must explore it. and choose from it first. This might be called " giving a lead " : but it is not the lead of the autocratic or arrogant. It .is the proper exercise of responsibility by public authorities duly constituted as trustees for the public interest. ·[ 18] 52. Television has been called a mirror of society: but the metaphor, though striking, wholly misses the major issue of the responsibility of the two broadcasting authorities. For, if we consider the first aspect of this responsibility, what is the mirror to reflect? Is it to reflect the best or the worst in us? One cannot escape the question by saying that it must do both ; one must ask then whether it is to present the best and the worst with complete indifference and without comment. And if the answer is that such passivity is unthinkable, that in showing the best and the worst television must show them for what they are, then an active choice has been made. This is not only to show the best in our society. but to show also the worst so that it will be recognised for what it is. That this choice must be made emphasises the main flaw in the comparison. Television does not, and cannot, merely reflect the moral standards of society. It must affect them, either by changing or by reinforcing them. 53. Nor wJll a mirror passively reflecting society go anything like ~ far as possible towards showing the whole range of worthwhile experience. It cannot do so. If the attempt were made, the scale would be so small that only the most common experience would show l~ge enough for recognition. The rest would go unnoticed. Spor:t mtght well show only as football and boxing ; entertainment as vanety and revue. To avoid this, television must pay particular attention to those parts of the range of worthwhile experience which lie beyond the most common; to those parts which some have explored here and there
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but few everywhere. Finally, and of special importance: because the r.ange of .ex:peri~nce is not finite but constantly growing, and because the growmg pomts are usually most significant, it is on these that television must focus a spotlight. For it is at these points that the challenges to existing assumptions and beliefs are made, where the cJ.a.ims to new knowledge and new awareness are stlated. If our society is to respond to the challenges and judge the clalms, they must be put before it. All broadcasting, and telev.i.sion especially, must be ready and anxious to experiment, to show the new and unusual, to give a hearing to dissent. Here, broadcasting must be most willing to make [20] mistakes ; for if it does not, it will make no discoveries.
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CHAPTER VI
A GENERAL APPRAISAL OF THE TELEVISION SERVICE OF THE BBC 113. We have seen that good television broadcasting may be said to comprise thre.e major elements. First, programme planning and content must respect the right of the public to choose from amongst the widest possible range of subject matter. Second, in every part of this wide range of subject matter there must be a high quality of approach and presentation. Last, and by no means least, since it is of overriding importance, those who handle so powerful a medium must be animated by a sense of its power to influence values and moral standards and of its capacity for enriching the lives of all of us. The broadcasting authorities must care about public tastes and attitudes, in all their manifold variety, and must keep aware of them. They must also keep aware of their capacity to change and develop ; they must in this sense give a lead.
The BBC's concept of the purposes of broadcasting 114. That the BBC is acutely aware of the power of the medium and regards itself as answerable for the general influence it exerts is, in our view, clear. Giving oral evidence, Mr. Carleton Greene, Director General of the BBC, considered that television would be one of the main factors influencing the values and moral attitudes of our society. We need only add that nothing in the Corporation's written and oral evidence has suggested that they hold any reservations about the principle. 115. On the range and content of programmes, the BBC told us that the service should be comprehensive, and that a proper definition of " comprehensive " must give enough weight to education and informa· tion. The Corporation regularly and deliberately put on programmes which would appeal immediately to a comparatively small audience, but tried so to present them as to attract and hold wider audiences which did not at first know that they would be attracted by such programmes. "But", Mr. Carleton Greene added, "we should try always to do the best we possibly can in every type of broadcast. without thinking that it -is more important to put our best into iriformation and education. It is just as important to put the best skills one can. into entertainment." The BBC held it an important part of their responsibility to "give a lead " to public taste, in literature and the arts and elsewhere. There [37]
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The Political Economy of the Media Il was in this a risk of paternalism, but it was a risk of which they were conscious and which they must accept. The three elements-information, education and entertainment-were not separable: programmes which, if they must be classified would fall under the first two headings, were often, nevertheless, entertaining. Because the success of their service was not to be measured merely by the size of audiences, the BBC were. themselves constantly questioning and testing their own. programme policies. Also they engaged in contin:uous audience research to find out not only how many people watched programmes, but how they valued them. The response of the audience to a programme, the strength of its appreciation, was as important, if not more important, than the size of the audience. And further, for all their research, they would not claim they knew "what the public wanted" ; they reminded us that there must be experiment, trial and error. 116. These stated views of the BBC on the purposes of broadcasting accord closely with those formulated by us earlier in the Report. How far these views find expression through programming policies and practice is of course a separate question. [38]
Dissatisfaction : how tar it is attributable to the BBC' s service 127. The BBC told us tba.t thci.r traditional poldcy had been "to develop programmes over the widest possible range of content and treatment, while preserving a reasona-ble baJance between programmes intended for relaxation and amusement and those of a more thoughtful kind". It was on range of subjeot matter presented and variety of treatment of pa.rt:i.cular subjects within. that range that the primary emphasis lay. lit was by e~1Je.ndin.g the range of subjeot matter treated and the variety of trea:tme:n.t that the broadcaster developed the possibilities of the medium and increased its value. Al1so important was the ratio of relaxing-or " light"-programmes to more demanding-or "serious "-programmes: but libds w.as not easily measured because " light " and " serious " were subjective terms. Nevertheless, most programmes were in practice recognisable as light or serious. T.he foLlowing kinds of programme might be classed as serious : news and current affairs, talks and discussions, documentary programmes, outside broadcasts of national importance a:nd other major events of a non-sporting character, music (other than "light mmic "), opera, ballet and religious programmes. Though some plays would be cla5sed as serious pro~ grammes, others would not ; so all were omitted from the class. 128. The BBC aLso told us that it W\aS the core of their programme policy that the more important serious programmes should, for the most pa:ct, be offered Wlhen the largest audiences we.re av.adlable.
[41]
Appraisal of the BBC's television service: a summing up 148. We have now to summarise the conclusions we have reached on the conduct by the BBC of their service of television. Our clear impression is that the BBC's stated views on the purposes which the service should fulfil accord with those we have formulated earlier iri the Report. The CorpOIJ."altJi:on's traditi,onal idea of public service remains the essential consideration in the formulation of policy. We are impressed by the BBC's awareness of the na·tnir.e, 1lhe magnitude and the complexity of the task of catering for the needs of the public. It is easy to assert an awareness of principles, but the BBC appear also to have a grasp of their practical imp!Jcations. In short, we found in the BBC an all-round professionalism. By this we mean not so much that there is at the production level a competence, a mastery of present techniques. We mean that there is, at tlhe executive levels whe.re bot:h principles and the public interest are interpreted and re-interpreted, a recognition of w.hat-in terms of pr.ogr.amme pl.anruing and performance-is needed to give substance to principles. This professionalism of the BBC shows itself not least in their dissatisfaction with performance, in their sense of the unrealised possibilities of the medium. 149. The BBC know good broadcasting; by and large, they are providing it. We set olllf: to consider how far the main causes of disquiet and dissatisfaction were attribut:able to the BBC's television service. The BBC a:re not blameless ; but the causes are not, we find, to any great extent attributable to theLr servdce. T.his is the broad consensus of view revealed by 1lhe repreSeJI.tations put to us by people and organisations which spoke to us as viewers. Their view is perhaps seen most significantly in this ; that whatever criticism they made of televJsion, they nearly aJ.1 werut on t-o say that, if llhere were to be an additional television programme, it should be provided by the BBC. We have no hesitation in saying that the BBC command public confidence. If this is a test of the discharge of a public trust, then the BBC pass it. There are blemishes, too ; mistakes, as there· must be, of judgment. And we repeat that there was criticism of a more general kind which, we felt, had some substance ; that the BBC had lowered their standards in some measure in order to compete with independent television. Bud: our broad conclusion is this; that, within the limits imposed by a single programme, the BBC's television service is a successful realisa-tion of the purposes· of broadcasting as defined in the Charter. [46]
283
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The Political Economy of the Media 11
Dissatisfaction : how far it is attributable to the service of independent television 187. The main cause of dissatisfaction was, we noted, that the range of subject matter provided was insufficient to meet the wide variety of viewers' interests. We now note that it attaches very largely to the programmes of independent television.
The discharge by the Authority of its responsibilities
[60]
191. serious programmes were de~berately placed outside peak viewing hours. The aim was to get the maximum audience for them, and the best way to achieve this aim was by putting them on when it was unlikely that the BBC would be putting out a big [62] entertainment. · 194.
All the main companies
ag~e~d ~at they had ~ !7sponsibility for leading public taste, and that ~~. unplted. a responsibility to cater f~r "minority" as well as "major-
Ity tastes. But whereas the Authonty thought that the service now catered sufficiently for minorities, the companies on the whole did not. One reason was that there was not enough room within a single programme. But another was that, since independent television derived its re_venue fr?I? adv~rtising, ~t was bound to seek the largest audiences. Anglia TelevlSlon satd that mdependent television must be concerned to hold the maximum audience ; Associated Rediffusion said that it was inevitable that it should serve the majority ; for Scottish Television Mr. '!homson said that, because advertisers paid for viewers, "it is inevitable m the system that you should be reaching generally for a maximum" ; for Southern Television, Mr. Dowson said that it was " impractical " to pu~ _out ?pera, be~ause no advertiser would be prepared to buy advertrsmg tllll.e knowmg that the audience would be small. This was also one of the reasons for the placing of serious programmes outside peak hours. [63]
285
219. That advertisers shouJd see television primarily as a tool for their purposes is natural and understandable. Their view reflects their special interest; it is they who, in the first place, pay. A most forthright expression of this view was given by. a leading advertising practitioner when he inaugurated a course for advertising executives in June, 1961. He was reported as asserting that commercial television was first and foremost an advertising medium and only secondarily and incidentally a public service. When he came with other representatives of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising to give oral evidence, he told us that the statement was made in an address to advertising people and, in that context, was certainly true. His was the opening address iii the course, and the audience was a special one. More generally, the sense of his statement was that the operators of independent television were not well enough aware of the source of their income. The Authority's Advertising Control Officer attended the course. He told us that he had read from the Television Act to refute the speaker. We emphasise that the view of the Authority and the companies-that the service is intended essentially as a service of broadcasting to the public and only incidentally as a service to advertising-is the right one. 220. In saying this, we recognise that, though the service to advertising is secondary and incidental, advertisers must be treated fairly. If the principal service, the service of broadcasting to the public, is to be financed out of advertising revenue, provision for advertisements must be reasonable in itself and administrable. [70] 221. We recognise, too, that the companies' interests as sellers. of advertising time conflict with their role as producers ~f the best. possib~e service of broadcasting to the public. The comparue~ reco~rused. this conflict, and some told us that they tried so to orgaruse th7rr busmess that the Sales Department could not influence the Programmmg Department But, as we noted in Chapter VII, some of them accepted t~e fact that the choice and timing of programmes were affected by thetr interests as sellers of advertising time.
[71]
286
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Appraisal of the service of independent television: a summing up 207. Independent Television is relatively new. Generally those in the Authority and the companies who are its administrators were, when the service started, new to broadcasting ; and television itself was relatively a newcomer. In rather more than six years independent television has provided a second service for nearly the whole of the country. This achievement is impressive. As an engineering achievement-the provision of studios and transmitting stations-it is praiseworthy. As an achievement of administration-the creation, development and operation of large and complex organisations of people concerned with programmes and production, advertising, finance, transmission, engineering, administration and control-it is remarkable. In this Chapter, however, we have been concerned exclusively with the product. Some of it ·has been excellent. Moreover, the existence of independent television is believed to have advanced production techniques. All this is to the good. But the general judgment is unmistakable: it is that the service falls well short of what a good public service of broadcasting should be. 208. We conclude that the stated views of the Authority on the purposes of broadcasting do not accord with those we have formulated earlier in the Report. The differences are not only of emphasis. The role of the broadcasting organisation, as the Authority interpreted it to us, seemed to lack that positive and active quality which is essential to good broadcasting. We reject. too, its view that television will be shaped by society. A number of factors will operate to shape television, to form the character of the service ; but what must figure very largely [67] are the attitudes, the convictions, the motives of those who provide programmes-who plan and produce what we see on our television screens. Their role is not passive ; they in turn will be helping, however imperceptibly, to affect society; 209. The disquiet about and dissatisfaction with television are, in our view, justly attributed very largely to the service of independent television. This is so despite the popularity of the service, and the well-known fact that many of its programmes command the largest audiences. Our enquiries have brought us to appreciate why this kind of success is not the only, and is by .no means the most important, test of a good broadcasting service. Indeed, it is a success which can be [68] obtained by abandoning the main purposes of broadcasting~
[13] FRC Interpre tation of
the
Public Interest Statement Made by the Commission on August 23,1928, Relative to Public Interest, Convenience, or Necessity 2 FRC Ann. Rep. 166 (1928) Delayed confirmations and appropriations complicated by death and resignation caused the membership of the Federal Radio Commission to remain incomplete until a year after passage of the Act of 1927. At about the same time, on March 28, 1928, the ·~oavis Amendment" (Public Law 195, 70th Congress) was signed into law. This amendment directed the FRC to provide "equality of radio broadcasting service, both of transmission and of reception" to each of the five zones established by Section 2 of the Radio Act. The amendment was an administrative nightmare for a new commission plagued with the problems of an overcrowded broadcast spectrum. Before establishing the quotas required by the Davis Amendment, the Commission acted on its own General Order No. 32, holding expedited hearings during two weeks in July, 1928, ·in which 164 broadcast licensees were given .the opportunity to justify their continued stat4s as station operators under the Radio Act's public interest standard. When the dust had settled there were 62 fewer broadcasters; several others had to settle for power reductions, consolidations, or probationary renewals. Fewer than half of the 164 stations emerged unscathed. The following statement constitutes the FRC's first compre49
288
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hensive attempt to put the flesh of administrative interpretation on the bare-boned "public interest" standard with which Congress had endowed it. Although some of the guidelines seem hopelessly archaic today, contemporary technical and programming standards can be traced back to these basic principles of regulatory philosophy. Related Reading: 106, 131.
Federal Radio Commission, Washington, D. C. The Federal Radio Commission announced on August 23, 1928, the basic principles and its interpretation of the public interest, convenience, or necessity clause of the radio act, which were invoked in reaching decisions in cases recently heard of radio broadcasting stations whose public service was challenged. The commission's statement follows:
Public interest, convenience, or necessity The only standard (other than the Davis amendment) which. Congress furnished to the commission for its guidance in the determination of the complicated questions which arise in connection with the granting of licenses and the renewal or modification of existing licenses is the rather broad one of "public interest, convenience, or necessity." ... . . . No ·attempt is made anywhere in the act to define the term "public interest, convenience, or necessity," nor is any illustration given of its proper application. The commission is of the opinion that Congress, in enacting the Davis amendment, did not intend to repeal or do away with this standard. While the · primary purpose of the Davis amendment is to bring about equality as between the zones, it does not require the commission to grant any application which does not serve public interest, convenience, or necessity simply because the application happens to proceed from a zone or State that is under its quota. The equality is not to be brought about by sacrificing the standard. On the other hand, where a particular zone or State is over its quota, it is true that the commission may on occasions be forced to deny an application the granting of which might, in its opinion, serve public interest, convenience, or necessity. The Davis amendment may, therefore, be viewed as a partial limitation upon the power of the commission in applying the standard. The cases which the commission has considered as a result of General Order No. 32 are all cases in which it has had before it applications for renewals
The Political Economy of the Media II FRC Interpretation of the Public Interest
289 51
of station licenses. Under section 2 of the act the commission is given full power and authority to follow the procedure adhered to in these cases, when it has been unable to reach a decision that granting a particular application would serve public interest, convenience, or necessity. In fact, the entire radio act of I 927 makes it clear that no renewal of a license is to be granted, unless the commission shall find that public interest, convenience, or necessity will be served. The fact that all of these stations have been licensed by the commission from time to time in the past, and the further fact that most of them were licensed prior to the enactment of the radio act of 1927 by the Secretary of Commerce, do not, in the opinion of the commission, demonstrate that the continued existence of such stations will serve public interest, convenience, or necessity. The issuance of a previous license by the commission is not in any event to be regarded as a finding further than for the duration of the limited period covered by the license (usually 90 days). There have been a variety of considerations to which the commission was entitled to give weight. For example, when the commission first entered upon its duties it found in existence a large number of stations, much larger than could satisfactorily operate simultaneously and permit good radio reception. Nevertheless, in order to avoid injustice and in order to give the commission an opportunity to determine which stations were best serving the public, it was perfectly consistent for the commission to relicense all of these stations for limited periods. It was in the public interest that a fair test should be conducted to determine which stations were rendering the best service. Furthermore, even if the relicensing of a station in the past would be some indication that it met the test, there is no reason why the United States Government, the commission, or the radio-listening public should be bound by a mistake which has been made in the past. There were no hearings preliminary to granting these licenses in the past, and it can hardly be said that the issue has been adjudicated in any of the cases . The commission has been urged to give a precise definition of the phrase "public interest, convenience, or necessity," and in the course of the hearings has been frequently criticized for not having done so. It has also been urged that the statute itself is unconstitutional because of the alleged uncertainty and indefiniteness of the phrase. So far as the generality of the phrase is concerned, it is no less certain or definite than other phrases which have found their way into Federal statutes and which have been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. An example is "unfair methods of competition." To be able to arrive at a precise definition of such a phrase which will foresee all eventualities is manifestly impossible. The phrase will have to be defined by the United States Supreme Court, and this will probably be done by a gradual process of decisions on particular combinations of fact. It must be remembered that the standard provided by the act applies not only to broadcasting stations but to each type of radio station which must be licensed, including point-to-point communication, experimental, amateur, ship, airplane, and other kinds of stations. Any definition must be broad enough to
The Political Economy of the Media /I
290 52
DOCUMENTS OF AMERICAN BROADCASTIN G
include all of these and yet must be elastic enough to permit of defmite application to each. It is, however, possible to state a few general principles which have demonstrated themselves in the course of the experie~ce of the commission and which are applicable to the broadcasting band. In the first place, the commission has no hesitation in stating that it is in the public interest, convenience, and necessity that a substantial band of frequencies be set aside for the exclusive use of broadcasting stations and the radio listening public, and under the present circumstances believes that the band of 550 to 1,500 kilocycles meets that test. In the second place, the commission is convinced that public interest, convenience, or necessity will be served by such action on the part of the com~~ssion as will bring about the best possible broadcasting reception condtttons throughout the United States. By good conditions the commission means freedom from interference of various types ·as well as good quality in the operation of the broadcasting station. So far as possible, the various types of interference, such as heterodyning, cross talk, and blanketing must be avoided. The commission is convinced that the intere~t of the broadcast listener is of superior importance to that of the broadcaster and that it is better that there should be a few less broadcasters than that the listening public should suffer from undue interference. It is unfortunate that iri the past the most vociferous public expression has been made by broadcasters or by persons speaking in their behalf and the real voice of the listening public has not sufficiently been heard. The commission is furthermore convinced that within the band of frequencies devoted to broadcasting, public interest, convenience, or necessity will be best served by a fair distribution of different types of service. Without attempting to determine how many channels should be devoted to the various types of service, the commission feels that a certain number should be devoted to stations so equipped and financed as to permit the giving of a high .order of service over as large a territory as possible. This is the only manner in which the distant listener in the rural and sparsely settled portions of the country will be reached. A certain number of other channels should be given over to stations which desire to reach a more limited region and as to which there will be large intermediate areas in which there will be objectionable interference. Finally, there should be a provision for stations which are distinctly local in character and which aim to serve only the smaller towns in the United States without any attempt to reach listeners beyond the immediate vicinity of such towns. The commission also believes that public interest, convenience, or necessity will be best served by avoiding too much duplication of programs and types of programs. Where one community is underserved and another community is receiving duplication of the same order of programs, the second community should be restricted in order to benefit the first. Where one type of service is· being reQdered by several stations in the same region, consideration
291
The Political Economy of the Media /I FRC Interpretation of the Public Interest
53
should be given to a station which renders a type of service which is not such a duplication. In view of the paucity of channels, the commission is of the opinion that the limited facilities for broadcasting should not be shared with stations which give the sort of service which is readily available to the public in another form. For example, the public in large cities can easily purchase and use phonograph records of the ordinary commercial type. A station which devotes the main portion of its hours of operation to broadcasting such phonograph records is not giving the public anything which it can not readily have without such a station. If, in addition to this, the station is located in a city where there are large resources in program material, the continued operation of the station means that some other station is being kept out of existence which might put to use such original program material. The commission realizes that the situation is not the same in some of the smaller towns and farming communities, where such program resources are not available. Without placing the stamp of approval on the use of phonograph records under such circumstances, the commission will not go so far at present as to state that the practice is at all times and under all conditions a violation of the test provided by the statute. It may be also that the development of special phonograph records will take such a form that the result can be made available by broadcasting only ;md not available to the public commercially, and if such proves to be the case the commission will take the fact into consideration. The commission can not close its eyes to the fact that the real purpose of the use of phonograph records in most communities is to provide a cheaper method of advertising for advertisers who-are thereby saved the expense of providing an original program. While it is true that broadcasting stations in this country are for the most or partially supported by advertisers, broadcasting stations are supported part not given these great privilegeS by the United States Government for the primary benefit of advertisers. Such benefit as is derived by advertisers must be incidental and entirely secondary to the interest of the public. The same question arises in another connection. Where the station is used for the broadcasting of a considerable amount of what is called "direct ·advertising," including the quoting of merchandise prices, the advertising is usually offensive to the listening public. Advertising should be only incidental to some real service rendered to the public, and not the main object of a program. The commission realizes that in some .communities, particularly in the State of Iowa, there seems to exist a strong sentiment in favor of such advertising on the part of the listening public. At least the broadcasters in that community have succeeded in making an impressive demonstration before the commission on each occasion when the matter has come up for discussion. The commission is not fully convinced that it has heard both sides of the matter, but is willing to concede that in some localities the quoting of direct merchandise prices may serve as a sort of local market, and in that community a service may thus be
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DOCUMENTS OF AMERICAN BROADCASTING
rendered. That such is not the case generally, however, the commission knows from thousands and thousands of letters which it has had from all over the country complaining of.such practices. . Another question which must be taken seriously is the location of the transmitter of the station. This is properly a question of interference. Generally speaking, it is not in the pulilic interest, convenience, or necessity for a station of substantial power (500 wa~ts or more) to be located in the midst of a thickly inhabited community. The question of the proper location of a station with respect to its power is a complicated one and can not here be discussed in detail. Obviously it is desirable that a station serving a particular community or region should cover that community or region with a signal strong enough to constitute adequate service. It is also desirable that the \ligna! be not so strong as to blanket reception from other stations operating on other frequencies. There is a certain amount of blanketing in the vicinity of every transmitter, even one of 5, 10, or 50 watts. The frequencies used by stations in the same geographical region can be widely enough sepanited, however, so that the blanketing will not be serious from a transmitter of less than 500 watts, even when located in a thickly inhabited community. With stations of that amount of power, or greater, the problem becomes a serious one. In order to serve the whole of a large metropolitan area a 500-watt ~tation has barely sufficient power even when it is located in the center· of the area. If its transmitter is located away from the thickly inhabited portions and out in the country it will not give satisfactory service. Such an area can only be adequately served, without blanketing, by stations of greater power located in sparsely settled portions of the near-by country. Theoretically, therefore, it may be said that it will not serve public interest,. convenience, or necessity to permit the location of a low-powered station in a large city. It can not hope to serve the entire city, and yet it renders the frequency useless for the listeners of the city outside of the small area immediately surrounding the station. On the other hand, such a station might give very good service to a small town or city. The commission is furthermore convinced that in applying the test of public interest, convenience, or necessity, it may consider the character of the licensee or applicant, his financial responsibility, and his past record, in order to determine whether he is more or less likely to fulfrll the trust imposed by the license than others who are seeking the same privilege from the same community, State, or zone. A word of warning must be given to those broadcasting (of which there have been all too many) who consume much of the valuable time allotted to them under their licenses in matters of a distinctly private nature, which are not only uninteresting but also distasteful to the listening public. Such is the case where two rival broadcasters in the same community spend their time in abusing each other over the air.
The Political Economy of the Media 11 FRC Interpretation of the Public Interest
293 55
A station which does not operate on a regular schedule made known to the public through announcements in the press or otherwise is not rendering a service which meets the test of the law. If the radio listener does not know whether or not a particular station is broadcasting, or what its program will be, but must rely on the whim of the broadcaster and on chance in tuning his dial at the proper time, the service is not such as to justify the commission in licensing such a broadcaster as against one who will give a regular service of which the public is properly advised. A fortiori, where a licensee does not use his transmitter at all and broadcasts his programs, if at all, over some other transmitter separately licensed, he is not rendering any service. It is also improper that the zone and State in which his station is located should be charged with a license under such conditions in connection with the quota of that zone and that State under the Davis amendment. A broadcaster who is not sufficiently concerned with the public's interest in good radio reception to provide his transmitter with an adequate control or check on its frequency is not entitled to a license. The commission in allowing a latitude of 500 cycles has been very lenient and will necessarily have to reduce this margin in the future. Instability in frequency means that the radio-listening public is subjected to increased interference by heterodyne (and, in some cases, cross-talk) on adjacent channels as well as on the assigned channels. In conclusion, the commission desires to point out that the test - "public interest, convenience, or necessity" - becomes a matter of a comparative and not an absolute standard when applied to broadcasting stations. Since the number of channels is limited and the number of persons desiring to broadcast is far greater than can be accommodated, the commission must determine from among the applicants before it which of them will, if licensed, best serve the public. In a measure, perhaps, all of them give more or less service. Those who give the least, however, must be sacrificed for those who give the most. The emphasis must be first and foremost on the interest, the convenience, and the necessity of the listening public, and not on the interest, convenience, or necessity of the individual broadcaster or the advertiser.
Related Reading
106. Holt, Darrel, "The Origin of 'Public Interest' in Broadcasting," Educational Broadcasting Review, 1, No. 1 (October 1967), 15-19. 131. Le Due, Don R., and Thomas A. McCain, 'The Federal Radio Commission in Federal Court: Origins of Broadcast Regulatory Doctrines," Journal of Broadcasting, 14, No. 4 (Fall 1970), 393-410.
The Political Economy of the Media I/ The Great Lakt:$ Statement
295 57
The Great Lakes statement also contains the germ of what was promulgated as the "Fairness Doctrine" 20 years later (see Document 22, pp. 217-231). lt is clear that by 1929 the FRC had come to view advertising as the economic backbone of broadcasting and was prepared to accept it as an inevitability, within bounds. The last sentence of the statement alludes to listeners' councils, which were the forerunners of the citizens groups of today.
[14]
The Great Lakes Statement
Related Reading: 106,118,131,187.
In the Matter of the Application of Great Lakes Broadcasting Co. FRC Docket No. 4900 3 FRC Ann. Rep. 32 (1929) The FRC reconstructed its interpretation of the public interest in this early comparative hearing proceeding. The reformulation was unaffected by a court remand [Great Lakes Broadcasting Company et al. v.Federal Radio Commission, 37 F.2d 993 (D.C. Cir. 1930); cert. dismissed 281 U.S. 706]. The 1927 Radio Act's "public interest, convenience, or necessity" phrase was derived from public utility law. The Great Lakes statement gives detailed treatment to the contention that although broadcasting was a type of utility, radio stations were not to be thought of as common carriers. This principle was given legislative affirmation in 1934 when Section 3(h) was included in the Communications Act. The statement is noteworthy for its emphasis on the requirement that radio stations carry diverse and balanced programming to serve the "tastes, needs, and desires" of the general public. This has been an underlying premise of subsequent FCC programming pronouncements, including the currently applied 1960 statement (see Document 26, pp. 262-278). Although the force of this principle has been moderated with respect to the vastly expanded AM and FM radio services, its vigor remains unabated for telev!sion broadcasting. 56
... Broadcasting stations are licensed to serve the public and not for the purpose of furthering the private or selfish interests of individuals or groups of individuals. The standard of public interest, convenience, or necessity means nothing if it does not mean this. The only exception that can be made to this rule has to do with advertising; the exception, however, is only apparent because advertising furnishes the economic support for the service and thus makes it possible. As will be pointed out below, the amount and character ofadve~tising must be rigidly confined within the limits consistent with the public s"ervice expected of the station. The service to be rendered by a station may be viewed from two angles, (I) as an instrument for the communication of intelligence of various kinds to the general public by persons wishing to transmit such intelligence, or (2) as an instrument for the purveying of intangible commodities consisting of entertainment, instruction, education, and information to a listening public. As an instrument for the communication of intelligence, a broadcasting station has frequently been compared to other forrns of communication, such as wire telegraphy or telephony, or point-to-point wireless telephony or telegraphy, with the obvious distinction that the messages from a broadcasting station are addressed to and received by the general public, whereas toll messages in point-to-point service are addressed to single persons and attended by safeguards to preserve their confidential nature. If the analogy were pursued with the usual legal incidents, a broadcasting station would have to accept and transmit for all persons on an equal basis without discrimination in charge, and according to rates ftxed by a governmental body; this obligation would extend to anything and everything any member of the public might desire to communicate to the listening public, whether it consist of music, propaganda, reading, advertising, or what-not. The public would be deprived of the advantage of the self-imposed censorship exercised by the program directors of broadcasting stations who, for the sake of the popularity and standing of their stations, will select entertainment and educational features according to the needs and desires of their invisible audiences. In the present state of the art there is no way of increasing the number of stations without great injury to the listening public, and yet
296
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thousands of stations might be necessary to accommodate all the individuals who insist on airing their views through the microphone. If there are many such persons, as there undoubtedly are, the results would be, first, to crowd most or all of the better programs off the air, and second, to create an almost insoluble problem, i.e., how to choose from among an excess of applicants who shall be given time to address the public and who shall exercise the power to make such a choice. To pursue the analogy of telephone and telegraph public utilities is, therefore, to emphasize the right of the sender of messages to the detriment of the listening public. The commission believes that such an analogy is a mistaken one when applied to broadcasting stations; the emphasis should be on the receiving of service and the standard of public interest, convenience or necessity should be construed accordingly. This point of view does not take broadcasting stations out of the category of public utilities or relieve them of corresponding obligations; it simply assimilates them to a different group of public utilities, i.e., those engaged in purveying commodities to the gene.ral public, such, for example, as heat, water, light, and power companies, whose duties are to consumers, just as the duties of broadcasting stations are to listeners. The commodity may be intangible but so is electric light; the broadcast program has become a vital part of daily life. Just as heat, water, light, and power companies use franchises obtained from city or State to bring their commodities through pipes, conduits, or wires over public highways to the home, so a broadcasting station uses a franchise from the Federal Government to bring its commodity over a channel through the ether to the home. The Government does not try to tell a public utility such as an electric-light company that it must obtain its materials such as coal or wire, from all corners on equal terms; it is not interested so long as the service rendered in the form of light is good. Similarly, the commission believes that the Government is interested mainly in seeing to it that the program service of broadcasting stations is good, i.e., in accordance with the standard of public interest, convenience, or necessity. · It may be said that the law has already written an exception into the foregoing viewpoint in that, by section 18 of the radio act of 1927, a broadcasting station is required to afford equal opportunities for use of the station to all candidates for a public office if it permits any of the candidates to use the station. It will be noticed, however, that in the same section it is provided that "no obligation is hereby imposed upon any licensee to allow the use of its station by any such candidate." This is not only not inconsistent with, but on the contrary it supports, the commission's viewpoint. Again the emphasis is on the listening public, not on the sender of the message. It would not be fair, indeed it would not be good service to the public to allow a one-sided presentation of the political issues of a campaign. In so far as a program consists of discussion of public questions, public interest requires ample play for the free and fair competition of opposing views, and the commission believes that the principle applies not only to addresses by political candidates but to all
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discussions of issues of importance to the public. The great majority of broadcasting stations are, the commission is glad to ·say, already tacitly recognizing a broader duty than the law imposes upon them .... An indispensable condition to good service by any station is, of course, modern efficientapparatus, equipped with all devices necessary to insure fidelity in the transmission of voice and music and to avoid frequency instability or other causes of interference.... There are a few negative guides to the evaluation of broadcasting stations. First of these in importance are the injunctions of the statute itself, such, for example, as the requirement for nondiscrimination between political candidates and the prohibition against the utterance of "any obscene, indecent, or profane language" (sec. 29). In the same connection may be mentioned rules and regulations of the commission, including the requirements as to the announcing of call letters aoo as to the accurate description of mechanical reproductions (such as phonograph records) in announcements .... For more positive guides the commission again finds itself persuaded of the applicability of doctrines analogous to those governing the group of public utilities to which reference has already been made. If the viewpoint is found that the service to the listening public is what must be kept in contemplation in construing the legal standard with reference to broadcasting stations, the service must first of all be continuous during hours when the public usually listens, and must be on a schedule upon which the public may rely .... Furthermore, the service rendered by broadcasting stations must be without discrimination as between its listeners. Obviously, in a strictly physical sense, a station can not discriminate so as to furnish its programs to one listener and not to another;. in this respect it is a public utility by virtue of the laws of nature. Even were it technically possible, as it may easily be as the art progresses, so to design both transmitters and receiving sets that the signals emitted by a particular transmitter can be received only by a particular kind of receiving set not available to the general public, the commission would not allow channels in the broadcast band to be used in such fashion. By the same token, it is proceeding very cautiously in permitting television in the broadcast band because, during the hours of such transmission, the great majority of the public audience in the service area of the station, not being equipped to receive television signals, are deprived of the use of the channel. TI1ere is, however, a deeper significance to the principle of nondiscrimination which the commission believes may well furnish the basic formula for the evaluation of broadcasting stations. The entire listening public within I he service area of a station, or of a group of stations in one community, is entitled to service from that station or stations. If, therefore, all the programs transmitted are intended for, and interesting or valuable to, only a small portion of that public, the rest of the listeners are being discriminated against. This does not mean that every individual is entitled to his exact preference in program items. 1t does mean, in the opinion of the commission, that the tastes, needs, and desires
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of all substantial groups among the listening public should be met, in some fair proportion, by a well-rounded program, in which entertainment, consisting of music of both classical and lighter grades, religion, education and instruction, important public events, discussions of public questions, weather, market reports, and news, and matters of interest to all members of the family find a place. With so few channels in the spectrum and so few hours in the day, there are obvious limitations on the emphasis which can appropriately be placed on any portion of the program. There are parts of the day and of the evening when one type of service is more appropriate, than another. There are differences between communities as to the need for one type as against another. The commission does not propose to erect a rigid schedule specifying the hours or minutes that may be devoted to one kind of program or another. What it wishes to emphasize is the general character which it believes must be conformed to by a station in order to best serve the public .... In such a scheme there is no room for the operation of broadcasting stations exclusively by or in the private interests of individuals or groups so far as the nature of the programs is concerned. There is not room in the broadcast band for every school of thought, religious, political, social, and economic, each to have its separate broadcasting station, its mouthpiece in the ether. If franchises are extended to some it gives them an unfair advantage over others, and results in a corresponding cutting down of general public-service stations. It favors the interests and desires of a portion of the listening public at the expense of the rest. Propaganda stations (a term which is here used for the sake of convenience and not in a derogatory sense) are not consistent with the most beneficial sort of discussion of public questions. As a general rule, postulated on the laws of nature as well as on the standard of public interest, convenience, or necessity, particular doctrines, creeds, and beliefs must find their way into the market of ideas by the existing public-service stations, and if they are of sufficient importance to the listening public the microphone will undoubtedly be available. If it is not, a well-founded complaint will receive the careful consideration of the commission in its future action with reference to the station complained of. The contention may be made that propaganda stations are as well able as other stations to accompany their messages with entertainment and other program features of interest to the public. Even if this were true, the fact remains that the station is used for what is essentially a private purpose for a substantial portion of the time and in addition, is constantly subject to the very human temptation not to be fair to opposing schools of thought and their representatives. By and large, furthermore, propaganda stations do not have the financial resources nor do they have the standing and popularity with the public necessary to obtain the best results in programs of general interest. The contention may also be made that to follow out the commission's viewpoint is to make unjustifiable:concessions to what is popular at the expense of what is
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important and. serious. This bears on a consideration which the commission realizes must always be kept carefully in mind and in so far as it has power under the law it will do so in its reviews of the records of particular stations. A defect, if there is any, however, would not be remedied by a one-sided presentation of a controversial subject, no matter how serious. The commission has great confidence in the sound judgment of the listening public, however, as to what types of programs are in its own best interest. If the question were now raised for the first time, after the commission has . given careful study to it, the commission would not license any propaganda station, at least, to an exclusive position on a cleared channel. Unfortunately, under the law in force prior to the radio act of 1927 (see particularly Hoover v. Intercity Radio Co., 286 Fed. 1003), the Secretary of Commerce had no power to distinguish between kinds of applicants and it was not possible to foresee the present situation and its problems. Consequently there are and have been for a long time in existence a number of stations operated by religious or similar organizations. Certain enterprising organizations, quick to see the possibilities of radio and anxious to present their creeds to the public, availed themselves of license privileges from the earlier days of broadcasting, and now have good records and a certain degree of popularity among listeners. The commission feels that the situation must be dealt with on a common-sense basis. It does not seem just to deprive such stations of all right to operation and the question mu~t be solved on a comparative basis. While the commission is of the opinion that a broadcasting station engaged in general public service has, ordinarily, a claim to preference over a propaganda station, it will apply this principle as to existing stations by giving preferential facilities to the former and assigning less desirable positions to the latter to the extent that engineering principles permit. In. rare cases it is possible to combine a general public-service station and a high-class religious station in a division of time which will approximate a well-rounded program. In other cases religious stations must accept part time on inferior channels or on daylight assignments where they are still able to transmit during the hours when religious services are usually expected by the listening public. It may be urged that the same reasoning applies to advertising. In a sense this is true. The commission must, however, recognize that, without advertising, broadcasting would not exist, and must confine itself to limiting this advertising in amount and in character so as to preserve the largest possible amount of service for the public. The advertising must, of course, be presented as such and not under the guise of other forms on the same principle that the newspaper must not present advertising as news. It will be recognized and accepted for what it is on suCh a basis, whereas propaganda is difficult to recognize. If a rule against advertising were enforced, the public would be deprived of millions of dollars worth of programs which are being given out entirely by concerns simply for the resultant good will which is believed to accrue to the broadcaster or the advertiser by the announcement of his name and business in connection with
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programs. Advertising must be accepted for the present as the sole means of support for broadcasting, and regulation must be relied upon to prevent the abuse and overuse of the privilege. It may be urged that if what has heretofore been said is law, the listening public is left at the mercy of the broadcaster. Even if this were so, the commission doubts that any iJ:nprovement would be effected by placing the public at the mercy of each individual in turn who desired to communicate his hobby, his theory, or his grievance over the microphone, or at the mercy of every advertiser without regard to the standing either of himself or his product. That it is not so, however, is demonstrable from two considerations. In the first place, the listener has a complete power of censorship by turning his dial away from a program which he does not like; this results in a keen appreciation by the broadcaster of the necessity of pleasing a large portion of his listeners· if he is to hold his audience, and of not .displeasing, annoying, or offending the sensibilities of any substantial portion of the public. His failure or success is immediately reflected on the telephone and in the mail, and he knows that the same reaction to his programs will reach the licensing authority. In the second place, the licensing authority will have occasion, both in connection with renewals of his license and in connection with applications of others for his. privileges, to review his past performances and to determine whether he has met with the standard. A safeguard which some of the leading stations employ, and which appeals to the commission as a wise precaution, is the association with the station of an advisory board made up of men and women whose character, standing, and occupations will insure a well-rounded program best calculated to serve the greatest portion of the population in the region to be served.
Related Reading 106. Holt, Darrel, 'The Origin of 'Public Interest' in Broadcasting," Educational Broadcasting Review, 1, No. 1 (October 1967), 15-19. 118. Kahn, Frank J., 'The Quasi-Utility Basis for Broadcast Regulation," Journal of Broadcasting, 18, No.3 (Summer 1974), 259-276. 131. Le Due, Don R., and Thomas A. McCain, 'The Federal Radio Commission in Federal Court: Origins of Broadcast Regulatory Doctrines," Journal of Broadcasting, 14, No. 4 (Fall 1970), 393-410. 187. Rosenbloom, Joel, "Authority of the Federal Communications Commission" in Freedom ··and Responsibilty in Broadcasting, ed., John E. Coons. ' Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1961.
[15]
The ''Vast Wasteland'' Address by Newton N. Minow to the National Association of Broadcasters, Washington, D.C. * May 9, 1961 Newton N. Minow served only 28 months as FCC Ch~irman but no commissioner before or since matched his impa~t on' the general p~blic and broadcasting. A Chicago lawyer and associate of Adlai E. Stevenson, Minow was named to the Commission early in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy. He resigned in the middle of 1963 to take a more lucrative legal position in private industry. This speech alarmed broadcasters, made newspaper headlines, and evoked favorable public response and comment in the print media. lt signaled the. start of a new regulatory activism and an end to the corruption that riddled the FCC in the closing years of the Eisenhower administration, when two commissioners (including a chairman) were forced to resign because of their scandalous dealings with sonie of the broadcasters they were supposed to regulate. regulatory program outlined in ' . . Some aspects of Minow's th1s address, attracted Wide support and were realized in the following 2 years. Educational television station construction was given a $32 million boost when Congress passed the "ETV Facilities Act of 1962" (Public Law 87-447, approved May 1, 1962}. The prospects for UHF television brightened with enactment of the "All Channel Receiver Law" (Public Law 87-529, approved July 10, 1962) which added Sections 303(s) and 330 to the *Reprinted with permission from Newton N. Minow, Equal Time: The Private Broadcaster and the Public Interest, ed. Lawrence Laurent (New York: Atheneum, 1964), pp. 48-{;4. 281
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Communications Act (see pp. 526 and 543). But protection of Pay TV from infanticide and reduction of broadcast advertising excesses were among the regulatory objectives Minow failed to achieve because of his short stay in office and the shifting··regulatory climate following his departure. lt was Minow's outspoken discontent with television program· ming and his vow to lead the FCC to review broadcast content more closely when acting on license renewals that made broadcasters apprehensive. Anxious not to find out if the Chairman really meant what he said, networks and stations alike attempted to make the "vast wasteland" bloom with more public affairs programs, improved children's offerings, and a de-emphasis on violent action shows. The change proved to be as temporary as Minow's tenure at the FCC. More lasting was the technique of "regulation by raised eyebrow" that Minow used with considerable success in this speech and which his successors have continued to employ in the delicate area of broadcast programming with varied results. Related Reading: 3, 64,127,156,171,187 ,198,238.
Governor Collins, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen: Thank you for this opportunity to meet with you today'. This is my fust public address since I took over my new job. When the New Frontiersmen rode into town, I locked myself in my office to do my homework and get my feet wet. But apparently I haven't managed to stay out of hot water. I seem to have detected a certain nervous apprehension about what I might say or do when I emerged from that locked office for this, my maiden station break. First, let me begin by dispelling a rumor. I was not picked for this job because I regard myself as the fastest draw on the New Frontier. Second, let me start a rumor. Like you, I have carefully read President Kennedy's messages about the regulatory agencies, conflict of interest and the dangers of ex parte contacts. And of course, we at the Federal Communications Commission will do our part. Indeed, I may even suggest that we change the name of the FCC to The Seven Untouchables! It may also come as a surprise to some of you, but I want you to know that you have my admiration and respect. Yours is a most honorable profession. Anyone who is in the broadcasting business has a tough row to hoe. You earn your bread by using public property. When you work in broadcasting, you volunteer for public service, public pressure and public regulation. You must compete with other attractions ancl other investments, and the only way you can do it is to
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prove to us every three years that you should have been in business in the first place. I can think ofeasier ways to make a living. But I cannot think of more satisfying ways. I admire your courage-but that doesn't mean I would make life any easier for you. Your license lets you use the public's airwaves as trustees for 180 million Americans. The public is your beneficiary. If you want to stay on as trustees, you must deliver a decent return to the public-not only to your stockholders. So, as a representative of the public, your health and your product are among my chief concerns. As to your health: let's talk only of television today. In 1960 gross broadcast revenues of the television industry were over $1,268,000,000; profit before taxes was $243,900,000-an average return on revenue of 19.2 per cent. Compare this with 1959, when gross broadcast revenues were $1,163,900,000, and profit before taxes was $222,300,000, an average return on revenue of 19.1 per cent. So, the percentage increase of total revenues from 1959 to 1960 was 9 per cent, and the percentage increase of profit was 9.7 per cent. This, despite a recession. For your investors, the price has indeed been right. I have confidence in your health. But not in your product. It is with this and much more in mind that I come before you today. One editorialist in the trade press wrote that "the FCC of the New Frontier is going to be one of the toughest FCC's in the history of broadcast regulation." If he meant that we intend to enforce the law in the public interest, let me make it perfectly clear that he is right-we do. If he meant that we intend to muzzle or censor broadcasting, he is dead · wrong. It would not surprise me if some of you had expected me to come here today and say in effect, "Clean up your own house or the government will do it for you." Well, in a limited sense, you would be right-I've just said it. But I want to say to you earnestly that it is not in that spirit that I come before you today, nor is it in that spirit that I intend to serve the FCC. I am in Washington to help broadcasting, not to harm it; to strengthen it, not weaken it; to reward it, not punish it; to encourage it, not threaten it; to stimulate it, not censor it. Above all, I am here to uphold and protect the public interest. What do we mean by "the public interest"? Some say the public interest is merely what interests the public. I disagree. So does your distinguished president, Governor Collins. In a recent speech he said, "Broadcasting, to serve the public interest, must have a soul and a conscience, a burning desire to excel, as well as to sell; the urge to build the charac-
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ter, citizenship and intellectual stature of people, as well as to expand the gross national product. . . . By no means do I imply that broadcasters disregard the public interest. ... But a much better job can be done, and should be done." I could not agree more. And I would add that in today's world, with chaos in Laos and the Congo aflame, with Communist tyranny on our Caribbean doorstep and relentless pressure on our Atlantic alliance, with social and economic problems at home of the gravest nature, yes, and with technological knowledge that makes it possible, as our President has said, not only to destroy our world but to destroy poverty around the world-in a time of peril and opportunity, the old complacent, unbalanced fare of action-adventure and situation comedies is simply not good enough. Your industry possesses the most powerful voice in America. It has an inescapable duty to make that voice ring with intelligence and with leadership. In a few years this exciting industry has grown from a novelty to an instrument of overwhelming impact on the American people. It should be making ready for the kind of leadership that newspapers and magazines assumed years ago, to make our people aware of ~eir world. Ours has been called -the jet age, the atomic age, the space age. It is also, I submit, the television age. And just as history will decide whether the leaders of today's world employed the atom to destroy the world or rebuild it for mankind's benefit, so will history decide whether today's broadcasters employed their powerful voice to enrich the people or debase them. If I seem today to address myself chiefly to the problems of television, I don't want any of you radio broadcasters to think we've gone to sleep at your switch-we haven't. We still listen. But in recent years most of the controversies and crosscurrents in broadcast programing have swirled around television. And so my subject today is the television industry and the public interest. Like everybody, I wear more than one hat. I am the Chairman of the FCC. I am also a television viewer and the husband and father of other television viewers. I have seen a great many television programs that seemed to me emi· nently worthwhile, and I am not talking about the much-bemoaned good old days of "Playhouse 90" and "Studio One." I am talking about this past season. Some were wonderfully entertaining, such as "The Fabulous Fifties," the "Fred Astaire Show" and the "Bing Crosby Special"; some were dramatic and moving, such as Conrad's "Victory" and "Twilight Zone"; some were marvelously informative, such as "The Nation's Future," "CBS Reports," and "The Valiant Years." I could list many more-programs that I am sure everyone here felt enriched his own life and that of his family. When television is good, nothing-not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers-nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit-and-loss sheet or rating book to distract
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you-and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland. You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western badmen, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials-many screaming, cajoling and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you will see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, try it. Is there one person in this room who claims that broadcasting can't do better? Well, a glance at next season's proposed prograrning can give us little heart. Of seventy-three and a half hours of prime evening time, the networks have tentatively scheduled fifty-nine hours to categories of "action-adventure," situation comedy, variety, quiz and movies. Is there one network president in this room who claims he can't do better? Well, is there at least one network president who believes that the other networks can't do better? Gentlemen, your trust accounting with your beneficiaries is overdue. Never have so few owed so much to so many. Why is so much of television so bad? I have heard many answers: demands of your advertisers; competition for ever higher ratings; the need always to attract a mass audience; the high cost of television programs; the insatiable appetite for programing material..,...these are some of them. Unquestionably these are tough problems not susceptible to easy answers. But I am not convinced that you have tried hard enough to solve them. I do not accept the idea that the present over-all programing is aimed accurately at the public taste. The ratings tell us only that some people have their television sets turned on, and of that number, so many are tuned to one channel and so many to another. They don't tell us what the public might watch if they were offered half a dozen additional choices. A rating, at best, is an indication of how many people saw what you gave them. Unfortunately it does not reveal the depth of the penetration, or the intensity of reaction, and it never reveals what the acceptance would have been if what you gave them had been better-if all the forces of art and creativity and daring and imagination had been unleashed. I believe in the people's good sense and good taste, and I am not convinced that the people's taste is as low as some of you assume. My concern with the rating services is not with their accuracy. Perhaps they are accurate. I really don't know. What, then, is wrong with the ratings? It's not been their accuracy-it's been their use. Certainly I hope you will agree that ratings should have little influence where children are concerned. The best estimates indicate that during the hours of 5 to 6 P.M., 60 per cent of your audience is composed of children under twelve. And most young children today, believe it or not, spend as much time watching television as they do in the schoolroom. I repeat-let that sink in-most young chil-
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dren today spend as much time watching television as they do in the schoolroom. It used to be said that there were three great influences on a child: home, school and church. Today there is a fourth great influence, and you ladies and gentlemen control it. If parents, teachers and ministers conducted their responsibilities by following the ratings, children would have a steady diet of ice cream, school holidays and no Sunday School. What about your responsibilities? Is there no room on television to teach, to inform, to uplift, to stretch, to enlarge the capacities of our children? Is there no room for progran1s deepening their understanding of children in oilier lands? Is iliere no room for a children's news show explaining someiliing about the world to iliem at their level of understanding? Is there no room for reading ilie great literature of the past, teaching them the great traditions of freedom? There are some fme children's shows·, but they are drowned out in the massive doses of cartoons, violence and more violence. Must iliese be your trademarks? Search your consciences and see if you cannot offer more to your young beneficiaries, whose future you guide so many hours each and every day. What about adult progranling and ratings? You know, newspaper publishers take popularity ratings too. The answers are pretty clear; it is almost always the comics, followed by the advice-to-the-lovelorn columns. But, ladies and gentlemen, the news is still on ilie front page of all newspapers, the editorials are not replaced by more comics, the newspapers have not become one long collection of advice to the lovelorn. Yet newspapers do not need a license from the govern· ment to be in business-iliey do not use public property. But in televisionwhere your responsibilities as public trustees are so plain-the moment that the ratings indicate that Westerns are popular, there are new inlitations ofWesterns on the air faster than the old coaxial cable could take us from Hollywood to New York. Broadcasting cannot continue to live by the numbers. Ratings ought to be the slave of the broadcaster, not his master. And you and I boili know iliat the rating services themselves would agree. Let me make clear that what I am talking about is balance. I believe that the public interest is made up of many interests. There are many people in this great country, and you must serve all of us. You will get no argument from me if you say iliat, given a choice between a Western and a symphony, more people will watch ilie Western. I like Westerns and private eyes too-but a steady diet for the whole country is obviously not in the public interest. We all know that people would more often prefer to be entertained than stimulated or informed. But your obligations are not satisfied if you look only to popularity as a test of what to broadcast. You are not only in show business; you are free to communicate ideas as well as relaxation. You must provide a wider range of choices, more diversity, more alternatives. It is not enough to cater to the nation's whims-you must also serve the nation's needs. And I would add_Jhis-iliat if some of you persist in a relentless search for the highest rating arid the lowest common denominator, you may very well lose
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your audience. Because, to paraphrase a great Anlerican who was recently my law partner, the people are wise, wiser than some of the broadcasters-and politicians-think. As you may have gailiered, I would like to see television improved. But how is this to be brought about? By voluntary action by the broadcasters themselves? By direct government intervention? Or how? Let me address myself now to my role, not as a viewer, but as Chairman of ilie FCC. I could not if I would chart for you this afternoon in detail all of the actions I contemplate. Instead, I want to make clear some of the fundamental principles which guide me. First: the people own the air. They own it as much in prime evening time as tlley do at 6 o'clock Sunday morning. For every hour that ilie people give you,. you owe them something. I intend to see that your debt is paid with service. Second: I think it would be foolish and wasteful for us to continue any worn-out wrangle over the problems of payola, rigged quiz shows, and other mistakes of the past. There are laws on the books which we will enforce. But iliere is no chip on iny shoulder. We live togeilier in perilous, uncertain times; we face togeilier staggering problems; and we must not waste much time now by rehashing the cliches of past controversy. To quarrel over ilie past is to lose the future. Third: I believe in the free enterprise system. I want to see broadcasting improved and I want you to do the job. I am proud to champion your cause. It is not rare for Anlerican businessmen to serve a public trust. Yours is a special trust because it is imposed by law. Fourtll: I will do all I can to help educational television. There are still not enough educational stations, and major centers of the country still lack usable educational channels. If there were a limited number of printing presses in this country, you may be sure that a fair proportion of them would be put to educational use. Educational television has an enormous contribution to make to ilie future, and I intend to give it a hand along the way. If there is not a nationwide educational television system in this country, it will not be the fault of the FCC. Fifth: I am unalterably opposed to governmental censorship. There will be no suppression of progranling which does not meet with bureaucratic tastes. Censorship strikes at the taproot of our free society. Sixth: I did not come to Washington to idly observe the squandering of the public's airwaves. The squandering of our airwaves is no less important than the lavish waste of any precious natural resource. I intend to take the job or Chairman of the FCC very seriously. I believe in ilie gravity of my own particular sector of the New Frontier. There will be times perhaps when you will consider tllat I take myself or my job too seriously. Frankly, I don't care if you do. For I am convinced iliat either one takes this job seriously-or one can be seriously taken. Now, how will these principles be applied? Clearly, at the heart of the FCC's
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authority lies its power to license, to renew or fail to renew, or to revoke a license. As you know, when your license comes up for renewal, your performance is compared with your promises. I understand that many people feel that in the past licenses were often renewed pro fonna. I say to you now: renewal will not be pro fonna in the future. There is nothing permanent or sacred about a broadcast license. B11t simply matching promises and performance is not enough. I intend to do more. I intend to find out whether the people care. I intend to find out whether the community which each broadcaster serves believes he has been serving the public interest. When a renewal is set down for hearing, I intendwherever possible-to hold a well-advertised public hearing, right in the com· munity you have promised to serve. I want the people who own the air and the homes that television enters to tell you and the FCC what's been going on. I want the people-if they are truly interested in the service you give them-to make notes, document cases, tell us the facts. For those few of you who really believe that the public interest is merely what interests the public-I hope that these hearings will arouse no little interest. The FCC has a fme reserve of monitors-almost 180 million Americans gathered around 56 million sets. If you want those monitors to be your friends at court-it's up to you. Some of you may say, "Yes, but I still do not know where the line is between a grant of a renewal and the hearing you just spoke of." My answer is: why should you want to know how close you can come to the edge of the cliff! What the Commission asks of you is to make a conscientious good-faith effort to serve the public interest. Every one of you serves a community in which the people would benefit by educational, religious, instructive or other public service programing. Every one of you serves an area which has local needs-as to local elections, controversial issues, local news, local talent. Make a serious, genuine effort to put on that prograrning. When you do, you will not be playing brinkmanship with the public interest. What I've been saying applies to broadcast stations. Now a station break for the networks: You know your importance in this great industry. Today, more than onehalf of all hours of television station prograrning comes from the networks; in prime time, tltis rises to more than three-fourths of the available hours. You know that the FCC has been studying network operations for some time. I intend to press this to a speedy conclusion with useful results. I can tell you right now, however, that I am deeply concerned with concentration of power in the hands of the networks. As a result, too many local stations have foregone any efforts at local prograrning, with little use of live talent and local service. Too many local stations operate with one hand on the network switch and the other on a projector loaded with old movies. We want tl1e individual stations to be free to meet their legal responsibilities to serve their communities.
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I join Governor Collins in his views so well expressed to the advertisers who use the public air. I urge the networks to join him and undertake a very special ntission on behalf of this industry: you can tell your advertisers, "This is the high quality we are going to serve-take it or other people will. If you think you can find a better place to move automobiles, cigarettes and soap-go ahead and try." Tell your sponsors to be less concerned with costs per thousand and more concerned with understanding per millions. And remind your stockholders that an investment in broadcasting is buying a share in public responsibility. The networks can start this industry on the road to freedom from the dictatorship of numbers. But there is more to the problem than network influences on stations or advertiser influences on networks. I know the problems networks face in trying to clear some of their best programs-the informational programs that exemplify public service. They are your finest hours, whether sustaining or commercial, whether regularly scheduled .or special; these are the signs that broadcasting knows the way to leadership. They make the public's trust in you a wise choice. They should be seen. As you know, we are readying for use new forms by which broadcast stations will report their programing to the Commission. You probably also know that special attention will be paid in these reports to public service programing. I believe that stations taking network service should also be required to report the extent of the local clearance of network public service programing, and when they fail to clear them, they should explain why. If it is to put on some outstanding local program, this is one reason. But, if it is simply to carry some old movie, that is an entirely different matter. The Commission should consider such clearance reports carefully when making up its mind about the licensee's over-all prograrning. We intend to move-and as you know, indeed the FCC was rapidly moving in other new areas before the new administration arrived in Washington. And I want to pay my public respects to my very able predecessor, Fred Ford, and my colleagues on the Commission who have welcomed me to the FCC with warmth and cooperation. We have approved an experiment with pay TV, and in New York we are testing the potential of UHF broadcasting. Either or both of these may revolutionize television. Only a foolish prophet would venture to guess the direction they will take, and their effect. But we intend that they shall be explored fullyfor they are part of broadcasting's new frontier. The questions surrounding pay TV are largely econontic. The questions surrounding UHF are largely technological. We are going to give the infant pay TV a chance to prove whether it can offer a useful service; we are going to protect it from those who would strangle it in its crib. As for UHF, I'm sure you know about our test in the canyons of New York City. We will take every possible positive step to break through the allocations
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barrier into UHF. We will put this sleeping giant to use, and in the years ahead we may have twice as many channels operating in cities where now there are only two or three. We may have a half-dozen networks instead of three. I have told you that I believe in the free enterprise system. I believe that most of t~levision's problems stem from lack of competition. This is the importance of UHF to me: with more channels on the air, we will be able to provide every community with enough stations to offer service to all parts of the public. Programs with a mass-market appeal required by mass-product advertisers certainly will still be available. But other stations will recognize the need to appeal to more limited markets and to special tastes. In this way we can all have a much wider range of programs. Television should thrive on this competition-and the country should benefit from alternative sources of service to the public. And, Governor Collins, I hope the NAB will benefit from many new members. Another, and perhaps the most important, frontier: television will rapidly join the parade into space. International television will be with us soon. No one knows how long it will be until a broadcast from a studio in New York will be viewed in India as well as in Indiana, will be seen in the Congo as it is seen in Chicago. But as surely as we are meeting here today, that day will come-and once again our world will shrink. What will the people of other countries think of us when they see our Western badmen and good men punching each other in the jaw in between the shooting? What will the Latin American or African child learn of America from our great communications industry? We cannot permit television in its present form to be our voice overseas. There is your challenge to leadership. You must reexamine some fundamentals of your industry. You must open your minds and open your hearts to the limitless horizons of tomorrow. I can suggest some words that should serve to guide you: Television and all who participate in it are jointly accountable to the American public for respect for the special needs of children, for community responsibility, for the advancement of education and culture, for the acceptability of the program materials chosen, for decency and decor~;~m in production, and for propriety in advertising. This responsibility cannot be discharged by any given group of programs, but can be discharged only through the highest standards of res peel for I he American home, applied to every moment of every program presenred by television. Program materials should enlarge the horizons of the viewer, provide him with wholesome entertainment, afford helpful stimulation, and remind him of the responsibilities which the citizen has toward his society. These words are not mine. They are yours. They are taken literally from your own Television-Code. They reflect the leadership and aspirations of your
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own great industry. I urge you to respect them as I do. And I urge you to respect the intelligent and farsighted leadership of Governor LeRoy Collins and to make this meeting a creative act. I urge you at this meeting and, after you leave, back home, at your stations and your networks, to strive ceaselessly to improve your product and to better serve your viewers, the American people. I hope that we at the FCC will not allow ourselves to become so bogged down in the mountain of papers, hearings, memoranda, orders and the daily routine that we close our eyes to the wider view of the public interest. And I hope that you broadcasters will not permit yourselves to become so absorbed in the chase for ratings, sales and profits that you lose this wider view. Now more than ever before in broadcasting's history the times demand the best of all of us. We need imagination in programing, not sterility; creativity, not imitation; experimentation, not conformity; excellence, not mediocrity. Television is filled with creative, imaginative people. You must strive to set them free. Television in its young life has had many hours of greatness-its "Victory at Sea," its Army-McCarthy hearings, its ''Peter Pan," its "Kraft Theater," its "See It Now," its ''Project 20,'' the World Series, its political conventi~ns and campaigns, the Great Debates-and it has had its endless hours of mediocrity and its moments of public disgrace. There are estimates that today the average viewer spends about 200 minutes daily with television, while the average reader spends thirty-eight minutes with magazines and forty minutes with newspapers. Television has grown faster than a teenager, and now it is time to grow up. What you gentlemen broadcast through the people's air affects the people's taste, their knowledge, their opinions, their understanding of themselves and of their world. And their future. The power of instantaneous sight and sound is without precedent in mankind's history. This is an awesome power. It has limitless capabilities for goodand for evil. And it carries with it awesome responsibilities-responsibilities which you and I cannot escape. In his stirring Inaugural Address, our President said, "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country." Ladies and Gentlemen: Ask not what broadcasting can do for you-ask what you can do for broadcasting. I urge you to put the people's airwaves to the service of the people and the cause of freedom. You must help prepare a generation for great decisions. You must help a great nation fulfill its future. Do this, and I pledge you our help.
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The Political Economy of the Media ll Related Reading
3. Baird, Frank L., "Program Regulation on the New Frontier," Journal of Broadcasting, 11, No. 3 (Summer 1967), 231-243.
[16] Electronic Publishing
64. Dreher, Cad, "How the Wasteland Began: The Early Days of Radio," The Atlantic. 217 (February 1966), 53-58. 127. Krasnow, Erwin G., and Lawrence D. Longley, The Politics of Broadcast Regulation. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973. 156. Minow, Newton N., Equal Time: The Private Broadcaster and the Public Interest, ed., Lawrence Laurent. New York: Atheneum, 1964. 171. Pierson, W. Theodore, "The Active Eyebrow-A Changing Style for Censorship," Television Quarterly, 1, No. 1 (February 1962), 14-21. 187. Rosenbloom, Joel, "Authority of the Federal Communications Commission," in Freedom and Responsibility in Broadcasting, ed., John E. Coons. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1961. 198. Schwartz, Bemard, The Professor and the Commissions. New York: Knopf, 1959. 238. Weinberg, Meyer, TV in America: The Morality of Hard Cash. New York: Ballantine, 1962.
It is a great privilege for me to be invited to deliver this important lecture at this year's Edinburgh Television Festival. I want to use the opportunity to offer a contribution to tackling a problem which is, I believe, increasingly disturbing in the current debate about the future of what we used loosely to call television and radio broadcasting and should now more compendiously call electronic publishing. The problem, as I see it, can be best summed up as a lack of perspective - both chronological and moral- in our perception of what is going on and of what we believe is about to go on. To put it more baldly, we give the impression of being constantly startled, unnerved and nonplussed by each successive revelation of the technological changes which are expanding the capabilities of electronic publishing so rapidly. We do not know what is going to happen next and we are certainly not sure what to think about what is already happening. It is not just that the mysteries and magic of the changing technology itself bemuse and amaze us. Nor is it just that existing institutions find themselves stupefied by the financial, commercial, managerial and creative questions thrown up by each new successive change in the technological possibilities. More profoundly, as citizens and as a society we too easily give the impression of people who feel that they are falling off the edge of a cosy, stable and familiar 'flat earth' into a fathomless abyss of unrecognisable and frightening no~elties. We seem to know that the old world is fragmenting and will disappear; but we seem to have great difficulty in thinking coherently and confidently about the principles which should operate in the new world as it develops. Indeed, we seem to have only the most hazy and unconfident sense of what those principles might be, if indeed any exist, other than a desperate attempt to graft the habits of the past on to the quite different future, hoping against hope that as little as possible has really changed. To anyone who doubts this description I commend the transcript, if there is one, of Monday evening's opening session of this Festival with 'The Insiders'!
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This broad caricature is - like all broad caricatures - substantially unfair, especially to numerous individuals who are grappling with great energy and imagination with the opportunities and problems created by the evolving technology of electronic broadcasting and who in the process display knowledge, understanding and optimism about the future. Nonetheless, a society has to be able to think together- though not necessarily to agree- about major trends affecting its own character and evolution. To do so there have to be some shared concepts and perceptions, the building blocks out of which intelligible and coherent debate can be constructed and from which the big decisions about the control and regulation of the activity in question can be made. There could scarcely be a better example of such an activity than the primary means of communication and publication within a society, especially when it is undergoing rapid change. The modest contribution that I would like to make - and that is my purpose in this lecture tonight - is to suggest that there is a helpful perspective in which current developments can be seen and that, when they are so seen, much of the bafflement and mystification about where we are going in electronic publishing will disappear, while at the same time it will become very much clearer what the basic principles are which society should apply in debating the future legislative, regulatory and institutional framework within which the technological potentialities of electronic publishing should be permitted and encouraged to fulfil themselves over the next several decades. I by no means expect general, still less universal, agreement with the specifics of the analysis which I want to sketch out for you in this lecture. But I shall feel that the effort has been more· than worthwhile if it at least contributes to the debate being conducted with a more confident sense of historical perspective and with a more rigorous recognition of the already available criteria for choosing the principles which society should apply in setting and modifying the rules of the game for electronic publishing from here on. Let me start by inviting you to stand on its head the conventional perception that, in the universe of electronic publishing, it is the world in which ·we have been living which is 'normal' and the world into which we are now beginning to move which is strange or peculiar. Instead I ask you to consider the hypothesis that, on the contrary, it is the world in which we have been living, for nearly a century now, which is artificial and special and that it is the world into which we are moving which will be much more properly regarded as normal and natural. Let me explain what I mean.
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Why do human societies have governments at all and why do they feel, to the extent that they do, the need for them? Whatever may be the factual historical derivation of the institution of government, the broad justification that most of us feel for the existence of governments at all is and only is that, at least in principle, they enable the individuals who comprise a society to live lives which are more satisfactory to them as individuals (though in most cases social individuals) than they would if there were no governments. We tolerate governments and we justify or condemn their actions by this broad criterion, although there is, of course, almost limitless scope for dispute whether any particular act, policy or programme does or does not satisfy the criterion. The broad kinds of activity which have been traditionally accepted as fulfilling the criteria are ·very well known: political relations with the outside world; defence of the realm; the making and enforcement of such laws and regulations as may be necessary and justified by the criterion mentioned; the exploitation of those 'public goods' and the correction of those 'external dis-economies' which, as is well known, even the idealised workings of the market econo~y cannot accomplish; the monitoring. and modification of the distribution of wealth and income in ways which affect the overall character of the society; and in several other ways. The presumption, however, in societies which adhere to this libertarian and utilitarian conception of government is that government action and involvement is not justified unless it can be positively shown to satisfy the condition that, however measured~ the sum benefit ~o individuals will exceed the cost. The notion that a government action could be justified because of some independent right or interest of government itself, conceived as something above and beyond the sum of the individuals in whose name it governs, is strongly rejected, in contrast with other political philosophies which do see government as the embodiment of some other or higher force or purpose than simply the welfare, however broadly interpreted, of the individuals who comprise the society. A classic example of an activity which is normally presumed not to require government intervention is communication. Second only, perhaps, to the right of individuals to think privately what thoughts they wish comes the right of individuals to communicate those thoughts with one another. The historic battles to establish this right after the invention of the printing press and the perception of the power and potentialities of what by the standards of those days may be called mass communication was, to be sure, long and bitter. But, for those who
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adhere to the libertarian and utilitarian tradition, it is not seen as a battle between two arguable propositions or legitimate interests, but rather as a simple struggle between a sound and fundamental ideal on the one hand and dark forces motivated by interest (or occasionally mistaken bigotry) on the other. We now regard it as axiomatic that mass communication of the printed word should be a free activity which does not require any general framework of government regulation or sponsorship, although according to our varying different individual points of view we may be more or less inclined to accept certain general marginal constraints on this freedom for such reasons as sedition, blasphemy, libel, race relations and national security. When communication and in due course mass communication by the new technology of wireless telegraphy became possible, the natural presumption of a liberal utilitarian society must surely have been that this raised no new question of principle so far as the legitimate role of goverl).ment in the regulation of mass communiucation was concerned. What in fact brought government and the law-makers into the picture was not and should not have been any general perception that the character of mass communication by wireless telegraphy was so fundamentally different from mass communication by the printed word that it required a form of regulation not thought necessary or appropriate for the printed word, but instead was a simple fact of broadcasting technology. Since two signals could not be broadcast on the same wavelength in the same area at the same time without interfering with one another, some kind of wavelength policing was needed; and, therefore, some act of government was felt to be justified in the interests of the private individuals who comprise society for exactly the same reason that we feel government is needed and justified in imposing a 'keep left' or 'keep right' rule for driving on the public highways. The nineteenth century Wireless Telegraphy Acts, culminating in the 1905 Act, had this essential purpose and justification; and it has essentially been on this very narrow and specific foundation that the whole inverted pyramid of government and parliamentary regulation of broadcasting has since been built. There was and to some extent still is an inescapable need for someone to decide who should- and therefore who should not - broadcast on any given wavelength at any given time in any given area. In the absence of the theoretically possible alternatives of a lottery or an auction, the only available authority to make this decision was, in one form or another, the government. But of course, having once got into the act on this genuine but narrow
technical pretext, it will surprise no one that even in a pluralistic country governments and Parliament have moved forward from this bridgehead to· what is, by the standards of print communication, a massive control and regulation of the dominant forms of electronic publishing. I am not, of course, here talking about the kind of editorial control and crudely propagandist exploitation of radio and television which we associate with Eastern European and other totalitarian societies. Nor am I speaking of the kind of government regulation which is being hotly debated in the framework of UNESCO between the spokesmen of the Western 'free' societies and other societies who feel that governments are entitled to much more positive editorial control of radio and television, to say nothing of newspapers as well. What I have in mind is simply the contrast between the basic freedom to publish, to create a new publication, to contain in it any material whatsoever within the general laws of blasphemy, libel, national security, race relations etc., the contrast between all of that, whether in newspapers, magazines, books or any other form of printed publication, and the broadcasting framework as it has evolved through the granting of successive charters to the BBC, the creation of the Independent Television Authority and its development into the Independent Broadcasting Authority with _responsibilities for commercial radio as well as television. I leave on one side the draconian regulatory powers and monopoly position of the Post Office, now British Telecom, in relation to almost all other forms of private use of the airwaves and other telecommunication facilities for communication and even limited publication. It is quite simply impossible, as things stand, for any individual or private institution to communicate with his fellow citizens by way of broadcast radio or television unless he has either been appointed by a chartered or statutory body to do so or invited by someone else who has been so appointed. Moreover, any such communication has to conform, not merely to the broad general law affecting such matters as blasphemy, libel, national security and race relations, but also has to conform to a most elaborate series of formal and informal codes affecting the content, balance, timing etc, of such publications. My purpose at this point is not to evaluate or criticise these arrangements. I am aware that many people think they are justified and that there are some who even think that they still permit too much freedom to those who are allowed access to the airwaves. My aim here is simply to bring out the profound difference between the framework of law, regulation and government as it applies to print publications and as it
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applies to electronic publishing, at least insofar as electronic publishing takes the form of broadcast material.
without coming within the existing purview of the broadcasling regulators and, indeed, subject to one major once-and-for-all decision without the acquiescence of public authority in any of its other guises, whether as the guardian of wavelengths, way-leaves, the public purse or any other existing basis of gevernmental control. Video- both in its tape and disc manifestations - is already the most highly developed form of this new wave. Cable, satellites (especially Direct Broadcast Satellite services), teletext and other innovations are all contributing to what, from the cosy perspective of the 'closed circle' of the 'authorised' broadcasters, is regarded as the 'fragmentation' of the audience. Even moderate developments such as the Fourth Channel, the Welsh Fourth Channel and breakfast television, which involve no technological innovation whatever and which are twenty-four carat card-carrying creations of the traditional regulated system, are seen in some circles as threatening because they let newcomers, new ideas or new languages into the business or even, more simply, because they might cause the existing stock of jam to be spread yet more thinly. I will not dwell on ~he wetness, let alone the simple-minded fallaciousness, of that kind of reflex protectionism. This picture of an existing world of electronic publishing, dominated by authorised broadcasting, being gradually eroded and fragmented by technological changes which pare away cumulatively significant marginal slices of the traditional broadcaster's market - and predictably stimulate the historically familiar catalogue of demands for extended regulation, if indeed not prohibition, on every pretext of public interest known to man save the true one of resistance to competition- allied to the usual desire of every politician, busybody and self-appointed cultural and moral nanny to lay down what other people may and may not communicate to one another, this picture itself grossly underestimates the enormity of the change which is coming about. Quite simply, we are within less than two decades technologically of a world in which there will be no technical pretext for a government-appointed policeman to allocate the airwaves at all; and therefore, in turn, there will be no technically based grounds for government or legislative interference in electronic publishing, except insofar as the general laws of blasphemy, libel etc, which apply to print publishing are applied also to electronic publishing. To put it technically, 'spectrum scarcity' is going to disappear. In simple terms this means there will be able, in effect, to be as many channels as there are viewers. At that moment all the acrimonious and
Against this background, let us now begin to look at what current technological developments are doing to the potentialities of electronic broadcasting and thereby to our existing apparatus of concepts for controlling and regulating it. So far, we have had a world in which for most practical purposes electronic publishing was authorised broadcasting, both radio and television, in the strict sense of broadcast transmissions by authorised bodies across the airwaves to privately owned receivers. To this in recent years and increasingly have begun to be added a whole catalogue of actual and potential devices for enabling the public to enjoy the same or similar services by other means. It began with purely 'pirate' transmissions, which involved no technological innovation at all, but simply exploited jurisdictional or enforcement loop-holes in the existing system of regulation. These were variously dealt with by ignoring them on de minimis grounds, as in the case of Radio Luxembourg, or by gradual suppression by methods which were at least as indirect as the pirates' own circumvention of existing regulations, as in the case of Radio Caroline and its emulators. The advent of audio tapes was treated as if it were an extension of the gramophone record market rather than as violating the broadcasters' domain and therefore as not coming within the purview of the broadcast regulators. When cable television, under its original guise as 'pay television', first entered the debate a decade or so ago, nobody doubted that this belonged squarely in the regulated area of electronic publishing or, indeed, that it was entirely a matter for government decision whether or not the practice of such a black art should be permitted at all. Fortunately for the upholders of the ancien regime of regulated electronic publishing such experiments as were permitted were never sufficiently successful to force a major social decision on whether or how pay television should be controlled. Moreover, even pay television continued to present a solid, though narrow, pretext for official involvement in that the necessary cables to make it possible could not legally or practically be laid without the consent and probably the assistance of public authority. But now we are well and truly in sight of a world in which significant parts of electronic publishing can both legally and practically take place 224
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The News difficult debate about how many channels there should be, who should control them and have access to them and what should be allowed to be shown on them- to say nothing of which and how many traditiona l and new pressure groups are needed to squabble over these issues - all this can disappear. But it will only disappear if we all work, indeed fight, extremely hard to ensure that, once the technical pretext for policing electronic publishing has gone, the whole inverted pyramid of regulation and control, going way beyond the mere prevention of mutually jamming transmissions, is in fact dismantled. It will be an extremely hard fight because, the habit of regulation and control once formed and the vested interests which benefit from it once established, the regulators and beneficiaries are extremely reluctant to give up their role and their territory; and the politicians and legislators will be extremely reluctant to abdicate power and influence in a field which they know is important and which they are accustomed to enjoying. Let me add in passing that the beneficiaries of a regulated world are not by any means confined to the regulators themselves or to those whose commercial interests are thereby directly protected. All the other armies of lobbies and special interest groups, whether they represent shareholders, managers, creators, various echelons of employees or countless special geographical and other categories of consumers, all in varying degrees live off a world in which regulation occurs and in which it is thereby possible whether by lobbying, negotiating, persuading or even attending solemn conferences - to seek to determine the way in which the regulations are framed and enforced. But take away the honey-pot and the bees will disperse. There are only pressure groups if there are pressure points. Were we not being told on this very Monday evening that yet another new body was needed in order that the voice of the broadcast ers themselves should be more loudly heard in the privileged arena of centralised regulation and control, a club to which every interest gro~p belongs, but in which not a single ordinary producer or ordinary viewer is to be found? Also Jeremy Isaacs, whom I greatly revere and who said many wise things, remarked en passant, 'Of course, we don't want unregulated Babel here.' But I would say to him that the term 'Babel' can much more properly be applied to the squabblin g of the politicians and the special interest groups over the control of the regulated system of authorised broadcast ing than it can to free communic ation, whether electronic or not, between private authors and private consumers. Now let me try to sketch how this wondrous emancipa tion can occur, if not today, at least the day after tomorrow in terms of the eras of
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Electronic Publishing electronic publishing; and I make only a small apology here for drawing on some evidence I gave nearly five years ago to the Annan Committee evidence which must rank as one of the most purely solipsistic experi: ences in the history of the written word. Rather before the end of the century, subject only to a very large initial capital outlay which could only be borne by society as a whole in the first instance, it will be possible b~ fibre-optic technology to create a grid connecting every household m the country, whereby the nation's viewers can simultaneously watch as many different programm es as the nation's readers can read different books, magazines, newspapers etc. The only constraint s technically speaking, will be the obvious ones that no one television se; can simultaneously display more than one programm e and that it may be necessary to watch any given programm e at a stated number of minutes past the hour. There will doubtless also continue to be somewhat fewer sets than people, though by the year 2000 we may even have t~e wall-size screen, for multiple simultaneous images, in general use, With the viewers simply choosing which source he wants. In other words a .television set (or radio) will be like a telephone iri that the user selects for himself the connection he wants; and it will be quite immaterial what connections other users wish to make for themselves. In contempo rary parlance, the number of channels will become, if not infinite, at least indefinitely large - certainly as large as the number of receivers. Imagine each set equipped with a telephone dial on which the code number of the desired programm e or connection can be dialled. Imagine also the equivalent of a telephone meter monitorin g receptions on each set, linked to the code number of the item received. Imagine finally a central 'black box' maintaine d by British Telecom into which an indefinitely large number of programm es can be fed (either by lodging a tape or by direct feed for live transmissions). The rest of the conditions for a free electronic publishing market, with consumer choice and freedom of access, falls quickly into place. No gene~al. law~ are req~ired other than those which already govern pubhshmg (hbel, copynght, obscenity, common law, etc.), though there is nothing in the system to prevent Parliamen t making special laws for electronic publishing; and some special laws may be needed to deal with copyright in a world of satellite transmissions and cassette copying. The only necessary function of the State is to lay a duty on British Telecom to provide and operate the technology of the system, to accept all programm es which conform to the law, to collect charges from the 227
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viewing public and, after deducting its own costs and any other approved taxes or charges, to pass what remains over to the publisher of each item. This, indeed, is the framework already adopted for the Viewdata system. Large and small wholesale publishers will be free to establish themselves. Many of them might well be best organised as workers' cooperatives rather than as limited liability companies. They, the publishers, will arrange and finance the preparation of the programmes, set the charges for them, advertise their availability and their code numbers and reward the authors and participants under freely negotiated contracts. Individuals who wish to make their own programmes will be free to do so though, as with books, they will either have to firi.d a publisher or bear the costs and risks of publishing themselves. There is nothing in this system to prevent the State continuing to subsidise any particular categories of electronic publishing which are considered virtuous or in the public interest, even to the extent of ensuring that the equivalent of one or more whole channels of regular transmissions are available to the public without direct charge. Nor is there anything to prevent any other patron or sponsor from subsidising meritorious, or indeed meritless, productions. The BBC and the independent broadcast companies would presumably continue as major publishers on the new scene. But the IBA would disappear; and the BBC would cease to be a broadcasting authority with (self-) regulatory powers and duties, insofar as Broadcasting House can at present be said to exercise over the rest of the BBC analogous supervision to that which the IBA exercises over the ITV and ILR programme companies. As large independent producers the BBC and ITV programme companies would doubtless continue to set their own policies and standards; but these need not reflect any general state policy for broadcasting. The news and party political broadcasts could be catered for either under the general provisions above or by special provision. On the face of it there is no reason why the news should not justify itself commercially; but, if it is felt that it needs to be subsidised, this could be done by raising through the British T elecom charging mechanism a small levy on all other transmissions, which would be earmarked to finance news services. Party political broadcasts should presumably be financed by the parties (one would suppose at a loss), though Parliament could require British Telecom to make them available free to the viewer and to collect the cost direct from monies voted by Parliament.
The treatment of advertising raises no insuperable problem. Either Parliament could disallow advertisement altogether. Or it could require British Telecom to accept programme packages which included advertising material in natural breaks, in which case the charge to the viewer would be lower - or nil. It would then be up to individual publishers to decide whether or not they wished to include advertising material at intervals during their programmes. The viewers would be free to decide whether they thought this interruption worth the saving in charges or not. This extremely compressed sketch of a future market in electronic publishing is designed only to show that there is nothing God-given or immutable about the familiar duopolistic regime, a conclusion which can also be reached from other premises. At present, cumbrous giants battle for franchises of the air; and, between their occasional encounters, they are themselves besieged by multiple special interests trying to steer programme time and programme content more to their particular way of thinking. This process in no way guarantees, or even necessarily tends towards, the maximum satisfaction of viewers' preferences. Indeed, that is not even the objective of the present institutions. The addition of an extra channel, or even two or ten, would not change this essential pattern. Indeed, so long as electronic publishing is confined to a limited number of channels, there is a plausible argument that consumer choice is maximised by giving one or two authorities the duty to provide choice rather than by forcing several rival organisations to vie with each other for a limited mass audience. The argument so far has sought to show that, on certain assumptions about the development of telecommunications technology, a radically different organisation of broadcasting, seen as electronic publishing and modelled partly on print publishing, would be possible. But technical feasibility does not entail financial feasibility, still less desirability, (despite the widespread belief to the contrary). There are in fact two distinct financial questions about the scheme of electronic publishing sketched here:
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(a) Would the huge investment in the necessary telecommunications grid and in the change-over of the nation's receivers to the new system be justified after allowing for the earnings of the other non-publishing chargeable services which could be carried on such an electronic network? (b) Would the system of meter charging for viewing, augmented by specific subsidies on merit and, if allowed, by advertising receipts,
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[10] Excerpts from Broadcast over Britain.
THE FUNCTIO N OF BROADCA STING HERE is a grumble and a cause of complaining if the crofter in the North of Scotland or the agricultural labourer in the West of England has been unable to hear the King speak on some great national occasion, the Prime Minister at the Lord Mayor's Banquet, or the President of the British Association tell of the latest explorations in the borderlands of scientific knowledge. The music and the news and the other happenings of the great cities must be brought to them as a matter of course. This, and much else besides, is what broadcasting not only makes possible, but has actually achieved. It has, indeed, already become commonplace. It no longer excites comment, and the novelty has worn off. Even in so simple and straightforward an illustration something of the great potentialities · of broadcasting is revealed. organizaour about inquire to come who Those tion and its activities are astounded at the rapid growth, but almost in the same breath they will point out the vastness of the field before us. " Of course," they say, " you are only at the very beginning." The keen interest in broadcasting is due in large measure to the essential directness of the service, in whatever line it may be. Till the advent of this universal and extraordinarily cheap medium of communication, a very large proportion of the people were shut off from first-hand knowledge of
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the events which make history. They did not share in the interests and diversions of those with Fortune's twin-keys : Leisure and Money. They could not gain access to the great men of the day, and these great men could deliver their message to a limited number only. To-day all this is changed. He who really has something to tell his country.:. men, something which it shall be to their profit to hear, can command an audience of millions ready to hand. An event, be it speech, or music, or play, or ceremony, is certainly broadcast for any and all to receive ; but it seems to be personal to the individual hearer, and is brought to his very room. It is not even left, like the milk, on the doorstep ; still less has he to go outside into the rain, or put himself to any sort of inconvenience, to receive it. It is carried to him among all the accustomed and congenial circumstances and surroundings of his own home, and in his leisure hours. It comes in such a way that enjoyment on the one hand, or assimilation on the other, is induced with comparatively little effort. There need be none of the ordinary distractions and discomforts which militate against satisfaction and real effect. Less time and trouble are involved. The appeal of the ear, in matters such as these, is at least as quick as that to the eye. It is true that no appeal is made to the eye ; but when to the hearing of the ear is super-added the intelligent, spontaneous or assisted exercise of the imagination, little prejudice need remain from the absence of physical vision. How few can attend
17
THE FUNCTION OF BROADCASTING
a great function, or hear the utterances of statesmen which are heavy with significance to us all ! We will often listen to a speech, but not read one. Owing to the sensitiveness of the microphone a great part of the personality of the speaker may be conveyed. It is probable, moreover, that there will be an absence of much that in normal circumstances is superfluous and wearisome. A wireless talk is concentrated essence ; it is also direct, so that each listener may feel that he is being personally addressed. Entertainment, in the accepted (but erroneous) sense of the term, may at one time have been considered the sole function of the service. It may still be, in the full sense, the primary function. To the extent to which the idea of entertainment, as commonly understood, may have gained currency, there may be an explanation for the original holding aloof of many men and women in various walks of life, artistic and professional, whose cooperation and sympathy were needed, and whose lack of interest was for a time a matter of some irritation and concern. It was not altogether surprising. There was nothing to show what manner of people we were, nor in what way we were to handle our work. I think it will be admitted by all, that to have exploited so great a scientific invention for the purpose and pursuit of " entertainment " alone would have been a prostitution of its powers and an insult to the character and intelligence of the people. To have left unexplored the innumerable 2
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THE FUNCTION OF BROADCASTING
paths along which might pass influences, other than those normally associated with entertainment, would have ·stamped as sorry fellows those to whose care the administration of the invention had been committed. A closer inspection of the word "entertainment" is sufficient to show how incomplete is the ordinarily accepted meaning. To entertain means to occupy agreeably. Would it be urged that this is only to be effected by the broadcasting of jazz bands and popular music, or of sketches by humorists ? I do not think that many would be found willing to support so narrow a claim as this. Enjoyment may be sought, not with a view to returning refreshed to the day's work, but as a mere means of passing the time, and therefore of wasting it, or of relieving the tedium of life which is induced by deficiency, mental or physical. On the other hand, it may be part of a systematic and sustained endeavour to re-create, to build up knowledge, experience and character, perhaps even in the face of obstacles. . Broadcasting enjoys the co-operation of the leaders of that section of the community whose duty and pleasure it is to give relaxation to the rest, but it is also aided by the discoverers of the intellectual forces which are moulding humanity, who are striving to show how time may be occupied not only agreeably, but well. Broadcasting brings relaxation and interest to many homes where such things are at a premium. It does far more ; it carries direct information on a hundred subjects to innumerable men and women,
who thereby will be enabled not only to take more interest in events which were formerly outside their ken, but who will after a short time be in a position to make up their own minds on many matters of vital moment, matters which formerly they had either to receive according to the dictated and partial versions and opi~ions of others, or to ignore altogether. A new and mighty weight of opinion is being formed, and an intelligent concern on many subjects will be manifested in quarters now overlooked. I have heard it argued that, in so far as broadcasting is awakening interest in these hitherto more or less sheltered or inaccessible regions, it is fraught with danger to the community and to the country generally. In other words, I gather that it is urged that a state of ignorance is to be preferred to one of enlightenment. This smacks of the Middle Ages. No doubt incalculable harm has· been wrought by the apostles of strife. Such is, however, their stated object. Knowledge is not of itself dangerous. To disregard the spread of knowledge, with the consequent enlargements of opinion, and to be unable to supplement it with reasoned arguments, or to supply satisfactory answers to legitimate and intelligent questions, is not only dangerous but stupid.
BROADCAST OJ?ER BRITAIN
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THE RESPONSIBILITY F the responsibilities are of a high order, to whom are ~hey entrusted? For good or ill, they are ours, subject to a general control from a Government Department. The Postmaster-General is the· ultimate authority, and incidentally there have been five. Of r.ecent days an Advisory Committee 1 has also been appointed to which, at his discretion, th~ Postmaste~-Gen~ral may refer any special pomts for cons1derat10n. When the first appointments were made, the magnitude of the undertaking was not fully recognized ; as I have said, nobody really knew anything about broadcasting, or th~ extent to which it might so quickly develop. Securmg an appointment is one thing ; dischargi1:lg: ~~e duties of the post i~ another. The responstblltttes were not taken hghtly, nor was the line of least resistance adopted at the outset. No ~arly popularity was sought in ways where it 1s soonest found ; a greater measure of it might have been attained immediately, had the general make-up of the transmissions been of a different order, and had everything been framed for the ready appeal. I wonder if many have paused to consider the incalculable harm which might have been done, had different principles guided the conduct ·of the service in the early days ? It is easier to drop into inferior ways of doing things than to get out of them. It would not have been diffi-
BROADCAST OJTER BRITAIN
I
1
See Appendix. 31
. l
cult to make the service a clearing-house for sensationalism. . We have ~ndeavoured ~o _ip~icate a high conceptlOn of the mherent posstbthties of the service by continually developing new lines, and by supplementing from the outside our own knowledge and experience, which is necessarily limited in some directions. We have set out to secure, and have succeeded in securing, the co-operation and advice of recognized authorities and experts in all branches of our work. When it comes to questions of general policythe fixing of standards and the setting up of ideals -to decisions as to what shall or shall not be broadcast, we are obviously on dangerous ground. There is no n~tional reference book, dog~atic or empirical, to which one may turn for gmdance on things ethical. At the risk of being charged with posing as judge or educator; or with deciding matters outside our province, we must make the decision since ours is the responsibility for the conduct of the service. Anything in the nature of a dictatorship is the subject of much resentment in these days. Well, somebody has to give decisions ; it is always possible to replace those who give wrong ones, or. who have not the courage to give any, by others in whom people will have greater confidence. In the meantime, if there has to be an accusation at all, the broadcasters would rather be accused of taking too much on themselves, than too little. The preservation of a high moral standard is obviously. of paramount importance. Few would
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THE RESPONSIBILITY
question the desirability of refraining from anything approaching vulgarity or directing attention to unsavoury subjects. Beyond that lies a wide range of debatable subjects, which, while in no way within our province to decry, we certainly do not _feel justified in aiding or abetting ; there are, indeed, very good reasons for withholding assistance. For the sake of illustration only, I will refer to gambling, and this with respect to horse-racing. The result of a race is news, and should in itself be of sporting interest to many. It is therefore our practice to give the names of the winners of the more important races. It is not our practice to give either talks on racing form, or to .quote the starting prices. For this we have been subjected to a considerable amount of criticism. We have even been informed that receiving sets have been installed for the express purpose of receiving such news with the least delay. If that be so, then I regret the disappointment which must have ensued, and I trust that all the other activities of the service put together may have compensated for what they miss in this one direction, and may have been a deterrent to the casting out of the apparatus. It should be remembered that children of all ages listen to the news bulletins and to the programme in general ; talks on racing form and the broadcasting of starting prices might be the first inducement to systematic gambling. The liberty of one becomes the stumbling block of another. If it be considered advisable to put opportunity of this kind before the young people of our country, the broadcasters do not care 3
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34
to take the responsibility for it, and if encouragement be desired it must be obtained, as at present, in other ways. The responsibility weighs heavily with us ; let there be no misunderstanding on that score. It is realized to the full ; it is apt to become an obsession. It is a burden such as few have been called upon to carry. Whether we are fit or not, is for reasoned judgment only, but at any rate it is relevant and advisable that our recognition of the responsibility should be known. Pronouncement may be reserved till the proofs of the efforts are established. As we conceive it, our responsibility is to carry into the greatest possible number of homes everything that is best in every department of human knowledge, endeavour and achievement, and to avoid the things which are, or may be, hurtful. It is occasionally indicated to us that we are apparently setting out to give the public what we think they need-and not what they want, but few know what they want, and very few what they need. There is often no difference. One wonders to which section of the public such criticism refers. In any case it is better to over-estimate the mentality of the public, than to under-estimate it. I have already mentioned that we are securing the co-operation of experts in several departments of activity, either in the form of advisory committees, or by more direct participation~ This step is important, and it is significant that apart from the cautious attitude of a limited number to which I shall refer, very few individuals or organizations, to whom an
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THE RE8PON8IBILITr
appeal for assistance has been made, have failed to respond. Benevolent neutrality has given place to sympathetic interest, and this in turn to active co-operation. One might mention the Board of Education and the Ministries of Health and Agriculture as representative of Government Departments, and practically all the learned Societies might be cited also. In this way there is official and recognized authority in the work. With all this, however, a great deal depends on the staff who are chosen to carry out the great responsibilities which the service involves. The vocation, it has been said, goes up or down according to those who fill it. They have it to make or mar. With us this applies to the men and women at headquarters and in the provincial offices alike, for neither can function adequately without the other. Whereas, as I shall indicate later, it is our policy to exercise a considerable degree of central control, and to maintain certain experts in London whose services are available wherever required, a very great deal depends on the representative in charge at each centre. He can materially advance or materially retard. On his personality and tact to a great extent depends the measure of interest and co-operation which will be given locally by those with influence, and on his personality the extent to which, in local affairs, the station will develop in importance. With work of an entirely new character, and with no experienced men available, the suitability of Station Directors was at first, and to some extent, a
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. BROADCAST OYER BRITAJN
matter of trial and error. An exceptional range of qualifications is demanded of them ; diversity of gifts, but the same spirit. They must be capable of negotiating with many different kinds of men and women ; social, business and educational standards are required in them. They must carry on, as those in headquarters do, the everlasting struggle for acceptability and balance in programmes. Abounding energy, initiative, tact, human understanding, imagination-these are essentials to success. Men of these qualities do not crowd the waiting-rooms. Not infrequently some musical knowledge is also required, but in all the later appointments it has b~~n found advisable to lay the musical responsib1hty upon a separate, though subordinate, officer. At headquarters, departmentalization is naturally developed to a much greater extent than is possible in the provinces. So far as personnel is concerned the B.B.C. is a much bigger organization than is generally known. It is not a matter of any consequence, but I have found interest and amusement in some of the ideas which have been expressed on such little points as the number of staff at headquarters and in the stations. It is a much more difficult matter to conduct the general affairs of the Company, to erect and operate all the stations and to arrange for and transmit six or eight hours of varied programme per day than would perhaps be imagined. A little consideration is all that is required. There is a staff of about one hundred and fifty at Head Office,
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THE RE8PON8IBILITr
excluding London Station, and fifteen to twenty at each main station. Of these a large proportion are University undergraduates. The amount of work which the three chief departments, programme, engineering and secretarial, have to cover would be a revelation to the average listener. At headquarters, operate a Control Board and Central Programme Board, the underlying motive being that whatever is done shall be well done, wherever it is, and that all the activities shall be supervised, and if necessary co-ordinated, with a view to maximum effect. Before passing from the subject of the organization I must refer to the Board of Directors. The ways of Boards with their executive officials vary greatly. I know full well that many capable and enterprising executives are sore let and hindered by .their Directors, subjected to continuous interferences and questionings, confidence in themselves undermined and destroyed, and consequently their whole usefulness prejudiced. I have, in my time, had experience of almost every possible variety of chief. Of some of them I have fortunately succeeded in shutting out practically all recollection. It is both stimulating and gratifying to feel that one's whole loyalty goes out to a chief, and that nothing but the best and the utmost is good enough. It is in the power of some.rare individuals to call forth such service, but frequently one finds one's efficiency and enthusiasm worn thin by the limitations of those whom one is eager to serve. Suspicion instead of confidence, criticism in place of
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BROADCAST OP"ER BRITAIN !
encouragement, appropriation of credit but repudiation of responsibility for errors which they themselves have caused, are too often typical of the attitude of seniors. When called to the position· of General Manager of the new Broadcasting Company, I was naturally anxious to discover what degree of responsibility the Board proposed to put upon me. The result of the inquiries gave me every satisfaction, perhaps also some alarm. But things do not always work out according to schedule ; much more may depend on the spirit in which arrangements are carried out than on the letter of their original expression. I speak from experience, and sad experience of this nature is common. There is therefore the more delight in reviewing the manner in which the Chairman and Board of Directors have from the outset dealt with their chief executive, first as General Manager and later as Managing. Director. I hope they were justified in their confidence .in leaving so much to me. I am sure that on innumerable occasions they must have longed to step in and to cause certain things to be handled differently. This broadcasting is unlike any other kind of work. In most businesses there are technicalities of which Directors can know nothing, but broadcasting is everybody's concern, and everybody has opinions on how it should be done. It has been a great comfort to know that to any of them I could refer in any special difficulty, in the assurance of receiving whatever time and help might be required. It is unusual to speak or write of one's superiors.
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THE RE8PON8IBILITr
39
Even the most genuine tribute is liable to misinterpretation. I shall therefore content myself with saying that for Lord Gainford and the other Directors,l it has been a high privilege to work. Their method is perhaps unfortunate in this single respect-it may induce the feeling that one is insufficiently appreciative of, or responsive to, the confidence and the consideration which have uniformly been shown, unless one works the round of the clock.. 1
See Appendix.
HE Company operates as a public utility se~ vice, and it is of great importance that th1s should be definitely recognized. In other words, the Company is not out to make money for the sake of making money ; by its constitution it is debarred from doing so. It is true that the B.B.C. is an association of manufacturers, and that the success of their sales depends in large measure on the range and acceptability of the transmissions. Fears were soon expressed that a combination of manufacturing interests was, or might easily become, inimical to public service. These fears, if still extant, are groundless. I doubt if they now exist. I believe they were laid long ago, and laid in an obvious and logical manner. In this busines~, the interests of the public and the interests of the trade happen to be identical, even though this may not be apparent at first sight. The greater the extent to which, as a public service, the Company is able to give sa~i~facti.on, the greater t~e benefit to the new Bnt1sh mdustry. Certam readjustments of outlook from the original one on the part of some sections of the manufacturing interests were undoubtedly necessary, but these have been achieved. I think they have all come to the conclu.sion that, since the Broadcasting Company regards 1tself as a public service, and is catering for ~e public inter~st, it behoves the trade to adapt the1r manufactunD:g and selling policy to the requirements of the pubhc as reflected in B.B.C. policy.
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It must be remembered that in 1922 the then existing manufacturers (only some two or three hundred in number) were invited bythePost Office to join together, pool all their transmission patents, and form one Company to undertake the broadcasting service for this country, at a time when success was entirely problematical. Capital was r~quired, and had to be provided by the manufacturers, and the obvious risks were to be offset by compensating privileges, which, as things turned out, cannot be said to have materialized to any degree. Not only was the capital to be guaranteed, but the continuance of the service for a period of two years was to be guaranteed as well. The British Thomson-Houston, General Electric, Marconi's Wireless Telegraph, Metropolitan-Vickers, Radio Communication, and Western Electric Companies undertook these responsibilities, and each contributed £1o,ooo. It is only right that we should remember that it was with their money that the service was initiated, and also that but for the long and difficult labours of the Manufacturers' Committee in 1922, broadcasting would not have been started when it was. Such elements of commercialism, however, as there may have been when the Company was first constituted, have one by one disappeared. The original regulations governing the use of receiving apparatus were calculated to give preference to the British manufacturing members,not simply to those who formed the Company at the outset, but to any who came in later, and membership was open to all. But these regulations have since been subjected to one modification after
another, till from the 1st July of this year member firms, the number of which has now risen to one thousand seven hundred, are not only in open competition among themselves, as they always have been, but have now no sort of advantage over any other British manufacturer who is not a member, if there be such. The Company voluntarily suggested simpler and cheaper regulations to the Post Office. These involved considerable financial concessions by the Company as an operating concern, and by its trading members in the surrender of the degree of protection which they had nominally enjoyed before. This action may be taken as evidence of the desire to make the service as accessible as possible. Beyond a maximum dividend of seven and a ha1f per cent., payable as interest on the capital invested by member firms, there are no profits to be obtained from the conduct of this service, except such as the manufacturers or dealers may individually make in their normal business. No matter how large the revenue, it may all be spent, and spent efficiently, in the development and improvement of broadcasting. If it be not so spent during the period of the Company's licence, then the surplus is returnable to the Post Office for such use as is considered desirable and right. It has frequently been urged that a service, fraught with such potentialities, should be under the direct care of either the State, or a Board composed of representatives of the public, with no other interests at stake. It would be fatuous to deny a strong element of rationality in this con-
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tention. One must, however, keep in mind the circumstances and extreme difficulties which prevailed in 1922 before broadcasting could be inaugurated. A number of companies wished to operate independently, and the patent position was serious. But it is more important to review the manner in which the responsibilities have been discharged, and to inquire whether they show any taint of interested bias, and whether in any single respect the interests of the public have been subordinated to those of the trade. There are occasions on which it is well to allow performance and results to Justify means, even if the means be not gen.. erally understood or appreciated. Until the end of this year, according to the regulations, it is not permissible to use material of other than British origin in the construction of receiving apparatus. (By British is implied United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.) The same proviso applies to sets bought complete. This general protection was promised in 1922, in order that the new industry might have a chance to become established. The extent to which such conditions are observed obviously depends at least as much upon the- cooperation and loyalty of the public as upon any measures which might be adopted by the Post Office for their enforcement. British industries are in a parlous state to-day, and it is particularly desirable that this. most recent one of all should be given a fair opportunity to consolidate itself. Till July 1st, 1924, manufacturing members) in
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addition to contributing capital to the Company, were also obliged to assist in the maintenance of the service by means of a tariff on their sales. Competition from abroad is very keen, and importers have connived at the infringing of the regulations, and have prospered through the introduction of goods from other countries, contributing nothing to the expenses of the programmes. Apart from the fact that it is illegal to use foreign parts, it is grossly unfair. The B.B.C. trade-mark is the guarantee of British goods. If no measure of protection against the foreigner be extended after the end of this year, the mark will still be used by member firms, and it will retain its present significance. We trust that the custom of the public will continue to be placed with those who have observed the Government regulations, often to their own loss, instead of with those who have fostered their evasion and have handicapped this young industry. The country was to be served by broadcasting, and eight stations were originally considered sufficient, and this was all that the Company had undertaken to provide. ·These stations were soon in working order, but naturally large tracts of country were left with facilities only available to those who were in a position to buy comparatively powerful, and therefore expensive, apparatus. The Company early announced its willingness to extend its operations so as to make that which was broadcast receivable in the greatest possible number of homes. Here is a very important principle, and involves a radical departure from the original scheme, and on
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62
this account it was not altogether appreciated by certain sections of the trade, their manufacturing and selling programmes having already been planned on the old basis, involving high-powered apparatus. In pursuance of the Company's policy, however, relay stations have been, and are still being established in many cities where there are large industrial centres of population. I do not think it has been realized that nine stations were opened in I 9 2 3 and one new station per month is being opened in 1924; and even if that be known, I am quite sure that very few appreciate what is involved in adhering to this programme. A relay station has a much smaller range than a main station. This is necessary in order to avoid i?terference betvyeen stations. J:. relay is a pecuharly local affair. The first Idea was that it should be connected either by wireless or by land lines with the nearest main station, and so re-:-transmit the programmes from that station on a power sufficient to cover the area where the population was dense. The factor of inter-civic jealousy had, however, not been reckoned on. It appears that no city counted sufficiently important to have a relay station could listen to the programme of any station other than London without loss of dignity. It was also perhaps felt that the best programmes come from the metropolis. In any event interest was centred there, and hence most relay stations take the greater part of their programmes from London, with correspondingly heavier land line costs to us, and, in addition, a great deal of work and worry in the matter . of their efficient functioning. Personally I think it al-
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together unfortunate that there should be this demand for London programmes in the relay stations, and I believe there will be a change of opinion on the subject. It seems absurd that Swansea, for instance, should relay from London instead of from Cardiff, or Dundee from London instead of from a Scottish main station. Stations will, I imagine, eventually be grouped by areas according to the characteristics, national or local, of the people, and a much more satisfactory service be given. Long land lines are treacherous. Any main station programme should be good enough to relay, and on the special London nights the programme is sent to main as well as relays, so the relays would still secure the most important metropolitan events. The selection of cities to be equipped with relays· depends on such considerations as their population, civic importance, distance from existing stations, and some technical elements such as geographical " shielding " or "jamming " · by other services. With the nine main stations and ten relay stations, between sixty and seventy per cent. of the total population can receive, on simple and cheap apparatus, the broadcast programme from the nearest centre and, by means of the system of simultaneous broadcasting which has been developed, the great national events are available to them all as well, wherever these may take place. There remain the smaller towns and the great rural areas, at least thirty per cent. of the population still to be served on cheapest sets. Even an indefinite extension of the relay system could not cover this, and
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so we saw the need for a station of many times greater power, to serve the whole country, independently of the existing network, in order that the inhabitants even of the most distant places might listen on comparatively che~p apparatus. Highly ·successful experiments were conducted in July of this year, and permission was given to .Procee~ with ~he establishment of a super-broadcastmg stat10n which will be by far the most powerful in the world. This station will shortly begin a regular service, and it will be possible to offer alte~native programmes,: a ~ighly desirable end, and by different systems of hnkmg of the high- and l?w-power stations-wireless,. v:i:~d, and a combinat10n of both-all sorts of possibilities are available. I think there can be little doubt that the organization is being conducted on the lines of a public service, the maximum benefit to the maximum number being kept in view. Service is one of the essential characteristics of friendship. There are few words in the language which are subjected to such gross abuse as "friendship " or made to bear such an amazing variety of interpretations. It is, however, not altogether beyond the point or absurd to claim that, from the evidence of their endeavour to serve, the Broadcasting Company may claim to be regarded as the friends of the people of these Islands, and have indeed come to be so accepted. " Yes, it's a friendly thing," I heard an old lady say wistfully, as she switched off her set after the announcer's courteous and friendly " Good night ! " There is a power of significance in her remark.
T has been instructive to watch the birth .and the growth of interest in broadcasting. ·From the outset those who were gifted with prescience recognized that here was an in~uence of vast po:ver for good or ill, the degree of mfluence dependmg on the manner in which the whole conduct of the service was handled. As I have mentioned earlier, it was perhaps natural. that som.e should withhold an active support until such t1me as they were satisfied that their dignity would not be compromised, or until standards and ideals had been made manifest. There are, on the other hand, some men who, believing in th~ high dest~ni:s of an und~r taking, throw the we1gh~ of the1r mfl11:ence on 1ts side even when its stock 1s low; by their sympathy and' disinterested advice they help to achieve the success they feel to be merited. . Here I refer, however,· not to the response which the broadcasters met when they invited co-operation in their work but to the attitude of mind which they sensed on' the part of the general public. There are only two real attitudes .possible towards broadcasting-_the one, that of mterest, and the. other, that of lack of interest. These are defimte and distinct, whereas there is comparatively little difference in the familiar variations of the former, acclamation and condemnation, each of which is normally counted as an independent attitude, whereas they are but modifications of the same thought. With the attitude of interest, and all its manifes-
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tations, I shall deal later on. As for indifference, it may exist in some limited quarters for a time, but it cannot persist indefinitely. Broadcasting is much too big a thing to be ignored for long. Sooner or later it will cross all paths. It has crossed most already. It will eventually force itself on the attention of any who may have succeeded for a time in overlooking it. It is quite common for disregard and even a measure of contempt to fall to the lot of inventors and discoverers and of those who seek to exploit the fruits of the labours of these men in the public interest. A catch is suspected somewhere. There is no catch in most of the" crazes" which disturb routine, and indeed very little of anything, so they can be taken up without fear. This conservatism of mental attitude has been evident in all ages. We have, however, civilized methods of showing it nowadays. Indifference and ridicule have taken the place of bodily tortures. Broadcasting is not a passing craze ; one does not hear that said of it to-day. It is true that the novelty soon wears off, and the listener becomes more critical. This is perfectly natural. He is not intended to listen to every single item that is broadcast, though he probably does so for the first few weeks. If he expects to do this with uniform satisfaction, he will be disillusioned, and may perhaps then say that the programmes are not as good as they used to be, and that broadcasting is overrated. Broadcasting touches life at every angle. It must, and does, appeal to every kind of home. Perhaps in the early days it was felt that it would
be of interest. only to those who, for reasons of distance, infirmity or poverty, were unable to participate in the activities of others more favoured than they. It may be that this conception still obtains in certain quarters. It is an entirely mistaken one, and must be attributed to lack of imagination, to ignorance of the wide range of things which are transmitted, or to a deliberate and supercilious disregard of them. With all the imperfections of which we are desperately conscious, I believe that there is no home, however favoured, to which some quota of additional interests, new and live, may not be borne through this amazing medium. Neither by superior individuals, nor by organizations can it be, dismissed as beyond their ken and interest, or as· capable of doing neither harm nor good. The squire may suffer some embarrassment when he finds that his ploughman is better informed than he is on events of national significance. Over and above what it may be able to bring to men and women as individuals, the part which it is destined to play in the life of the community is much too definite and extensive for it to be disregarded. The progress which has been made in this country in eighteen months is certainly remarkable, and may be taken as a fair indication of the momentum which has been acquired. I am not speaking of the development of the service itself, nor of the extension of its operations, but simply of the number of homes in which wireless is already installed. Continuous lines of aerials are to be seen in the
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the dishonesty of refraining from making his contribution to the service which probably provides him with a considerable amount of satisfaction in one line or another. There is surely sufficient interest in· and return from the service per annum to justify the expenditure of the ten shillings charge. In America . broadcasting had been initiated more than a year earlier than in this country ; with characteristic energy it had been developed wholesale, largely on a commercial basis, and without any method of control whatsoever. There is no co-ordination, no standard, no guiding policy ; advertising, direct or indirect, is usually the sole means of revenue. I gather from many American visitors that they consider that the delay which took place before a service was begun in this country, is more than justified by the progress subsequently made. There is scarcely a civilized country of which representatives have not visited us, usually staying for a period, to absorb something of the procedure and methods of operation. We are always glad to see them. We make no copyright of our experience, however valuable or unique it may be. In October, r923, we decided to start a weekly magazine, the primary object bei~g that the programmes of all stations for the ensuing week should be clearly displayed. The success of The Radio Times is, I understand, without parallel in journalism. A quarter of a million copies of the first issue were printed and speedily sold out. To-day the· circulation is over six hundred thousand per
great towns ; they are to be found in the most inaccessible and remote regions of the country. In the places where there are broadcasting stations the number of aerials is not a fair criterion, as so many homes are equipped with internal wires and frames, requiring, however, more powerful apparatus. An aerial need not be a disfigurement, and one regrets that it so frequently is. I meet many men and women in all walks of life, and it is becoming increasingly rare to happen on any not possessed of receiving apparatus. I hear the whole subject discussed with engaging candour in clubs, restaurants and trains. It is almost impossible to get away from it. It is difficult, and indeed impossible, to speak with any assurance of the number of people who listen to broadcasting. In our first twenty-one months, that is, till the end of September, r 924, approximately 9 so,ooo licences had been issued, over so,ooo new licences being taken out in September alone. It is natural to assume that there are several people involved in each licence. The difficulty is to know what average figure to take. Taken at five, the audience is already over four million. For any special occasion an infinitely greater number can gather. I hope it will not be thought out of place if I here mention that there is definite evidence of a certain amount of evasion of the licence fee. It is rather difficult to comprehend the mentality of the individual on whose behalf such labour is expended, but who can reconcile with his conscience
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week. In addition to programmes this paper contains many interesting articles b~ well-known writers, and frequently statem.ents w1th respec~ to B.B.C. policy. It is the medmm of more detalled and familiar communication between the broadcasters and their audience than is possible or desirable on wireless. Attention is directed to special programme events and notes are given on some of the outstanding musical items which are to be broadcast. Several of the talks of particular appeal are reproduced, and advance. information of all kinds is given. It is an essent1al to .the due ~ppre ciation and application of the serv1ce. It 1s the connecting link of. the service? a.nd .the success of the publication 1s another md1cat10n of the popularity of broadcasting.
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HE policy of the Company being to bring the best of everything into the greatest number of homes, it follows that if this policy be carried out, that many educative influences must have been stirred. It was early realized that there were very great educational possibilities in broadcasting. It was also realized that in this direction it was advisable to proceed with caution. Entertainment was the stated function of the Company, and many apparently considered that all its operations and the whole of the time available should be confined to purposes of ~ntertainment alone. I ha-ye en~e~v oured to ind1cate how narrow a concept10n th1s 1s; in fact it is impossible of execution. It is impossible to occupy all the available hours in transmissions which would normally be described as of an entertaining nature. Entertainment, pure and simple, quickly grows tame ; dissatisfaction and boredom result. If hours are to be occupied agreeably, it would be a sad reflection on human intelligence if it were contended that entertainment, in the accepted sense of the term, was the onlr means for doing so. The suspicious and the hesitant have, however, to be dealt with gently. Short lectures were introduced, lectures intended to cover a wide range of subjects of general interest, delivered in a popular manner. In certain quarters these were hailed as the most interesting part of the programme. No doubt mistakes were made. Sub147
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jects were not always of sufficient interest ; the lecturers were not always sufficiently attractive. As time went on efforts were made to co-ordinate . these talks, and to arrange them on some sort of systematic basis. Greater attention is now being · paid to the choice of subject and speaker. Already series of talks have been given on various subjects, and this idea will be developed in so far as it is found practicable or acceptable. It will be necessary· to decide whether a speaker or a subject is of interest enough to warrant being broadcast simultaneously all over the country. It may be that one lecturer may be heard by several stations, and another lecturer on the same subject by the remainder. It is our object that there should be a recognition of the local standing of suggested speakers, but that there should also be taken into account the status of the lecturer from a national point of view. A man should be of pre-eminent and recognized position if he is to speak to the whole country, outweighing the advantages of local authorities on the same subject. There are many who would prefer to hear a professor from their nearest U niver:sity, or a local man of affairs, rather than a man of greater status from any other town ; and so the relative merits have to be assessed. There has been a certain, but comparatively slight, amount of opposition to the Company's educational activities. We have been informed that people have no desire to be educated, and that in any case it is no function of ours to assume responsibilities of this order. The narrow and
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limited conception conveyed in the former part of the objection carries its own condemnation. With regard to the latter part it is reasonable to insist that if we venture on so important a field, we should make quite sure that we are competent to discharge the responsibilities which we have undertaken ; little knowledge is proverbially dangerous, and in some respects a state of ignorance is preferable to one of incomplete and partial enlightenment. Whether or not, in ourselves, we be so competent is of small account, since much of our activity in this direction is subject to the ruling advice of recognized experts and authorities, individual and corporate. It became obvious, however, that our educational activities should be put under the specific charge of one who, by knowledge and experience, was capable of handling them, if they were to reach the maximum degree of efficiency. It is, I believe, without precedent that the Board of Education, or indeed any Government Department, should transfer a member of their staff for service with a public company. The appointment of a Director of Education is, in itself, evidence of the fact that we take this department of our work seriously, and intend to handle it satisfactorily. The duties of this officer are manifold. In brief, they will include the co-ordination of the work of all stations on such matters as pertain to the transmission of general and particular information. There are three separate lines of educational activity. There is the broadcasting of talks of general information in the course of the evening
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programme ; there is, secondly, the broadcasting of lectures for reception in schools ; and, thirdly, a line of activity which has not yet been started, but which will be begun in the coming winter-a systematic series of. lec~res fo: adults a~ some convenient hour which will not mterfere w1th the normal .work. Under the first heading there is included the series of fortnightly or monthly bulletins supplied by various Government Departments, such as the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. The former are given by the Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry or by one of his senior assistants who may be an expert in some particular branch of medical knowledge. One of his significant remarks, which may indeed be taken as justification for the pla~e which is given to t~ese talks, is that a large proport10n of the deaths whtch occur annually-four hundred and forty-four thousand in I 92 3-is due to crass ignorance of fundamen~al principles of national health, and as such are easily preventable. The information which is broadcast in this series is authentic and official, and represents the latest word on the different subjects which will be discussed. It comprises the consensus of medical opinion throughout the country, gathered together by the Ministry of Health. In addition, it. ~as been arranged that under the general superv1s1on of the Ministry, Medical Officers of Health shall have access to the nearest station in times of special local emergency. In similar manner the talks which have been
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arranged by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries will be of specific interest to those engaged in the occupations which are implied in the name of this Department of the State. They also will be full of counsel born of experience and given by outstanding authorities in the affairs which most concern them, and the services which will be rendered should be valuable. In the evenings are given fortnightly musical, dramatic, and literary criticisms·. These, being of rather more limited interest than many other subjects, are broadcast in the early part of the programme, that is, approximately at 7. I 5. The agricultural talks will also be at this hour, except where the matter is of wider interest than usual. The monthly health talks will·be between 9 and IO p.m., which is considered the time of maximum attendance. Subjects which are of limited interest are given at a time when some effort to hear is probably involved, as those who are specially interested will take the trouble, in this way leaving room for matters of more general interest later. I mention this in order that it may be seen that efforts are made to study the convenience of the majority, and yet to provide also information which is of great interest to minorities. With us, " minorities " are very important sections of the community, and a " limited appeal " may still involve many hundreds of thousands. Broadcasting brings the whole country into contact with the great achievements of men and · women in all departments of physical as
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well as mental activity. Spasmodic interest is often aroused by the records of explorations in unknown countries. Epoch-making inventions may have their little meed of excitement. Great discoveries have their day of flitting attention, but interest soon languishes through absence . of a personal understanding, for want of further information, and perhaps particularly for the lack of the translation of the importance of the result into terms which the average men can understand and appreciate. The story of many wonderful experiments and discoveries, vast in their potentiality, are to-day too frequently confined to the deliberations of select groups of experts and meetings of learned societies ; little or no effort is made to carry to the mass of the people the significance of these events. They are couched k language . which the average man cannot understand, and ip a form which is devoid of interest to him. We believe that broadcasting will enlighten millions of people about m~ny great achievements in which general interest would be aroused were any real effort made in this direction. Talks on popular lines by eminent scientists, physicists, chemists, astronomers, have already been found eminently acceptable. Introductions to the study of Natural History, the habits and the ways of familiar animals and birds and fishes, have proved intensely human in their appeal. Historians have removed dullness from the stories of olden times. All this range of activity is perhaps better termed informative rather than educative.
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It has been said that the industries of the country suffer from the ignorance which prevails concerning them. If that be so, then there are means at hand whereby the ignorance may be dispelled. It has already been arranged, in conjunction with representative associations, that talks on such matters may be given if they are of sufficient general interest to warrant inclusion in the programme. Official bulletins by Government Departments on matters which are not the concerns of party politicians, but are of national or international moment, can also be communicated, and a monthly impartial survey of foreign politics has been arranged by the British Institute of International Affairs. However objectionable such items may appear to a limited and suspicious section of the audience, they are highly "entertaining" to others, and their continuance is more than justified, not alone by the realization of the benefits which are conveyed, but by the overwhelming testimony of t~e hearers expressed in correspondence and otherWise. The lack of interest in, and acquaintance with, good literature is frequently deplored. It seems to be that whatever has the readiest appeal and is most simple stands the best chance of being absorbed and of gaining popularity, even though there be nothing of permanent value in it. People who most intensely dislike poetry or serious literature are generally those who have never made any real effort to read it. There is apparently nothing to commend it ; there is no, excitement, nothing to
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hold the attention, and so the masterpieces of literature are neglected. I shall allude to the possibility of the popularizing of the works of Shakespeare by means of wireless. Short readings of poetry and . other literature have also been transmitted regularly by wireless. In many cases the selections have been read by the authors themselves. Comment on the whole has been highly favourable. People come to the conclusion that it is perhaps worth while listening once, and the result is that they listen again, and find that works for which they had so insensate a dislike before, can make a direct appeal to them.
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THE BREAD UPON THE WATERS HERE are two kinds of idealist: the dreamer T who sees the ultimate vision and has no conception of how to overcome or circumvent the difficulties lying in the way, an4 the practical idealist who builds up his Utopia on the foundations, and with· the materials, already to hand. The first, the dreamer, is generally broken against the brick wall of prejudice which always confronts the man who dares to express openly his belief in the goodness of his neighbour. This basic obstacle to all development is due to ignorance, blind and devastating. Sooner or later, every man interested in the welfare of others, whether his interest be on national, parochial, or indeterminate lines, is brought up· short by the ignorance and hostility with which he is faced. It is not a platitude to say that ignorance is due in every case to limited education, when the word is used not only with reference to schooling but to response in the school of life. . The practical idealist, therefore, looks to education as the hope of the nation. He sees in the boys and girls of to-day the citizens of to-morrow, and the ancestors of the citizens of the future. Seed sown in the twentieth century will bear its fruit in centuries to come, and the practical idealist is he who, loving his kind, is willing to toil unremittingly on their behalf during life, and die without seeing the first fruits of his labour. There can. be little doubt that most men are interested in the development of civilization, and though there be 181
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some whose interest does not advance further than a supreme and abiding pessimism, a solemn disbelief in and discouragement of the efforts of the rest, yet few would deny that the only real hope for the future lies in eradicating the weed ignorance, if the garden of civilization is to flourish and grow beautiful. Let us, then, turn to the children and consider what effect broadcasting is likely to leave upon them, and what part broadcasting is to play, if any, in the war against ignorance. I have already spoken of the direct educational developments, and of the success attending the efforts made to introduce broadcasting into schools. How may this be expected to affect the children ? I think that when the novelty· has worn off, the wireless lessons will become, to the child-mind, an integral part of its schooling, and it will be impossible to dissociate its immediate effect from the general effect of the school routine on each child's work. That will be as it should be. The wireless lesson, as I have said, is intended to be supplementary to the school curriculum, but it should become an integral part of that curriculum. It is not meant to be an " extra," but a special course, which has its set place in the end-of-term report, and in which progress in each individual case can be estimated. The effects of broadcasting on the individual mind, whether adult or juvenile, are subtle and secret. Older people who regularly listen to the programme cannot indicate that thus and thus
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have they benefited. They cannot estimate the extent to which they have allowed broadcasting to colour their opinions or influence their actions. . As the effects of extensive reading, though undoubtedly important, are difficult to assess, so the effects of regular listening, though obviously considerable, are impossible to compute. The mental influences of wireless broadcasting are sufficient proof that it will have a permanent effect upon those who have come in contact with it, just as the mental influence of a noble writer, such as Ruskin or Arnold for example, may be realized without any concrete instance being given of the extent of this influence. Again, we may be told that the circulation of a public lending library has increased by so much, and that of this such and such a percentage is due to the demand for educational works ; but no one can tell us, for no one can estimate, the causes of such increase. It has to suffice that seed, somewhere sown, has at last fallen on fruitful ground and is giving forth increase. Thus, though I write on the influence of broadcasting on the minds of children, I would not have it imagined that I am endeavouring to compute, in concrete terms, the extent of such influence. I am only advancing my conviction that there is an influence, and a great one. I believe that the need which wireless listening makes manifest for exercising the imagination is of first importance in the consideration of its influence. Ignorance is born of lack of intelligent imagination, and the hostility inseparable as a rule from
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ignorance is constantly found to be rooted in a mental incapacity to appreciate data or reasonings outside a prescribed mental limit. Thus we still find Englishmen who seem unable to appreciate the fact that the Romans had a fine old language of their own, and who are hostile to any suggestion that it will repay trouble taken in learning it. Their hostility is born of ignorance, their ignorance is based on obstinacy, their obstinacy is the outcome of habit, and habit is an attribute of the adult mind. The child-mind is unaffected by such considerations. Life as yet holds nothing stale, for nothing has been tried and found wanting. The development of the children of well-to-do parents is, generally speaking, closely supervised by all those with whom they are allowed to come in contact. For these, wireless listening may be considered to take its place as an integral part of that development, just as, in the schools, the wireless lesson must become an integral part of the routine. Lessons, recreations, pastimes, hobbies, all are supervised by tareful parents, and if in some cases the supervision is over-strict, the blame is immediately applicable to the right source. The building up of character is the main idea behind the supervision, and here broadcasting can play its part. For the youngest the Children's Hour is as a spoken fairytale, a satisfying entertainment at the close of a happy day; for the older, there is music and tales of travel, words on hobbies and a score of other things for all ages and interests. Our thoughts also turn to the poor, that vast
majority whose children look on the streets as their playground and attend when they can the performances of the nearest Picture House. The possibilities of the " pictures " were enormous, and at the outset it was firmly believed that here was to be found the means of educating the masses. The ethical and educational value of the cinematograph was allowed to be superseded by sensationalism, and one does not contemplate with equanimity the effect upon the minds of· young children of seeing twice and sometimes three times weekly, films of a morbid, if not actually vicious, nature. I do not mean to infer that all :films are thus sweepingly to be condemned, for I have.. seen great stories .finely depicted, but far too few of these are shown, and practically none find their way to the poorer districts, the back doors of civilization. Interest in broadcasting, and love of the Children's Hour, is a definite and certainly desirable rival interest to the hold of such " pictures" on such children's minds, and a happy alternative to the squalor of streets and back-yards. If, therefore, noble conceptions can be inculcated by wireless, broadcasting may serve as an antidote to the harm which is being wrought on the children of the present day by the conditions under which they live. To these children, therefore, the Children's Hour must come as a wonderment, truly a voice from another world. The most casual sentiments with regard to " playing the game " and being thoughtful for others must strike deep, and if a
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tale of other lands and peoples rouses one spark of curiosity to know more, or sets one single small mind rummaging out more facts to add to the speaker's, then that tale has not been told in vain. It is the aim of those who plan the Children's Hour to provide an hour of clean, wholesome humour, some light music and a judicious sprinkling of information attractively conveyed. Children-like grownups-hate to feel that they are being " educated," but they do like stories of adventure and descriptions of foreign lands. Tell them therefore a story of adventure, and let them realize after it is told that it is a relation of actual facts, and that they will find it in the history books ; cover up the pill of information with a sufficient coating of the sugar of imaginative description and they will absorb any amount of facts. In this way the young intelligence is quickened and the young idea begins to sprout. Home surroundings may cherish or contemn it, school surroundings strengthen or undermine it, but once the desire to know more has been instilled in a child's mind, or his imagination has been kindled, it would take much to kill such desire or extinguish such imagination ; the foundations of knowledge have been laid. Special efforts have been made to interest children in music. It has been found that from the age of five, children are usually susceptible to musical appreciation. A child's brain can more easily assimilate new ideas in any line, and the next generation has every likelihood of being bett-er equipped to understand and enjoy good music than its fore-
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runners. Practical illustrations are given of the various instruments of which the orchestra is composed, and comparisons in tone-colour are indicated. It is found that the children are interested and can learn to make distinctions. The little slum-child has for sole music the local cinema band, a stray barrel-organ or two and the Salvation Army band, none of which, it may fairly be estimated, are likely to rouse any deep-rooted enthusiasm for music. By the little music-lectures it is hoped that not only will the more fortunate children benefit but also their less-favoured fellows, who, though they may not acquire a vast appreciation of tone-colour, may yet be taught good taste. Even a certain amount of technical instruction in the correct manner of playing and· singing has been given, and demonstrations of how the works of the great masters and the modernists should be performed give opportunity for correction and self-tuition. There is one way in which broadcasting exercises a definitely calculable influence upon the childmind. It teaches concentration. There is still too little real practice in the art of concentration. In days gone by people had time to give up their minds entirely to what they were doing, to the learned book they were reading or the weighty sermon to which they listened once a week. Now we have less leisure in which to . develop our minds, and the art of concentration is rapidly disappearing. True, we learn to compress much into little, many things into short spaces of time, but such dimensional concentration differs in many
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respects from mental concentration. If we, who have almost lost the art, can sow the desire to practise it in the minds of the coming generation, let us do so, helping others to profit by our own loss.
IN TOUCH WITH THE INFINITE READ recently, "The danger of democracy is Iknowledge not so much ignorance and violence, as half and conceit, the invariable companions of the beginnings of intelligence," and again : " It is hard for the school to defeat the home, and all the forces of heredity are against the teacher of humane culture." Here then is an ally of immense potency in the campaign for a general.intelligence and a higher culture. Broadcasting is a servant of culture and culture has been called the study of perfection. The whole service which is conducted by wireless broadcasting may be taken as the expression of a new and better relationship between man and man. It is a reversal of the natural law, that the more one takes, the less there is left for others. This obtains in almost all the commonplace happenings of life, but the broadcast is as· universal as the air. There is no limit to the amount which may be drawn off. It does not matter how many thousands there may be listening ; there · is always enough for others, when they too wish to join in. It is ·the perquisite of no particular class or faction. Most of the good things of this world are badly distributed and most people have to go without them. Wireless is a good thing, but it may be shared by all alike, for the same outlay, and to the same extent. The same music rings as sweetly in mansion as in cottage. It is no respecter of persons. The genius and the fool, the wealthy and the poor listen simul217
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taneously, and to the same event, and the satisfaction of the one may be as great as that of the other. The wisdom of the wise and the amenities of culture are available without discrimination. No sort of test as to fitness to receive is instituted. No one can tell the nature of the audience. There need be no first and third class. There is nothing in it which is exclusive to those who pay more, or who are considered in one way or another more worthy of attention. First-corners are certainly served at once, but so also are those who come last. For parallels we must turn to Nature, and even here the analogy may be faulty. When the sun shines and the sky is blue, it is for all to enjoy ; the beauties of the summer country-side are free ; but there is no common opportunity to participate. We may say, however, that in the realms of the things which are highest, there is no lack. Even here with the light and the stars and the flowers, there is enough beauty left for the glory of the sunsets, for unseen skies and for blooms in the desert. Surrounded ·as we are with evidences of limitation and shortage, in money, food, clothes, houses, we may turn to regions where limitation is unknown. No doubt we may derive a measure of comfort from the thought. It is, however, of much greater satisfaction if we can find something actually present with us which offers at least a few of the essential characteristics of the other world, and here it is to be found. Broadcasting may help to show that mankind is a unity and that the mighty heritage, material, moral and
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spiritual, if meant for the good of any, is meant for the good of all, and this is conveyed in its operations. So our desire is that we may send broadcast through the ether, which is universal, the universality of all that is good in whatsoever line we may ; and so all may receive without let or hindrance, and without encumbrance or care. There is certainly not much limitation about wireless. It ignores the puny and often artificial barriers which have estranged men from their fellows. I~ will soo? take conti?~z:ts in its stride, outstrippmg the wmds ; the d1v1slons of oceans, mountain ranges, and deserts will be passed unheeded. It will cast a girdle round the earth with bands that are all the stronger because invisible. Broadcasting is a national service the full importance of which will in due course come to be recognized, even if it be not adequately appreciated already. A writer points out that there is "a return of the ear," but that now a single voice can accomplish in a moment that which of old took many thousands of messengers and many weeks .of journeying. Its message is instantaneous and direct, and even in these times of rapid and cheap communication and huge newspaper circulations, it surpasses all other means of delivery. In entertainment or edification, in enlightenment or education, in all the manifold phases of its activity there is a consolidating influence at work. The universal dissemination of standard time is in itself a service of considerable importance. We are all familiar with the unfortunate results attendant
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on discrepancies of time as recorded by watches and clocks, not only in rural districts, but even in large cities as well. There is now no excuse forinaccurate time-keeping, as time signals are broadcast direct from the clock which tells the time for the world in the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. As an alternative, and more romantic, means of time-indicating there are also the ·regular transmissions from Big Ben, sufficiently accurate for all practical purposes. It is interesting to note the effect produced by small things. To hear the Greenwich clock, but more ·particularly the chiming of Big Ben, in the remotest villages of the United Kingdom has evoked a degree of sentiment and romance which most people would consider out of proportion with the cause. It is, however, in large measure understandable. Rural areas are brought into direct contact with these Empire institutions, the clock which beats the time over the Houses of Parliament, in the centre of the Empire, is heard echoing in the loneliest cottage in the land. It has been said that there are two kinds of loneliness : insulation in space and isolation of spirit. These are both dispelled by wireless. The country is brought to the town and the town to the country. Whether it be the momentous utterance of a statesman, the exposition of a scientist, the eloquence of a preacher, or a great ceremony of widespread interest, such, for instance, as the service at the Cenotaph to which the thoughts of all the country are directed, all these may be heard and shared alike by the favoured few who are present
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as by others hundreds or thousands of miles away, and as in due time by our countrymen in the very outposts of the Empire. Among the great paradoxes oflife come the companionship of solitude and the voice of silence. To men and women confined in the narrow streets of the great cities shall be brought many of the voices of Nature, calling them to the enjoyment of her myriad delights. There is some peculiar quality about certain sounds, since they may be considered not incompatible with the conditions of silence. Already we have broadcast a voice which few have opportunity of hearing for themselves. The song of the nightingale has been heard over all the country, on highland moors and in the tenements of great towns. Milton has ·.said that when the nightingale sang, silence was pleased. So in the song of the nightingale we have broadcast something of the silence which all of us in this busy world unconsciously crave and urgently need. The time is not far distant when for those to hear who care to listen voices from the ends of the earth shall be brought to all the homes of Britain. A stumbling-block is the difference in the time and the hour of day between the various countries, but some will consider it worth while to make adjustments in the hours of work or sleep in order that on occasions they may hear the messages or the music of the East or the West, or may attend to that sent in return. The public affairs of the Empire will sooner or later be debated in the hearing of the Empire, and the Statesmen of the Home Country and of the Dominions and
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Colonies be enabled to listen to the expositions of policies and aspirations as they are delineated in the Parliaments or great assemblages. Whatever is practicable within the Empire is practicable also between all the countries of the world. In such a realization of world-unity, music will play its exalted part ; further, the greatest achievements in art and science will be made known, for national frontiers cannot have or hold them ; best of all, perhaps, the message of peace on earth, proclaimed in the first Christmas to a few shepherds, can ·reach the hearts of all men of goodwill. All these elements are neither merely national nor international, but supra-national. Broadcasting in itself, therefore, presents for reflection characteristics which are unique in their constitution and significance. It is not subject to the limitations which handicap so many of the great endeavours which are instituted to promote unity of thought or action in matters of high moment, national or international, or undertaken on behalf of individual or corporate intelligence. It operates on a plane of its own, and is therefore the more commanding in its interest for those who are associated with its development. The interest is enhanced by the knowledge that the operations of broadcasting are dependent for their propagation on the mysterious and fascinating medium we call ether. When we speak of the ether, we speak more or less as fools, for the more is discovered, the more apparently contradictory facts are revealed. It would seem to have proper-
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ties which formerly were regarded as mutually exclusive. While it fascinates, it mystifies ; and the more it fascinates and the more it is explored the more it mystifies. With all manner of its ch~r acteristics and properties definitely and mathem~tic ally proved, it is still only a conception of the mmd. When we attempt to deal with ether we are immediately involved in the twilight shades of the borderland ; darkness presse~ i_n on all sides, . and .the intensity of the darkness ts m creased by the tll:umm~ tions which here and there are shed, as the mvestlgators, candle in hand and advancing step by step, peer into the illimitable unknown. As knowledge increases, so does ignorance, and some say that ignorance is advancing faster than knowle~ge. This is a compliment to knowledge. There 1s a . system in every star, a world in every atom. Wireless is in particular league with ether ; th1s has been recognized from the outset, for there was no other explanation possible. The dependence of all things upon etheric vibrations is not so obvious, and material suppositions were formerly good enough. Now we have the most so~id " mat~rial " bodies described as faults or bubbles m the umversal ether. We are confined on every hand by the limitations of human intellect, apd have no more understanding of the physical universe than a telephone exchange operator has o~ the su?scribers in her area. In order that some 1mpress10n may be conveyed to us of what is happening all around, we have to take the interpretations which our senses a~opt. And so .we speak of sounds and colours,
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and therewith are content, till we realize that these are merely the forms in which the ear or the eye has interpreted a situation for our brain to understand it. We are missing infinitely more than we are receiving, and we shall continue to function defectively until, with limitations overcome and with the necessity for interpreting senses removed, we shall be introduced to fresh and amazing realms of activity, and shall know as we are known. To be carried to distant villages the music of an orchestra requires a microphone and .much intricate apparatus. But the music of an orchestra is unreal, symbolic and transitory. Thought is probably permanent, and a means may be found to ally thought with ether direct and to broadcast and communicate thought without the intervention of the senses or any mechanical device, in the same 111anner as a receiving set is to-day tuned to the wave-length of a transmitter so that there may be a free passage between them. It is well that we should be conscious of the relativity of all things, and remember that complete dissolution of the manifested universe would quickly follow on any suspension of the functionings of the universal ether. We should also be aware of the feebleness and errors of our own perceptions and intelligence, and from this awareness, turn to the contemplation of the Omnipotence holding all things together by the word of power, in Whom, as in the ether, we live and move and have our being.
[11] --------~~~~--------DEVELOPMENT AND CONTROL OF RADIO BROADCASTING
When I became head of the Department I found that one of its duties was to develop and regulate the use of radio. At that time radio was still little more than a ship-to-shore telegraph system. Broadcasting the human voice was only experimental-we called it the radio telephone then-but it was quickly to emerge from this stage to a new and universal art profoundly modifying every aspect of human life. In this creation the Department was destined to play a part. Only the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company at Pittsburgh and the General Electric Company at Schenectady had .ere~ted experimental voice broadcasting stations. There were at th1s t1me probably fewer than 50,000 receiving sets, and they were not too good. The American boy, however, had taken enthusiastically to radio and, with his crystal set and- earphones, was spreading interest widely over the country. Suddenly a great public interest awoke, and in six months there were 320 broadcasting stations, most of them of low power and short range. The law authorizing the Secretary of Commerce to regulate radio had been enacted prior to voice broadcasting. It was a very weak rudder to steer so powerful a development. I was early impressed with three things: first, the immense importance of the spoken radio; second, tl1e urgency of placing the new channels of communication under public control; and, third, the difficulty of devising such control in a new art. Radio men were eager for regulation to prevent interference with one another's wave lengths, but many of them were insisting on a right of permanent preemption of the channels tluough the air as private prop[ 139]
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erty-a monopoly of enormous financial value. Their argument was that the necessary capital could not be provided without permanent tenure. It was in a fashion comparable to private ownership of a water navigation channel. Therefore in our usual fashion of solving problems wherever possible by cooperation rather than by law, I called a conference of representatives of the industry and various government agencies on February ·27, 1922. A few paragraphs from my opening address to the conference will illustrate the situation at that time: It is the purpose of this conference to inquire into the critical situation that has now arisen through the astonishing development of the wireless telephone; to advise the Department of Commerce as to the application of its present powers of regulation, and further to formulate such recommendations to Congress as to the legislation necessary. We have witnessed in the last four or five months one of the most astounding things that have come under my observation of American life. This Department estimates that today over 600,000 persons (one estimate being 1,000,000) possess receiving sets, whereas there were fewer than 50,000 such sets a year ago. We are indeed today upon the threshold of a new means of widespread communication of intelligence that has the most profound importance from the point of view of public education and public welfare. The comparative cheapness . . . of receiving sets .•• bids fair to make them almost universal in the American home. I think that it will be agreed at the outset that the use of the radio telephone for communication between single individuals as in the case of the ordinary telephone is a perfectly hopeless notion. Obviously if ten million telephone subscribers are crying through the air for their mates they will never make a junction.... The wireless spoken word has one definite field, and that is for broadcast· of certain predetermined material of public interest from central stations. This material must be limited to news, to education, and to entertainment, and the communication of such commercial matters as are of importance to large groups of the community at the same time. It is therefore primarily a question of broadcasting, and it becomes of primary public interest to say who is to do the broadcasting, under what circumstances, ;:.nd with what type of material. It is inconceivable that we should allow so great a possibility for service to be drowned in advertising chatter.
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Congress some few years ago authorized the Secretary of Commerce to ... impose certain conditions ... designed to prevent interference between the stations ..• This legislation was drawn before the development of the wireless telephone. . .• The time has arrived • . . when there must be measures to stop the interferences ... between even the limited number of sending stations. . .• The problem is one of most intensely technical character ... Even if we use all the ingenuity possible I do not believe there are enough permutations to allow unlimited numbers of sending stations. One of the problems . . . is who is to support the sending stations. In certain countries, the government has prohibited the use of receiving instruments except upon payment of a fee, out of which are supported governmentsending stations. I believe that such a plan would most seriously limit the development of the art and its social possibilities.... This is a problem of regulation . . . Regulations will need to be policed . .. and thus the celestial sy~tem-at least the ether part of it-comes within the province of the policeman. Fortunately the art permits such a policeman by listening in to detect those ether hogs that are endangering the traffic. There is in all of this the necessity to establish public right over the ether roads. . . . There must be no national regret that we have parted with a great national asset. The Conference agreed, irrespective of the legal authority of the Department, to abide by my decisions as umpire until we could devise needed legislation. We set aside certain parts of the wave bands for public broadcasting, certain parts for the Army and Navy and public services. We assigned a definite wave band for boys. Because there were, as far as the art had developed, insufficient wave lengths for all the purposes then known, we forbade the use of person-to-persqn telephone except in restricted instances. Then with the skillful help of Stephen Davis we set about the picture puzzle of so allotting the wave lengths that the broadcasting stations would not interfere with one another. Fortunately, the weak sending power at that time enabled the same wave lengths to be used in different cities at some distance from one another, and so we were able to accommodate. everybody for a while. To sustain this cooperative action I called a second conference of the inJustry in March, 1923, a third in October, 1924, the fourth in Novem-
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ber, 1925. The delegates-more than 1,000 at each session-took a most constructive attitude, and the majority of them supported our legislative proposals. Their cooperative spirit contributed enormously to the development of methods for handling the difficult technical problems. From 1921 to 1923 we felt we should have more experience before drafting legislation. With the approval of the Congressional committees we carried on until1924. At that time we proposed a draft bill but soon found that Congress, overburdened with more urgent work, was loath to take up such a complex subject, especially since we should have to resist pressure from some interests which still hoped for private rights in broadcast frequency channels. One of our troubles in getting legislation was the very success of the voluntary system we had created. Members of the Congressional committees kept saying, "It is working well, so why bother?" A long period of delay ensued. One bill died in transit between the House and Senate in 1925. Finally a Chicago station broke away from our voluntary regulation, preempted a wave length for itself, and established its contention in the courts against the weak legal authority of the Secretary of Commerce. Then Congress woke up and finally, in February, 1927, passed the law which we recommended, and which established the public ownership and regulation of the wave channels. A vivid experience in the early days of radio was with Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson of Los Angeles. One of the earliest to appreciate the possibilities in radio, she had established a small broadcasting station in her Temple. This station, however, roamed all over the wave band, causing interference and arousing bitter complaints from the other stations. She was repeatedly warned to stick to her assigned wave length. As warnings did no good, our inspector sealed up her station and stopped it. The next day I received from her a telegram in these words: Please order your minions of Satan to leave my station alone. You cannot expect the Almighty to abide by your wavelength nonsense. When I offer my prayers to Him I must fit into His wave reception. Open this station AIMEE SEMPLE McPHERSON at once.
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Finally our tactful inspector persuaded her to employ a radio manager of his own selection, who kept her upon her wave length. I made many public addresses and statements during a period of six years in the course of advocating legislation and obtaining public support for it, both abjuring and defending broadcasters. Some paragraphs from these expressions indicate the growth of the art, of the industryand of the problems: (March 10, 1924) ..• I can state emphatically that it would be most unfortunate for the people of this country, to whom broadcasting has become an important incident of life, if its control should come into the hands of any single corporation, individual, or combination. It would be in principle the same as though the entire press of the country were so controlled. The effect would be identical whether this control arose under a patent monopoly or under any form of combination or over a wave channel. . . . In the licensing system put in force by this Department the life of broadcasting licenses is limited to three months, so that no vested right can be obtained either in a wave length or in a license. I believe, however, that everybody should be permitted to send out anything they like. The very moment that the government begins to determine what can be sent, it establishes a censorship through the whole field of clashing ideas. . . • (March 26, 1924) The amateurs, as you all know, have a certain wave band assigned to them, but within this band they do much of their own policing. In discussing with one of their leaders-a youngster of about sixteen-the method of preventing interference between them, he stated with some assurance that there would be no difficulties about enforcement if left to them. I pressed him as to the method they would employ. He showed a good deal of diffidence but finally came through with the statement, "If you leave it to us and if anybody amongst the amateurs does not stick to the rules, we will see that somebody beats him up." So far I have heard of no cases of such assault. (November 9, 1925) We have great reason to be proud of the results of these conferences. From them have been established principles upon which our country has led the w_orld in the development of this service. We have
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accomplished this by a large measure of self-government in an art and industry of unheard-of complexity, not only in its technical phases, but in its relations both to the government and to the public. Four years ago we were dealin.g with a scientific toy; today we are dealing with a vital force in American life. We are, I believe, bringing this lusty child out of its swaddling clothes without any infant diseases. . . . Some of our major decisions of policy have been of far-reaching importance and have justified themselves a thousandfold.•.. We hear a great deal about the freedom of the air, but there are two parties to freedom of the air, and to freedom of speech for that matter. There is the speechmaker and the listener. Certainly in radio I believe in freedom for the listener. He has much less option upon what he can reject, for the other fellow is occupying his receiving set. The listener's only option is to abandon his right to use his receiver. Freedom cannot mean a license to every person or corporation who wishes to broadcast his name or his wares, and thus. monopolize the listener's set.... So far as opportunity goes to explain one's political, religious, or social views, it would seem that 578 independent stations might give ample latitude in remarks; and in any event, without trying out all this question, we can surely agree that no one can raise a cry of deprivation of free speech if he is compelled to prove that there is something more than naked commercial selfishness in his purpose. The ether is a public medium, and its use must be for public benefit. The use of a radio channel is justified only if there is public benefit. The dominant element for consideration in the radio field is, and always will be, the great body of the listening public. . .. We have in this development of governmental relations two distinct problems. First is the question of traffic control. This must be a Federal responsibility ...• The second question is the determination of who shall use the traffic channels and under what conditions. This is a very large discretionary or quasijudicial function which should not devolve entirely· upon any single official. ... Today there are nearly six hundred stations and about twenty-five million listeners. (October 21, 1925). Four million of our families have radio receiving sets ..• ; one-half of the nation can now receive the inspiration of a speech from our President and a score of millions throb with the joys and sorrows
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of the dramatic presentation of minute-to-minute events in the last World Series. They have knowledge ••• more quickly than some people in the grandstands.••• Incidentally I wish our engineers and inventors would invent another knob on our receiving sets by which we could express our feelings to the fellow who is broadcasting. Tuning out in disgust is an uncompleted mental reaction. (December 26, 1925) A statement in one of this morning's newspapers seems to indicate a lack of information as to the basis I have proposed for radio control. The implication is that I have sought to have the job placed in my hands. Far to the contrary. I have both before Congressional Committees and in at least a half-dozen public addresses stated that no one official should dictate who is to use the radio wave lengths, and I have for years advocated that this, as a quasijudicial function, should be placed in the hands of an independent commission. Moreover, for five years I have reiterated that these wave lengths are public property to be used by assignment of public authority. This view has been e(lforced by the Department of Commerce for the past five years. It was again reaffirmed by the last Radio Conference. This principle, together with a provision for a commission to control assignments, was incorporated into bills introduced to Congress . . . and approved by me. Somebody needs to find out what has already taken place before he starts something.
The legislation finally enacted required the appointment of a quasijudicial commission to administer the act. President Coolidge asked me to select its members, which I did. They were all men of technical and legal experience in the art, and none of them were politicians. The act worked very well except in one particular, to remedy which I secured its amendment in 1929. THE FffiST INTERNATIONAL RADIO CONFERENCE
It had become evident over the years that much radio interference rose from beyond our own borders and that there must be international regulation. Through the State Department we called an international conference which assembled in Washington, October 4, 1927, attended by the delegates of seventy-six nations. I presided at these meetings.
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The task proved so difficult that it required sessions extending over several months. We finally signed the treaties which established world order, certain principles, and the assignment of wave lengths. They have lasted except in the Communist states until this day in spite of all wars and murrain. THE ASSETS AND LIABILITIES IN RADIO
With the background of interest in radio I had also the experience of making addresses by the hundred on various subjects and observing their effect upon the listeners. They do not hesitate to express themselves pro or con. I have also listened to thousands of other people's speeches and programs. With this experience, I have naturally often tried to weigh the social, political, and economic effect of this new instrument. It has not been an unmixed good. On the good side it has been a powerful educational force. It has stimulated the appreciation of good music, despite the fact that it gives tenfold time to the worst of music. It has made science, the arts, the professions, the daily lives of other men and. women familiar to all the people. It has vastly enriched the lives of shut-ins and residents of remote places. It has made transmission of news instantaneous. It has brought into every household the voice and views of the men who create thought and command action. But trutl1 is far less carefully safeguarded on the radio than in the press. The control of slander, libel, malice, and smearing is far more difficult. The newspaper editor has a chance to see a statement before it goes to the press. But on the radio it is often out before the station can stop it. A misstatement in the press can be corrected witl1in twenty-four hours, and it reaches approXimately the same people who read the original item and is open to all who have a grievance. There is little adequate answer to a lying microphone. The audience · is never the same on any two days or hours, and it takes days to arrange time for an answer even when the station consents. At tl1at, no matter how grave tl1e injustice, the broadcasting companies will seldom sacrifice time for tl1is privilege. Action under American law as to slander is doubly futile against the radio. Also radio lends itself to propaganda far more easily than the press.
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And propaganda is seldom the whole truth. The officials currently in office have preponderant time at the microphone, and theirs becomes the dominant voice. Propaganda, even when it sticks to fact, is often slanted by the magic in the human voice. And propaganda over the air raises emotion at the expense of reason far more than the printed word. Often enough, no one is much interested in providing a counterpropaganda; or at least few are able to organize it. Not only is domestic propaganda poured on us, but it has become a special function of foreign governments and persons. Crooked propaganda has become an insidious instrument of international politics. In the debate over going into World War II British speakers deluged our radio with their propaganda. When some of us who were opposed · wished to present our views, we were refused time by the British authorities. Some of the evils. of libel and slander could be corrected by a revision of our laws in those matters. They are not adapted to the radio and they have been watered down from the original English common law by American court decisions, until they provide little protection. Unlike tl1e British, they seldom give moral damages for misrepresentation and wrongful injury to reputation. As I pointed out in my first statement in 1922, broadcasting, then just beginning its use of advertising, could go wild in this direction. It has often done so. The dignified presentation of the sponsor has too often been abandoned for hucksters' tattle, interlarded into the middle of programs and tiresomely continued at the end. Sensitive people refuse to buy an article because of the inept persistence of the announcer. Yet advertisers, paying $500 a minute, seemingly cannot bear to hear any minute lost in the barking of their wares or names. The danger is that some day the public will revolt against all these misuses of radio and put programs into the hands of a government agency. That is a sorry thing to contemplate. With all its faults the private ownership has proved far superior in its enterprise, its .entertainment, and its use in public debate and in public service to the government-owned systems of Europe. Some of these evils could be cured by the industry itself. Many radio clirectors deplore them. No one station or chain can alone stamp them
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out. They might be much reduced by resuming the annual conferences of the early twenties and by making an effort to develop codes of ethics to apply not only to stations, but to speakers.1 1
A list of my more important statements on radio while Secretary of Commerce is
given in the Appendix, under the heading Chapter 20.
APPENDIX On radio: 1921: Aug. 30, Radio Convention. 1922: Feb. 27, address opening first Radio Conference; May 4, article in Boston Evening Transcript; July, article in Popular Science Monthly; August, article in Scientific American. 1923: Jan., article in Radio Broadcast; Jan. 2, House Hearings on Radio Act; March 20, address opening second Radio Conference; April 2, on Radio Conference. . 1924: March 10, Control of Radio Broadcasting; March 11, House Hearings on Regulating Radio; March 16, article in New York World; March 22, article in Radio Digest; March 26, broadcast from Washington; May 18, Radio Improvement; Aug. 16, address at San Francisco; Oct., article in Radio Netvs; Oct. 6, address to third Radio Conference; Oct. l6, press .release on Radio Monopoly; Dec. 4, to Congressman White on Radio Regulation. 1925: Jan., article in Radio Retailing; Jan. 1, Radio and the Public; Feb. 8, Radio Situation; May 28s Special Privilege in Radio; Sept. 12, address to Radio Exposition; Nov. 9, address opening fourth Radio Conference; Nov. l2, broadcast from Washington; Dec. 3, message to American Radio Relay League; Dec. 26, Radio Control. 1926: Jan. 6, House Hearings on Radio Regulation; April 20, Radio Legislation; April 30, Radio Manufacturers; July 9, on Radio Legislation. 1927: Feb. 24, Radio Situation; March 6, Radio Legislation; Oct. 4, address opening International Radio Conference; Oct. 15, address at New York; Nov. 25, address at Washington to International Radio Conference. 1928: Jan. 1, International Radio Conference; March 15, letter to Federal Radio Commission.
Exc~rpts
from Report of the Committee on Broadcasting 1960
43. Whereas the disquiet about television arose from "sins of commission "-from the conviction that its capacity to influence people was often misused-the dissatisfaction, the other main element in the submissions made to us, arose from "sins of omission "--from the conviction that many of the best potentialities of television were simply not being realised. The theme common to nearly all those submissions which expressed dissatisfaction was that programme items were far too often devised with the object of seeking, at whatever cost in quality or variety, the largest possible audience ; and that, to attain this object. the items nearly always appealed to a low level of public taste. This was not, of course, to say that all items which attracted large audiences were poor. But in far too many the effect was to produce a passively acquiescent or even indifferent audience rather than an actively interested one. There was a lack of variety and originality, an adherence to what was " safe " ; and an unwillingness to try challenging, demanding and, still less, uncomfortable subject matter. It was put to us that, in television as elsewhere, one man's meat ought to be another man's poison ; that too often viewers were offered neither meat nor poison but pap-because, presumably, though no-one much likes it, at least no-one will get indigestion. . Against this, it has been said that in fact people watch these items ; that the justification lies precisely in the fact that they are mass-appeal items. In a free society, this is what people freely choose ; they do not have to watch ; they can switch off. In short, by these tests, these items are "what the public wants", and to provide anything else is to impose on people what someone thinks they ought to like. Indeed; it has been held that, for this reason, it is not of great relevance to criticise television at all. We found this last a deflating thought. 44. We were bound to examine these alternative and opposing views. "To give the public what it wants " seems at first sight unexceptionable. But when applied to broadcasting it is difficult to analyse. The public is not an amorphous, uniform mass ; however much it is counted and classified under this or that heading, it is composed of individual people ; and "what the public wants " is what individual people want. They share some of their wants and interests with all or most of their fellows ; and it is necessary that a service of broadcasting should cater for these wants and interests. There is in short a considerable place for items which all or most enjoy. To say, however, that the only way of giving people what they want is to give them these items is to imply that all individuals are alike. But no two are. Each is composed of a different pattern of tastes, abilities and possibilities ; and even within· each person the emphasis on this or that part of the pattern is not always the same. Some of our tastes and needs we share with virtually everybody ; but most-and they are often those which engage us most intensely-we share with different minorities. A service which caters only for majorities can never satisfy all, or even most, of the needs of any individual. It cannot, therefore, satisfy all the needs of the public. 45. Television has not of course the time to cater for all tastes. If all programmes excited in us an equal intensity of interest it might, therefore, be wrong to use its limited time to appeal to interests shared
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only by a few, at the expense of those common to most. But they do not. A television viewer may be acquiescent or indifferent ; he may be enthusiastic. It is by no means obvious that a vast audience watching television all the evening will derive a greater sum of enjoyment from it than will several small audiences each of which watches for part of the evening only. For the first may barely tolerate what it sees ; while the second might enjoy it intensely. 46. No one can say he is giving the public what it wants, unless the public knows the whole range of possibilities which television can offer and, from this range, chooses what it wants to see. For a choice is only free if the field of choice is not unnecessarily restricted. The subject matter of television is to be found in the whole· scope and variety of human awareness and experience. If viewers-" the public" -are thought of as "the mass audience", or "the majority", they will be offered only the average of common experience and awareness ; the " ordinary " ; the commonplace-for what all know and do is, by definition, commonplace. They will be kept unaware of what lies beyond ·the average of experience ; their field of choice will be limited. In time they may come to like only what they know. But it will always be true that, had they been offered a wider range from which to choose, they might and often would have chosen otherwise, and with greater enjoyment. 47. It might be said that this is a theoretical argument ; that in fact there is no point in offering the public the whole range of experience from which to choose. For much of it will not be understood, far less enjoyed, by more than a very few ; and, though televiskm is to cater for minorities, the line must be drawn somewhere. There is of course some truth in this ; and those who draw the line have to make a judgment of the public's capacity for interest and enjoyment. No one can claim to know what this is ; and it would be presumptuous to make the claim. We have seen in the past thirty years the development of a widespread interest in symphony concerts which could never have been predicted: competitive swimming, both as a pursuit and as a spectacle, has captured the public's interest in an even shorter time: where interest in classical literature was all but dead, now there has been a sudden demand for pocket translations of the classics. In each instance, to have denied the public the chance to develop the taste would have deprived many of pleasures-in short, would have deprived them of " what they want." The point was neatly made to us as follows: " Those who say they give the public what it wants begin by underestimating public taste, and end by debauching it." 48. In summary, it seems to us that" to give the public what it wants" is a misleading phrase: misleading because as commonly used it has the appearance of an appeal to democratic principle but the appearance is deceptive. It is in fact patronising and arrogant, in that it claims to know what the public is, but defines it as no more than the mass audience ; and in that it claims to know what it wants, but limits its choice to the average of experience. In this sense we reject it utterly. If there is a sense in which it should be used, it is this: what the public wants and what it has the right to get is the freedom to choose from [17]
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the widest possible range of programme matter. Anything less than that is deprivation. 49. The alternative is often presented as this; that the broadcaster should "give the public what he thinks is good for it." This philosophy too we would reject as patronising and arrogant. ·But it was never advocated to us in evidence ; and it is not, as is sometimes sue:aested, the only alternative. The choice is not between either " giving tl:l~""public what it wants", or "giving the public what someone thinks is good for it ", and nothing else. There is an area of possibility between the two ; and it is within this area that the choice lies, The broadcasting authorities have certainly a duty to keep sensitively aware of the public's tastes and attitudes as they now are and in all their variety ; and to care about them: But if they do more than that, this is not to give the public "what someone thinks is good for it". It is to respect the public's right to choose from the widest possible range of subject matter and so to enlarge worthwhile experience. Because, in principle, the possible range of subject matter is inexhaustible, all of it can never be presented, nor can the public know what the range is. So, the broadcaster must explore it. and choose from it first. This might be called " giving a lead " : but it is not the lead of the autocratic or arrogant. It .is the proper exercise of responsibility by public authorities duly constituted ·[ 18] as trustees for the public interest. 52. Television has been called a mirror of society: but the metaphor, though striking, wholly misses the major issue of the responsibility of the two broadcasting authorities. For, if we consider the first aspect of this responsibility, what is the mirror to reflect? Is it to reflect the best or the worst in us? One cannot escape the question by saying that it must do both ; one must ask then whether it is to present the best and the worst with complete indifference and without comment. And if the answer is .that such passivity is unthinkable, that in showing the best and the worst television must show them for what they are, then an active choice has been made. This is not only to show the best in our society, but to show also the worst so that it will be recognised for what it is. That this choice must be made emphasises the main flaw in the comparison. Television does not, and cannot, merely reflect the moral standards of society. It must affect them, either by changing or by reinforcing them. 53. Nor wJll a mirror passively reflecting society go anything like as far as possible towards showing the whole range of worthwhile experience. It cannot do so. If the attempt were made, the scale would be so small that only the most common experience would show large enough for recognition. The rest would go unnoticed. Spo~ might well show only as football and boxing ; entertainment as vanety and revue. To avoid this, television must pay particular attention to those pans of the range of worthwhile experience which lie beyond the most common; to those parts which some have explored here and there
[19]
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but new everywhere. Finally, and of special importance: because the range of e:x:perience is not finite but constantly growing, and because the growing points are usually most significant, it is on these that television must focus a spotlight. For it is all: these pomts that the challenges to existing assumptions and beliefs are made, where the claJ.ms to new knowledge and new awareness are stlated. If our society is to respond to the challenges and judge the chiims, they must be put before it. A1l broadcasting, and telev.isi.on especially, must be ready and anxious to e:x:perim.ent, to show the new and unusual, to give a hearing to dissent. Here, broadcasting must be most willing to make mistakes ; for if it does not, it will make no discoveries. [20]
The Political Economy of the Media II
CHAPTER VI
A GENERAL APPRAISAL OF THE TELEVISION SERVICE OF THE BBC 113. We have seen that good television broadcasting may be said to comprise thre.e major elements. First, programme planning and content must respect the right of the public to choose from amongst the widest possible range of subject matter. Second, in every part of this wide range of subject matter there must be a high quality of approach and presentation. Last, and by no means least, since it is of overriding importance, those who handle so powerful a medium must be animated by a sense of its power to influence values and moral standards and of its capacity for enriching the lives of all of us. The broadcasting authorities must care about public tastes and attitudes, in all their manifold variety, and must keep aware of them. They must also keep aware of their capacity to change and develop ; they must in this sense give a lead.
The BBC's concept of the purposes of broadcasting 114. That the BBC is acutely aware of the power of the medium and regards itself as answerable for the general influence it exerts is, in our view, clear. Giving oral evidence, Mr. Carleton Greene, Director General of the BBC, considered that television would be one of the ma·in factors influencing the values and moral attitudes of our society. We need only add that nothing in the Corporation's written and oral evidence has suggested that they hold any reservations about the principle. 115. On the range and content of programmes, the BBC told us that the service should be comprehensive, and that a proper definition of " comprehensive" must give enough weight to education and information. The Corporation regularly and deliberately put on programmes which would appeal immediately to a comparatively small audience, but tried so to present them as to attract and hold wider audiences which did not at first know that they would be attracted by such programmes. "But", Mr. Carleton Greene added, "we should try always to do the best we possibly can in every type of broadcast, without thinking that it -is more important to put our best into iriformation and education. It is just as important to put the best skills one can. into entertainment." The BBC held it an important part of their responsibility to "give a lead " to public taste, in literature and the arts and elsewhere. There [37]
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was in this a risk of paternalism, but it was a risk of which they were conscious and which they must accept The three elements-information, education and entertainment-were not separable: programmes which. if they must be classified would fall under the first two headings, were often, nevertheless, entertaining. Because the success of their service was not to be measured merely by the size of audiences, the BBC were.. themselves constantly questioning and testing their own . programme policies. Also they engaged in contin:uous audience research to find out not only how many people watched programmes, but how they valued them. The response of the audience to a programme, the strength of its appreciation, was as important, if not more important, than the size of the audience. And further, for all their research, they would not claim they knew "what the public wanted" ; they reminded us that there must be experiment, trial and error. 116. These stated views of the BBC on the purposes of broadcasting accord closely with those formulated by us earlier in the Report. How far these views find expression through programming polic_ies and practice is of course a separate question. [38]
Dissatisfaction : how far it is attributable to the BBC's service 127. The BBC told us that their tmditional po1icy had been "to develop programmes over the widest possible range of content and treatment, while preserving a reasonable baJance between programmes intended for relaxation and amusement and those of a more thoughtful kind". It was on range of subjeot matter pre.o;e.n.ted and variety of treatment of particular subjects within. that range that the primary emphasis lay. Jit was by e~1Je.ndin.g the range of subjeot matter treated and the variety of trea:tmen.t that the broadcaster developed the possibilities of the medium and increased its value. Allso important was the ratio of relaxing-or " light"-programmes to more demanding-or "serious "-programmes: but lihds was not easily measured because " light " and " serious " were subjective terms. Never.theless, most programmes were in practice recognisable as light or serious. The foLlowing kinds of programme might be classed as serious : news and current affairs, talks and discussions, documentary programmes, outside broadcasts of national importance and other major events of a non-sporting character, music (other than "light mmic "), opera, ba:l.let and religious programmes. Though some plays would be classed as serious pro~ grammes, others would not ; so all were omitted from the class. 128. The BBC also told us that it was the core of their pr.Q!!...ramme policy that the more important serious programmes should, for the m-ost par:t, be offered 'Mhen the largest audiences were av.a.ilable.
[41]
Appraisal of the BBC's television service: a summing up 148. We have now to summarise the conclusions we have reached on the conduct by the BBC of their service of television. Our clear impression is that the BBC's stated views on the purposes which the service should fulfil accord with those we have formulated earlier iri the Report. The Corp.Otral!ii:on's traditional idea of public service rem.a.ins the essential consideration in the formulation of policy. We are impressed by the BBC's awareness of the naotur.e, the magnitude and the complexity of the task of catering for the needs of the public. It is easy to assert an awareness of principles, but the BBC appear also to have a grasp of their practical impLications. In short, we found in the BBC an all-round professionalism. By this we mean not so much that there is at the production level a competence, a mastery of present techniques. We mean that there is, at tlhe executive levels where both principles and the public interest are interpreted and re-interpreted, a recognition of Wlhat-.in terms of pr.ogr.arnme pl.an.n1ng and performance-is needed to give substance to principles. T.his professionalism of the BBC shows itself not least in their dissatisfaction with performance, in their sense of the unrealised possibilities of the medium. 149. The BBC know good broadcasting; by and large, they are providing it. We set ollll: -to consider how far the main causes of disquiet and dissatisfaction were attributable to the BBC's television service. The BBC are not blameless ; but the causes are not, we find, to any great extent attributable to thek servdce. This is the broad consensus of view revealed by tihe representations put to us by people and organisations which spoke to us as viewers. Their view is perhaps seen most ~ignificantly in this ; that whatever criticism they made of televJsion, they nearly all werut on to say tb.llit, if llhere were to be an additional television programme, it should be provided by the BBC. We have no hesitation in saying that the BBC command public confidence. If this is a test of the discharge of a public trust, then the BBC pass it. There are blemishes, too ; mistakes, as there· must be, of judgment. And we repeat that there was criticism of a more general kind which, we felt, had some substance ; that the BBC had lowered their standards in some measure in order to compete wibh independent television. Brut our broad conclusion is tlhis; that, within the limits imposed by a single programme, the BBC's television service is a successfuJ. realisation of the purposes· of broadcasting as defined in the Charter. [46]
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Dissatisfaction : how far it is attributable to the service of independent television 187. The main cause of dissatisfaction was, we noted, that the range of subject matter provided was insufficient to meet the wide variety of viewers' interests. We now note that it attaches very largely to the programmes of independent television.
The discharge by the Authority of its responsibilities
[60]
serious programmes were del~berately . . . 191. placed outside peak viewmg hours. The aim was to get the maximum audience for them, and the best way to achieve this aim was by putting them on when it was unlikely that the BBC would be putting out a big [62] entertainment. All the main companies . .. 194. ag~e~d rh:at they had ~ !C:sponsibihty for leading public taste, and that ~~. lillphed. a responsibility to cater f~r " minority " as well as " major-
Ity tastes. . But wherea~. th~. Authonty thought that the service now catered sufficiently for nnnonties, the companies on the whole did not. One reason was that there was not enough room within a single pro~amme. But another was that, since independent television derived Its :e_venue fr?~ adv~rtising, ~t was bound to seek the largest audiences. An.,lia TelevlSl~n said th~t mdependent television must be concerned !O h?ld the ma~J.Illum audience ; Associated Rediffusion said that it was mev1table ~at It should serve the .majority; for Scottish Television Mr. !Jlomson said that, because advertisers paid for viewers, "it is inevitable m the system that :y~u should be reaching generally for a maximum" ; for Southern TelevlSlon, Mr. Dowson said that it was "impractical" to pu~ .out ?pera, be~ause no advertiser would be prepared to buy advertlSlng t1.me knowmg that the audience would be small. This was also one of the reasons for the placing of serious programmes outside [63] peak hours.
285
219. That advertisers shcmld see television primarily as a tool for their purposes is natural and understandable. Their view reflects their special interest; it is they who, in the first place, pay. A most forthright expression of this view was given by. a leading advertising practitioner when he inaugurated a course for advertising executives in June, 1961. He was reported as asserting that commercial television was first and foremost an advertising medium and only secondarily and incidentally a public service. When he came with other representatives of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising to give oral evidence, he told us that the statement was made in an address to advertising people and, in that context, was certainly true. His was the opening address iii the course, and the audience was a special one. More generally, the sense of his statement was that the operators of independent television were not well enough a ware of the source of their income. The Authority's Advertising Control Officer attended the course. He told us that he had read from the Television Act to refute the speaker. We emphasise that the view of the Authority and the companies-that the service is intended essentially as a service of broadcasting to the public and only incidentally as a service to advertising-is the right one. 220. In saying this, we recognise that, though the service to advertising is secondary and incidental, advertisers must be treated fairly. If the principal service, the service of broadcasting to the public, is to be financed out of advertising revenue, provision for advertisements must [70] be reasonable in itself and administrable. 221. We recognise, too, that the companies' interests as sellers. of advertising time conflict with their role as producers of the best possible service of broadcasting to the public. The companie~ reco~nised. this conflict, and some told us that they tried so to orgaruse thc;:rr busmess that the Sales Department could not influence the Program.mmg Department. But, as we noted in Chapter Vll, some of them accepted t~e fact that the choice and timing of programmes were affected by their interests as sellers of advertising time.
[71]
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Appraisal of the service of independent television: a summing up 207. Independent Television is relatively new. Generally those in the Authority and the companies who are its administrators were, when the service started, new to broadcasting ; and television itself was relatively a newcomer. In rather more than six years independent television has provided a second service for nearly the whole of the country. This achievement is impressive. As an engineering achievement-the provision of studios and transmitting stations-it is praiseworthy. As an achievement of administration-the creation, development and operation of large and complex organisations of people concerned with programmes and production, advertising, finance, transmission, engineering, administration and control-it is remarkable. In this Chapter, however, we have been concerned exclusively with the product. Some of it ·has been excellent. Moreover, the existence of independent television is believed to have advanced production techniques. All this is to the good. But the general judgment is unmistakable: it is that the service faJ.Is well short of what a good public service of broadcasting should be. 208. We conclude that the stated views of the Authority on the purposes of broadcasting do not accord with those we have formulated earlier in the Report. The differences are not only of emphasis. The role of the broadcasting organisation, as the Authority interpreted it to us, seemed to lack that positive and active quality which is essential to good broadcasting. We reject, too, its view that television will be shaped by society. A number of factors will operate -to shape television. to form the character of the service ; but what must figure very largely [67] are the attitudes, the convictions, the motives of those who provide programmes-who plan and produce what we see on our television screens. Their role is not passive ; they in turn will be helping, however imperceptibly, to affect society: 209. The disquiet about and dissatisfaction with television are, in our view, justly attributed very largely to the service of independent television. This is so despite the popularity of the service, and the well-known fact that many of its programmes command the largest audiences. Our enquiries have brought us to appreciate why this kind of success is not the only, and is by .no means· the most important, test of a good broadcasting service. Indeed, it is a success which can be [68] obtained by abandoning the main purposes of broadcasting~
[13] FRC Interpretation of the
Public Interest Statement Made by the Commission on August 23, 1928, Relative to Public Interest, Convenience, or Necessity 2 FRC Ann. Rep. 166 (1928) Delayed confirmations and appropriations complicated by death and resignation caused the membership of the Federal Radio Commission to remain incomplete until a year after passage of the Act of 1927. At about the same time, on March 28, 1928, the "Davis Amendment" (Public Law 195, 70tli Congress) was signed into law. This amendment directed the FRC to provide "equality of radio broadcasting service, both of transmission and of reception" to each of the five zones established by Section 2 of the Radio Act. The amendment was an administrative nightmare for a new commission plagued with the problems of an overcrowded broadcast spectrum. Before establishing the quotas required by the Davis Amendment, the Commission acted on its own General Order No. 32, holding expedited hearings during two weeks in July, 1928, ·in which 164 broadcast licensees were given .the opportunity to justify their continued stat4s as station operators under the Radio Act's public interest standard. When the dust had settled there were 62 fewer broadcasters; several others had to settle for power reductions, consolidations, or probationary renewals. Fewer than half of the 164 stations emerged unscathed. The following statement constitutes the FRC's first compre49
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DOCUMENTS OF AMERICAN BROADCASTING
hensive attempt to put the flesh of administrative interpretation on the bare-boned "public interest" standard with which Congress had endowed it. Although some of the guidelines seem hopelessly archaic today, contemporary technical and programming standards can be traced back to these basic principles of regulatory philosophy. Related Reading: 106, 131.
Federal Radio Commission, Washington, D.C. The Federal Radio Commission announced on August 23, 1928, the basic principles and its interpretation of the public interest, convenience, or necessity clause of the radio act, which were invoked in reaching decisions in cases recently heard of radio broadcasting stations whose public service was challenged. The commission's statement follows:
Public interest, convenience, or necessity The only standard (other than the Davis amendment) which. Congress furnished to the commission for its guidance in the determination of the complicated questions which arise in connection with the granting of licenses and the renewal or modification of existing licenses is the rather broad one of "public interest, convenience, or necessity." ... . . . No -attempt is made anywhere in the act to define the term "public interest, convenience, or necessity," nor is any illustration given of its proper application. The commission is of the opinion that Congress, in enacting the Davis amendment, did not intend to repeal or do away with this standard. While the· primary purpose of the Davis amendment is to bring about equality as between the zones, it does not require the commission to grant any application which does not serve public interest, convenience, or necessity simply because the application happens to proceed from a zone or State that is under its quota. The equality is not to be brought about by sacrificing the standard. On the other hand, where a particular zone or State is over its quota, it is true that the commission may on occasions be forced to deny an application the granting of which might, in its opinion, serve public interest, convenience, or necessity. The Davis amendment may, therefore, be viewed as a partial limitation upon the power of the commission in applying the standard. The cases which the commission has considered as a result of General Order No. 32 are all cases in which it has had before it applications for renewals
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51
of station licenses. Under section 2 of the act the commission is given full power and authority to follow the procedure adhered to in these cases, when it has been unable to reach a decision that granting a particular application would serve public interest, convenience, or necessity. In fact, the entire radio act of 1927 makes it clear that no renewal of a license is to be granted, unless the commission shall find that public interest, convenience, or necessity will be served. The fact that all of these stations have been licensed by the commission from time to time in the past, and the further fact that most of them were licensed prior to the enactment of the radio act of 1927 by the Secretary of Commerce, do not, in the opinion of the commission, demonstrate that the continued existence of such stations will serve public interest, convenience, or necessity. The issuance of a previous license by the commission is not in any event to be regarded as a finding further than for the duration of the limited period covered by the license (usually 90 days). There have been a variety of considerations to which the commission was entitled to give weight. For example, when the commission first entered upon its duties it found in existence a large number of stations, much larger than could satisfactorily operate simultaneously and permit good radio reception. Nevertheless, in order to avoid injustice and in order ~o give the commission an opportunity to determine which stations were best serving the public, it was perfectly consistent for the commission to relicense all of these stations for limited periods. It was in the public interest that a fair test should be conducted to determine which stations were rendering the best service. Furthermore, even if the relicensing of a station in the past would be some indication that it met the test, there is no reason why the United States Government, the commission, or the radio-listening public should be bound by a mistake which has been made in the past. There were no hearings preliminary to granting these licenses in the past, and it can hardly be said that the issue has been adjudicated in any of the cases . The commission has been urged to give a precise definition of the phrase "public interest, convenience, or necessity," and in the course of the hearings has been frequently criticized for not having done so. It has also been urged that the statute itself is unconstitutional because of the alleged uncertainly and indefiniteness of the phrase. So far as the generality of the phrase is concerned, it is no less certain or definite than other phrases which have found their way into Federal statutes and which have been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. An example is"unfair methods of competition." To be able to arrive at a precise definition of such a phrase which will foresee all eventualities is manifestly impossible. The phrase will have to be defined by the United States Supreme Court, and this will probably be done by a gradual process of decisions on particular combinations of fact. It must be remembered that the standard provided by the act applies not only to broadcasting stations but to each type of radio station which must be licensed, including point-to-point communication, experimental, amateur, ship, airplane, and other kinds of stations. Any definition must be broad enough to
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DOCUMENTS OF AMERICAN BROADCASTIN G
include all of these and yet must be elastic enough to permit of defmite application to each. It is, however, possible to state a few general principles which have demonstrated themselves in the course of the experience of the commission and · which are applicable to the broadcasting band. In the first place, the commission has no hesitation in stating that it is in the public interest, convenience, . and necessity that a substantial band of frequencies be set aside for the exclusive use of broadcasting stations and the radio listening public, and under the present circumstances believes that the band of 550 to 1,500 kilocycles meets that test. In the second place, the commission is convinced that public interest, convenience, or necessity will be served by such action on the part of the commission as will bring about the best possible broadcasting reception conditions throughout the United States. By good conditions the commission means freedom from interference of various types as well as good quality in the operation of the broadcasting station. So far as possible, the various types of interference, such as heterodyning, cross talk, and blanketing must be avoided. The commission is convinced that the intere~t of the broadcast listener is of superior importance to that of the broadcaster and that it is better that there should be a few less broadcasters than that the listening public should suffer from undue interference. It is unfortunate that irt the past the most vociferous public expression has been made by broadcasters or by persons speaking in their behalf and the real voice of the listening public has not sufficiently been heard. The commission is furthermore convinced that within the band of frequencies devoted to broadcasting, public interest, convenience, or necessity will be best served by a fair distribution of different types of service. Without attempting to determine how many channels should be devoted to the various types of service, the commission feels that a certain number should be devoted to stations so equipped and financed as to permit the giving of a high .order of service over as large a territory as possible. This is the only manner in which the distant listener in the rural and sparsely.settled portions of the country wiii be reached. A certain number of other channels should be given over to stations which desire to reach a more limited region and as to which there will be large intermediate areas in whic~ there will be objectionable interference. Finally, there should be a provision for stations which are distinctly local in character and which aim to serve only the smaller towns in the United States without any attempt to reach listeners beyond the immediate vicinity of such towns. The commission also believes that public interest, convenience, or necessity will be best served by avoiding too much duplication of programs and types of programs. Where one community is underserved and another community is receiving duplication of the same order of programs, the second community should be restricted in order to benefit the first. Where one type of service is· being rendered by several stations in the same region, consideration
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should be given to a station which renders a type of service which is not such a duplication. In view of the paucity of channels, the commission is of the opinion that the limited facilities for broadcasting should not be shared with stations which give the sort of service which is readily available to the public in another form. For example, the public in large cities can easily purchase and use phonograph records of the ordinary commercial type. A station which devotes the main portion of its hours of operation to broadcasting such phonograph records is not giving the public anything which it can not readily have without such a station. If, in addition to this, the station is located in a city where there are large resources in program material, the continued operation of the station means that some other station is being kept out of existence which might put to use such original program material. The commission realizes that the situation is not the same in some of the smaller towns and farming communities, where such program resources are not available. Without placing the stamp of approval on the use of phonograph records under such circumstances, the commission will not go so far at present as to state that the practice is at all times and under all conditions a violation of the test provided by the statute. It may be also that the development of special. phonograph records will take such a form that the result can be made available by broadcasting only ;md not available to the public commercially, and if such proves to be the case the commission will take the fact into consideration. The commission can not close its eyes to the fact that the real purpose of the use of phonograph records in most communities is to provide a cheaper method of advertising for advertisers who.are thereby saved the expense of providing an original program. While it is true that broadcasting stations in this country are for the most or partially supported by advertisers, broadcasting stations are supported part not given these great privileges by the United States G>vernment for the primary benefit of advertisers. Such benefit as is derived by advertisers must be incidental and entirely secondary to the interest of the public. The same question arises in another connection. Where the station is used for the broadcasting of a considerable amount of what is called "direct advertising," including the quoting of merchandise prices, the advertising is usually offensive to the listening public. Advertising should be only incidental to some real service rendered to the public, and not the main object of a program. The commission realizes that in some .communities, particularly in the State of Iowa, there seems to exist a strong sentiment in favor of such advertising on the part of the listening public. At least the broadcasters in that community have succeeded in maki~g an impressive demonstration before the commission on each occasion when the matter has come up for discussion. The commission is not fully convinced that it has heard both sides of the matter, but is willing to concede that in some localities the quoting of direct merchandise prices may serve as a sort of local market, and in that community a service may thus be
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rendered. That such is not the case generally, however, the commission knows from thousands and thousands of letters which it has had from all over the country complaining of.such practices. Another question which must be taken seriously is the location of the transmitter of the station. This is properly a question of interference. Generally speaking, it is not in the public interest, convenience, or necessity for a station of substantial power (500 wa~ts or more) to be located in the midst or a thickly inhabited community. The question of the proper location of a station with respect to its power is a complicated one and can not here be discussed in detail. Obviously it is desirable that a station serving a particular community or region should cover that community or region with a signal strong enough to constitute adequate service. It is also desirable that the ~ignal be not so strong as to blanket reception from other stations operating on other frequencies. There is a certain amount of blanketing in the vicinity of every transmitter, even one of 5, 10, or 50 watts. The frequencies used by stations in the same geographical region can be widely enough sepanited, however, so that the blanketing will not be serious from a transmitter of less than 500 watts, even when located in a thickly inhabited community. With stations of that amount of power, or greater, the problem becomes a serious one. In order to serve the whole of a large metropolitan area a 500-watt !:tation has barely sufficient power even when it is located in the center· of the area. If its transmitter is located away from the thickly inhabited portions and out in the country it will not give satisfactory service. Such an area can only be adequately served, without blanketing, by stations of greater power locatedin sparsely settled portions of the near-by country. Theoretically, therefore, it may be said that it will not serve public interest,. convenience, or necessity to permit the location of a low-powered station in a large city. It can not hope to serve the entire city, and yet it renders the frequency useless for the listeners of the city outside of the small area immediately surrounding the station. On the other hand, such a station might give very good service to a small town or city. The commission is furthermore convinced that in applying the test of public interest, convenience, or necessity, it may consider the character of the licensee or applicant, his financial responsibility, andhis past record, in order to determine whether he is more or less likely to fulftll the trust imposed by the license than others who are seeking the same privilege from the same community, State, or zone. A word of warning must be given to those broadcasting (of which there have been all too many) who consume much of the valuable time allotted to them under their licenses in matters of a distinctly private nature, which are not only uninteresting but also distasteful to the listening public. Such is the case where two rival broadcasters in the same community spend their time in abusing each other over the air.
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A station which does not operate on a regular schedule made known to the public through announcements in the press or otherwise is not rendering a service which meets the test of the law. If the radio listener does not know whether or not a particular station is broadcasting, or what its program will be, but must rely on the whim of the broadcaster and on chance in tuning his dial at the proper time, the service is not such as to justify the commission in licensing such a broadcaster as against one who will give a regular service of which the public is properly advised. A fortiori, where a licensee does not use his transmitter at all and broadcasts his programs, if at all, over some other transmitter separately licensed, he is not rendering any service. It is also improper that the zone and State in which his station is located should be charged with a license under such conditions in connection with the quota of that zone and that State under the Davis amendment. A broadcaster who is not sufficiently concerned with the public's interest in good radio reception to provide his transmitter with an adequate control or check on its frequency is not entitled to a license. The commission in allowing a latitude of 500 cycles has been very lenient and will necessarily have to reduce this margin in the future. Instability in frequency means that the radio-listening public is subjected to increased interference by heterodyne (and, in some cases, cross-talk) on adjacent channels as well as on the assigned channels. In conclusion, the commission desires to point out that the test - "public interest, convenience, or necessity" - becomes a matter of a comparative and not an absolute standard when applied to broadcasting stations. Since the number of channels is limited and the number of persons desiring to broadcast is far greater than can be accommodated, the commission must determine from among the applicants before it which of them will, if licensed, best serve the public. In a measure, perhaps, all of them give more or less service. Those who give the least, however, must be sacrificed for those who give the most. The emphasis must be first and foremost on the interest, the convenience, and the necessity of the listening public, and not on the interest, convenience, or necessity of the individual broadcaster or the advertiser.
Related Reading
106. Holt, Darrel, "The Origin of 'Public Interest' in Broadcasting," Educational Broadcasting Review, 1, No. 1 (October 1967), 15-19. 131. Le Due, Don R., and Thomas A. McCain, 'The Federal Radio Commission in Federal Court: Origins of Broadcast Regulatory Doctrines," Journal of Broadcasting, 14, No. 4 (Fall 1970), 393-410.
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The Great Lakes statement also contains the germ of what was promulgated as the "Fairness Doctrine" 20 years later (see Document 22, pp. 217-231). lt is clear that by 1929 the FRC had come to view advertising as the economic backbone of broadcasting and was prepared to accept it as an inevitability, within bounds. The last sentence of the statement alludes to listeners' councils, which were the forerunners of the citizens groups of today.
[14]
The Great Lakes Statement
Related Reading: 106,118,131,187.
In the Matter of the Application of Great Lakes Broadcasting Co. FRC Docket No. 4900 3 FRC Ann. Rep. 32 (1929) The FRC reconstructed its interpretation of the public interest in this early comparative hearing proceeding. The reformulation was unaffected by a court remand [Great Lakes Broadcasting Company eta/. v.Federal Radio Commission, 37 F.2d 993 (D.C. Cir. 1930); cert. dismissed 281 U.S. 706]. The 1927 Radio Act's "public interest, convenience, or necessity" phrase was derived from public utility law. The Great Lakes statement gives detailed treatment to the contention that although broadcasting was a type of utility, radio stations were not to be thought of as common carriers. This principle was given legislative affirmation in 1934 when Section 3(h) was included in the Communications Act. The statement is noteworthy for its emphasis on the requirement that radio stations carry diverse and balanced programming to serve the "tastes, needs, and desires" of the general public. This has been an underlying premise of subsequent FCC programming pronouncements, including the currently applied 1960 statement (see Document 26, pp. 262-278). Although the force of this principle has been moderated with respect to the vastly expanded AM and FM radio services, its vigor remains unabated for television broadcasting. 56
... Broadcasting stations are licensed to serve the public and not for the purpose of furthering the private or selfish interests of individuals or groups of individuals. The standard of public interest, convenience, or necessity means nothing if it does not mean this. The only exception that can be made to this rule has to do with advertising; the exception, however, is only apparent because advertising furnishes the economic support for the service and thus makes it possible. As will be pointed out below, the amount and character ofadve~tising must be rigidly confined within the limits consistent with the public service expected of the station. The service to be rendered by a station may be viewed from two angles, {I) as an instrument for the communication of intelligence of various kinds to the general public by persons wishing to transmit such intelligence, or (2) as an instrument for the purveying of intangible commodities consisting of entertainment, instruction, education, and information to a listening public. As an instrument for the communication of intelligence, a broadcasting station has frequently been compared to other forms of communication, such as wire telegraphy or telephony, or point-to-point wireless telephony or telegraphy, with the obvious distinction that the messages from a broadcasting station are addressed to and received by the general public, whereas toll messages in point-to-point service are addressed to single persons and attended by safeguards to preserve their confidential nature. If the analogy were pursued with the usual legal incidents, a broadcasting station would have to accept and transmit for all persons on an equal basis without discrimination in charge, and according to rates fixed by a governmental body; this obligation would extend to anything and everything any member of the public might desire to communicate to the listening public, whether it consist of music, propaganda, reading, advertising, or what-not. The public would be deprived of the advantage of the self-imposed censorship exercised by the program directors of broadcasting stations who, for the sake of the popularity and standing of their stations, will select entertainment and educational features according to the needs and desires of their invisible audiences. In the present state of the art there is no way of increasing the number of stations without great injury to the listening public, and yet
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thousands of stations might be necessary to accommodate all the individuals who insist on airing their views through the microphone. If there are many such persons, as there undoubtedly are, the results would be, first, to crowd most or all of the better programs off the air, and second, to create an almost insoluble problem, i.e., how to choose from among an excess of applicants who shall be given time to address the public and who shall exercise the power to make such a choice. To pursue the analogy of telephone and telegraph public utilities is, therefore, to emphasize the right of the sender of messages to the detriment of the listening public. The commission believes that such an analogy is a mistaken one when applied to broadcasting stations; the emphasis should be on the receiving of service and the standard of public interest, convenience or necessity should be construed accordingly. This point of view does not take broadcasting stations out of the category of public utilities or relieve them of corresponding obligations; it simply assimilates them to a different group of public utilities, i.e., those engaged in purveying commodities to the general public, such, for example, as heat, water, light, and power companies, whose duties are to consumers, just as the duties of broadcasting stations are to listeners. The commodity may be intangible but so is electric light; the broadcast program has become a vital part of daily life. Just as heal, water, light, and power companies use franchises obtained from city or State to bring their commodities through pipes, conduits, or wires over public highways to the home, so a broadcasting station uses a franchise from the Federal Government to bring its commodity over a channel through the ether to the home. The Government does not try to tell a public utility such as an electric-light company that it must obtain its materials such as coal or wire, from all corners on equal terms; it is not interested so long as the service rendered in the form of light is good. Similarly, the commission believes that the Government is interested mainly in seeing to it that the program service of broadcasting stations is good, i.e., in accordance with the standard of public interest, convenience, or necessity. · It may be said that the law has already written an exception into the foregoing viewpoint in that, by section 18 of the radio act of 1927, a broadcasting station is required to afford equal opportunities for use of the station to all candidates for a public office if it permits any of the candidates to use the station. It will be noticed, however, that in the same section it is provided that "no obligation is hereby imposed upon any licensee to allow the use of its station by any such candidate." This is not only not inconsistent with, but on the contrary it supports, the commission's viewpoint. Again the emphasis is on the listening public, not on the sender of the message. It would not be fair, indeed it would not be good service to the public to allow a one-sided presentation of the political issues of a campaign. In so far as a program consists of discussion of public questions, public interest requires ample play for the free and fair competition of opposing views, and the commission believes that the principle applies not only to addresses by political candidates but to all
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discussions of issues of importance to the public. The great majority of broadcasting stations are, the commission is glad to ·say, already tacitly recognizing a broader duty than the law imposes upon them .... An indispensable condition to good service by any station is, of course, rrodern efficient:apparatus, equipped with all devices necessary to insure fidelity in the transmission of voice and music and to avoid frequency instability or other causes of interference .... There are a few negative guides to the evaluation of broadcasting stations. First of these in importance are the injunctions of the statute itself, such, for example, as the requirement for nondiscrimination between political candidates and the prohibition against the utterance of "any obscene, indecent, or profane language" (sec. 29). In the same connection may be mentioned rules and regulations of the commission, including the requirements as to the announcing of call letters am as to the accurate description of mechanical reproductions (such as phonograph records) in announcements .... For more positive guides the commission again finds itself persuaded of the applicability of doctrines analogous to those governing the group of public utilities to which reference has already been made. If the viewpoint is found that the service to the listening public is what must be kept in contemplation in construing the legal standard with reference to broadcasting stations, the service must first of all be continuous during hours when the public usually listens, and must be on a schedule upon which the public may rely .... Furthermore, the service rendered by broadcasting stations must be without discrimination as between its listeners. Obviously, in a strictly physical sense, a station can not discriminate so as to furnish its programs to one listener and not to another;. in this respect it is a public utility by virtue of the laws of nature. Even were it technically possible, as it may easily be as the art progresses, so to design both transmitters and receiving sets that the signals emitted by a particular transmitter can be received only by a particular kind of receiving set not available to the general public, the commission would not allow channels in the broadcast band to be used in such fashion. By the same token, it is proceeding very cautiously in permitting television in the broadcast band because, during the hours of such transmission, the great majority of the public audience in the service area of the station, not being equipped to receive television signals, are deprived of the use of the channel. TI1erc is, however, a deeper significance to the principle of nondiscrimination which the commission believes may well furnish the basic formula for the evaluation of broadcasting stations. The entire listening public wilhin I he service area of a station, or of a group of stations in one community, is entitled to service from that station or stations. If, therefore, all the programs lransmilted are intended for, and interesting or valuable to, only a small portion of that public, the rest of the listeners are being discriminated against. This does not mean that every individual is entitled to his exact preference in program items. ll does mean, in the opinion of the commission, that the tastes, needs, and desires
298
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of all substantial groups among the listening public should be met, in some fair proportion, by a well-rounded program, in which entertainment, consisting of music of both classical and lighter grades, religion, education and instruction, important public events, discussions of public questions, weather, market reports, and news, and matters of interest to all members of the family find a place. With so few channels in the spectrum and so few hours in the day, there are obvious limitations on the emphasis which can appropriately be placed on any portion of the program. There are parts of the day and of the evening when one type of service is more appropriate, than another. There are differences between communities as to the need for one type as against another. The commission does not propose to erect a rigid schedule specifying the hours or minutes that may be devoted to one kind of program or another. What it wishes to emphasize is the general character which it believes must be conformed to by a station in order to best serve the public .... In such a scheme there is no room for the operation of broadcasting stations exclusively by or in the private interests of individuals or groups so far as the nature of the programs is concerned. There is not room in the broadcast band for every school of thought, religious, political, social, and economic, each to have its separate broadcasting station, its mouthpiece in the ether. If franchises are extended to some it gives them an unfair advantage over others, and results in a corresponding cutting down of general public-service stations. It favors the interests and desires of a portion of the listening public at the expense of the rest. Propaganda stations (a term which is here used for the sake of convenience and not in a derogatory sense) are not consistent with the most beneficial sort of discussion of public questions. As a general rule, postulated on the laws of nature as well as on the standard of public interest, convenience, or necessity, particular doctrines, creeds, and beliefs must find their way into the market of ideas by the existing public-service stations, and if they are of sufficient importance to the listening public the microphone will undoubtedly be available. If it is not, a well-founded complaint will receive the careful consideration of the commission in its future action with reference to the station complained of. The contention may be made that propaganda stations are as well able as other stations to accompany their messages with entertainment and other program features of interest to the public. Even if this were true, the fact remains that the station is used for what is essentially a private purpose for a substantial portion of the time and in addition, is constantly subject to the very human temptation not to be fair to opposing schools of thought and their representatives. By and large, furthermore, propaganda stations do not have the financial resources nor do they have the standing and popularity with the public necessary to obtain the best results in programs of general interest. The contention may also be made that to follow out the commission's viewpoint is to make unjustifiable concessions to what is popular at the expense of what is
The Political Economy of the Media II The Great Lakes Statement
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important and serious. This bears on a consideration which the commission realizes must always be kept carefully in mind and in so far as it has power under the law it will do so in its reviews of the records of particular stations. A defect, if there is any, however, would not be remedied by a one-sided presentation of a controversial subject, no matter how serious. The commission has great confidence in the sound judgment of the listening public, however, as to what types of programs are in its own best interest. If the question were now raised for the first time, after the commission has given careful study to it, the commission would not license any propaganda station, at least, to an exclusive position on a cleared channel. Unfortunately, under the law in force prior to the radio act of 1927 (see particularly Hoover v. Intercity Rad.io Co., 286 Fed. 1003), the Secretary of Commerce had no power to distinguish between kinds of applicants and it was not possible to foresee the present situation and its problems. Consequently there are and have been for a long time in existence a number of stations operated by religious or similar organizations. Certain enterprising organizations, quick to see the possibilities of radio and anxious to present their creeds to the public, availed themselves of license privileges from the earlier days of broadcasting, and now have good records and a certain degree of popularity among listeners. The commission feels that the situation must be dealt with on a common-sense basis. It does not ~eem just to deprive such stations of all right to operation and the question must be solved on a comparative basis. While the commission is of the opinion that a broadcasting station engaged in general public service has, ordinarily, a claim to preference over a propaganda station, it will apply this principle as to existing stations by giving preferential facilities to the former and assigning less desirable positions to the latter to the extent that engineering principles permit. In. rare cases it is possible to combine a general public-service station and a high-class religious station in a division of time which will approximate a well-rounded program. In other cases religious stations must accept part time on inferior channels or on daylight assignments where they are still able to transmit during the hours when religious services are usually expected by the listening public. It may be urged that the same reasoning applies to advertising. In a sense this is true. The commission must, however, recognize that, without advertising, broadcasting would not exist, and must confine itself to limiting this advertising in amount and in character so as to preserve the largest possible amount of service for the public. The advertising must, of course, be presented as such and not under the guise of other forms on the same principle that the newspaper must not present advertising as news. It will be recognized and accepted for what it is on suCh a basis, whereas propaganda is difficult to recognize. If a rule against advertising were enforced, the public would be deprived of millions of dollars worth of programs which are being given out entirely by concerns simply for the resultant good will which is believed to accrue to the broadcaster or the advertiser by the announcement of his name and business in connection with
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programs. Advertising must be accepted for the present as the sole means of support for broadcasting, and regulation must be relied upon to prevent the abuse and overuse of the privilege. It may be urged that if what has heretofore been said is law, the listening public is left at the mercy of the broadcaster. Even if this were so, the commission doubts that any iJ:nprovement would be effected by placing the public at the mercy of each individual in turn who desired to communicate his hobby, his theory, or his grievance over the microphone, or at the mercy of every advertiser without regard to the standing either of himself or his product. That it is not so, however, is demonstrable from two considerations. In the first place, the listener has a complete power of censorship by turning his dial away from a program which he does not like; this results in a keen appreciation by the broadcaster of the necessity of pleasing a large portion of his listeners· if he is to hold. his audience, and of not .displeasing, annoying, or offending the sensibilities of any substantial portion of the public. His failure or success is immediately reflected on the telephone and in the mail, and he knows that the same reaction to his programs will reach the licensing authority. In the second place, the licensing authority will have occasion, both in connection with renewals of his license and in connection with applications of others for his. privileges, to review his past performances and to determine whether he has met with the standard. A safeguard which some of the leading stations employ, and which appeals to the commission as a wise precaution, is the association with the station of an advisory board made up of men and women whose character, standing, and occupations will insure a well-rounded program best calculated to serve the greatest portion of the population in the region to be served.
Related Reading 106. Holt, Darrel, 'The Origin of 'Public Interest' in Broadcasting," Educational Broadcasting Review, 1, No. 1 (October 1967), 15-19. 118. Kahn, Frank J., 'The Quasi-Utility Basis for Broadcast Regulation," Journal of Broadcasting, 18, No.3 (Summer 1974), 259-276. 131. Le Due, Don R., and Thomas A. McCain, 'The Federal Radio Commission in Federal Court: Origins of Broadcast Regulatory Doctrines," Journal of Broadcasting, 14, No. 4 (Fall 1970), 393-410. 187. Rosenbloom, Joel, "Authority of the Federal Communications Commission" in Freedom and Responsibilty in Broadcasting, ed., John E. Coons. ' Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1961.
[15]
The ''Vast Wasteland'' Address by Newton N. Minow to the National Association of Broadcasters, Washington, D.C. * May 9, 1961 Newton N. Minow served only 28 months as FCC Ch~irman but no commissioner before or since matched his impa~t on' the general p~blic and broadcasting. A Chicago lawyer and associate of Adlai E. Stevenson, Minow was named to the Commission early in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy. He resigned in the middle of 1963 to take a more lucrative legal position in private industry. This speech alarmed broadcasters, made newspaper headlines, and evoked favorable public response and comment in the print media. It signaled the. start of a new regulatory activism and an end to the corruption that riddled the FCC in the closing years of the Eisenhower administration, when two commissioners (including a ch'!irman) were forced to resign because of their scandalous dealings with some of the broadcasters they were supposed to regulate. Some aspects of Minow's regulatory program, outlined in this address, attracted wide support and were realized in the following 2 years. Educational television station construction was given a $32 million boost when Congress passed the "ETV Facilities Act of 1962" (Public Law 87-447, approved May 1, 1962). The prospects for UHF television brightened with enactment of the "All Channel Receiver Law" (Public Law 87-529, approved July 10, 1962) which added Sections 303(s) and 330 to the *Reprinted with permission from Newton N. Minow, Equal Time: The Private Broadcaster and the Public Interest, ed. Lawrence Laurent (New York: Atheneum, 1964 ), pp.48-64. 281
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Communications Act (see pp. 526 and 543). But protection of Pay TV from infanticide and reduction of broadcast advertising excesses were among the regulatory objectives Minow failed to achieve because of his short stay in office and the shifting··regulatory climate following his departure. lt was Minow's outspoken discontent with television programming and his vow to lead the FCC to review broadcast content more closely when acting on license renewals that made broadcasters apprehensive. Anxious not to find out if the Chairman really meant what he said, networks and stations alike attempted to make the "vast wasteland" bloom with more public affairs programs, improved children's offerings, and a de-emphasis on violent action shows. The change proved to be as temporary as Minow's tenure at the FCC. More lasting was the technique of "regulation by raised eyebrow" that Minow used with considerable success in this speech and which his successors have continued to employ in the delicate area of broadcast programming with varied results. Related Reading: 3, 64,127,156,171,187 ,198,238.
Governor Collins, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen: Thank you for this opportunity to meet with you today. This is my fust public address since I took over my new job. When the New Frontiersmen rode into town, I locked myself in my office to do my homework and get my feet wet. But apparently I haven't managed to stay out of hot water. I seem to have detected a certain nervous apprehension about what I might say or do when I emerged from that locked office for this, my maiden station break. First, let me begin by dispelling a rumor. I was not picked for this job because I regard myself as the fastest draw on the New Frontier. Second, let me start a rumor. Like you, I have carefully read President Kennedy's messages about the regulatory agencies, conflict of interest and the dangers of ex parte contacts. And of course, we at the Federal Communications Commission will do our part. Indeed, I may even suggest that we change the name of the FCC to The Seven Untouchables! It may also come as a surpri~e to some of you, but I want you to know that you have my admiration and respect. Yours is a most honorable profession. Anyone who is in the broadcasting business has a tough row to hoe. You earn your bread by using public property. When you work in broadcasting, you volunteer for public service, public pressure and public regulation. You must compete with other attractions and other investments, and the only way you can do it is to
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prove to us every three years that you should have been in business in the first place. I can think ofeasier ways to make a living. But I cannot think of more satisfying ways. I admire your courage-but that doesn't mean I would make life any easier for you. Your license lets you use the public's airwaves as trustees for 180 million Americans. The public is your beneficiary. If you want to stay on as trustees, you must deliver a decent return to the public-not only to your stockholders. So, as a representative of the public, your health and your product are among my chief concerns. As to your health: let's talk only of television today. In 1960 gross broadcast revenues of the television industry were over $1 ,268,000,000; profit before taxes was $243,900,000-an average return on revenue of 19.2 per cent. Compare this with 1959, when gross broadcast revenues were $1,163,900,000, and profit before taxes was $222,300,000, an average return on revenue of 19.1 per cent. So, the percentage increase of total revenues from 1959 to 1960 was 9 per cent, and the percentage increase of profit was 9.7 per cent. This, despite a recession. For your investors, the price has indeed been right. I have confidence in your health. But not in your product. It is with this and much more in mind that I come before you today. One editorialist in the trade press wrote that "the FCC of the New Frontier is going to be one of the toughest FCC's in the history of broadcast regulation." If he meant that we intend to enforce the law in the public interest, let me make it perfectly clear that he is right-we do. If he meant that we intend to muzzle or censor broadcasting, he is dead · wrong. It would not surprise me if some of you had expected me to come here today and say in effect, "Clean up your own house or the government will do it for you." Well, in a limited sense, you would be right-I've just said it. But I want to say to you earnestly that it is not in that spirit that I come before you today, nor is it in that spirit that I intend to serve the FCC. I am in Washington to help broadcasting, not to harm it; to strengthen it, not weaken it; to reward it, not punish it; to encourage it, not threaten it; to stimulate it, not censor it. Above all, I am here to uphold and protect the public interest. What do we mean by ''the public interest"? Some say the public interest is merely what interests the public. I disagree. So does your distinguished president, Governor Collins. In a recent speech he said, "Broadcasting, to serve the public ·interest, must have a soul and a conscience, a burning desire to excel, as well as to sell; the urge to build the charac-
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ter, citizenship and intellectual stature of people, as well as to expand the gross national product. . . . By no means do I imply that broadcasters disregard the public interest. ... But a much better job can be done, and should be done." I could not agree more. And I would add that in today's world, with chaos in Laos and the Congo aflame, with Communist tyranny on our Caribbean doorstep and relentless • pressure on our Atlantic alliance, with social and economic problems at home of the gravest nature, yes, and with technological knowledge that makes it possible, as our President has said, not only to destroy our world but to destroy poverty around the world-in a time of peril and opportunity, the old complacent, unbalanced fare of action-adventure and situation comedies is simply not good enough. Your industry possesses the most powerful voice in America. It has an in· escapable duty to make that voice ring with intelligence and with leadership. In a few years this exciting industry has grown from a novelty to an instrument of overwhelming impact on the American people. It should be making ready for the kind of leadership that newspapers and magazines assumed years ago, to make our people aware of tl).eir world. Ours has been called .the jet age, the atomic age, the space age. It is also, I submit, the television age. And just as history will decide whether the leaders of today's world employed the atom to destroy the world or rebuild it for mankind's benefit, so will history decide whether today's broadcasters employed their powerful voice to enrich the people or debase them. If I seem today to address myself chiefly to the problems of television, I don't want any of you radio broadcasters to think we've gone to sleep at your switch-we haven't. We still listen. But in recent years most of the controversies and crosscurrents in broadcast programing have swirled around television. And so my subject today is the television industry and the public interest. Like everybody, I wear more than one hat. I am the Chairman of the FCC. I am also a television viewer and the husband and father of other television viewers. I have seen a great many television programs that seemed to me eminently worthwhile, and I am not talking about the much-bemoaned good old days of "Playhouse 90" and "Studio One." I am talking about this past season. Some were wonderfully entertaining, such as "The Fabulous Fifties,'' the "Fred Astaire Show" and the "Bing Crosby Special"; some were dramatic and moving, such as Conrad's ''Victory" and "Twilight Zone"; some were marvelously informative, such as "The Nation's Future," "CBS Reports," and "The Valiant Years." I could list many more-programs that I am sure everyone here felt enriched his own life and that of his family. When television is good, nothing-not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers-nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit-arid-loss sheet or rating book to distract
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you-and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland. You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western badmen, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials-many screaming, cajoling and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you will see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, try it. Is there one person in this room who claims that broadcasting can't do better? Well, a glance at next season's proposed programing can give us little heart. Of seventy-three and a half hours of prime evening time, the networks have tentatively scheduled fifty-nine hours to categories of "action-adventure," situation comedy, variety, quiz and movies. Is there one network president in this room who claims he can't do better? Well, is there at least one network president who believes that the other networks can't do better? Gentlemen, your trust accounting with your beneficiaries is overdue. Never have so few owed so much to so many. Why is so much of television so bad? I have heard many answers: demands of your advertisers; competition for ever higher ratings; the need always to attract a mass audience; the high cost of television programs; the insatiable appetite for programing material-:-these are some of them. Unquestionably these are tough problems not susceptible to easy answers. But I am not convinced that you have tried hard enough to solve them. I do not accept the idea that the present over-all programing is aimed accurately at the public taste. The ratings tell us only that some people have their television sets turned on, and of that number, so many are tuned to one channel and so many to another. They don't tell us what the public might watch if they were offered half a dozen additional choices. A rating, at best, is an indication of how many people saw what you gave them. Unfortunately it does not reveal the depth of the penetration, or the intensity of reaction, and it never reveals what the acceptance would have been if what you gave them had been better-if all the forces of art and creativity and daring and imagination had been unleashed. I believe in the people's good sense and good taste, and I am not convinced that the people's taste is as low as some of you assume. My concern with the rating services is not with their accuracy. Perhaps they are accurate. I really don't know. What, then, is wrong with the ratings? It's not been their accuracy-it's been their use. Certainly I hope you will agree that ratings should have little influence where children are concerned. The best estimates indicate that during the hours of 5 to 6 P.M., 60 per cent of your audience is composed of children under twelve. And most young children today, believe it or not, spend as much time watching television as they do in the schoolroom. I repeat-let that sink in-most young chil-
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dren today spend as much time watching television as they do in the schoolroom. It used to be said that there were three great influences on a child: home, school and church. Today there is a fourth great influence, and you ladies and gentlemen control it. If parents, teachers and ministers conducted their responsibilities by following the ratings, children would have a steady diet of ice cream, school holidays and no Sunday School. What about your responsibilities? Is there no room on television to teach, to inform, to uplift, to stretch, to enlarge the capacities of our children? Is there no room for progran1s deepening their understanding of children in other lands? Is there no room for a children's news show explaining something about the world to them at their level of understanding? Is there no room for reading the great literature of the past, teaching them the great traditions of freedom? There are some fme children's shows·, but they are drowned out in the massive doses of cartoons, violence and more violence. Must these be your trademarks? Search your consciences and see if you carmot offer more to your young beneficiaries, whose future you guide so many hours each and every day. What about adult prograrning and ratings? You know, newspaper publishers take popularity ratings too. The answers are pretty clear; it is almost always the comics, followed by the advice-to-the-lovelorn columns. But, ladies and gentlemen, the news is still on the front page of all newspapers, the editorials are not replaced by more comics, the newspapers have not become one long collection of advice to the lovelorn. Yet newspapers do not need a license from the government to be in business-they do not use public property. But in televisionwhere your responsibilities as public trustees are so plain-the moment that the ratings indicate that Westerns are popular, there are new inlitations of Westerns on the air faster than tl1e old coaxial cable could take us from Hollywood to New York. Broadcasting carmot continue to live by the numbers. Ratings ought to be the slave of the broadcaster, not his master. And you and I both know that the rating services themselves would agree. Let me make clear that what I am talking about is balance. I believe that the public interest is made up of many interests. There are many people in this great country, and you must serve all of us. You will get no argument from me if you say that, given a choice between a Western and a symphony, more people will watch the Western. I like Westerns and private eyes too-but a steady diet for the whole country is obviously not in the public interest. We all know that people would more often prefer to be entertained than stimulated or informed.· But your obligations are not satisfied if you look only to popularity as a test of what to broadcast. You are not only in show business; you are free to communicate ideas as well as relaxation. You must provide a wider range of choices, more diversity, more alternatives. It is not enough to cater to the nation's whims-you must also serve the nation's needs. And I would add this-that if some of you persist in a relentless search for the highest rating arid the lowest common denominator, you may very well lose
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your audience. Because, to paraphrase a great Anlerican who was recently my law partner, the people are wise, wiser than some of the broadcasters-and politicians-think. As you may have gathered, I would like to see television improved. But how is this to be brought about? By voluntary action by the broadcasters themselves? By direct government intervention? Or how? Let me address myself now to my role, not as a viewer, but as Chairman of the FCC. I could not if I would chart for you this afternoon in detail all of the actions I contemplate. Instead, I want to make clear some of the fundamental principles which guide me. First: the people own the air. They own it as much in prime evening time as they do at 6 o'clock Sunday morning. For every hour that the people give you,. you owe them something. I intend to see that your debt is paid with service. Second: I think it would be foolish and wasteful for us to continue any worn-out wrangle over the problems of payola, rigged quiz shows, and other mistakes of the past. There are laws on the books which we will enforce. But there is no chip on iny shoulder. We live together in perilous, uncertain times; we face together staggering problems; and we must not waste much time now by rehashing the cliches of past controversy. To quarrel over the past is to lose the future. Third: I believe in the free enterprise system. I want to see broadcasting improved and I want you to do the job. I am proud to champion your cause. It is not rare for Anlerican businessmen to serve a public trust. Yours is a special trust because it is imposed by law. Fourth: I will do all I can to help educational television. There are still not enough educational stations, and major centers of the country still lack usable educational channels. If there were a limited number of printing presses in this country, you may be sure that a fair proportion of them would be put to educational use. Educational television has an enormous contribution to make to the future, and I intend to give it a hand along the way. If there is not a nationwide educational television system in this country, it will not be the fault of the FCC. Fifth: I am unalterably opposed to governmental censorship. There will be no suppression of prograrning which does not meet with bureaucratic tastes. Censorship strikes at the taproot of our free society. Sixth: I did not come to Washington to idly observe the squandering of the public's airwaves. The squandering of our airwaves is no less important than the lavish waste of any precious natural resource. I intend to take the job or Chairman of the FCC very seriously. I believe in the gravity of my own particular sector of the New Frontier. There will be times perhaps when you will consider that I take myself or my job too seriously. Frankly, I don't care if you do. For I am convinced that either one takes this job seriously-or one can be seriously taken. Now, how will these principles be applied? Clearly, at the heart of the FCC's
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authority lies its power to license, to renew or fail to renew, or to revoke a license. As you know, when your license comes up for renewal, your performance is compared with your promises. I understand that many people feel that in the past licenses were often renewed pro fonna. I say to you now: renewal will not be pro fonna in the future. There is nothing permanent or sacred about a broadcast license. But simply matching promises and performance is not enough. I intend to do more. I intend to find out whether the people care. I intend to find out whether the community which each broadcaster serves believes he has been serving the public interest. When a renewal is set down for hearing, I intendwherever possible-to hold a well-advertised public hearing, right in the com· munity you have promised to serve. I want the people who own the air and the homes that television enters to tell you and the FCC what's been going on. I want the people-if they are truly interested in the service you give them-to make notes, document cases, tell us the facts. For those few of you who really believe that the public interest is merely what interests the public-I hope that these hearings will arouse no little interest. The FCC has a fme reserve of monitors-almost 180 million Americans gathered around 56 million sets. If you want those monitors to be your friends at court-it's up to you. Some of you may say, "Yes, but I still do not know where the line is between a grant of a renewal and the hearing you just spoke of." My answer is: why should you want to know how close you can come to the edge of the cliff! What the Commission asks of you is to make a conscientious good-faith effort to serve the public interest. Every one of you serves a community in which the people would benefit by educational, religious, instructive or other public service programing. Every one of you serves an area which has local needs-as to local elections, controversial issues, local news, local talent. Make a serious, genuine effort to put on that prograrning. When you do, you will not be playing brinkmanship with the public interest. What I've been saying applies to broadcast stations. Now a station break for the networks: You know your importance in this great industry. Today, more than onehalf of all hours of television station prograrning comes from the networks; in prime time, tllis rises to more than three-fourths of the available hours. You know that the FCC has been studying network operations for some time. I intend to press tllis to a speedy conclusion with useful results. I can tell you right now, however, that I am deeply concerned with concentration of power in the hands of the networks. As a result, too many local stations have foregone any efforts at local prograrning, with little use of live talent and local service. Too many local stations operate with one hand on the network switch and the other on a projector loaded with old movies. We want tlte individual stations to be free to meet their legal responsibilities to serve their communities.
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I join Governor Collins in his views so well expressed to the advertisers who use the public air. I urge the networks to join him and undertake a very special nlission on behalf of this industry: you can tell your advertisers, "This is the high quality we are going to serve-take it or other people will. If you think you can find a better place to move automobiles, cigarettes and soap-go ahead and try." Tell your sponsors to be less concerned with costs per thousand and more concerned with understanding per millions. And renlind your stockholders that an investment in broadcasting is buying a share in public responsibility. The networks can start this industry on the road to freedom from the dictatorship of numbers. But there is more to the problem than network influences on stations or advertiser influences on networks. I know the problems networks face in trying to clear some of their best programs-the informational programs that exemplify public service. They are your finest hours, whether sustaining or commercial, whether regularly scheduled .or special; these are the signs that broadcasting knows the way to leadership. They make the public's trust in you a wise choice. They should be seen. As you know, we are readying for use new forms by which broadcast stations will report their programing to the Commission. You probably also know that special attention will be paid in these reports to public service programing. I believe that stations taking network service should also be required to report the extent of the local clearance of network public service programing, and when they fail to clear them, they should explain why. If it is to put on some outstanding local program, this is one reason. But, if it is simply to carry some old movie, that is an entirely different matter. The Commission should consider such clearance reports carefully when making up its mind about the licensee's over-all prograrning. We intend to move-and as you know, indeed the FCC was rapidly moving in other new areas before the new administration arrived in Washington. And I want to pay my public respects to my very able predecessor, Fred Ford, and my colleagues on the Commission who have welcomed me to the FCC with warmth and cooperation. We have approved an experiment with pay TV, and in New York we are testing the potential of UHF broadcasting. Either or both of these may revolutionize television. Only a foolish prophet would venture to guess the direction they will take, and their effect. But we intend that they shall be explored fullyfor they are part of broadcasting's new frontier. The questions surrounding pay TV are largely econonlic. The questions surrounding UHF are largely technological. We are going to give the infant pay TV a chance to prove whether it can offer a useful service; we are going to protect it from those who would strangle it in its crib. As for UHF, I'm sure you know about our test in the canyons of New York City. We will take every possible positive step to break through the allocations
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barrier into UHF. We will put this sleeping giant to use, and in the years ahead we may have twice as many channels operating in cities where now there are only two or three. We may have a half-dozen networks instead of three. I have told you that I believe in the free enterprise system. I believe that most of t~levision's problems stem from lack of competition. Tills is the importance of UHF to me: with more channels on the air, we will be able to provide every community with enough stations to offer service to all parts of the public. Programs with a mass-market appeal required by mass-product advertisers certainly will still be available. But other stations will recognize the need to appeal to more limited markets and to special tastes. In this way we can all have a much wider range of programs. Television should thrive on this competition-and the country should benefit from alternative sources of service to the public. And, Governor Collins, I hope the NAB will benefit from many new members. Another, and perhaps the most important, frontier: television will rapidly join the parade into space. International television will be with us soon. No one knows how long it will be until a broadcast from a studio in New York will be viewed in India as well as in Indiana, will be seen in the Congo as it is seen in Chicago. But as surely as we are meeting here today, that day will come-and once again our world will shrink. What will the people of other countries think of us when they see our Western badmen and good men punching each other in the jaw in between the shooting? What will the Latin American or African child learn of America from our great communications industry? We cannot permit television in its present form to be our voice overseas. There is your challenge to leadership. You must reexamine some fundamentals of your industry. You must open your minds and open your hearts to the limitless horizons of tomorrow. I can suggest some words that should serve to guide you: Television and all who participate in it are jointly accountable to the American public for respect for the special needs of children, for community responsibility, for the advancement of education and culture, for the acceptability of the program materials chosen, for decency and decorum in production, and for propriety in advertising. This responsibility cannot be discharged by any given group of programs, but can be discharged only through the highest standards of respeel for I he American home, applied to every moment of every program presenred by television. Program materials should enlarge the horizons of the viewer, provide him with wholesome entertainment, afford helpful stimulation, and remind him of the responsibilities which the citizen has toward his society. These words are not mine. They are yours. They are taken literally from your own Television Code. They reflect the leadership and aspirations of your
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own great industry. I urge you to respect them as I do. And I urge you to respect the intelligent and farsighted leadership of Governor LeRoy Collins and to make this meeting a creative act. I urge you at this meeting and, after you leave, back home, at your stations and your networks, to strive ceaselessly to improve your product and to better serve your viewers, the American people. I hope that we at the FCC will not allow ourselves to become so bogged down in the mountain of papers, hearings, memoranda, orders and the daily routine that we close our eyes to the wider view of the public interest. And I hope that you broadcasters will not permit yourselves to become so absorbed in the chase for ratings, sales and profits that you lose this wider view. Now more than ever before in broadcasting's history the times demand the best of all of us. We need imagination in programing, not sterility; creativity, not imitation; experimentation, not conformity; excellence, not mediocrity. Television is filled with creative, imaginative people. You must strive to set them free. Television in its young life has had many hours of greatness-its "Victory at Sea," its Army-McCarthy hearings, its "Peter Pan," its "Kraft Theater ," its "See It Now," its ''Project 20," the World Series, its political conventi~ns and campaigns, the Great Debates-and it has had its endless hours of mediocrity and its moments of public disgrace. There are estimates that today the average viewer spends about 200 minutes daily with television, while the average reader spends thirty-eight minutes with magazines and forty minutes with newspapers. Television has grown faster than a teenager, and now it is time to grow up. What you gentlemen broadcast through the people's air affects the people's taste, their knowledge, their opinions, their understanding of themselves and of their world. And their future. The power of instantaneous sight and sound is without precedent in man·kind's history. This is an awesome power. It has limitless capabilities for goodand for evil. And it carries with it awesome responsibilities-responsibilities which you and I cannot escape. In his stirring Inaugural Address, our President said, "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country." Ladies and Gentlemen: Ask not what broadcasting can do for you-ask what you can do for broadcasting. I urge you to put the people's airwaves to the service of the people and the cause of freedom. You must help prepare a generation for great decisions. You must help a great nation fulfil! its future. Do this, and I pledge you our help.
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3. Baird, Frank L., "Program Regulation on the New Frontier," Journal of Broadcasting, 11, No. 3 (Summer 1967), 231-243.
[16] Electronic Publishing
64. Dreher, Carl, "How the Wasteland Began: The Early Days of Radio," The Atlantic. 2.17 (February 1966), 53-58. 127. Krasnow, Erwin G., and Lawrence D. Longley, The Politics of Broadcast Regulation. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973. 156. Minow, Newton N., Equal Time: The Private Broadcaster and the Public Interest, ed., Lawrence Laurent. New York: Atheneum, 1964. 171. Pierson, W. Theodore, "The Active Eyebrow-A Changing Style for Censorship," Television Quarterly, 1, No. 1 (February 1962), 14-21. 187. Rosenbloom, Joel, "Authority of the Federal Communications Commission," in Freedom and Responsibility in Broadcasting, ed., John E. Coons. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1961. 198. Schwartz, Bemard, ThePro[essorand the Commissions. New York: Knopf, 1959. 238. Weinberg, Meyer, TV in America: The Morality of Hard Cash. New York: Ballantine, 1962.
It is a great privilege for me to be invited to deliver this important lecture at this year's Edinburgh Television Festival. I want to use the opportunity to offer a contribution to tackling a problem which is, I believe, increasingly disturbing in the current debate about the future of what we used loosely to call television and radio broadcasting and should now more compendiously call electronic publishing. The problem, as I see it, can be best summed up as a lack of perspective- both chronological and moral- in our perception of what is going on and of what we believe is about to go on. To put it more baldly, we give the impression of being constantly startled, unnerved and nonplussed by each successive revelation of the technological changes which are expanding the capabilities of electronic publishing so rapidly. We do not know what is going to happen next and we are certainly not sure what to think about what is already happening. It is not just that the mysteries and magic of the changing technology itself bemuse and amaze us. Nor is it just that existing institutions find themselves stupefied by the financial, commercial, managerial and creative questions thrown up by each new successive change in the technological possibilities. More profoundly, as citizens and as a society we too easily give the impression of people who feel that they are falling off the edge of a cosy, stable and familiar 'flat earth' into a fathomless abyss of unrecognisable and frightening no~elties. We seem to know that the old world is fragmenting and will disappear; but we seem to have great difficulty in thinking coherently and confidently about the principles which should operate in the new world as it develops. Indeed, we seem to have only the most hazy and unconfident sense of what those principles might be, if indeed any exist, other than a desperate attempt to graft the habits of the past on to the quite different future, hoping against hope that as little as possible has really changed. To anyone who doubts this description I commend the transcript, if there is one, of Monday evening's opening session of this Festival with 'The Insiders'!
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This broad caricature is - like all broad caricatures - substantially unfair, especially to numerous individuals who are grappling with great energy and imagination with the opportunities and problems created by the evolving technology of electronic broadcasting and who in the process display knowledge, understanding and optimism about the future. Nonetheless, a society has to be able to think together - though not necessarily to agree- about major trends affecting its own character and evolution. To do so there have to be some shared concepts and perceptions, the building blocks out of which intelligible and coherent debate can be constructed and from which the big decisions about the control and regulation of the activity in question can be made. There could scarcely be a better example of such an activity than the primary means of communication and publication within a society, especially when it is undergoing rapid change. The modest contribution that I would like to make - and that is my purpose in this lecture tonight - is to suggest that there is a helpful perspective in which current developments can be seen and that, when they are so seen, much of the bafflement and mystification about where we are going in electronic publishing will disappear, while at the same time it will become very much clearer what the basic principles are which society should apply in debating the future legislative, regulatory and institutional framework within which the technological potentialities of electronic publishing should be permitted and encouraged to fullil themselves over the next several decades. I by no means expect general, still less universal, agreement with the specifics of the analysis which I want to sketch out for you in this lecture. But I shall feel that the effort has been more· than worthwhile if it at least contributes to the debate being conducted with a more confident sense of historical perspective and with a more rigorous recognition of the already available criteria for choosing the principles which society should apply in setting and modifying the rules of the game for electronic publishing from here on. Let me start by inviting you to stand on its head the conventional perception that, in the universe of electronic publishing, it is the world in which we have been living which is 'normal' and the world into which we are now beginning to move which is strange or peculiar. Instead I ask you to consider the hypothesis that, on the contrary, it is the world in which we have been living, for nearly a century now, which is artificial and special and that it is the world into which we are moving which will be much more properly regard€d as normal and natural. Let me explain what I mean.
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Why do human societies have governments at all and why do they feel, to the extent that they do, the need for them? Whatever may be the factual historical derivation of the institution of government, the broad justification that most of us feel for the existence of governments at all is and only is that, at least in principle, they enable the individuals who comprise a society to live lives which are more satisfactory to them as individuals (though in most cases social individuals) than they would if there were no governments. We tolerate governments and we justify or condemn their actions by this broad criterion, although there is, of course, almost limitless scope for dispute whether any particular act, policy or programme does or does not satisfy the criterion. The broad kinds of activity which have been traditionally accepted as fulfilling the criteria are ·very well known: political relations with the outside world; defence of the realm; the making and enforcement of such laws and regulations as may be necessary and justified by the criterion mentioned; the exploitation of those 'public goods' and the correction of those 'external dis-economies' which, as is well known, even the idealised workings of the market economy cannot accomplish; the monitoring. and modification of the distribution of wealth and income in ways which affect the overall character of the society; and in several other ways. The presumption, however, in societies which adhere to this libertarian and utilitarian conception of government is that government action and involvement is not justified unless it can be positively shown to satisfy the condition that, however measured~ the sum benefit to individuals will exceed the cost. The notion that a government action could be justified because of some independent right or interest of government itself, conceived as something above and beyond the sum of the individuals in whose name it governs, is strongly rejected, in contrast with other political philosophies which do see government as the embodiment of some other or higher force or purpose than simply the welfare, however broadly interpreted, of the individuals who comprise the society. A classic example of an activity which is normally presumed not to require government intervention is communication. Second only, perhaps, to the right of individuals to think privately what thoughts they wish comes the right of individuals to communicate those thoughts with one another. The historic battles to establish this right after the invention of the printing press and the perception of the power and potentialities of what by the standards of those days may be called mass communication was, to be sure, long and bitter. But, for those who
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adhere to the libertarian and utilitarian tradition, it is not seen as a battle between two arguable propositions or legitimate interests, but rather as a simple struggle between a sound and fundamental ideal on the one hand and dark forces motivated by interest (or occasionally mistaken bigotry) on the other. We now regard it as axiomatic that mass communication of the printed word should be a free activity which does not require any general framework of government regulation or sponsorship, although according to our varying different individual points of view we may be more or less inclined to accept certain general marginal constraints on this freedom for such reasons as sedition, blasphemy, libel, race relations and national security. When communication and in due course mass communication by the new technology of wireless telegraphy became possible, the natural presumption of a liberal utilitarian society must surely have been that this raised no new question of principle so far as the legitimate role of government in the regulation of mass communiucation was concerned. What in fact brought government and the law-makers into the picture was not and should not have been any general perception that the character of mass communication by wireless telegraphy was so fundamentally different from mass communication by the printed word that it required a form of regulation not thought necessary or appropriate for the printed word, but instead was a simple fact of broadcasting technology. Since two signals could not be broadcast on the same wavelength in the same area at the same time without interfering with one another, some kind of wavelength policing was needed; and, therefore, some act of government was felt to be justified in the interests of the private individuals who comprise society for exactly the same reason that we feel government is needed and justified in imposing a 'keep left' or 'keep right' rule for driving on the public highways. The nineteenth century Wireless Telegraphy Acts, culminating in the 1905 Act, had this essential purpose and justification; and it has essentially been on this very narrow and specific foundation that the whole inverted pyramid of government and parliamentary regulation of broadcasting has since been built. There was and to some extent still is an inescapable need for someone to decide who should- and therefore who should not- broadcast on any given wavelength at any given time in any given area. In the absence of the theoretically possible alternatives of a lottery or an auction, the only available authority to make this decision was, in one form or another, the government. But of course, having once got into the act on this genuine but narrow
technical pretext, it will surprise no one that even in a pluralistic country governments and Parliament have moved forward from this bridgehead to· what is, by the standards of print communication, a massive control and regulation of the dominant forms of electronic publishing. I am not, of course, here talking about the kind of editorial control and crudely propagandist exploitation of radio and television which we associate with Eastern European and other totalitarian societies. Nor am I speaking of the kind of government regulation which is being hotly debated in the framework of UNESCO between the spokesmen of the Western 'free' societies and other societies who feel that governments are entitled to much more positive editorial control of radio and television, to say nothing of newspapers as well. What I have in mind is simply the contrast between the basic freedom to publish, to create a new publication, to contain in it any material whatsoever within the general laws of blasphemy, libel, national security, race relations etc., the contrast between all of that, whether in newspapers, magazines, books or any other form of printed publication, and the broadcasting framework as it has evolved through the granting of successive charters to the BBC, the creation of the Independent Television Authority and its development into the Independent Broadcasting Authority with _responsibilities for commercial radio as well as television. I leave on one side the draconian regulatory powers and monopoly position of the Post Office, now British Telecom, in relation to almost all other forms of private use of the airwaves and other telecommunication facilities for communication and even limited publication. It is quite simply impossible, as things stand, for any individual or private institution to communicate with his fellow citizens by way of broadcast radio or television unless he has either been appointed by a chartered or statutory body to do so or invited by someone else who has been so appointed. Moreover, any such communication has to conform, not merely to the broad general law affecting such matters as blasphemy, libel, national security and race relations, but also has to conform to a most elaborate series of formal and informal codes affecting the content, balance, timing etc, of such publications. My purpose at this point is not to evaluate or criticise these arrangements. I am aware that many people think they are justified and that there are some who even think that they still permit too much freedom to those who are allowed access to the airwaves. My aim here is simply to bring out the profound difference between the framework of law, regulation and government as it applies to print publications and as it
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applies to electronic publishing, at least insofar as electronic publishing takes the form of broadcast material.
without coming within the existing purview of the broadcasting regulators and, indeed, subject to one major once-and-for-all decision without the acquiescence of public authority in any of its other guises, whether as the guardian of wavelengths, way-leaves, the public purse or any other existing basis of gevernmental control. Video - both in its tape and disc manifestations - is already the most highly developed form of this new wave. Cable, satellites (especially Direct Broadcast Satellite services), teletext and other innovations are all contributing to what, from the cosy perspective of the 'closed circle' of the 'authorised' broadcasters, is regarded as the 'fragmentation' of the audience. Even moderate developments such as the Fourth Channel, the Welsh Fourth Channel and breakfast television, which involve no technological innovation whatever and which are twenty-four carat card-carrying creations of the traditional regulated system, are seen in some circles as threatening because they let newcomers, new ideas or new languages into the business or even, more simply, because they might cause the existing stock of jam to be spread yet more thinly. I will not dwell on ~he wetness, let alone the simple-minded fallaciousness, of that kind of reflex protectionism. This picture of an existing world of electronic publishing, dominated by authorised broadcasting, being gradually eroded and fragmented by technological changes which pare away cumulatively significant marginal slices of the traditional broadcaster's market - and predictably stimulate the historically familiar catalogue of demands for extended regulation, if indeed not prohibition, on every pretext of public interest known to man save the true one of resistance to competition - allied to the usual desire of every politician, busybody and self-appointed cultural and moral nanny to lay down what other people may and may not communicate to one another, this picture itself grossly underestimates the enormity of the change which is coming about. Quite simply, we are within less than two decades technologically of a world in which there will be no technical pretext for a government-appointed policeman to allocate the airwaves at all; and therefore, in turn, there will be no technically based grounds for government or legislative interference in electronic publishing, except insofar as the general laws of blasphemy, libel etc, which apply to print publishing are applied also to electronic publishing. To put it technically, 'spectrum scarcity' is going to disappear. In simple terms this means there will be able, in effect, to be as many channels as there are viewers. At that moment all the acrimonious and
Against this background, let us now begin to look at what current technological developments are doing to the potentialities of electronic broadcasting and thereby to our existing apparatus of concepts for controlling and regulating it. So far, we have had a world in which for most practical purposes electronic publishing was authorised broadcasting, both radio and television, in the strict sense of broadcast transmissions by authorised bodies across the airwaves to privately owned receivers. To this in recent years and increasingly have begun to be added a whole catalogue of actual and potential devices for enabling the public to enjoy the same or similar services by other means. It began with purely 'pirate' transmissions, which involved no technological innovation at all, but simply exploited jurisdictional or enforcement loop-holes in the existing system of regulation. These were variously dealt with by ignoring them on de minimis grounds, as in the case of Radio Luxembourg, or by gradual suppression by methods which were at least as indirect as the pirates' own circumvention of existing regulations, as in the case of Radio Caroline and its emulators. The advent of audio tapes was treated as if it were an extension of the gramophone record market rather than as violating the broadcasters' domain and therefore as not coming within the purview of the broadcast regulators. When cable television, under its original guise as 'pay television', first entered the debate a decade or so ago, nobody doubted that this belonged squarely in the regulated area of electronic publishing or, indeed, that it was entirely a matter for government decision whether or not the practice of such a black art should be permitted at all. Fortunately for the upholders of the ancien regime of regulated electronic publishing such experiments as were permitted were never sufficiently successful to force a major social decision on whether or how pay television should be controlled. Moreover, even pay television continued to present a solid, though narrow, pretext for official involvement in that the necessary cables to make it possible could not legally or practically be laid without the consent and probably the assistance of public authority. But now we are well and truly in sight of a world in which significant parts of electronic publishing can both legally and practically take place 224
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The News difficult debate about how many channels there should be, who should control them and have access to them and what should be allowed to be shown on them- to say nothing of which and how many traditional and new pressure groups are needed to squabble over these issues - all this can disappear. But it will only disappear if we all work, indeed fight, extremely hard i:o ensure that, once the technical pretext for policing electronic publishing has gone, the whole inverted pyramid of regulation and control, going way beyond the mere prevention of mutually jamming transmissions, is in fact dismantled. It will be an extremely hard fight because, the habit of regulation and control once formed and the vested interests which benefit from it once established, the regulators and beneficiaries are extremely reluctant to give up their role and their territory; and the politicians and legislators will be extremely reluctant to abdicate power and influence in a field which they know is important and which they are accustomed to enjoying. Let me add in passing that the beneficiaries of a regulated world are not by any means confined to the regulators themselves or to those whose commercial interests are thereby directly protected. All the other armies of lobbies and special interest groups, whether they represent shareholders, managers, creators, various echelons of employees or countless special geographical and other categories of consumers, all in varying degrees live off a world in which regulation occurs and in which it is thereby possible whether by lobbying, negotiating, persuading or even attending solemn conferences - to seek to determine the way in which the regulations are framed and enforced. But take away the honey-pot and the bees will disperse. There are only pressure groups if there are pressure points. Were we not being told on this very Monday evening that yet another new body was needed in order that the voice of the broadcasters themselves should be more loudly heard in the privileged arena of centralised regulation and control, a dub to which every interest groqp belongs, but in which not a single ordinary producer or ordinary viewer is to be found? Also Jeremy Isaacs, whom I greatly revere and who said many wise things, remarked en passant, 'Of course, we don't want unregulated Babe! here.' But I would say to him that the term 'Babel' can much more properly be applied to the squabbling of the politicians and the special interest groups over the control of the regulated system of authorised broadcasting than it can to free communication, whether electronic or not, between private authors and private consumers. Now let me try to sketch how this wondrous emancipation can occur, if not today, at least the day after tomorrow in terms of the eras of
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electronic p.ublishing; and I make only a small apology here for drawing on. some evt~ence I gave nearly five years ago to the Annan Committee, evtde~ce whtc~ must rank as one of the most purely solipsistic experi~ ences m the htstory of the written word. Rather before the end of the century, subject only to a very large initial capital outlay which could only be borne by society as a whole in the first instance it will be possible b~ fibre-optic technology to create a grid conne~ting every household m the country, whereby the nation's viewers can simultaneously.watch as many different programmes as the nation's readers can read ~tfferent bo?ks, magazines, newspapers etc. The only constraints, techmcally speakmg, will be the obvious ones that no one television set can simultaneously display more than one programme and that it may be. necessary to watch any given programme at a stated number of mmutes past the hour. There will doubtless also continue to be somewhat fewe~ sets than people, though by the year 2000 we may even have t~e wall-s~ze screen, for multiple simultaneous images, in general use, wtth the vtewers simply choosing which source he wants. In other words a television set (or radio) will be like a telephone iri that the user selects for himself the connection he wants· and it will be quite immaterial what connections other users wish' to make for themselves. In contemporary parlance, the number of channels will become, if not infinite, at least indefinitely large - certainly as large as the number of receivers. Imagine each set equipped with a telephone dial on which the code number of t~e desired programme or connection can be dialled. Imagine also ~he eqmvalent of a telephone meter monitoring receptions on each set, lmk;d to the c?de n.um~er of the it.e~ received. Imagine finally a ~entr~l. black box mamtamed by Bnttsh Telecom into which an mdeftmtely l~rge number of. programmes can be fed (either by lodging a tape or by dtrect feed for hve transmissions). The rest of t~e conditions for a free electronic publishing market, with consumer chotce and freedom of access, falls quickly into place. No gene~al. law~ are required other than those which already govern ~ubhsh.mg .(hbel, copyright, obscenity, common law, etc.), though there ts notht~g m t~e ~ystem to prevent Parliament making special laws for electromc pubhshmg; and some special laws may be needed to deal with copyright in a world of satellite transmissions and cassette copying, The only necessary function of the State is to lay a duty on British Telecom to provide and op.erate the technology of the system, to accept all programmes whtch conform to the law, to collect charges from the
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viewing public and, after deducting its own costs and any other approved taxes or charges, to pass what remains over to the publisher of each item. This, indeed, is the framework already adopted for the Viewdata system. Large and small wholesale publishers will be free to establish themselves. Many of them might well be best organised as workers' cooperatives rather than as limited liability companies. They, the publishers, will arrange and finance the preparation of the programmes, set the charges for them, advertise their availability and their code numbers and reward the authors and participants under freely negotiated contracts. Individuals who wish to make their own programmes will be free to do so though, as with books, they will either have to find a publisher or bear the costs and risks of publishing themselves. There is nothing in this system to prevent the State continuing to subsidise any particular categories of electronic publishing which are considered virtuous or in the public interest, even to the extent of ensuring that the equivalent of one or more whole channels of regular transmissions are available to the public without direct charge. Nor is there anything to prevent any other patron or sponsor from subsidising meritorious, or indeed meritless, productions. The BBC and the independent broadcast companies would presumably continue as major publishers on the new scene. But the IBA would disappear; and the BBC would cease to be a broadcasting authority with (self-) regulatory powers and duties, insofar as Broadcasting House can at present be said to exercise over the rest of the BBC analogous supervision to that which the IBA exercises over the ITV and ILR programme companies. As large independent producers the BBC and ITV programme companies would doubtless continue to set their own policies and standards; but these need not reflect any general state policy for broadcasting. The news and party political broadcasts could be catered for either under the general provisions above or by special provision. On the face of it there is no reason why the news should not justify itself commercially; but, if it is felt that it needs to be subsidised, this could be done by raising through the British Telecom charging mechanism a small levy on all other transmissions, which would be earmarked to finance news services. Party political broadcasts should presumably be financed by the parties (one would suppose at a loss), though Parliament could require British Telecom to make them available free to the viewer and to collect the cost direct from monies voted by Parliament.
The treatment of advertising raises no insuperable problem. Either Parliament could disallow advertisement altogether. Or it could require British Telecom to accept programme packages which included advertising material in natural breaks, in which case the charge to the viewer would be lower - or nil. It would then be up to individual publishers to decide whether or not they wished to include advertising material at intervals during their programmes. The viewers would be free to decide whether they thought this interruption worth the saving in charges or not. This extremely compressed sketch of a future market in electronic publishing is designed only to show that there is nothing God-given or immutable about the familiar duopolistic regime, a conclusion which can also be reached from other premises. At present, cumbrous giants battle for franchises of the air; and, between their occasional encounters, they are themselves besieged by multiple special interests trying to steer programme time and programme content more to their particular way of thinking. This process in no way guarantees, or even necessarily tends towards, the maximum satisfaction of viewers' p·references. Indeed, that is not even the objective of the present institutions. The addition of an extra channel, or even two or ten, would not change this essential pattern. Indeed, so long as electronic publishing is confined to a limited number of channels, there is a plausible argument that consumer choice is maximised by giving one or two authorities the duty to provide choice rather than by forcing several rival organisations to vie with each other for a limited mass audience. The argument so far has sought to show that, on certain assumptions about the development of telecommunications technology, a radically different organisation of broadcasting, seen as electronic publishing and modelled partly on print publishing, would be possible. But technical feasibility does not entail financial feasibility, still less desirability, (despite the widespread belief to the contrary). There are in fact two distinct financial questions about the scheme of electronic publishing sketched here:
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(a) Would the huge investment in the necessary telecommunications grid and in the change-over of the nation's receivers to the new system be justified after allowing for the earnings of the other non-publishing chargeable services which could be carried on such an electronic network? (b) Would the system of meter charging for viewing, augmented by specific subsidies on merit and, if allowed, by advertising receipts,
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generate the revenue necessary to support the required level of broadcasting? The first question is legitimate and important. The answer to it depends on many variables, whose values are certainly not known and some of whose values are probably extremely difficult to assess. Fortunately, society does not have to give a precise answer now, since final decisions will not be needed for a decade or so. But it is important to form a view about whether such an investment is likely to be within the realm of the possible or whether it is pure science, or rather financial, fiction. This will partly depend, of course, on the ~ost of the investment. British T elecom are able to give sketch estimates of this, at least in terms of orders of magnitude. It will also depend on how many other users there will be, in addition to- what we now think of as television services, for the new telecommunications infrastructure. The more there are and the greater the prospective yield from such other users, the smaller will need to be the specific return from sales of grid capacity to the broadcast public. Much may also depend on the rate of society's time preference used in discounting the future flow of benefits from the new facility. The arguments will be familiar to economists. The question about the adequacy of the revenue to be generated is only meaningful if it is supposed that there can be a difference between what the viewing public, together with public and private patrons and sponsors, as well as advertisers (if they are allowed), are willing to pay for broadcast material and the right quantity of broadcasting. It is possible to construct senses in which there could be such a conceptual difference; but it is not a distinction which is normally held to be generally meaningful in the provision of marketable services to the public, except in areas like national health or perhaps housing where some sense and measurements can be attached to the notion of the public's 'needs' as distinct from what the public will pay for (though some economists dispute even this). So, the short answer to the objection that the public would not want to pay for the amount of broadcast material which vested interests or wise men think should be provided is the same as the answer to any other entrepreneur who complains that the market will not bear as much as he would like it to: hard luck! Indeed, the argument can be pressed a little further. One of the great 230
merits of the system adumbrated here for financing broadcasting, as against finance which depends heavily either on the Government's taxing power or on advertising alone, is that it generates invaluable information about the effective demand for broadcast material and therefore about the scale of resources which it is right to invest and to use in supplying the material. Indeed, where this information is not generated, it is common for public authorities either to look abroad to see what proportion of their national incomes other countries spend on comparable facilities, where market choice does operate, or to corral the growth of expenditure into conformity with the average growth rate of the national economy as a whole (cf. the present plight of the National Health Service). Now that GNP growth is nil or negative this stifles what should be, by public preference, expanding services such as health and communication. Inevitably these proxies for direct evidence of demand lead either to more or to less resources being devoted to the service in question than the public wants; and there is no way of knowing whether it is too much or too little. One may_ guess, partly from overseas data, that in the areas of national health and broadcasting what we now get is probably less than the public would choose to spend and that in the areas of hard technology, such as futuristic aircraft, it is probably more. It would be better to know than to have to guess. This then leaves the question whether there are any good nontechnological-cum-financial reasons for going on as at present, in the sense of keeping electronic publishing under the degree of statutory supervision which the BBC charter and the Broadcasting Act have laid down even after the historical 'rule-of-the-road' reasons for this involvement of the State have become technically obsolete. People will answer this question according to their different political and social- philosophies. In the circumstances envisaged here for the end of the century there need be literally no limit to what can be published electronically, other than the general law and what the public (and others) will pay for. In those circumstances the only role of supervision is to prevent the publication of lawful material which the public would choose and pay for. Otherwise, supervision is wholly passive and merely reproduces what would happen under open publishing. To believe that such prevention of publication would be desirable it would appear to be necessary to believe one or more of the following propositions: 231
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It will be evident that none of these propositions appeal much to me. Few, in fact, would be found today to defend the first proposition as it stands. But there are many who, without perhaps admitting it even to themselves, adopt positions which entail this proposition; and it is better to see it nakedly for what it is, namely a complete rejection of the p~ilosophy of the primacy of the individual and of his liberty on which most people would claim that our society is and ought to be founded. The second proposition is rather more plausible at first sight. But this is only because the alternative system of electronic publishing suggested here is being construed as though it were still oligopolistic publishing, but writ a little larger. It will be asked how in practice can an indefinitely
large number of electronic publishers, to say nothing of countless go-it-alone authors, afford the hugely expensive overheads, such as cameras, studios, editing facilities and so forth, which television production requires. Only the few could do it; and competition among the few leads to homogenised products and neglible choice. Or it leads .to domination by big corporations. So the argument runs. This is mistaken. It will not be necessary for any but the biggest publishers to have their studios, etc., any more than every print publisher and author has to own his own press. It will pay entrepreneurs (as indeed it already does) to provide studio facilities and to hire them out to all corners. Small publishers and go-it-alone authors will rent what they need when they need it. Even that may be more expensive than printing and publishing a limited edition of one's own book; but then no one has a God-given right to use whatever resources he wants to indulge personal fantasies. Either one pays for those resources oneself or one persuades a patron to do so or one persuades a financier to do so in the expectation of a return. The argument for producer sovereignty, other than in a market environment which makes consumers sovereign, lacks any intelligible philosophical basis for its major premise - outside of certain religious orders which genuinely exist for the sake exclusively of fulfilment in work (i.e. prayer, contemplation, and so forth) and which literally produce nothing beyond their own meals, clothes and shelter that can be of material benefit to anyone {except maybe to God). For the rest the notion seems to be confusion. The exercise of producer power may well be in the selfish interest of individual groups considering themselves as workers in a world in which anonymous millions supply the things they themselves wish to consume; but it degenerates into nonsense if generalised into an economic basis of society. In practice in the broadcasting industry the argument, whether deployed by executives, 'creative' staff or manual workers, is no different from the special pleading of all manner of groups - from farmers to furnacemen and from opera singers to obsolete printers - to be preserved at the expense of the rest of society in their customary way of life irrespective of whether it any longer serves a useful purpose. Society may judge in some cases that it wishes to make such provision either out of compassion or from other reasons. But unless such arrangements are by nature exceptions to some more utilitarian general rule, the logical conclusion is the monastic life for all. The notion, therefore, that the unconstrained use of electronic pub-
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{a) that a man or woman does not always know what is best for him or her to receive; that someone else does know best {or at least knows better); that Parliament can embody that somebody else's knowledge in some general law or, more likely, appofnt him or her and their like to control what is available to the public; that Parliament will, in fact, normally appoint the right people and that the fact that Parliament thinks this someone else knows best gives Parliament and the someone else the right to deny the public access to the forbidden material - in other words, as Jeremy Isaacs put it so vividly 'We don't want unregulated Babel here.' {b) That free electronic publishing would in practice lead to a narrowing of choice, even in the new conditions described, as compared with what would happen under a benevolent supervision; that the supervision would in practice tend to be benevolent and that by preventing the publication of too many similar programmes of little 'worth' resources can be kept free {or, rather, not too expensive) for more worthwhile or varied productions. Or (c) that economic activities, of which broadcasting is certainly one in the sense that it uses scarce resources including labour to purvey goods or services to the public, exist primarily or exclusively for the benefit of those who work in them rather than for those who use their output and that workers are likely to have a better time of things working for a benevolent {perhaps malleable) supervisory authority, backed by the State and its taxing power, than they would have supplying a competitive market in which the consumer was sovereign and some big publishers, whether public or private, came to play a large part.
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lishing resources should be the sovereign right of creators and producers thus depends either on making a general rule of producer sovereignty or on a special case for adding broadcasting to the list of exceptions to the rule of consumer sovereignty. The general rule leads quickly to absurdity; and it seems hard to think of a less appropriate or deserving exception to the more practical rule of consumer sovereignty in economic affairs. Note also, however, that- given consumer sovereignty in a free electronic publishing market- there is no reason at all why many or even all of the producing units should not be workers' cooperatives, something which I personally strongly favour as a solution to the much broader economic problems of inflation, unemployment etc. It follows then that, in a world in which central supervision is not an inevitable by-product of some broadcasting rule-of-the-road, there will be no compelling need for continued monolithic (or indeed duo-, or oligo-lithic) broadcasting franchises. Once this is accepted, it can be seen that most of the problems which preoccupy public debate about the future of broadcasting disappear, at least if the time-scale is extended far enough into the future to comprehend the kind of developments envisaged here. For, most of those problems are problems about allocating scarce publishing opportunities between competing interest groups, whether established institutions, financial vested interests, worker vested interests, evangelical producers, Scotsmen, Welshmen, Irishmen, divines, educationalists, ethnic minorities or any other form of man-in-his-organisations as against man-in-his-home-wanting-to-sit-in-his-armchair-and-watch-thetelly. Once there is no allocation to be made, there will be no lobbies and so no headaches to be suffered in arbitrating between them. Only consider - the recent strange episodes surrounding the Monopolies Commission gives us a foretaste of what the problems would be if government had to renew, or not renew, The Times's charter, or to allocate the tabloid franchise between IPC and Mr Rupert Murdoch, or if areas of the country had to be exclusively shared out to Macmillan, Cape and Penguin. It is only by looking at it in this way that ~e liberating effects of escaping altogether from the need to allocate scarce electronic publishing opportunities can be fully appreciated. At the same time, of course, the power in the hands of the great allocator is liquidated; and Government, as well as the vested interests and busybodies who believe they can manipulate Government, will resist this. But this is scarcely an argument why society should bless such an
unnecessary exercise of power with spurious respectability. In conclusion, let me re-emphasis the obvious fact that this lecture is quite explicitly and deliberately futuristic. It is, as its title states, about the day after tomorrow. It has little or nothing to say about the preoccupations of broadcasters, viewers and regulators today, except in the very broad sense that it would lead those who agreed with the argument of the lecture to welcome the embryonic development over which Jeremy Isaacs is so ably presiding on Channel 4 and to wish him the very best of luck in his efforts. No one, therefore, should be disposed to ask with feigned astonishment how it is that the chairman of a company holding a franchise under the existing system is to be found advocating the eventual liquidation of that system. I have said nothing to suggest that the British system is defective or markedly less satisfactory than available alternatives under the present conditions. But there is, I hope, eriough of the existentialist in all of us to permit a man to be both company chairman and to think for himself as a citizen. There is no inconsistency, outside of a world of cardboard caricature functionaries, in operating within. the constraints of one system which may be appropriate to one set of circumstances and, at the same time, trying to think about how, in new and different circumstances, a new and different system might serve society even better. I certainly believe that we shall think more confidently and more coherently about the more immediate and obvious signs of the fragmentation of the system of authorised electronic publishing - video, cable, direct broadcast satellite services, etc. - if we :
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(a) realise that these are only the modest precursors of a much more fundamental transformation of the technological base of electronic broadcasting; and (b) recognise that, as that transformation fulfils itself over the next two decades or so, the world which we will be entering will, in fact, be a much less artificial one in which well known principles of consumer and producer freedom articulated through the proper operation of the price mechanism can and should be invoked to solve problems which have seemed so recalcitrant in the world of authorised electronic publishing and which seem so baffling to those who regard the new world as merely an extension of the old world with complications. Finally, however, those who care passionately for freedom in communication and publishing, whether electronic, print or simply oral,
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The News need now to gird themselves for a prolonged struggle against old habits and vested interests in order to ensure that the new freedoms, which the new technology will make technically possible, are in fact translated into real freedoms for both producers and consumers under law. The belief that electronic publishing, especially by broadcast television, has mystical, hypnotic and unique powers is deeply entrenched in the political mind; and the desire to control and influence it will not be shed like an old skin simply because the technical need for a spectrum rule of the road and, therefore, for a spectrum policeman, has disappeared. The battles that were fought by the great seventeenth-, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century heroes of free speech and free publication will have to be fought all over again. I would foresee - and I hope - that this theme will be a recurrent preoccupation of successive Edinburgh International Television Festivals; and I hope that, by using this opportunity to air the question, I have not only done my modest best to pay tribute to the memory and the inspiring example of James MacTaggart, but have also done something to prompt that debate and to offer some concepts and principles which can give it shape and standards. The MacTaggart Lecture, Edinburgh International Television Festival, 1981
[17] /
Excerpt from Report of the Committee on Financing the BBC. 12.2 Broadcasting Aims and Broadcasting Hnance Viewer and Listener Sovereigmy 546. Faced with these technological uncertainties it would have been tempting to confine ourselves to a limited examination of the case for and against the introduction of advertising on the BBC in the years immediately ahead. But, although this has escaped allcntion in much of the public debate, our terms of reference go further. For we are asked to consider any other "proposals for securing income from the consumer other than through the licence fee"; and the advance of technology is increasing the range of financing options as well as of broadcasting systems (see paragraph I). Our terms of reference also require us to examine the financial and other consequences of any changes for a wide range of broadcasting and other media, and in particular their "range and quality". We therefore agree with those witnesses who have maintained that before we can devise guidelines for the finance of broadcasting, we have to specify its purposes. The need to be cautious and open-minded about technological possibilities makes it more, rather than less, important to be clear about aims and criteria. 547. The fundamental aim of broadcasting policy should in our view be to enlarge both the freedom of choice of the consumer and the opportunities available to programme makers to offer alternative wares to the public. The fulfilmen( of this goal, so far from being incompatible with public service activities positively requires them in a sense of "public service" which we shall explain below (sec paragraphs 580-581). 548. Our goal is of course derived from aims much wider than any applying to broadcasting alone. They are embedded, for example, in the First Amendment to the US Constitution (15 December, 1791). This lays down illler alia: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech or of the press ... " It is often taken by US writers to mean both that television monopolies are to be prevented and that government intrusion of a negative, censorious kind is to be avoided. 549. Another way of looking at the m alter is via the parallel with the printing press, which was subject to many kinds of regulation and censorship in the first two and half centuries of its existence (see paragraphs 16-27). The abolition ofprepublication censorship by Parliament in 1694-leaving the printed word to be regulated by the general law of the land-was described by Macaulay as a greater contribution to liberty and civilisation than either the Magna Carta or the Bill of Rights. • •History of Englm1d, Chapter XXI. ""While the Abb.!y was hanging with black for tht: funeral of the Quccn.lhc Commons came tu a vote which a11he time auractcd little aucntion. which produced no excitement. which has been ldl unnoticed by voluminous annalisls. and of which the history can be bm imperfectly traced in the arc;hivcs of Parliament. but which has done: mnn: for liberty and civilisation than lhc Grcal 01arte:r or the Gill uC Rights."
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550. Hitherto it has been very hard either to avoid prepublication censorship in broadcasting, or apply the spirit of the First Amendment, because of spectrum scarcity and the difficulties of charging viewers and listeners directly. Intervention and regulation have been required not only to secure public service broadcasting in our sense of the term, but even to simulate the effects of a functioning consumer market (see paragraphs 130-133). 551. Technological developments hold promise, however, of liberation from these constraints. There is at least a chance of creating a genuine consumer market in broadcasting combined wJth a continuation of public service, in the positive sense of secure funding of programmes of a demanding or innovative kind. 552. The dire.ct purchase of broadcasting services, as explained in chapter 3, requires the fulfilment of important conditions if viewers' and listeners' interests are to be made paramount. It is therefore incumbent on us to outline these conditions, particularly as the mere mention of a market in broadcasting services gives rise to much misunderstanding: (i) Viewers must be able to register their preferences directly and register the intensity of their preference. The only system which will fulfil these conditions is "pay per view". (ii) Effective provision of services presupposes freedom of entry for any programme maker who can cover his costs or otherwise finance his or her production. (iii) Operators of transmission equipment, where monopoly elements are likely to prevail, must have common carrier obligations to transmit programmes at prices regulated on public utility lines, perhaps by a body such as OFTEL. 553. The above are ideal requirements where direct purchase is appropriate, but they do provide a yardstick for assessing any proposed changes. Condition (i) emphasises that expression of preferences through advertising ratings can at best be indirect, and certainly intensity of preferences cannot be captured in a system financed solely by advertising. Conditions (ii) and (iii) offer the protection for the viewer against monopoly which could restrict choice and make programmes more cpstly to the viewer than they need be, always supposing that vigorous government action against monopoly and restrictive practices is available if necessary. If these conditions are to be fulfilled, the technical and economic difficulties· of developing charging systems must be overcome in the foreseeable future and spectrum scarcity radically reduced, either by the creation of more broadcasting "time" by further channels or more intensive use of existing channels. In short, a broadcasting market designed to promote the welfare of viewers and listeners certainly does not carry the implication that "commerciallaissez-faire" (explained in paragraphs 571-573) should take over.
A Technical Qualification: Theoretical Undersupply* 554. There is a technical economic problem associated with direct sale of programmes to viewers and listeners to which reference has already been made in chapter 3 paragraph 132. Once a programme has been produced the cost of supply to each additional viewer per showing is effectively zero. (This explains why US soap operas can be made available so cheaply outside American markets.) If charging were introduced, so the argument goes, television programmes would be under-supplied. The problem is not unique to television. It applies to all products, including books and newspapers, whose marginal cost of supply is well below their average cost. Television is an extreme case. 555. As already argued (see paragraph 132), subsidising a broadcasting company to the extent necessary to reduce the cost of programmes to zero to the consumer can itself bring about adverse effects on efficiency through the difficulty of being able to·a:scertain the minimum subsidy necessary to achieve this end. The subsidy would be all too likely to "pad out" costs and reduce the incentive to introduce innovations in methods of programme production and in the content of programmes. A related problem is the difficulty of raising revenue to cover the subsidy in a form which would not have further adverse effects on efficiency and which would not outweigh any gains from a superior relative price structure. In any case it would be difficult to justify a generalised subsidy to broadcasting alone. 556. It might be argued that under-supply would be less of a problem, even if no public subsidy can be justified, with an advertiser-supported system with no ditect charges to consumers than with a pay-TV system. This argument would only be a cogent one if there were an unlimited number of channels available and therefore is inapplicable to the present duopoly arrangements in the UK. Even if it were reasonable to postulate that the number of channels would increase, any advantages of no direct charging to consumers would be outweighed by the direct expression of consumer preferences which a charging system allows. •Paragraphs 554-556 arc mainly of lcchnical economic interest and can he readily skipped by the general reader.
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The Political Economy of the Media ll The Expansion of Tastes and Programmes 557. In expounding how the direct purchase of broadcasting services promotes the interests of viewers and listeners we do not stop at the idea of "providing the consumer with what he wants". There is a bad tradition in analytical economics of presenting the model of •·consumer sovereignty" as if consumers had only known and static wants. This ignores the important feature of the competitive market as a "discovery mechanism" for finding out by trial and error what the consumer might be enticed to accept (as well as the least costly method of supplying it) and for trying out new and challenging ideas. 558. The more thoughtful exponent of consumer sovereignty does not believe that citizens always know what they want or where their interests lie. Producers compete to persuade individuals of the existence and value of new or different kinds of experience. In the debate at the Cambridge Union in September 1985, the late Sir Huw Weldon rightly criticised the false dichotomy between giving the viewer what he or she wants and what he or she ought to have. According to Sir Huw, the producer or creator provides what is "in him to give". This is true of much creative entrepreneurship in general. The proviso in a market economy is that in the end a sufficient number of consumers have to be persuaded to take what the producer is willing to give. 559. In many areas of commercial life profit-seeking entrepreneurs are prepared to take a long view, often longer than that of governments, and not confine themselves to what is immediately remunerative. Indeed if this were not so all the great companies in the world would stop their research programmes to the immense benefit of their short term as distinct from their long term profits. 560. There may be-indeed there are-peculiar features of the broadcasting market, which discuumge the long view. But the need is to ascertain what these are rather than to assume that the short view is characteristic of markets as such. The preceding chapters have demonstrated that the insistence on quick mass market returns derives from indirect finance, via sales of advertising rather than of broadcasting directly to the consumer. When the latter becomes possible, and would-be producers can work with the assurance of access to common carrier facilities, then the existing broadcasting market may lose some of its peculiar features.
The Public Role in Broadcastillg Finance 561. We are clear that the component in consumer welfare which represents exposure to programmes which expand their range of tastes and preferences is of major importance. Our society will be the richer if it offers artists, teachers, entertainers, politicians and news gatherers, as well as producers of material goods, an opportunity both to stimulate and satisfy desires of which people were not previously conscious. The crucial question arising from this statement of values is to what extent, if at all, public intervention is required and in what form. Would it not be sufficient, in this context, to confine government activity in the broadcasting market to regulation designed to enforce the law of the land with respect to matters such as public decency, defamation, sedition and blasphemy and with respect to the prevention of monopoly? 562. The answer to the question is "no", if for no other reason than that viewers and listeners themselves may be willing to provide public finance for broadcasting activities in their capacity as voting taxpayers. (See paragraph 129 but also our views on censorship ip paragraphs 594 and 691.) A simple illustration makes our point. Many citizens who never go near our National Galleries value their existence and are prepared to contribute as tax-payers to their upkeep. Public patronage has long been a source of support for the Arts, alongside direct consumer support since the time of Classical Greece or earlier. (We will not, however, discuss whether Medici support for Michaelangelo or Esterhazy employment of Haydn should be described as public or private patronage.) 563. The Committee has its own views on the types of programme suitable for public patronage, and which form a large part of its concept of Public Service Broadcasting (see below). Four key words we would suggest here are knowledge, culture, criticism and experiment. To be more specific: (i) There should be news, current affairs, documentaries, programmes about science, nature and other parts of the world, as well as avowedly educational programmes, all of which require active and not passive attention and which may alsu cuntribute to responsible citizenship. (ii) There should be high quality programmes on the Arts (music, drama, literature etc) covering not only performance but also presentation of and comment on the process of artistic creation. (iii) There should be critical and controversial programmes, covering everything from the appraisal of commercial products to politics, ideology, philosophy and religion. 127
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The Political Economy of the Media I/ 564. The case for public support of programmes of this type can be accepted by those who believe that viewers and listeners are in the last analysis the best judges of their own interest, because:(i) Some people may come to enjoy what they do not do already as a result of new opportunities being presented. (ii) Some people will accept guidance or stimulus from others on matters where they perceive that their knowledge or taste is limited. (iii) Many people would like high quality material to be available even though they would not willingly watch or listen to it themselves in large enough numbers for it to be paid for directly (for instance the National Gallery example in paragraph 562). 565. Public patronage of broadcasting can go further. There may be a case for experimenting with types of entertainment or popular programmes of a different standard to the ones which viewers and listeners would have demanded unpromptcd. The only a priori stipulations are that state support should be direct and visible and not achieved by cross-subsidisation or "leaning" on programme makers, and that such patronage should account for a modest proportion of total broadcasting. 566. We have stated the case for trying to enlarge the range of choice facing the public beyond what would be otherwise viable. But we would also maintain that public intervention here should be of a positive kind and transparent, to help finance additional protluction, rather than of a negative, censorious kind, oblique and undetectable, which even the best system of regulation risks becoming. If one believes that people should be allowed to make their own decisions, and they appear content with a diet of manufactured junk food, then we can support all sorts of activities designed to enlarge their taste and inform them of the merits of other foods. But if after all these efforts they still make for junk food, that is their privilege in a free society. Access to Broadcczsting Services 567. It will be argued that the Committee's statement so far is primarily concerned with the efficient allocation of resources used in broadcasting through both private and public action, but ignores the question of the inequality of access to broadcasting services as a result of differences in income. The substitution of voluntary purchase of broadcasting services means that poor listeners and viewers will have to pay the same as rich listeners and viewer& for programmes and the rich will be able to afford a greater volume and variety in their broadcasting "diet". It is recognised by those who put forward this argument that the existing licence fee is regressive with resl.'ect to. in~me and this leads them to argue f?r the replacement of the licence fee by some form of chargmg wh1ch IS more closely related to means. A vanant of this argument has already been mentioned in paragraph 259, by which the licence fee should be abolished and the BBC should be financed out of general taxation. 568. The Committee accepts that a move towards a Pay-TV system might result in those on lower incomes paying more for broadcasting services both because of the: charges. introduced and their desire to alter their "mix" of the volume and type of programmes that they w1sh to enjoy. If Pay-TV had any adverse distributional effects then the Committee would prefer to see these taken care of by alterations in the tax or benefit structure or both, leaving those who were compensated in this manner to decide for themselves, in the light of their tastes and preferences, the amount and comp~sition of broa?casting services that ~ey wished to purchase. Similarly any change in the method of financmg of the public support for broadcas'!-"g does not preclude taking account of distributional effects. ~ndeed, _the proposal to use gen~ral taxation rather than a regressive levy would be one method by wh1ch pubhc support for broadcasting could be financed.
The Political Economy of the Media I/ 12.3 Implications for the Present System Commercial Laissez-Faire
571. The Committee's view of the aim of broadcasting, with its emphasis on reflection of the tastes and preferences of consumers must not be confused with what may be termed the "commerciallaissez-faire" system. Such a system would simply require that all broadcasting channels should be privatised and that the whole of broadcasting should be de-regulated without worrying about whether channels are financed by advertising or in other ways. 572. The view that commercialisation will in the end bring the main advantages of a genuine market is much more willingly accepted in the USA than in Britain and has a strong influence on the present US Administration's policies. A graphic statement of what the free market principle entails is found in the view of Mark Fowler, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission for the USA. He characterises the traditional approach to broadcasting regulation as the "trusteeship model" in which exclusive rights to a frequency are assigned, having regard to the "public interest" rather than bought and sold in the marketplace. This has given the FCC the right to intrude into programme content on the ground that the "Commission is more than a traffic officer, policing the wavelengths ... (The 1934 Communications Act] puts upon the Com~ission the burden of determining the composition of the traffic", to quote a significant judgement of Justice Frankfurter. In Mr Fowler's view this judgement is misconceived, and, strictly interpreted, would be in conflict with the First Amendment of the US Constitution which states that Congress can pass no law which abridges freedom of speech and of the press. Mr Fowler proposes instead that access to the electromagnetic spectrum should be made as free as possible and that regulation of content should be eliminated. Market incentives will then act as a "regulator", by ensuring that consumers are.~r?vided with ':"h~t they desire. A_ bod¥ such as the FC:C should, he believes, confine its regulatory actlVllles to the ass1gnmg of property nghts m the spectrum m some appropriate way and to any intervention needed to sustain competition. Mr Fowler and his supporters are, however, prepared to countenance so.m_e subsidy for public service broadcasting, provided that interference in the marketplace is kept !o a mmtmum.
569. Another aspect of the problem llf access to broadcasting services concerns the location of viewers and listeners. There would be, as at present, considerable disparity in the costs of providing broadcasting services to different areas of the United Kingdom. Those companies charging for broadcasting services would be tempted to cover their costs by charging different prices in relatively low-cost and high-cost areas, to the detriment of the latter. This would be contrary to the principle of universality o.f access to broadcasting services. 570. The Committee accepts that there is a collective benefit in access to a considerable range of broadcasting programmes, particularly those which concentrate on matters of serious national concern, including news, educational and current affairs programmes. Its positio~ implies_that some measure of public support must be directed towards creating such access.or that some mtervenllon would be necessary in the charging system to achieve the same end. The prec1se a""!ount of.such support or the extent of regulation of charging is clearly a matter for debate. The Commtttee beheves that any such support or regulation should be made explicit and offers further suggestions on its extent in paragraph 699.
573. It would be easy to contract out of serious discussion of the US model, as now conceived by its regulators, simply by arguing that the US system is so different-some might say alien-to the UK system. ThC: ~mmittee, having placed s~ much emphasis on the importance of "consumer sovereignty", has an obhgatton, nevertheless, to explam why the Fowler model should not form the eventual aim of a gradual reform of broadcasting finance. There are two major problems about the model: (i) US TV is financed largely by advertising. This means, as we have stated bcforc,that television and radio stations direct their programming to satisfy the needs of advertisers. If viewers and listeners have access to a large number of channels offering a wide range of choice, the discrepancy between an adver.tiser-financed system and one of direct consumer sovereignty exercised by pay-TV is diminished. Whether it will be eliminated depends on the distribution of consumer preferences and the structure of programm~ cos!s, and of cour~e on whether concentration among channel owners or programme producers IS avmded. The expenence of Italy, where nearly 30 channels arc available to viewers in many areas, but where the Berlusconi group controls the main national private channels, is a warning here. (ii) An advertising financed system is more likely to provide for real consumer sovereignty in the US where the vast land area reduces the problem of spectrum scarcity. In addition, entry into the broadcasting _business is facilitated by the prospect of potentially large audiences. With a total of 6,000 radio stations and as many as 50 television channels in larger communities, the problem of coincidence of pre~erences of advertisers and viewers/listeners may be reduced. Any programme commanding a viable audtence may soon be able to find some means of transmission in the main US urban centres. Even then television financed by advertising could still turn out to be inferior to a pay-TV system with many channels. The difference remains that pay TV viewers pay for the programmes they receive whereas they do not pay for programmes financed by advertising. · (iii) In any case it will take us a good few years of growth of satellite and cable channels, and decline in the price of their reception, before the problems of spectrum shortages are overcome in the UK. There still remains the question of whether the market for programmes will be sufficient to attract new entrants on a sufficient scale to provide adequate choice and competition. Some members of the Committee believe that for this reason the US analysis will remain misleading for the UK alone, but might be more useful for Western Europe as a whole. Others believe tlmt the quest inn nf "Where will the prmluccrs come from?" a~d "How will people find time to consume their waresT' {sec paragraph 6111) could easily have been apphed to books at the time of the introduction of printing. In their view the root of the problem is not the size of the UK market, but the present difficulty of directly charging individual consumers at differential prices which reflect the intensity of their preferences.
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The Political Economy of the Media ll Public Service Broadcasting
574. The Public Service concept has for a long time been at the heart of the debate on broadcasting. We have referred to it in paragraph 563 but we have left its analysis until this stage of the chapter, not to belittle it, but on the contrary because it can best be understood in relation to the earlier discussion of consumer sovereignty and commerciallaissez-faire. 575. There seem to be as many interpretations of the concept of Public Service as contributors to the debate. It is worth distinguishing between Public Service as a set of institutional arrangments and "public service" as a shorthand way of referring to certain characteristic beliefs about the aims of such institutions and the methods by which they should pursue them. We start with the institutions. 576. The essence of the Public Service institutions has been that, under arrangements made by Parlia· ment in the name of and for the good of society as a whole, a non-commercial body or bodies are given the duty of serving the evident needs and interests of the public, as best these may be judged by the body or bodies themselves, and with whatever supporting financial arrangements Parliament may see fit to put in place. The public's needs and interests have been taken by Parliament (for instance in the BBC Charter) to consist in programmes which "inform, educate and entertain". The interpretation of these broad targets has been presumed to be the duty of the bodies charged with supplying, or supervising the provision of, programmes to the public. These institutional arrangments apply not only to the BBC, which has a direct responsibility for providing programmes, but also to the IBA, which is responsible for allocating ITV and commercial radio franchises, and for day-to-day regulation of the commercial sector, and which acts as a strict regulator of schedules, content and advertising time. Looser regulation applies to cable, DBS and community radio. (See paragraphs 2&-42.) 577. There is much more confusion about public service as an aim. Indeed BBC spokesmen have not always been as effective as they might have been in explaining it, either because they have been too vague or because they have claimed too much. For instance, some statements of the BBC Director General Alasdair Milne risk giving the impression that the viewer's or listener's main function is to react to a set of choices determined by the broadcasting institutions. • 578. We had some difficulty in obtaining an operational definition from broadcasters of public service broadcasting. But it would be unfair to dwell on this difficulty if only because the term "public service" is used in discussions of broadcasting throughout the world and its meaning is reasonably clear from its usage. Most broadcasters have insisted on:(i) The duty to "inform, entertain, and educate", a duty which is reaffirmed in the introductory section of the BBC Charter. (ii) The principle of geographical universality (see paragraph 569). In other words there is a commitment to. ensure that television and radio services reach as high a proportion of the population as possible.t
579. In the early stages of our Inquiry stress was laid by BBC representatives on the incompatibility of advertising on the BBC with public service principles. Any such move would, it was argued, drive both the BBC and ITV much further into a battle for ratings. Later more stress was laid on the argument that public service covered the BBC's light entertainment as well as other programmes and that the Corporation must not be drawn into a so-called "Arts Council ghetto". 580. The best operational definition of public service is simply any major modification of purely commercial provision resulting from public policy. Defined in this way the scope of public service will vary with the state of broadcasting. If a full broadcasting market is eventually achieved, in which viewers and listeners can express preferences directly, the main role of public service could turn out to be the collective provision outlined in paragraphs 561-566 of programmes which viewers and listeners are willing to support in their capacity of taxpayers and voters, but not directly as consumers. These would include programmes of a more demanding kind with a high content of knowledge, culture, education and experiment (including entertainment). •For instance: "Broadcasting is not a matter of one person sending a signal to another; or one household to another; it is a process or scauering and thus sowing seed far wide. Some will fall on slony ground and some on fertile ground. Broadcasting further means that the sower waits to see what grows." (Speech althe public meeting held by the Committee at Church Uouse. Westminster, 28 November 1985.)
tThe BBC Annual Report and Handbook 1986 indicates that coverage for BB Cl and BBC2 was estimated to be 99.1% or the population. The report goes on to say that it had taken 65 new transmitting stations to push the figure up from 99.0% to 99.1%.
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581. But in the highly imperfect broadcasting market we ~~ve known, a~d which sti!l ~xists, the role of public service is much wider. So long as the number of telev.tston channels ts severely hmtte? ~y s~ectrum shortage, and there is no direct payment by viewers and hsteners, an unregulll:ted a~verusmg-f~nance~ broadcasting system so far from satisfying consumer demand can actually dtstort tt. In parucular tt provides an inadequ~te supply of medium appeal and "minority ~rogrammes", whi.ch most people w~nt to see or hear some ofthe time (see paragraphs 299-316). In these cucumstances--qmte apart from thetr role in stimulating a taste for demanding programmes-the Public Service institutions have been necessary to provide the viewer and listener with what he or she wants as a consumer. The BBC and the regulate~ ITV system have done far better, in mimicking the effects of a true consumer market, than any purely !mssezfaire system, financed by advertising could have done under conditions of spectrum.shorta&e. To atd th~m in their task they have established systematic and frequent.market research, cov~nng audt.e!lce appreciation as well as ratings, of a kind that no new~paper ha~ avatlable on a .regu!ar basts. In. addttlon t~ey have provided more demanding programmes (for mstances m the arts), whtch vtewers and hsteners mtght have been willing to pay for in their capacity as taxpayers and voters, but not as consumers. 582. We would go further. The broadcasting authorities have not only mimicked the ""!arket; they have provided packages of programmes to audiences at remarkably low cost (measured by the hcence fee and by the implicit cost to the consumer of ITV advertisements (see paragraph 239) and judged by the ~tandards of other forms of leisure and entertainment and by international standards). We can also pay tnbute to the way in which the packaging of programmes has satisfied and develo~ed audience tastes. The inte~twining of information education and entertainment has broadened the honzons of great numbers of vtewers and listeners. The notion of cross-fertilisation of programme categories is inherent in BBC practice-and in ITV practice, to~r-and of great v~lue. Thu_s '!'e have ·:Yes, Mini~ter:•, a programme s~r.ies conceived as entertainment.but, some of us thmk, provtdmg effective education m the ways of Bnush government. Comparable examples can be found in "Crimewatch", "Tomorrow's World", "Mastermind", "The World About Us" and a host of other programmes. The cookery programmes-forerunners of "Food and Drink" and "You are what you eat"-began as furt~e! education.on BBC2 .in ~aytime. ~ut prov~~ so popular .th~t they were moved to peak timings. All that ts m accord wtth the Reilhmn tra~ttlon, denvmg from Rett~ s own dictum in 1924 that you have to mix a little education with a lot of entertamment, to carry people with you (quoted, among other places, in John Reith's Broadcasting over Britain (19~4, pp 147-8)*. It must be admitted that, today, entertainment values at times appear !o. h~ve taken. ov~r m s~me new~ and current affairs programmes, with the inevitable consequences of tnvtahty and dtlutiOn of mformauon. Broa~ly speaking, though, the concept of providing indirect education and information through some entertainment programmes still prevails. 583. The practice of providing a mixed diet at low cost is one that we ~ish to see continued. It is, in ~ur view, compatible with the recommendations that follow for fu!ure financt!lg of the BBC through subscnption. It is, indeed, important that in moving towards the changes of the mtd-1990s and later dcv~lopments discussed in this chapter we do not, prematurely, dismantle or destroy the "packaged" terrestnal broadcasting services that give good value today. t •fn Anthony Smith, British Broadcasting, David and Charles, 1974, pp 44-S. tVivid illustrations of achievement and criticism of the earliest public service broadcasting cin be drawn from two books. The first comes from Tom Bums, in The BBC: public instilulion and private world, ppl~20. when: ht: assesses Rcith's period (1924-38):
"More strikingly and more assuredly, the BBC had bc:gun-or atlc:a.st can claim lhe greatest share ir;-what amounh:d tn a cultu~al traru.forma· lion. What the Public Ubrarics AclS of the 1890s had achieved already for books was Clpped hy the BB~ m other !egards. 11 rc::~~ccd Ylrt~all~ to zero the marginal cost to every member of the nation of full access to an enormous cultured heritage: preVIOUsly avntlable to a pnvdcgcd mmonty. The clearest manifestation or the sheer cuhural gains achieved through broadcasting is, of course, !"us1c. Perhaps the gr~atest achtevcme~t of the. BBC has been to transform this country from what was musically the most barbarous nation in Europe mto what has sor_ne cla1ms '?be the mus1ca~ cap1tal of the world. Its role in the development or new forms of dramatic writing, und in new dramatic genres-and thus tn the warume and, cspeaally. post war development or the theatre-is less easy to assess, but it is certainly considerable:... Bunu goes on. however, to be critical of Reith"s approach to broadcasting on pulilical issues. These had already been covered in deaail in the famous study by RH Coasc, Brilish Broad<arling (Longman, 1950, p. 167 and p. 18'1):
No balanced appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of .. Public Service.. institutions should ovc:rlook the BBC's role in kct:ping Winshln Olurchill off the air before World War Two. Details were given hy Brcndan Bracken in a Commons Debate on 16 July _1~6. whl!n_ he relutt:d that Churchill .. implored the Govcrnor1 of the BUC tu give: him an uppurlunily to !Iota le tn the country lite d~:!>pcr.ue dangers at was cnh:rmc .upon hy th.c squalid policy of appcasemcnl. The BBC refused to give him an opp
Cr.lu.msclf a pn::w.ar Governor, rephcc.J: ..That. I:!> unfortunately true ... Sir Ian went on to relate how Uoyd Gcorge, Churchill and Auslln Chambcrlam made a JOtnt protc:st tu the B~C on us subservience to the Party Whips. Churchill bad earlier been denied broadcasting opportunities in 1936, when he wanted to talk about lndta. It was only the 1939-45 war during which the BBC built up its own news services. and through the post-war dcvelopmcnlS in current affairs that that aspect of British broadcasting reached its maturity.
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584. There arc also weaknesses of the Public Service system. Despite the investment of both the BBC and ITV sectors in sophisticated market research, there is an absence of true consumer sovereignty and of market signals, which only direct payment by viewers and listeners could establish. Because of its dependence on public finance and regulation, the system is vulnerable to political pressure, and vulnerable to trade union and other special interest groups. The BBC's administrative structure seems to generate more than the usual amount of tension associated with large corporations organised on hierarchical lines. The unpopularity, whether deserved or not, of the financing mechanism associated with the UUC and the near-impossibility of the IBA to he seen to be discharging fairly its award of franchises are other problems, likely to grow rather than diminish in time.
advertising by Channel4 would breach the princip!e of no competition for the same source of reve~u:. It is in any case most l!nsatisfactory that the public serv1ce element m ITV should be dependent on restncuon of entry.
585. A further problem of the Public Service institutions is its endemic weakness in the control of cost or pursuit of efficiency in the sense of value for money (sec chapter 11). No amount of scrutiny by accountants or consultants can be a substitute for the direct pressure of a competitive market. Indeed the inflation of costs in broadcasting probably has its origin in the ITV side. Inevitably the profits theoretically obtainable from a monopoly franchise in a large and prosperous region are shared between the programme contractors and the unions, with the taxpayer-the real freeholder of the franchised public asset-coming a poor third through the levy (see chapter 4). 586. Thus tributes to the success of publicly regulated broadcasting cannot absolve policy makers from permitting and encouraging technological developments which may eventually make a fully developed consumer market possible. The past effects of packaging and channelling in developing viewers' and listeners' tastes do not justify a paternalistic attitude which would prevent them from making less constrained choices in the future. In many walks of life it is possible to accept that earlier constraints and restrictions may have had beneficial side effects, while insisting that consumers should be regarded as the best judges of their own welfare in formulating future policy. (A historical analogy may be helpful: a social critic in the late 18th and early 19th century could pay sincere and generous tribute to aristocratic patronage in forming taste in painting, music and literature, while welcoming the greater freedom of choice offered both to artists and patrons by the wider bourgeois market that was beginning to develop.) 587. No consideration of public service principle can be complete without some summary of the circumstances which have made it operative and some assessment of whether these circumstances are likely to change. As already mentioned, in Britain public service principles have been implemented by a specific set of institutions. In the case of the BBC the public service aspect arises from its finance by a hypothecated tax known as the licence fee. In the case of independent television it arises from the influence of the IBA, both in awarding franchises and in the day-to-day regulation of channel content. The result is both some limitation on provision, compared with what contractors might like to provide, and some production of minority programmes, which might not be justified commercially in a system with a limited number of channels and no direct consumer purchase. 588. The essence of the operation of the public service system is seen at its most transparent in the case of the IBA, which awards franchises on a discretionary basis and regulates schedules and programme content with ultimate power of veto. The IBA's role, however, depends on there being no competition between different contractors, operating at the same time and in the same place, for advertising finance. From that point of view the Annan principle of no competition for the same source of finance is correct. ITV contractors can accept IBA guidance in the knowledge that they are protected from competition by rivals (other than the BBC, which is directly subject to public service principles, and Channel4 whose advertising they control). Once this protection goes the IBA will find it extremely difficult to enforce its standards. The abandonment ofTV-am's original aim is evidence of the limitations oflBA influence once contributors are believed to be in commercial difficulties. 589. "Regulation", in one of its aspects, can be regarded as a backdoor method of introducing arts, current affairs and other minority or medium appeal programmes without the direct injection of public money. The IBA is able to secure a moderate number of such programmes by its franchise power and veto power over a programme schedule (both of which put it in a good position to make "suggestions"). But for good or ill, the ability to secure such programmes by the regulatory backdoor could fade away. As satellite and cable spread, television channels will be competing for the same source ofadvertising revenues; and the need to remain in business will take precedence over the desire to please the IBA590. The conflict between regulation of programme content and freedom of entry would become acute if there were a chance of a 5th or 6th channel for ordinary terrestrial broadcasting. Even without breaching the universality principle such channels can be made available by the lease for "downloading" of the unused night-time hours; and we later make proposals for such leasing. Indeed, even the direct sale of its own 132
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591. The past successes of IBA regulation and the ability of the authorities to maintain the duopoly unt.il now may in the future create a fool's paradise. It is time to recognise the need for public finance for pubhc service programmes in the concrete sense outlined in paragraph 563. Indeed the defenders of the duopoly may unwittingly be the worst enemies of high quality programmes in the arts, current affai!s and for specialised tastes. For the ability of the existing system to finance these programmes ~ould wither away without any alternative source of provision of fi.nance havi~g bee~ developed. M~anY'hll~ the ~BC could find itself under even more pressure to populanse to hold Jts .aud1ence share, wh1ch Jt believes 1t needs to obtain public and political support for the licence fee. The true friend of "public service" programmes will realise that the present system for supporting them is unlikely to last far into the 1990s and that they. will require for their future sustenance a combination of moves to a genuine consumer market and some d1rect support from the public purse. 12.4 Strategy and Implementation 592. Our own conclusion is that British broadcasting should move towards a sophist_icated market system based on consumer sovereignty. That is a system which recognises that viewers and listeners· are the best ultimate judges of their own interests, which they can best satisfy if they have the optio.n of purchasi~g the broadcasting services they requir~ from as many alternative sou.rces of supply as poss1ble. There w1.11 always be a need to supplement the duect consumer market by pubhc finance for programmes of a pubhc service kind (defined in paragraph 563) supported by people in their capacity as citizens and voters but unlikely to be commercially self-supporting in the view of broadcasting entrepreneurs. 593. We therefore adopt an operational definition of public service, which implies a multiplicity .of programmes which could in principle be provided by programme makers who would make contracts with some statutory body to implement public service obligations in return for grants. It must be noted, however, that a wholly privatised broadcasting service is not a necessary condition for the operation either of a pay-TV system or of public service grants. It would be quite possible for both direct payments hy viewers and listeners and public service grants to be made to a mixture of private enterprise companies and a public corporation as at present. In practice we have no doubt that there will be a distinct and important role for the BBC as far ahead as anyone cares to look, not only in the supply of public service programmes in the narrow sense, but in a wide field of entertainment, information and education. 594. What we do expect to disappear or much diminish is the need for negative censorious controls. If the right conditions are established, there will be little need for "regulation" apart from the general law of the land to cover matters such as public decency, defamation, sedition, blasphemy and most of the other matters of concern in broadcasting.
595. We emphasise these legal constraints on Free Speech which exist even in countries most attached to the principles of the First Amendment. Whether or not it comes within our terms of reference, we can hardly fail to be aware of public concern about excesses of violence and sex on television. Our main point is that the recourse for people concerned about these areas should lie with the normal remedies of the law. To the extent that legislation lifts some of the legal constraints in return for specific regulation, these exemptions need to be removed, as we move along the deregulation route. The Committee has no collective view on whether these legal constraints need to be relaxed or strengthened, but points out the clear need for consistency between broadcasting and other areas. We take this point up in Recommendation 18. • 596. It follows from our concept of consumer sovereignty that we reject the commercial laissez-faire model, which is based on a small number of broadcasters competing to sell audiences to advertisers. Such a system neither achieves the important welfare benefits theoretically associated with a fully functioning market, nor meets British standards of public accountability for the private use of public assets. Furthermore, so long as the number of television channels is limited, and there is no direct consumer payment, collective provision and regulation of programmes does provide a better simulation of a market designed to reflect consumer preferences than a policy of laissez-faire. But this justification for the maintenance of regulation for the time being is only available if policy makers permit and encourage technological development which may eventually make a genuine market possible. --rbc Commiucc was informed thallhc eh id difference hctwccn hro:u.Jac.ting ami th~: press cunccr~ Ih..: Ol'r..o.:nc Puhlit..-atiuns Act. 11J59. While I he legal aspcc:tS urc oubidc our terms or reference. il h. evident that in the atur.;c of creating a consumer markL!llhc law ncctb lo Ill! nuu.h: cun..'\islcnl. We alstl acccptlhat. for hruadc-..tsling. the existing conwntiun under whkh ..adult .. pmgmmm~.-s appear late in Ihe c•;cning is :t scnsihtc approach.
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597. The present regulatory and financing system cannot therefore guide our longer term thinking. For a start, it will be increasingly impossible to preserve the conditions in which alone it can operate because of the outflanking development of so many new technologies. Anyway, even if it could by a superhuman effort of governmental regulation be preserved into the 21st century, it would be wrong in principle to seek to do so.
604. It has helped our thinking to envisage three stages. At the end of each stage, there will be an opportunity to "stop, look and listen" before moving on to the next-although we realise, of course, that a great deal of policy making will inevitably take place in piecemeal fashion in the course of the stages.
598. Our consumer sovereignty model is, of course, an ideal, a standard and a goal; not a fully specified mechanism to be pulled off the shelf tomorrow by a trigger-happy central pla~n~r. A satisfactory broadcasting market requires full freedom of entry for programme makers, a transmission system capable of carrying an indefinitely large number of programmes, facilities for pay-per-programme or pay-p~r channel and differentiated charges for units of time. Such a system may be called the full broadcasting market akin to that which exists in publishing. The difficulty is, of course, how to move from the present regulated system now under stress to the full broadcasting market without having to pass ii_I between through a time of troubles which could.gjve us the worst of bothworlds and the benefits of neither. 599. The first transitional difficulty to be faced is that of the cost of establishing a functioning broadcasting market. It is a priori possible that the cost of establishing pay-per-programme or pay-per-channel would be so great as to outweigh the benefits to choice and efficiency. For instance some restaurants charge much less for a table d'hote meal than the same items ordered a la carte. The cost of new technological developments, including multiplicity of charinels, or pay-per-programme or pay-per-channel, tends to fall rapidly, but unpredictably. The cost of individual charging systems will have to be carefully monitored before changes are made in existing financing and charging systems. But while conceding the point in principle it is important to compare like with like. It is quite invalid to compare _the cost to a future viewer of a whole array of additional services and channels with the cost to the present viewer of the four channels of the duopoly. The relevant comparison is with the cost to a future consumer who decides to take four basic channels and eschew any extras. There is no particular reason to suppose that the real cost ~o such .a viewer of "core" services will rise substantially, if only because some channels and programmes wdl contme to be financed by advertising. There is also a case for not encrypting programmes financed from public services funds (see paragraph 685 below).
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605. For some years to come-probably until well into the 1990s-the bulk of broadcast television will be supplied by a very limited number of channels: the two BBC and the ITV channels and a couple of supplementary channels formed by utilising the "silent hours" (see Recommendation 9). Satellite and cable are likely to advance, but still be confined to a minority of viewers. We will call this period. Stage 1. During this stage our main tasks are:(i) To secure the continuity and stability of BBC finances. (ii) To ensure an adequate range of diversity and programme quality in a period when the "ratings war" is likely to increase. (iii) To prepare the way for the more direct exercise of consumer choice in later stages, while giving existing broadcasters and suppliers of equipment adequate time to adjust.
Impact on Viewers and Listeners
606. At the time of writing, a likely route to the full broadcasting market we envisage appears to be the development of an optic fibre network by the telecommunications industry, which could be used for broadcasting and other services (see paragraph 493). In our first stage proposals we suggest the removal of obstacles to such a development. But we certainly do not want to commit ourselves to one specific means of delivery, especially when the possibilities of satellite and other forms of cable are still far from fully tested. In any case, some intermediate stage wil~ probably be necessary before the full broadcasting market arrives; and we are attracted to direct viewer subscription to the BBC as such a second stage and on its own merits. Technology is already available for such a subscription system, in which the consumer could pay directly for BBC services. The BBC evidence (as well as our own investigations) makes clear that subscription is feasible. (It is already used by nearly a million French television households receiving Canal Plus.) Moreover there is at least some support in the BBC evidence for a subscription system (although there is more than one view in the Corporation) and a good deal of confidence within the Corporation in its ability to sell its services directly under such a system.
600. It is a common misunderstanding to suppose that in a fully developed broadcasting market most people would spend most of their time facing a bewildering set of dials, trying to mak.e up ~heir minds between thousands of alternative programmes. Of course many people for much of the lime wdl_prefer to economise on the effort of choice by paying for packages of programmes or whole channels, JUS! as at present people buy collections of published works in the form of newspapers, magazines and journals, as well as individual books. So it would be with multiplicity of choice in broadcasting.
607. We make below a simple technical recommendation (see Recommendation 1), which will not commit the Government to BBC subscription, but which will much reduce the cost of a changeover to such a system, if time is allowed for the natural obsolescence and replacement of present receivers. It will also provide manufacturers and broadcasters time to adjust to any changeover. We see the following attraction in subscription:-
601. Another common question is:-" Who will have time to watch this great v.ariety of programmes?:' The. comparison with publishing helps here t.oo. A~y individual p_rinted work, or JO'!rna!, .or ne'Yspaper IS read by a minority, often a very small minonty. It IS the aggregation of numerou~ mmontles which makes possible a publishing industry under whi.ch a large number of titles are pubh~hed a ye:'lr. B~ way of comparison Whitaker's Almanack, 1986 hsts (page 1071) the number of book titles published m Great Britain in 1984 as 51,555. Similarly in a multiple choice broadcasting market, there could be numerous specialist programmes or channels each with its own particular public, together with more traditional channels of broad appeal. 602. Cultural quality is also affected by thes~ considerations. When th~ printing pres~ super~eded the handwritten manuscript, the number of publicatiOns rose manyfold, and their ayerage q_uahty d~ch1_1ed. But because of the great expansion of published works, the absolute number of h1gh quahty publications and their total readership both expanded a great ~eal. For similar reasons, the effects on standards of a fu~ly developed broadcasting market should not be JUdged by the average programme, but by the range, quahty and penetration of the best. To do otherwise would be like ignoring the spectacular rise in the sale of paper, back classics, on the grounds that popular tabloids sell in even greater numbers.
(i) It is a step towards consumer choice. If there is to be a consumer market in broadcasting, it will help if viewers become accustomed to paying for at least one or two channels directly rather than through a licence fee or through the cost in the shops of advertised products. (ii) Once it is clear that viewers are themselves deciding to pay for BBC services, and not being forced to do so as a condition for being allowed to own or rent a television set, there will be no reason to resent the payment. (iii) We are optimistic about the BBC's ability· to attract subscription revenue for its two main channels (which unlike the French Canal Plus are not a marginal extra but in the mainstream of broadcasting).
(iv) A BBC subscription system might eventually provide opportunity for pay-per-programme or payper-channel which would be a helpful step towards a full broadcasting market. (v) Last, but far from least, subscription would reduce the political dependence of the BBC on government, and political pressures upon the Corporation, even more than the indexation of the licence which we recommend in Stage 1 (see Recommendation 3 below.)
Three Stages 603. Our detailed recommendations are designed to lead to our stated goal in a manner which will allow full flexibility for all the unknown and unforeseeable developments, technical and otherwise, which will occur over the couple of decades or so that must pass before the goal itself, in whatever form, can be reached.
608. The following table sets out the three stages we envisage, with some notes on possible accompanying developments. These are presented as a guide rather than a predetermined plan of action. In particular moves to the second and third stages should not be automatic, but should depend on an appraisal of what has gone before. We set out later some ofthe developments required to trigger further action in the further stages.
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Table 12.1: The Three Stages STAGE
LlKELY BROADCASTING DEVELOPMENTS
POLICY REGIME
Satellite and cable develop, but most viewers and listeners continue to rely on BBC, ITV and independent local radio.
Indexation of BBC licence fee
2
Proliferation of broadcasting systems, channels and payments methods.
Subscription replaces main part of licence fee
3
Indefinite number of channels. Pay-per-programme or pay-per-channel available. Technology reduces cost of multiplicity of outlets and of charging system.
Multiplicity of choice leading to full broadcasting market
A Public Service provision will continue through all three stages. 609. Our detailed recommendations are designed. to take effect in Stage 1, many of these quite soon. But they are also designed to facilitate the transition to the later stages, should it still seem desirable to move in that direction. Following our specific recommendations, we suggest some guidelines designed to help in the choice of whether and when to move to the later stages, and to anticipate as far as we can both the opportunities and pitfalls en route. 610. We are well aware that we have not said the last word on the complex and changing issues facing broadcasting. But we do offer our analysis and recommendations as a foundation on which others can build. An outside body should periodically review the progress made in implementing the Committee's recommendations and offer the Home Secretary an independent opinion on when and by what means it is desirable to implement the second and third stages. Rather than recommend the setting up of yet another committee, we suggest that the task of monitoring be undertaken by an appropriate Commons Select Committee. (This could be the Select Committee on Home Affairs or the Select Committee on Trade and Industry.) We now proceed to our recommendations.
[18] Excerpt from Television and the Crisis of Democracy.
5.3 Public Access Television Public access television is one of the few real forms of alternative television, and it provides the best prospect for using the broadcast media to serve the interests of popular democracy. As Frantz Fanon put it, "A community will evolve only when a people control their own communi~ cations." Indeed, the rapid expansion of public access television in recent years has created new opportunities for progressives to counter the con~ servative programming that dominates mainstream television. Innovative access programming is now being cablecast regularly in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, Madison, Austin, and hundreds of other towns or regions throughout the country. In this section, I shall discuss public access television in the context of the new possibilities for democratic intervention in broadcast media, and provide examples of alternative pro~ gramming based on a media project with which I am involved in Austin, Texas. 10 When cable television was widely introduced in the early 1970s, the FCC mandated that "beginning in 1972, new cable systems [and, after 1977, all cable systems] in the 100 largest television markets be required to provide channels for government, for educational purposes, and most importantly, for public access." This mandate suggested that cable systems should make three public access channels available for state and local government, education, and community use. The term public access was construed to mean that the cable company should make equipment and air time available so that literally anybody could make noncommercial use of the access channel to say or do anything he or she wished, on a first-come, first-serve basis, subject only to obscenity and libel laws. Local organizations were set up to manage the access system; and, in some cases, the cable company itself managed the access center, providing the equipment and personnel to make access programming. In the beginning, few if any cable systems made as many as three channels available. Some systems began offering one or two in the 1970s. For the most part, the availability of access channels depends on the political clout of local governments and of committed, often unpaid, local groups to convince the cable companies (almost all of which are privately owned) to make access chai).nels available. In Austin, Texas, for example, a small group of video activists formed Austin Community Television in 1973 and began cablecasting with their own equipment through the cable system that year. Eventually, they received foundation and CETA government grants to support their activities, buy equipment, and pay regular employees
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salaries. A new cable contract signed in the early 1980s required that the cable company pay $500,000 a year for access. After a difficult political struggle (which will be described later in the chapter), the access system was able to get at least $300,000 to $400,000 a ·year to support Austin Community Television activities. In 1979, however, a Supreme Court decision struck down the 1972 FCC ruling on the grounds that the agency didn't have the authority to mandate access-an authority that supposedly belongs to the U.S. Congress (see FCC v. Midwest Video Cor. 440 U.S. 689, discussed in Koenig 1979). Nonetheless, cable was expanding so rapidly and becoming such a highgrowth, competitive industry that city governments considering cable systems were besieged by companies making lucrative offers of 20 to 80 channel cable systems. In such an atmosphere, city governments were able to negotiate access channels and financial support for a public access system. Consequently, public access grew significantly during the 1980s, and more than 1,000 access centers now cablecast regular programming. Where there are operative public access systems, individuals have a promising, though not sufficiently explored, opportunity to produce and cablecast their own television programs. Shown in Austin, for example, are weekly antinuclear programs, black and chicano series, gay programs, countercultural and anarchist programs, an atheist program, feminist pro~ grams, labor programs, and a weekly progressive news magazine, "Alternative Views," which produced more than 400 hour-long programs between 1978 and 1990 on a wide variety of topics, thus providing a conduit for perspectives ("alternative views") usually excluded from the broadcasting spectrum. "Alternative Views"
Our show originated in 1978 and immediately started producing a weekly program by using video equipment and tapes at the University of Texas as well as the broadcast and editing facilities of Austin Community Television. In fact, a group does not require technical experience or even financial resources to begin producing access programming, especially when there is an access system in place that wUl provide equipment, technical personnel, and video tapes. A few systems charge a fee for the use of facilities or air time; but owing to competitive bidding between cable systems for the most lucrative franchises, many cable systems offer free use of equipment, personnel, and air time; occasionally they even provide free videotapes. Many public access systems also offer training programs on how to use the tnedia, directed to groups or individuals who want to make their own programs from original conception through final editing. As equipment costs have rapidly declined, it is even possible for some groups to purchase their own video equipment. (See below for more details on how to organize public access production.)
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From the beginning, those of us involved in "Alternative Views" were convinced that our programs would prove of interest to the community; indeed, we gained a large and loyal audience. 11 On our first program in October 1978, our guest was an Iranian student who discussed opposition to the shah and the possibility of his overthrow; we also featured a detailed discussion of how the Sandinista movement was struggling to overthrow Somoza-weeks before the national broadcast media discovered these movements. We then offered two programs on nuclear energy and energy alternatives, featuring, among other guests, Austinite Ray Reece (1980), whose book later became a definitive text on corporate control and suppression of solar energy. On early shows we broadcast in-depth interviews with former Senator Ralph Yarborough, a Texas progressive responsible for such legislation as the National Defense Education Act. (In the process, we learned that he had never before been interviewed for television.) We also aired an interview with former CIA official John Stockwell, who described how he had been recruited into the CIA at the University of Texas. Stockwell (1978) discussed not only the CIA's activities but also his own experiences in Africa, Vietnam, and then Angola, which led him to quit the CIA and write a book (In Search of Enemies) that exposed the Angola operation he had been in charge of. He then detailed a long history of CIA abuses and provided arguments as to why he thought the CIA should be shut down and a new intelligence service developed. Other interviews included discussions with American Atheist founder Madalyn Murray O'Hair, who expounded her views on religion and told of how she had successfully brought lawsuits to eliminate prayer from schools, thus preserving the constitutional separation between church and state; with Jim Hightower, who discussed agribusiness and oil corporations; with Benjamin Spock, who discussed the evolution of his theory of childrearing, his political radicalization, and his adventures in the 1960s as an antiwar activist; with Stokeley Carmichael (now Kwame Ture), who discussed his 1960s militancy and theories of black power, his experiences in Africa, and his perspectives on world revolution; and with Nobel Prize winner George Wald, former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, antinuclear activist Helen Caldicott, and many other well-known intellectuals, activists, and social critics. As our connections grew, we began receiving documentaries from various filmmakers and devised a documentary and talk show format. We also presented a regular news section that utilized material from mostly nonmainstream news sources. These stories, largely ignored by the establishment media, provided interpretations of events different from those in the mainstream. We received very positive responses to our show and began regularly taping interviews with people who visited Austin as well as with local activists involved in various struggles. We began varying our format
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using documentary films, slide shows, raw video footage, and other material to enhance the visual aspect of our program. In addition, one of our members, Frank Morrow, became skilled at editing and developed some impressive montages of documentary and interview material to illustrate · the topics being discussed. Once the project got under way, we had little difficulty finding topics, people, or resources. We discovered that almost everyone we wished to interview was happy to appear on our program, and, after we began gaining recognition, local groups and individuals called us regularly to provide topics, speakers, films, and other video material. We encouraged some local groups to make their own weekly shows, and a variety of peace, countercultural, gay, anti-nuke, chicano, anti-klan, women's, and other groups have done so. Indeed, we have continued to serve as an umbrella organization for more than 100 local groups that have used their speakers and film or video materials to produce programs. Aside from hour-long interviews with the nationally known individuals already mentioned, various feminists, gays, union activists, and representatives of local progressive groups have appeared as guests on our show. We have also carried through in-depth interviews with officials from the Soviet Union and Nicaragua, Allende's former government in Chile, members of the democratic front in El Salvador, and participants in other Third World revolutionary movements. And in addition to the documentaries and films provided by various filmmakers and groups, we ourselves have made video documentaries on a variety of topics. We have also received raw video footage of the bombing of Lebanon and the aftermath of the massacres at Sabra and Shatilla, of the assassinations of five communist tabor organizers by the Ku Klux Klan in Greensboro, North Carolina, of daily life in the liberated zones of El Salvador, and of counterrevolutionary activity in Nicaragua. Most of this material would not have been shown on network television; at the least, it would have been severely cut and censored. Hence it is probably true that the best existing possibUity for producing alternative television is through public access/cable television. Obviously, progressive groups who want to carry out access projects must make a sustained commitment to media politics and explore local possibUities for intervention. Public Access Television: Challenges and Problems When progressive public access television became widespread and popular in Austin, it was subjected to political counterattacks. The establishment daily newspaper, the Austin American-Statesnian, published frequent de· nunciations of public access television, claiming that it was controlled by the "lunatic" fringe of "socialists, atheists, and radicals" and that it was
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not representative of the community as a whole (an interesting claim given that many conservative church groups, business groups, and political groups also make use of access). The "poor technical quality" of public access television was attacked along with the "irresponsibility" of many of the programs (in fact, technical quality has been steadily improving). In 1983 these criticisms were repeated in editorials and in articles on Austin Community Television (ACTV) in the more liberal monthly magazines, Texas Monthly and Third Coast. Representatives of these publications wanted to get part of the access pie and thus attacked the group currently in control-as did some members of the local public broadcasting system. Eventually, the criticisms became threatening. Austin Community Television was applying for a five-year renewal of its contract as access manager, but certain interests in the community were attempting to replace it with another access manager and system controlled by city government and local media interests. After an intense political struggle, the city cable commission and the city council approved the renewal of the ACTV access management. For the time being, the community remains in control of the access system, which is open to anyone who wants to use it, either on a regular or an . occasional basis. Other U.S. cities have not been so fortunate.l2 Some cable companies have either taken over the access center or leased access channels for commercial purposes. Some city governments have also taken over access centers and have been known to shut them down, lease them commercially, or use them exclusively for government purposes. Many access centers are severely underfunded, and some major cities (e.g., San Francisco) have only one access channel. Some access centers, such as the one in Houston, charge fees for use of equipment and airtime. And since there is no cable law that mandates access, some centers will be threatened with shutdown when current franchise contracts expire. Furthermore, many cable companies have never provided access channels, whereas others rigidly control the access channels and would probably not permit a program like "Alternative Views" to be cablecast. But many cities do have relatively open access channels. Where possible, progressives should start using this vehicle of political communication with an eye toward developing a national public access network in which tapes can be exchanged and circulated. Steps in this direction have been discussed in various groups, including our own, which has now developed a national access network. In the spring of 1984 we began distributing "Alternative Views" program tapes to access centers in Dallas and San Antonio, and in the fall of 1984 we added Fayetteville, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, and Urbana to our evolving network. After that, we made contact with access systems and groups in New York, Boston, Portland, San Diego, Marin County, Fairfax and Arlington counties in Virginia, Cincinnati, San Francisco, Columbus,
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Chicago, New Haven, Durham, and many other cities. This project involves contacting local groups or members of an access center who are interested in sponsoring our program on a regular weekly basis, and duplicating and sending packages of five tapes to the access systems in these cities. Administration of this project has required the heroic labor of Frank Morrow, who has managed to provide tapes to as many as fifty different access centers and to keep track of which programs have been distributed to the various centers (i.e., to avoid duplication and to provide variety). At the Union for Democratic Communications conference in Washington in October 1984, several access groups explored the possibility of leasing weekly satellite time so that progressive access programming could be beamed all over the country. This would mean that the millions of people who own home satellite receivers could watch progressive public access programming. Preliminary inquires suggest that the cost of renting satellite time for access programming is not prohibitive; indeed, a grant of $100,000 to $150,000. a year might yet make it possible for additional millions of people all over the country to receive progressive television in their homes. During 1985-1986, Paper Tiger Television, a New York-based access project founded by DeeDee Halleck, received grants that made possible a ten-week satellite access project. "Deep Dish TV," as it was called, broadcast via satellite ten programs (on such topics as militarism, agriculture, racism, Central America, and children's TV) to access systems and private dishes across the country. It is hoped that this effort will eventually lead to a Left-leaning satellite channel that can compete with the multitude of religious, business, and other satellite outletS that tend to present the ideologies and agendas of the Right. Access centers must be convinced to carry progressive access programs, as Paper Tiger has done. Indeed, it claims that more than 300 systems carry its Deep Dish TV series. During a second season, Deep Dish TV produced a new series of programs on selected topics; as of 1990, a third season is being planned. In the next section, we shall examine some of the ways in which individuals might make use of public access television in situations where cable television already exists. After that, we shall consider proposals for a progressive satellite television system.
How to Produce Local Access Programming Individuals and groups wishing to produce progressive television programming must first explore the availability of an access channel and approach the people in charge of it. They should· make clear what type of programming they want to produce, and inquiries should be made concerning what equipment, training, and tapes are available from the access center. Next, a group must decide if it wishes to produce only occasional
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programs or to develop a regular weekly, biweekly, or monthly series. "Alternative Views" started out by producing weekly one-hour programs and then developed its programming organization, philosophy, and projects as it went on. In some cases, however, more fully developed projects should be outlined before one begins. In many respects, it is preferable to undertake a weekly· program, played at the same day and time every week, in order to build up an audience. A talk show format is, of course, the easiest to adopt, even though more imaginative uses of video might be developed as experience and expertise expand. Paper Tiger Television in New York, for example, combines critiques of various types of corporate media by media critics with imaginative sets, visuals, editing, and so on. A tabor-oriented program in Pittsburgh, "The Mill Hunk News," combines news reports of labor issues with documentary interviews and uses music videos as well as other creative visuals. An alternative television project can also draw on the many progressive films and videos already produced. Many groups are happy to provide copies of their films and video cassettes for broadcast on public access. If the films and duplicating equipment are available, this, too, is a good way to begin. Then, as the project progresses, the group may want to begin developing its own documentaries and perhaps mix documentary, film, and discussion formats by editing in titles, slides, and other images in order to make use of the video format. Once the project gets under way, the group should consider incorporating as a nonprofit corporation and applying for tax-exempt status from the IRS. Doing so will help in fund-raising activities because the donations then become tax-deductible; tax-exempt status also makes possible the purchase of nonprofit bulk-mailing permits, which can be useful for fund raising and communicating with the audience by mail. An access project can be funded through regular benefits, solicitation of contributions, and various local and national foundation grants. A few access systems actually pay for programming, but they are unfortunately exceptions. Indeed, the development of progressive access systems will eventually involve struggling for funding from the cable systems and the city government. In this way, members of access groups could be paid for their activity and would have a budget to purchase cassettes of films and video programming from independent producers. Both public access television and independent film and video could thus be established on a financially secure foundation. Of course, public access television is not a substitute for political organization and struggle; rather, it is a vehicle through which participants and local political groups can provide information about their activities and involve people in their efforts. Almost every one of the 100 or so groups that have appeared on "Alternative Views" have reported that they received many phone calls and letters indicating interest in their groups
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changing technological and political environment of the future. To ensure that we get the full free flow of information that an informed democratic citizenry requires to participate intelligently in the political process, I believe we need an expanded system of public access television that could be funded from revenues received from cable systems (as is currently the case in Austin, Texas, and elsewhere in the country). Yet, the new satellite television technology also holds the potential for a greatly expanded democratic communication system.
and that appearing on public access television was a useful organizing and recruiting tool. Public access videotapes can also be made available to high schools, university campuses, churches, and other local groups. Our tapes on Central America, for instance, have been frequently shown in churches and elsewhere for educational and organizing purposes. Thus public access programming is a useful tool for political education; indeed, it goes beyond regular broadcasting by reaching into community politics and organizing. Public access television is still in a relatively early stage of development in the United States, and it is just beginning in Europe; but it contains the promise of providing a different type of alternative television. Despite obstacles to its use, public access provides one opening in the commercial and state broadcasting systems that is at least potentially receptive to progressive intervention. It is self-defeating to dismiss the broadcast media as tools of manipulation and to think that the print media are the only tools of communication and political education open to progressives. Surveys have shown that people take more seriously individuals and groups that appear on TV; thus the use of television could help progressive movements and struggles gain legitimacy and force in the shifting and contradictory field of U.S. politics. After all, the Right has been making effective use of new technologies and media of communication, and progressives can no longer afford to remain aloof. As to the question of whether viewers would actually watch alternative television, surveys indicate that interesting public access programs gather a respectable percentage of the audience, often getting more viewers than PBS programs (see the sources in note 11). By 1990, Alternative Views, for instance, had gained a national audience, and we received stacks of letters and many phone calls everyday. Viewers seem to be ready for more socially critical, controversial, and investigative television, thus it is probable that a public interest network would have a large and devoted following. The possible breakup of conservative hegemony in the 1990s confronts progressives with both new challenges and new dangers. But if the Left is to produce a genuine alternative to the Right, progressives must increase their mass base and circulate their struggles to more segments of the population. After all, most people get their news and information from television, and the broadcast media arguably play a decisive role in defining political realities, shaping public opinion, and determining what is to be taken seriously. If progressives want to play a role in U.S. political life, they must come to terms with the realities of electronic communication and develop strategies to make use of new .technologies and possibilities for intervention. There is the risk, of course, that the time and energy spent in other projects may be lost in occasionally frustrating media politics. But this risk must be taken if progressives want to intervene more effectively in the
5.4 Satellite Television and Some Utopian Proposals All too briefly, cable and satellite television offered possibilities for a significantly improved broadcasting system. What I call the "golden age of cable and satellite television'' in the early 1980s went far beyond the "golden age of television" in the 1950s in terms of diversity of innovatiye programming. Whereas 1950s television broadcast, at best, a few quality live dramas and anthology drama series, 1980s television aired a wide range of new programming services. For instance, in 1980, the Cable News Network (CNN) began a 24-hour-a-day news service that was joined shortly thereafter by CNN2, which provided a 30-minute news service. Viewers could therefore receive news reports at any time of the day or night. In addition, the CNN channel frequently broadcast live congressional hearings, news conferences, and other events. These news services were supplemented in the 1980s with C-SPAN, which provided live broadcasts of congressional sessions, videotapes of significant conferences or lectures, political discussion and call-in shows, and other political television; this service was supplemented in 1987 by a second C-SPAN channel that broadcast live Senate proceedings. In 1982 CBS Cable offered an exciting experimental cultural channel for cable television systems. It produced innovative television that included the best European movies, documentaries, provocative talk shows, and intelligent artistic productions. At the same time, The Entertainment Network cablecast quality television from England, and Tele-France presented several hours a day of the best in French film, television, and culture on the SPN network. The Arts Network also broadcast quality cultural programming, and many movie services (HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc.) featured contemporary and classical films, uncut and without advertising. The Black Entertainment Network and two national Spanish-language networks were implemented, and channels for the hearing-impaired, children, and businesspeople began operation. For rock music enthusiasts, MTV was available; sports fans could turn to all-sports channels; news enthusiasts could watch around-the-clock news channels; and religious buffs could ingest all the old-time religion and right-wing politics that they desired.
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These services were generally supported by revenues accrued from advertising and the expansion of cable television, which had a boom period in the early 1980s. Unfortunately, CBS Cable, after losing $35 million in its first year, shut down operations in 1983, as did the Tele-France service; meanwhile, the Arts and Entertainment channels merged into one service that is still operative. The cable channels that survived, having received adequate advertising and cable industry support, were the more commercial networks such as USA, which showed network reruns and programming similar to those of commercial broadcasting. Specialty networks such as MTV, ESPN, and CNN, as well as channels funded by corporations such as the Disney Channel and the Playboy Channel, also survived. Obviously, the commercial system could not support quality cultural services or a different kind of television programming, such as was found all too briefly on CBS Cable. Thus, the promise of quality and alternative television on cable soon receded p.s cable became increasingly commercial and more and more like network teleyision. In the mid-1980s another new technology promised the ultimate in television variety and diversity: satellite television. Indeed, the home satellite industry began booming, and by 1986 more than 1.5 million Americans owned satellite dishes and were able to receive at least 100 channels on 16 or so active satellites. Moreover, new channels appeared almost every month. Movie-lovers could choose from hundreds of movies, sports fans could see almost every major sporting event, religious junkies could get their fix of evangelical religion, and news buffs could see unedited live reports broadcast from satellites to the networks-and could then determine which stories got on the evening news and in what form. Those with diverse tastes could find a variety of programming previously unimaginable. Superstations in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, New Jersey, Dallas, and San Diego provided viewers programming and news from these areas, and satellites offered programming from Mexico and Canada. In addition, one could view live news feeds, hear off-color jokes during the commercial breaks in some live network programs, and pick up satellite conferences ranging from corporate meetings attended by Coca-Cola bosses trying to deal with the disaster of the unpopular "new Coke" to gatherings of scientists concerned with the dangers of nuclear war. The Global Village seemed to have arrived. But on January 15, 1986 (a day of infamy for the U.S. broadcasting system), HBO-Cinemax began full-time "scrambling" of its satellites signals, which the owners of home satellite dishes had previously been receiving free of cost. By the end of 1986 several other movie services and cable channels had followed suit, and as of 1990 almost every single cable network has scrambled its service. To be sure, one can buy an expensive decoder and pay for monthly satellite services, which tend to cost somewhat more
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than cable prices; but this television alternative is prohibitively expensive for most families. Consequently1 the satellite industry has significantly slowed down after a period of rapid expansion. Once again, the imperatives of corporate profit and control of the communications system have limited the democratizing potential of a new communications technology that has been absorbed into the old system. Just as there were earlier attempts to suppress FM radio, UHF television; and cable and pay TV in favor of maintaining the status quo in the broadcasting industry, business and government have worked together to halt the growth of the satellite industry, which threatened the interests of the major broadcasting powers and the cable industry. The FCC permitted scrambling and Congress failed to take any positive action to limit it. Although there were persistent allegations of scandal, concerning pressure from cable owners that forced satellite channels to scramble their programs; these allegations were never investigated. In short, Congress never really examined whether scrambling was in the public interest-but this was a typical abrogation of congressional responsibility during the Reagan/Bush years.
Toward a System of Democratic Cable/Satellite Television Yet satellite television remains the technological foundation for a national system of alternative television-for a democratic, innovative, and diverse television system. A combination of cable and satellite technologies would make possible the creation of a truly excellent system of communications. But it would also require an immediate halt to satellite scrambling and allow a free flow of information and entertainment to satellite dishes. Although the U.S. government has consistently followed a communications policy in the field of international communications based on a "free flow of information" policy, it has not allowed a free flow to its own citizens. The scrambling situation has progressed to the point that even most PBS channels, the American Arms Forces Services television, and some CBS transponders have scrambled. Once again, then, commercial interests have ridden roughshod over the public interest, and the FCC and Congress have either sanctioned the process or allowed the most powerful corporate interests to control the communications spectrum. But reversal of this process so as to permit an unscrambled satellite system would make possible a truly diverse system of broadcasting. Here is my proposal: In an age of cable and satellite television, with more than 60 percent of the nation wired for cable and more than 2.5 million homes with satellite dishes, why not make a satellite channel available to various groups who want to broadcast their political views and information? A
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public interest satellite channel could be provided to representative groups free of charge so that Democrats, Republicans, workers, blacks, hispanics, women, gays, socialists, anarchists, and any number of other groups could present their political views and programs every day. Time could be allotted according to the number of members in each group applying for access. This national political channel could then be picked up· by every cable system in the country, and people could be assured of getting real debate . over issues of public concern. as a required legislated be to To be effective, such a channel would have This distribution. maximum its channel for cable systems, to guarantee to inexpensive r~latively and implement to requirement would be easy reception. satellite has country the in company maintain, as every cable dishes and most have dishes that can be used free of charge by the various groups of the public interest satellite channel. Eventually, the channel could be expanded to make possible a genuine public interest system of democratic communications. The government could dedicate an entire satellite to public broadcasting and make available the twenty-four transponders currently on each satellite to the various groups that would constitute the public broadcasting system. In this case, of course, individuals would have to own home satellite dishes; but the cost of such dishes would inevitably fall. Such a revitalized and democratized public broadcasting system could greatly expand the current spectrum of ideas and information, and allow open discussion of issues of interest and importance. Some claim that an increased diversity of media voices will produce a "tower of Babel" that would fragment and polarize the country and undercut efforts at establishing public dialogue and articulation of common interests (Barber 1982). These consequences are possible, but at present and for the foreseeable future the major commercial networks dominate the broadcast spectrum and, as Barber states (1982, 22), create a bland, massified, ideological, . 11 and" consensus"brou ght and stereotypical discourse. So £ar, t h e " umty about by broadcasting have come at the expense of radical and alternative voices and visions. Moreover, the current limitation of the opinion spectrum and the tightened Cl)rporate control over news and information have made it necessary to increase the range of voices and opinions if democracy is going to survive. Thus, I think that the risks must be taken and that 13 diversification is less dangerous than total corporate hegemony. These, in summary, are the steps needed to transform and democratize our broadcast system: (1) Expand and democratize the current public broadcasting system; (2) expand and strengthen the public access system; (3) use cable and satellite television to produce new public broadcasting channels open to groups currently excluded from national communication; and (4) develop an entire satellite and cable system of broadcasting that would allow a significant range of alternative voices and political opinions
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to be broadcast. Steps 1 and 2 could be undertaken immediately, and steps 3 and 4 are both technologically and financially feasible. Yet development of such an alternative democratic communications system would require educating the public and government about the real possibilities for democratic communication inherent in cable and satellite television.
Toward Democratic Communica tion and Information If we do not radically transform our media system, matters will only get worse. The rule by media managers and political handlers will continue, and democracy in the United States will be further imperiled. In the words of Max Weber: "The question is: how are freedom and democracy in the long run possible at all under the domination of highly developed capitalism? Freedom and democracy are only possible where the resolute will of a nation not to allow itself to be ruled like sheep is permanently alive. We are 'individualists' and partisans of 'democratic' institutions 'against the stream' of material constellations" (Weber, cited in Gerth and Mills 1975,
71).
It is a historical ir~ny that the 1980s marked the defeat of democracy by capitalism in the United States and the triumph of democracy over state communism in the Soviet bloc countries. At present, the "free" television media in the United States are probably no more adversarial and no less propagandistic than Pravda or the television stations in the Eastern European countries. Hence the very future of democracy is at stake-and development of a democratic communications system is necessary if democracy is to be revitalized. If radical transformati on of the system of communications and broadcasting is not undertaken, segments of the society will be condemned to perpetual information poverty; they will lack access to communications and social power. Indeed, the empowerme nt of individuals to participate in a democratic society must be an important part of a democratic communications system. Other possibilities for expanding a system of democratic communications can be found in new computer and information technologies. The future may bring a merger of entertainme nt and information centers whereby all print media information becomes accessible by computer and all visual media entertainmen t and information resources become available for home computer/en tertainment• center access. But the threat, and likelihood, is that this information and entertainme nt material will be thoroughly cornmodified, available only to those who can afford to pay. Progressive and investigative media face another threat, however, from data bases-exclus ion. Many national data bases do not include Left periodicals such as In These Times, The Guardian, Zeta Magazine, or other publications that are significantly outside the mainstream. It is therefore important that a pro-
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gressive politics of information struggle to get alternative media sources listed in the major data bases or to develop alternative data bases. Otherwlse, once again, progressive voices will be excluded from the information systems of the future. Accordingly, public alternatives to these private/corporate information and entertainment systems of the future must be devised. Given the growing importance of computers and information in the new technocapitalist society, new information networks and systems are essential ingredients of a progressive communication system. The computerization of the United States is well under way, and· new information networks and computer communication systems are emerging. To avoid corporate and government monopolization and control of information, new public information networks and centers will have to provide access to the information needed to intelligently participate in a democratic society. Computers, like broadcasting, can be used either for or against democracy. Indeed, computers are a potentially democratic technology. While broadcast communication is unidirectional, computer communication is potentially bi- or even omnidirectional. Individuals can use computers to do wordprocessing that communicates with other individuals; or they can communicate directly via modems, which use the telephone to link individuals with each other. Modems in turn can tap into community bulletin boards or computer conference programs, which make possible a new type of public communication. Progressives should intervene in these information modes as well as in broadcasting. For instance, many computer bulletin boards have a political debate program whereby individuals can type · in their opinions and other individuals can read them and respond. This constitutes a new form of public dialogue and interaction. Individuals can also use their computers to tap into information systems. (In a democratic communication system individuals need free access to all sources of information.) Vast amounts of information are computerized already, but much of it is commodified and accessible only to those who can purchase it. Thus every community needs a Community Information Center that would subscribe to numerous information services and make them available to the public free of charge or at minimal expense. Such an establishment could also provide free computer training classes (so that all individuals could attain the requisite computer skills and literacy for the new information age) and a community bulletin board and information system (so that individuals with home modem devices could tap into the new information systems and receive needed information free of charge). It might even offer the services of information ombudspeople who could help individuals discover appropriate information sources and access the information sought. Such centers already exist in Oakland (the pioneering Community Memory Center) and New York, but they should be developed in every city of the country.
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National information networks could also be established via modems so that individuals and groups could communicate with others via national bulletin boards and information systems. Many cities now offer a diversity of computer bulletin boards, and many national groups and services (such as Peace-Net) are setting up international information-distribu tion systems (see Downing in Downing et al. 1990). Such systems should be expanded, democratized, and open to all. In addition, democratic data bases and information services should make available all existing information sources, regardless of politics or viewpoint. Many data bases and information services omit leftist, radical, and other alternative information sources from their listings, thus in effect shutting out radical alternatives (much as the broadcasting networks exclude dissident voices from broadcast communication). Leftist groups and alternative publications should struggle to make sure that their information sources and services are listed in data-base bibliographies and source material. The information and communications revolutions pose both threats and promises to American democracy. Thus far in its history, capitalism has been the major threat to democracy (Wolfe 1977; Cohen and Rogers 1983; Bowles and Gintis 1986), and some of the major struggles of the last decades have been waged over property rights versus democratic ·rights, over the rights of capital versus the rights of the people. This contradiction is at the center of our communications system as well, and capitalism has thus far prevailed over democracy-to an alarming degree in the 1980s. It follows that the United States has really never had a democratic system of mass communications, by the people, for the people, and of the people. Instead, television and other mainstream media have been used by the capitalist class to maintain their hegemony. As noted, however, new communications technologies and their use by public interest and citizens groups can help produce an alternative democratic communications system. Individuals ·and groups are already using new technologies such as computers, desk-top publishing, video, and cable television to promote democratic communication. Moreover, as video cameras and recorders are increasingly light, inexpensive, and accessible to a wide range of individuals, it has become possible for individuals and groups to inexpensively make their own documentaries and to show to other individuals their own and other political tapes. Political videos, duplicated and circulated to interested individuals and groups, have been an effective mode of opposition to the mainstream media in Chile, the Eastern European countries, and other places where there is tight state or corporate control of the media. In these ways, individuals can use video to produce a new type of political communication, outside of the distribution circuits controlled by broadcast corporations or the state.
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Every progressive public interest group and political movement wishing to produce social change should thus devise a media politics to get its message to the public, ranging from PR material and press conferences to production· and distribution of its own print and broadcast material. As I have argued, public access television is an excellent arena for political intervention, and progressive groups should use computer technologies and information services to advance their goals and agendas, as did the Right during the late 1970s and 1980s. In addition, progressive groups should make media politics part of their political agenda, organizing against the broadcast networks when they distort or omit messages concerning issues central to these groups. There should be more monitoring of the mainstream media and more development of alternative media during an era in which politics will be fought out in the new broadcast public sphere. In a media age political struggles are mediated through the media, and those who are not players in this realm are likely to be excluded from the major issues and struggles of the future. The future of democracy thus depends upon the use of new technologies to promote democracy and to counter capitalist control of the state and broadcast media. Ultimately, then the struggle for a democratic communications system· is a struggle for democratic society. The technologies are there, but imagination, will, and struggle will be needed to realize the democratic potential that still exists in a system organized for the hegemony of capital in an era of conservative political ·rule. Yet liberation from the yoke of capital remains possible. It is also possible to imagine how a truly democratic society could be organized. Such a vision may be utopian, but, as Bertolt Brecht (1967) remarked, "[i]f you think that this is utopian then I would ask you to reflect upon why you think this is utopian."
Notes 10. For an earlier discussion of the. need for a radical media politics and for intervention in the broadcast media, see Kellner (1979, 1981), Downing (1984), and
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Mattelart and Siegelaub (1979, 1983). The latter collections contain a vast amount of material on leftist media politics and projects, but they provide no interventionist consideration of the potential progressive uses of public access television. (A forthcoming third volume will contain studies addressing this issue.) On the early history of access in the United States, see Shapiro (1976). On the history of alternative media, see Armstrong (1981). On attempts by the broadcast industries and government to suppress access, and on liberal proposals for a more democratic communications system, see Johnson (1970). A directory of access systems put out by the National Federation of Local Cable Programmers, The Video Register 19889, claims that there are more than 1,000 access facilities operative in the United States at present. Some of these systems, however, are limited to a channel that presents teletypes of time, weather, and announcements of local activities. Thus, it is quite difficult to ascertain how many full-blown access centers are operatives; it is clear, however, that the number is growing. 11. A survey by the ELRA Group of East Lansing, Michigan, indicates that access is rated the fifth most popular category of television programming (ahead of sports, women's and children's programs, religious programs, etc.); ari.d that 63 percent of those surveyed had an interest in access programming. Local surveys in Austin have confirmed that access programs have a potentially large audience. Two surveys, one undertaken by the cable company and another commissioned by it, indicated that between 20,000 and 30,000 Austin viewers watch "Alternative Views" each week, and that public access programming in general receives about 4. 7 percent of the audience; another recent cable company survey indicated that the viewership of access was on a par with that of the local PBS station. National surveys of viewer preferences for cable programs also indicate that public access is a high priority for many viewers. Thus there is definitely a receptive and growing audience for public access television, and the possibility of making alternative television programs by progressives should be a much higher priority for radical media politics. 12. It is difficult to get up-to-date information on the state of local access projects. Journals such as Access, The Independent, Alternative Media, and Communit:Y Television Review and newsletters such as those published by The National Federation of Local Cable Programmers and other local access groups have some material, but an overview is hard to obtain. Material on ten access projects in the mid-1970s is surveyed in Anderson (1975), who also offers suggestions on how to develop grassroots video projects. Material on early access projects can be found in various issues of Radical Software (1970-1975), in Shamberg (1971), and in Frederiksen (1972); a good review and critique of these projects is found in Jacobson (1974). Suggestions on how to set up an access system and provide quality community programming are found in Price and Wicklein (1972). For information on setting up a community media center, see Zelmer (1979). The National Federation of Local Cable programmers also provides guides concerning how to produce access television. 13. Barber (1984) is a progressive who advocates "strong democracy"; but, as Karp (1982) points out, many of the critics who are worried about the effects of fragmentation and diversification in the new broadcasting systems are precisely those conservatives who see these developments as a threat to their current hegemony. Thus I would champion increased diversification and access as possible ways to strengthen-indeed, preserve-democracy in the United States.
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Bibliography
Weber, Max (1946) From Max Weber, edited by Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press. Wolfe, Alan (1977) The Limits of Legitimacy. New York: Free Press. Zelmer, A. C. Lynn (1979) Community Media Handbook. Metuchen, NJ.: Scarecrow Press.
Anderson, Chuck (1975) Video Power. New York: Praeger. Armstrong, David (1981) A Trumpet to Arms: Alternative Media in America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin; reprinted by South End Press, 1981. Barber, Benjamin (I 982) "The Second American Revolution." Channels of Communication (February-March), pp. 21-25,62. - - ( 1984) Strong Democracy. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis (1986) Democracy and Capitalism. New York: Basic Books. Brecht, Bertolt (1967) "Der Rundfunk als Kommunikationspparat." In Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 18. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Cohen, Joshua, and Joel Rogers (1983). On Democracy. London and Baltimore: Penguin Books. Downing, John (1984) Radical Media. Boston: South End Press. Downing, John, Ali Mohammadi, and Annabelle Srebemy-Mohammadi (1990) Questioning the Media. A Critical Introduction. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Frederiksen, H. Allan (1972) Community Access Video. Menlo Park, N.J.: Nowells Publications. Gerth, H. H., and C. Wright Mills (1946) From Max Weber. New York: Oxford University Press. Jacobson, Bob (1974) "Video at the Crossroads." Jump Cut 1 (May-June). Johnson, Nicholas (1970) How to Talk Back to Your Television Set. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Karp, Waiter (1983) "The Lie ofTV's Political Power." Channels (May-June), pp.37-40. Kellner, Douglas (1979) "TV, Ideology, and Emancipatory Popular Culture." Socialist Review, Vol. 45, pp. 13-53. - - (1981) "Network Television and American Capitalism." Theory and Society, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 31-62. Koenig, Josh (1979) "Court Strikes Down FCC Access Rules." Community Television Review (Spring) pp. 4-5. Mattelart, Armand, and Seth Siegelaub, eds. (1979) Communication and Class Struggle. Vol. 1.: Capitalism, Imperialism. Paris: International General. - - (1983) Communication and Class Struggle. Vol. 2: Liberation, Socialism. Paris: International General. Morrow, Frank ( 1985) ''The U.S. Power Structure and the Mass Media." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas. Price, Monroe, and John Wicklein (1972) Cable Television: A Guide for Citizen Action. Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press. Radical Software (1970-1975). Shamberg, Michael (1971) Guerrilla Television. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Shapiro, Andrew (1976) Media Access. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Stockwell, John (1978) In Search ofEnemies. New York: Norton.
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Part ill Policing the Public Interest
[19] CHAPTER 1
• • •
Telecommunications and Their Deregulation: An Introduction
The telecommunications revolution, we are told, has arrived. Telecommunications used to mean the telephone, a mature, rather dull, and highly regulated industry dominated by the staid Bell System. For most of us, the technology of the telephone was so good and reliable, and its uses so set and inflexible, that it was functionally forgotten. For corporate users, telecommunications represented just another mundane cost of doing business. Telecommunications also encompassed broadcasting, a more glitzy endeavor than telephone to be sure, but one primarily characterized by a remarkable stability of three commercial television networks that aired mostly imitative and inoffensive entertainment programs, along with one poorly funded public network. Today the very term telecommunications may be too confining. The once stable, noncompetitive businesses of telephone service and equipment manufacturing have become dynamic and highly competitive. Telephone technology has merged with that of the computer to vastly enhance the capabilities of both. The resulting fusion, sometimes labeled "information technology," has become a vibrant, burgeoning industry, reconfiguring business practices and permitting corporations to slash operating costs and automate the workplace. Some government policy-makers have pronounced information technology the United States' most important industry. Likewise, broadcasting has been so transformed by satellites, the abundance of cable television, and videotape technology, that the traditionally limited television system seems nearly a thin~ of the past. There are now sports channels, news 3
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channels, movie channels, "adult" channels, Christian channels, Spanish language channels, and so on. While many of these changes reflect a grand profusion of technological innovation, perhaps the more interesting phenomenon is the less apparent transformation of the state-deregulation-which has accompanied and abetted this technological "revolution." The changes in telecommunications have emerged as much from changes in their regulatory treatment as they have from technological innovation. This book examines the framework within which the telecommunications industry has been stPtctured, and how that framework changed. It seeks to answer the question: how and why were American telecommunications deregulated? The American telecommunications industry is being deregulated after more than fifty years of close government oversight. In broadcasting, some of the changes are fundamental. Commercial broadcasters, once subject to many "public interest" regulatory controls, such as a requirement for public information programming, an obligation to ascertain the broadcast needs of the community, and recommendations on the maximum amount of advertising, are no longer constrained by such rules. The famous "Fairness Doctrine," which obligated broadcasters to air issues of controversy and to be balanced in that coverage, is now officially moribund. The period of license tenure for a radio frequency has been extended from three years to seven; for a television frequency from three years to five. The ceiling on the number of broadcast stations a single corporate entity may own has been raised from a total of seven AM, seven FM radio stations, and seven television outlets, to twelve of each. By the mid-1980s talk echoed in the Senate Commerce Committee and at the Federal Communications Commission about complete First Amendment protection for any and all "publishers," print or electronic. The aim of such pr~posals i~ to completely dismantle any remaining regulatory controls over broadcastmg, parttcularly the rules which require broadcasters to operate as "public trustees." Ancillary broadcast services, long restricted by regulations favoring conventional broadcasting, have been given a green light. The most important of these was cable television. For years, regulations hindered the expansion of cable television and restricted the type of signals and programs cable operators could purvey. These restrictions began to be dismantled in the mid-1970s. Cable has grown quic~ly since. Historic restrictions on.pay television were removed, and new programmmg sources have emerged. By the late 1970s the FCC went so far as to promote new broadcast services. Common carriers such as the telephone system have experienced even greater changes. Long considered a •'natural monopoly,'' the telephone system was closely regulated under the watchful eye of the Federal Communications Co~mis~ion an_d state public utilities commissions. Regulatory controls made competttton tmposstble. In exchange for monopoly status, telephone companies were obliged to extend service to all. Through the control of telephone rates, regulatory policies facilitated internal cross-subsidies to expand telephone service and keep particular rates low· The telephone system was united by the giant, vertically integrated Am:rican Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), operator of the only long-dtst~c~ network and of local telephone service in most major metropolises. But, begmmng as early as the late 1950s, the FCC allowed a certain amount of competition in spe-
cialized business services. Liberalized entry extended to domestic communication satellites in the early 1970s, and, most important, to long-distance telephone service by the late 1970s. In 1982 the structure of regulated telecommunications was massively transformed by the break-up of AT&T. A divestiture agreement between AT&T and the Justice Department severed AT&T of its local telephone service companies. AT&T, historically confined to the provision of regulated telecommunications services, was now free to compete with computer giants such as IBM in global information technology markets. The break-up of AT&T has become the single most important event in the deregulation of American industry.
The Context of Deregulation Yet telecommunication is not alone in experiencing a fundamental change in its regulatory treatment. It joins the ranks of several other industries that have been wholly or partially deregulated since the late 1970s. Tnese include commercial airlines, railroads, trucking, intercity busing, banking, and (to a far lesser degree) oil and natural gas. Given the widespread growth of the regulatory state in the twentieth century, how are we to understand this phenomenon of deregulation? Deregulation runs against the traditional understanding of government regulation as a means of rationalizing the economy and/ or of safeguarding the public interest. We commonly think of government regulation as the modern means of coordinating highly complex social activities in ways that the market cannot. One traditionally accepted argument is that capitalists, acting on their own, pursuing the logic of profit maximization, cannot adequately safeguard the conditions which allow their industry-when taken as a whole-to flourish. Some businesses are regulated because their inordinate market power enables them to abuse other businesses and/or the public. The coercive, regulatory power of the state limits the choices of individual capitalists in the long-term interest of both the industry and the public. Is deregulation,· then, a gross betrayal of the public interest, a strategy on the part of capital to reappropriate the power it once lost to democratic reforms? Or is deregulation a response to the dubious efficacy or even failure of government action? Government interference in the economy is claimed to irreparably disrupt the allocative beneficence of the self-regulating, self-equilibrating market. Indeed, regulatory agencies often are said to be "captured" by the regulated parties, which then utilize the state apparatus for private ends. Regulatory agencies protect businesses from competition. Does deregulation represent the "coming to senses" of an increasingly bureaucratized state apparatus, dismantling itself in favor of more workable market controls? In another popular account, the deregulation of telecommunications is taken to be a consequence of the revolution in technology. In this view, new technologies such as cable television and satellite delivery overwhelmed the traditional formulae of broadcast regulation. The advent of digital encoding (a method of breaking down information into a code of binary numbers) and the melding of the computer with telephone switching caused the dissolution of the legal boundary between the regulated telecommunications industry and the unregulated computer industry. In other words, the "information revolution" caused or necessitated deregulation. This idea
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is a variant of technological determinism: it sees technology as self-generative and social change as technologically driven. In my view, all such theories of deregulation are decidedly incomplete. For deregulation can only be understood in larger contexts. Telecommunication is just one of .several American industries to be deregulated since the mid-1970s. Hence its deregulation cannot be explained with reference to internal telecommunications issues or technological factors alone. Deregulation went beyond telecommunications, but was confined to a specific type of industry under a specific type of regulatory control. This points to the need to look toward regulatory structures. Deregulation was a political process, whereby the economic and political problems enveloping certain industries (but not others) turned a surprisingly heterogeneous political coalition against continued regulation. Joined within that coalition were two political logics usually diametrically opposed to each other-conservat ive free market economic theory and a left-liberal theory of political participation. Each "logic" attacked regulation from the standpoint of its own theoretical position. Liberals and public interest groups, seeing in traditional regulatory agencies evidence of "capture" by the very firms under regulation, came to advocate deregulation as a solution to entrenched corporate power. Conservatives and free market economists, seeing in regulatory agencies vast bureaucracies whose arbitrariness engendered economic inefficiency and artificial protectionism, also came to advocate deregulation. In various of these industries, the empirical example of an unregulated service provided the ideologically diverse regulatory reform coalition with a powerful model that legitimated competition as a practice which fulfilled the values of both efficiency and equity. The industries under regulation fought hard for continued regulation, but could not overcome the politics of reform. It is only when the phenomenon is situated in this context that one can grasp one of the great ironies of contemporary deregulation. Tlie prevalent business-inspired rhetoric of "getting government off the backs of the people" notwithstanding, deregulation has most strongly affected those regulatory agencies whose actions historically have been least odious to business. The agencies long criticized as having been ''captured'' by their regulated clients and serving those clients' narrow interests are precisely the agencies which are deregulating. Deregulation has affected primarily the industry-specific regulatory agencies created during the New Deal, such as the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Some industries, like airlines and trucking, were deregulated over the hostile and vociferous objections of the major corporate players and powerful unions of those industries. In contrast, the agencies universally reviled by business, such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Environm!!ntal Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), though cut back and to some degree subverted under a hostile Reagan Administration, have not deregulated. In short, the conditions were not there for a heterogeneous political coalition to support the deregulation of the so-called "social" regulatory agencies. But they were there for deregulation of price-and-entry regulated infrastructure industries. The industries that have undergone deregulation-air lines, trucking, railroads,
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telecommunications, banking, oil, and natural gas-have something very important in common. They are "infrastructures, " the basic services which underlie all economic activity. They are central to the circulation of capital and the flow of commerce. Historically, regulatory agencies have exercised administrative controls over infrastructure industries as part of the state's effort to construct a national arena for commerce and to stabilize the essential services upon which commerce depends. The type of regulatory controls exercised over these industries are known as "priceand-entry" controls. Agencies determined how many and which firms would compete in a given market, and set the basic prices that firms could charge. They substituted administrative decisions for market controls. The deregulated industries share another characteristic. With the exception of the Interstate Commerce Commission, which began regulating the nation's railroads in the late 1880s, all were brought under regulation around the time of the Depression and New Deal. The agencies are industry-specifi c-each agency has jurisdiction over a particular· industry only. While the main goal of New Deal regulatory agencies was to safeguard commerce, they also secured basic social equity. The "obligation to serve," a principle rooted in the old common law, was an essential feature of the regulation of infrastructure services. I argue that the regulation of telecommunications, like that of other infrastructure industries, did serve the "public interest." However, the notion of the public interest embodied in the policies of the key government player, the Federal Communications Commission, was so conservative and narrow, and its range of available regulatory options so constrained, that these policies did indeed protect the principal parties of the telecommunications industry, as many critics have charged. Traditional regulation of telecommunications exhibited a typically New Deal cautious guardianship over industries and firms deemed central to commerce. The public interest character of the regulation of infrastructure industries for the most part was exhibited in that facilitation of commerce. The regulation of infrastructure industries has been inherently conservative in other respects. The nature of price-and-entry regulatory structures is to construct operating boundaries and barriers to entry. In theory this permits existing firms to provide services essential to commerce wittout experiencing the destabilizing effects of competition. In short, price-and-entry regulation creates cartels. In so doing, the regulatory structures also facilitate socially valued "cross-subsidy" arrangements. For instance in telephony, long-distance rates supposedly were used to keep local rates low in order to encourage the universal expansion of the telephone network. Similar cross-subsidy arrangements were established in all infrastructure industries brought under regulation. However, because of these very arrangements, there always exist incentives for certain classes of consumers-prim arily large corporate users-to drop out of or "bypass" the regulated system, and for wouldbe entrepreneurial entrants to service those users. In periods of high, sustained inflation, regulation generally exacerbates bypass incentives. The agencies grant the regulated industries price hikes which, under traditional cross-subsidy arrange.ments, hit large corporate users proportionately more. Technological innovationsparticularly in telecommunicat ions-provide potential bypassers with additional
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TilE IRONY OF REGULATORY REFORM
incentives and with the means to drop out of the regulated system. Dissatisfied corporate users and potential competitors may form an alliance that pressures the · regulated industry in the regulatory arena. The regulatory agency generally responds to technological innovations and bypass demands as unwelcome challenges to the organizational "settledness," or even to the integrity of the agency itself. The agency often responds to such challenges conservatively, clinging to its tried and true formulae and policies and acting to safeguard the regulated system. The regulated parties also act to thwart challenge and to protect the status quo. It was this conservative dynamic of protectionism that aroused the ire of both left-liberals and conservative free market ideologues in the period of the late 1970s, a period when the political agenda had shifted from regulatory activism to one that questioned the efficacy of regulation.
Regulation: Elements of a Theory This book examines regulation and deregulation through the prism of American telecommunications, Most studies of American communications focus on either broadcasting or telephone, rarely on both. Conventional studies tend to be either economic or anecdotal histories of the respective industries, with an occasional bow to law and regulation. Or, they are policy analyses, steeped in the byzantine complexities of agency decisions, but bereft of a larger theoretical context. Yet the interrelation between the telephone and broadcast industries is not only important for an understanding of the process of regulation, but central to how deregulation came about in telecommunications. At another level, studies that look only at the deregulation of telecommunications miss the links to other deregulated industriesand hence miss the broad reasons for the deregulation phenomenon. This book examines both broadcast and telephone industries. It looks at regulation and deregulation in other industries. It situates the analysis of regulation and deregulation within th~ theoretical context of the relationship between the state and the economy in the American setting. Telecommunication is a particularly interesting infrastructure because it not only is crucial for commerce, but also constitutes the public realm of ideas and discussion, and hence implicates the range of issues surrounding freedom of speech. This leads to two important subthemes. The first relates to telephony, and involves the tensions surrounding the benefits and drawbacks of a regulated-monopoly infrastructure in a capitalist economy. The second relates to broadcasting, and deals with tensions among private ownership of the means of communication, the notion of a free and diverse marketplace of ideas, and the First Amendment quandary of regulatory controls. As should be clear already, this book analyzes deregulation as the consequence of a mosaic of forces, of structures in interaction over time. The key piece in that moving mosaic (if such a mixed metaphor is permitted) is the nature of regulation itself, for it is through and in and against the traditional price-and-entry regulatory structures that the int~rplay of economic, technological, legal, and ideological forces took shape. The interplay of those forces constituted the conditions upon which political choices came to be made.
The Political Economy of the Media 11 An Introduction
371 9
The importance of regulatory structures might be appreciated by contextualizing the role of technological innovation. An important factor in telecommunications deregulation, technological innovation was not an independent, abstract force, but a concrete dynamic situated within entrepreneurial opportunities, political discourse, and, most important, regulatory constraints. What is important about technology was how specific innovations reconfigured the internal balance of entrepreneurial interests-a balance created and maintained within regulatory policies and formulae. This dynamic of technological change within regulatory constraints became crucial, for example, as the FCC attempted to meet the demands of large telecommunications users for better service and freer options. The small policy changes initiated by these users' demands chipped away at the AT&T monopoly and the regulatory formulae which legitimized that monopoly. They inadvertently set in motion additional forces which culminated in the break-up of AT&T. Hence I argue that an adequate understanding of deregulation must rest upon a histonc!!IIY rooted theory of regulation that accounts both for the genesis of agencies and for actual agency operations. Regulation emerged in the twentieth century as a political institution to address new, systemic economic and social problems. Regulation in many ways is the hallmark of the modem "interventionist" state. It is part and parcel of the dynamic of national development by private enterprise but directed in some fashion by the state. The long regime of regulatory oversight of infrastructures provided a rational foundation for economic growth and development-within a capitalist economic framework, of course. To begin to address the question of deregulation, one must understand why regulatory agencies arose, what they do, and why they traditionally regulate particular kinds of industries such as telecommunication~. The key is the role of the state in a capitalist economy. And this role lies at the heart of the question of the meaning of that ubiquitous, but maddeningly vague term of regulation, the "public interest." In all state action, of which regulation is one, the definition of the public interest is crucial; it is a sort of black box whose meaning or representation is the terrain of struggle. The emergence of regulatory agencies constituted the building of national administrative structures in a state which had been institutionally localistic and courtcentered. For much of the 19th century, the dispersed structure of American state power permitted an active judiciary to direct the course of economic development. Judicial activism facilitated the establishment of quasi-infrastructural services in the early part of the century, lar~ely by means of eminent domain law and the granting of exclusive franchises to the builders of bridges, roads, or canals. Once the infrastructure was in place, judicial action favored business risk-taking (and consequently capitalist economic growth). With the exception of land grants and certain other subsidies, the economy was established by mid-century as a sphere largely beyond political intervention. This pattern changed by the 1890s, because the triumph of laissez-faire had created a general crisis of social control. Regulatory agencies grew in response to the needs and great changes fostered by the rise of the large national corporation. But regulatory agencies are not of a piece. Central to my theory is the notion that agencies have different functions and different scopes of activity, which generally
The Political Economy of the Media 11
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TilE IRONY OF REGULATORY REFORM
correspond to the historical conditions surrounding their creation. The particular nature of inter-business and wider political conflicts dictated the emergence of three different types of regulatory bodies, generally corresponding to three historical periods of origin. Progressive Era (approximately from 1900 to World War I) legislation created regulatory bodies largely in response to popular political activism. These bodies were designed to relieve the economic and social instability caused by the large corporation and its tremendous transformation of social and economic life. These agencies were concerned mainly with the general character of economic activity. The antitrust division of the Department of Justice (formed in the aftermath of the Sherman Act) and the Federal Trade Commission (established along with the Clayton Act of 1914) dealt with broad matters of monopoly and competition. The Federal Reserve System sought to control the exchange and circulation of money. The Interstate Commerce Commission, although literally an exception to this categorization (because it regulated a single industry), upon closer examination fits rather well. This is due to the absolutely pivotal importance of the railroad for the conduct of commerce in the late 19th and early 20th century. New Deal agencies such as the Civil Aeronautics Board and the Federal Communications Commission sought to create strong price and entry controls in specific markets, with the purpose of establishing stable cartels. This "industry-specific" type of regulation grew in response to the anarchy of the market during the Depression, and was vigorously sought after by various industries. The form of regulatory action introduced by the price-and-entry agencies is often labeled in the economics literature "producer protection." Both Progressive Era and New Deal regulation established federal political structures which functioned in two interrelated ways. First, by providing an extra-market policing function, regulatory agencies helped to rationalize corporate capitalism. Second, regulatory agencies provided an administrative framework within which important interest groups, primarily large corporations, could bargain, settle conflicts, and legally collude under state imprimatur. The agencies of the 1960s and early 1970s, established in large part in response to liberal reform movements during and just after the Great Society, dealt with the social impact of businesses, not with their economic behavior per se. These new agencies were to regulat~ all industries, not specific.ones. In contrast to the producer orientation of the Progressive Era and New Deal types of regulation, the Great Society agencies were oriented largely toward the values of consumers and the interests of those left out of producer-oriented interest representation. The Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration are the best known of the "social" regulatory agencies. However, the origin of an institution is different from the set of reasons and structures by which that institution operates or is maintained over time. I argue that there is a fundamental distinction between genesis and operationality. Although regulatory agencies should be differentiated according to the temporal political alignment of social and economic forces reflected in their creation, and according to their function, all regul!ltory agencies are situated within the same field of institutional power, and all regulatory agencies are united under the rubric of admin-
The Political Economy of the Media 11 An Introduction
373 11
istrative law. Similar forces of institutional constraint, bureaucratic organization, and procedure affect all agencies. Regulatory agencies constitute a new structure of federal political power in the American political system; they represent a mixture of legislative, executive, and judicial functions, able on the one hand to be flexible and informal and on the other hand to formulate hard and fast rules. In theory this flexibility permits regulatory oversight to be continuous and substantive. But regulatory agencies do not fundamentally alter the traditionally dispersed system of political power in the United States. The agency is generally the weakest player situated in an already constituted terrain of political power-including the pragmatic fact of actual functioning of the industry brought under regulation. Precisely because regulatory agencies do not centralize political power-agencies cannot direct economic production and they must vie with the many other layers of institutionalized governmental power at local, state, and federal levels- "bureaucratism" is endemic to them. This bureaucratism is seen in numerous time delays, in wrangling over jurisdiction, and in the multiple hearings at various institutional levels which any proposed regulation undergoes. The forces which engender bureaucratism in regulatory agencies push agencies to regulate conservatively. Regulatory agencies may properly be seen as a mechanism of rationalization in advanced capitalism, but they are only occasionally successful at this. Their overall lack of power means they might serve as a forum to allow oligopolistic industries to police themselves, or, alternatively, they might punish some corporations for "externalities" (indirect, or spillover effects of business activity, such as pollution), but they usually are unable to act as planning bodies. Institutional and organizational factors are of critical importance in understanding how a regulatory agency actually operates. This relation between the originally conceived function of a specific regulatory agency and the bureaucratic constraints that mold its actual operation must be considered in any analysis of regulation.
Telecommunications as Infrastructure Why are some industries, like telecommunications, regulated while others are not? Put a different way, why are some industries considered to be imbued with a public function or affected with a "public interest?" Notwithstanding the fact that some (perhaps much) regulation at first glance seems to serve private, rather than public interests, this is not true of all forms of regulation. Certain industries, and certain types of industries, appear historically always imbued with something larger, something more general than private interest. This "something" is what we intuitively · understand as the public interest. Telecommunication constitutes one of the four essential modes or channels that permit trade and discourse among members of a society. the other three being transportation, energy utilities, and the system of currency exchange, or money. Transportation, energy, and telecommunication industries provide the services upon which all economic activity (beyond the level of self-sufficiency) depends. Money, at bottom a representation of value and the means of exchange of value, also is
The Political Economy of the Media 11
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TilE IRONY OF REGULATORY REFORM
crucial for economic intercourse beyond the level of barter. These services are "connective" institutions. They are the channels for trade and discourse which bind together a community, society, or· nation. They are central to the circulation of capital and literally constitute both the foundation and the limit for the overall economic functioning of a society. This is why transportation, energy, telecommunications, and currency systems are called infrastructures. They are the structures below or underneath. As I suggested earlier, the construction and maintenance of infrastructures usually have been the responsibility of governments. A central contention of this study is that infrastructure industries are alw~ys the focus of direct state intervention, whether by way of promotion, subsidy, or regulation. This has been true in the Anglo-American context since 13th-century English common law courts declared certain kinds of occupations to be possessed of a special status-the so-called "common callings." Even in the United States, where the liberal tradition has meant that energy, transportation, communications, and even financial serviceslike all other capitalist enterprises-are private commercial ventures, government has been closely involved in their creation, maintenance, and oversight. In the 19th century, the state's involvement rested in acts of promotion and subsidy, and the extensive use of eminent domain law in the effort to establish quasi-public infrastructural services. In the 20th century the state's involvement has been the imposition of regulation and the establishment of complex systems of administrative control over these services. Both governmental assistance and the imposition of regulatory controls were central to the establishment and ongoing operation of the American telecommunications system. State actions helped private corporations establish telecommunication services. Throughout its early years, the telegraph industry received critical infusions of federal and state subsidies. Congress legitimized telephony as a "natural monopoly,'' and established regulatory oversight to facilitate both the expansion of the nationwide telephone network and the reduction of business risk. Federal intervention facilitated the emergence of radio in the United States, first by constructing a patent pool among the major corporate patent holders of radio technology and later by engineering the formation of the Radio Corporation of American (RCA). The Federal Communications Commission, established in 1934, was given a wide mandate to oversee wire and wireless communications. The FCC attended to the public interest in telecommunications largely by protecting the existing structures of telephony and broadcasting (and the corporations which provided those. services). Federal regulation stabilized the chaotic use of the radio airwaves for commercial broadcasters and oversaw a system of guaranteed fair rate of return for wired common carriers. The legal principle upon which state intervention in these industries has rested is the commerce clause of the Constitution: "The Congress shall have Power . . . to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States .... " 1 This is important. If there is a general concept of the public interest informing state intervention into infrastructure industries, it is a commerce-based concept. State intervention in infrastructure industries generally has meant the creation of a national trading area where goods and services can circulate freely. To facilitate the
The Political Economy of the Media 11 A11
Introduction
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actual circulation of goods and services, government imposed common carrier regulatory controls on the means of circulation. As it emerged in transportation law in the late 19th century, the main principle of common carrier law was that a carrier must allow nondiscriminatory, that is, fair and equitable, access to its service at just and reasonable prices. Nondiscrimination would ensure that carriers would serve the needs of commerce rather than inhibit commerce. Part of the provision of nondiscriminatory access to their services meant that common carriers were mandated to interconnect their lines with other carriers. Most often, common carriers were characterized by economies of scale and were granted monopoly franchises. Among other things, such franchises granted the right to take private property for public use, through eminent domain. These legal tools facilitated the construction of an overall network. Regulatory oversight would ensure nondiscriminatory service and "fair" rates. Regulation thus took advantage of certain efficiencies deriving from the monopolistic organization of capital while presumably protecting against the abuses that monopoly power could bring. The key to common carrier law-and the regulation of infrastructure industries generally-rests in the fact that it satisfies the. contradictory demand for a unified plan of national development within a system of private property.
Telecommunications and the Public Interest But state support and regulatory oversight did not simply help establish and protect telecommunication corporations and their services. They also secured certain broader public interest goals, goals linked to democratically based principles of fairness and equity. Telephone and telegraph companies were legally obliged to provide service to all, at fair and reasonable rates-known as "universal service." In part because of such obligations, the American telephone network traditionally was universal and efficient, and the service was comparatively inexpensive for the customer. It is significant that telephony achieved these ends as a governmentregulated monopoly. Broader public interest or equity-based values were attached to broadcasting as well. Broadcasters, though given licenses to monopolize a given radio frequency, were not to view that license as a property right. The airwaves were deemed the property of all the people of the United States, and the holders of broadcast licenses were required to operate as public trustees. Ultimately, broadcast regulation was founded upon a public domain argument, that the airwaves were a natural resource held in common-much like waterways. The state acted to protect and safeguard that commonly held resource. The public domain rationale rested upon a (now debated) scientific judgment as to tbe limited nature of the electromagnetic resource. Because not everyone who wished to engage in broadcasting could do so, government had to select individual licensees from a pool of prospective applicants. In a very real sense, the government endowed certain private parties with immense public benefits. Because of this, the broadcast licensee technically was deemed a "public trustee," and had to fulfill certain "affirmative" obligations. The common carrier principle is really little more than a commerce-based notion of the public interest. As it was applied to telegraphy and telephony, common
The Political Economy of the Media II
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TilE IRONY OF REGULATORY REFORM
carrier law meant simply the guaranteed access to the means of transmission. Even whe_n common carriag~ entailed, as it did in telephony, a policy which obliged camers to extend serv1ce to all, this also can be considered to some degree a commerce-based policy. It allowed and encouraged the expansion of communication necessary for the free flow of commerce. The fact that people were given access to the telecommunications infrastructure was essentially a logical extension of expanding the marketplace. . Noneth~l~ss, the fulfillment of the commerce function was responsible for the w1der public mterest accomplishment of making the telephone essentially a public utility, available (in principle) to all citizens. In this sense, even as it facilitates commerce, common carrier law embraces principles broader than commerce. The obligation to serve and not to discriminate among customers-roote d- in the old common law-clearly embody principles of social equity. _There is a~other way in ':"hich commerce is not the only fundamental principle whtch underhes the regulatiOn of telecommunications. Telecommunication is a peculiar infrastructure because it is a primary medium for the circulation of ideas ~nd information, a realm where, in principle, political life can be discussed openly m accordance with the standards of critical reason. The regulation of telecommunications i~ more complicated and interesting than that of transportation, -for example, precisely because in principle it safeguards the democratic right of freedom of speech. . _Ther~ is ~ historical and logical-but uneasy-connect ion ~tween the capItalist onentatwn to the market (that is to say, contractual freedom, lumped under what I have called the commerce principle) and wider civil freedoms (for our purposes here, the principle of freedom of speech and the creation of a "free marke_tplace of ideas"). After all, classical liberalism sought to carve out spheres of behav1or free from control by the state. This primarily entailed the freedom to fashion contracts and engage in commercial activity. Contractual freedom rested upon the legal privilege granted an individual to autonomously regulate his/her relations with others by his/her own transactions. 2 This is why contracts are, in a sense, private law-making. The- recognized autonomy of the individual in contrac~ual b~havior logically extended to the individual in other• spheres of conduct, 1~clu~mg the sphere of speech and ideas. Indeed, for a time the bourgeoisie's ~tst_o~tc stru~gle for contractual freedom went hand in hand with the struggle for tndlVIdual nghts of speech and print. In Europe, the bourgeoisie promoted the development of a public sphere in opposition to the traditionalist and hierocratic forms of feudal authority. The Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution cast within the natural law theory so intimately connected to the bourgeois revol~tion, prote~ted speech and press from governmental intrusions. Both in Europe and Amenca, the spread of private, partisan newspapers and journals in the late 18th and early 19th century constructed a sphere of public opinion which mediated between society and the state. J _ The abstract connection between early capitalism and free speech had a concrete form as well. The marketplace in early capitalism often was both the site for the circulation of commodities and the site where public discourse took place. Central to the theory of freedom of speech are the notions that only in a free and open
The Political Economy of the Media /1 An Introduction
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15
"marketplace" of ideas can a citizenry exercise democratic prerogative, and only in such an open marketplace can "truth" prevail. 4 The liberal separation of the state from the private realm of ideas was indeed essential to the creation of an independent public sphere. But this separation facilitates a democratic public sphere only to a degree, a fact that underscores one of the great tensions between liberalism and democracy. Just as concrete factors affect competition in the economic marketplace, the marketplace of ideas is greatly affected, if not essentially determined, by the available means of communication. The public sphere constructed by assembly in marketplaces and by a profusion of partisan newspapers is far different from a public sphere constructed by and within great and often centralized institutions of mass communication. The liberal model of freedom of speech stops at the limit of commerce. The model assumes that a democratic public sphere will emerge consequent to the unimpeded, private actions of speech-entrepreneurs. But the results of the state's noninterference in the public sphere is much less clear when the means of communication are complicated, consolidated, and not generally accessible. The public sphere constituted by media of electronic communication greatly extend the public sphere and vastly expand the amount of information available, but at the same time create difficult problems of power. Because access to the modern public sphere was (and is) restricted to those with the capital to own a newspaper or operate a broadcast station, this mode of communication is essentially one of expanded monologue, with only indirect feedback mechanisms. While those with wealth can disseminate their views, the First Amendment "right" of most citizens is merely to listen and read. Yet a free marketplace of ideas implies dialogue. In short, the nature of the media of communication and the terms of access to them greatly affect the actual marketplace of ideas. If we take the liberal theory of the marketplace of ideas seriously, the limited access to centralized media constitutes a limit on self-government and substantive free speech. The dilemma of broadcast regulation was this: how to safeguard the use of an important, technologically scarce, medium of commerce while maintaining the separation of the state from the priv;:lte realm of ideas, and at the same time also facilitate a democratic public sphere? The solution was for a regulatory body to li~ense would-be broadcasters, and suggest (not impose) broad and vague (not specific or concrete) principles of public interest licensee behavior. The paradox of the liberal conception of the public interest in telecommunications, as embodied both in common carrier law and in broadcast regulation, is that it is inescapably bound to the commerce origin. The free speech function of communications media was assumed protected by safeguarding the commerce function of the telecommunications infrastructure. Because a free market in ideas is assumed to result from the absence of government interference, there has never been a viable ideology of positive government action to facilitate the exchange of ideas. The FCC assumed that a diversity of owners of broadcast media would result in a diversity of ideas. And yet the commerce-rooted imposition of common carrier law in telecommunications did indirectly serve broader free speech interests. Because of the commerce function of the telegraph and the telephone, access to those services was to be nondiscriminatory. The nondiscrimination principle indirectly served free speech
378 16
The Political Economy of the Media /1
The Political Economy of the Media /1
1HE IRONY OF REGULATORY REFORM
An Introduction
interests by establishing the separation of the control of the means of communication (the "conduit") from the content of the traffic which went over those lines. Although less clear-cut and far less complete, the common carrier principle also applied to broadcasting. The broadcaster was legally obliged to air programs on controversial matters of public policy and to be balanced in that coverage. When a broadcaster permitted a candidate for public office to use the airwaves, that broadcaster had to open the frequency to all candidates. 5 These obligations might be considered quasi-common carrier in nature.
Deregulation and the Public Interest I argue that it is largely a commerce-based concept of the public interest which underlay the traditional system of telecommunications regulation. But regulation had powerful equity~based ramifications as well. Universal telephone service came to embody a principle that access to information and to the means of communication is part of being a citizen. Universal telephone service allows individuals to be part of the fabric of national life, if only due to a legally embedded principle of mandatory access to the equipment at cheap rates. Likewise, the scarcity rationale for the regulation of broadcasting created a public interest goal beyond the technical problem of allocating the electromagnetic spectrum, to wit, that the diversity of viewpoints and speech opportunities is crucial to a good society and a democratic polity. The principle of keeping content distinct from conduit, embedded in antitrust and regulatory "separations" policies, is, in a sense, a technologically rooted protection of freedom of speech. Separations policies constructed institutional boundaries between communications services: broadcasters were kept distinct from common carriers, telephone companies could not engage in telegraphy, AT&T could not enter the data processing industry. Notwithstanding the original commerce-based intentions underlying the system of telecommunications regulation, broader conceptions of the public interest came to be attached to that regulatory system post hoc. Yet, historically, the application of the conceptions of "universal and nondiscriminatory service," the "marketplace of ideas," and "diversity of viewpoints" was always tremendously problematic in the traditional regime of telecommunications regulation. Indeed, as the ensuing chapters will show, regulation barely secured these broader ends of equity and fairness. Sometimes, in attempting to secure such public interest ends, regulation actually sabotaged them. The irony is that these broader notions of the public interest were "attached" to specific technologies and, further, to the regulatory protection of such technologies. As the technologies themselves change and the' separation between them becomes more problematic, the broader notions of the public interest lose their material and legal moorings. This underscores the other great irony of deregulation. Liberals and public interest groups backed deregulation in large part because they saw "regulation as usual" as a form of regulatory "capture." The dissolution of regulatory protectionism and the forces unleashed therefrom served, however, to undercut the historic connections between particular telec;ommunications technologies and the broader notions of the public interest. The broader public interest goals became subsumed and redefined under the ideological rubrics of technological expansion and unbridled competition.
379 17
The deregulation of various industries underscores an important contemporary transformation of the concept of the public interest which goes well beyond the technological changes in telecommunications. I have noted that it is the New Deal, industry-specific, price-and-entry agencies which are deregulating. Traditional economic regulation created, at one and the same time, a complex system of producer cartels and service-based entitlements. Congress established the price-and-entry regulatory agencies to bring order, or ''rationality,'' to various industries during the Depression. Such agencies were given authority over a single industry which was burdened by some destabilizing condition. Railroads, trucking, and airlines were beset by too much competition; telephony was burdened with problems of monopoly; radio broadcasting suffered from an absence of general technical operating rules; speculative banking practices undermined financial institutions. Regulatory agencies established how many and which firms could enter into business, set general pricing levels, and formulated rules specific to the operation of an industry, such as which routes a certain trucking firm would service or which radio frequency a licensee would inhabit. In fulfilling the goal to stabilize these various industries, the price-and-entry regulatory agencies created structures of mutual benefit-or cartels-among the major interests (often including organized labor) in any particular industry. Industries and markets were ''saved" precisely by not permitting marketplace controls to function freely. Regulation substituted administrative rationality and informal political decision-making for market rationality. Price-and-entry regulation constituted a form of state intervention which not only stabilized certain key industries but, in the process, fulfilled certain broad New Deal social policies as well. Regulation brought order to these industries, fixing stable market shares and prices. In so doing, it facilitated the broad unionization of those industries (which could be seen also as fulfilling the Keynesian macroeconomic goal of stimulating aggregate demand). Lastly, such regulation constructed a sort of service-based entitlement system. Regardless of profit potential, buses, trucks, and airlines had to serve out-ofthe-way areas; local telephone service was made cheap and universally available; broadcasters had to fulfill (however nominally) the obligations of a public trustee. Regulation compelled that rates be skewed to facilitate the expansion of service. This generally entailed internal cross-subsidies that favored poor and out-of-theway customers. In short, regulation constructed a reasonably stable system of mutual compromises and benefits to major corporations, organized labor, and even consumers. Deregulation undermines this complex set of benefits. Deregulation serves to dismantle the easy functioning of regulation-enforced cartels. It permits the resurgence of competition and the anarchistic play of market forces. How such a political phenomenon could come to pass is very surprising, because the regulatory control of competition brought business certainty and relatively assured benefits to the parties of the various cartels. It is not generally in the interest of the major beneficiaries of an arrangement to seek alteration of the arrangement. Indeed, as if to underscore this point, the powerful interests of the deregulated industries generally opposed deregulation. Another fact~r favoring maintenance of the regulatory status quo is the bureaucratic nature of the regulatory agency itself. It is often asserted that regulatory bodies, like most bureaucratic
380 18
The Political Economy of the Media II
The Political Economy of the Media /I
TilE IRONY OF REGULATORY REFORM
An Introduction
organizations, tend not to shrink or dismantle themselves. Indeed, a frequent criticism aimed at regulators and agencies is that they try to expand their purviews and budgets. With deregulation, however, regulators surrender their expertise to the workings of the market. More shocking still, some agencies actually initiated the deregulatory process themselves. A key cause of deregulation is the divergence over time of administrative rationality and economic rationality. Regulatory structures and formulae tend to reflect an internal balance of interests within a regulated industry. This is largely because the basic business and functional institutional patterns are set before the advent of regulatory controls. Regulation usually recapitulates these patterns and applies the coercive authority of the state to make them work. Over time, changes in the larger economic environment and technological innovation may alter the balance of interests in and around a regulated industry, but the regulatory structures and formulae may not adapt to these changes. In theory, the informal, discretionary nature of regulation permits an agency to adapt to new circumstances. In practice, regulation tends to be conservative. In the case of the FCC, the Commission clung to familiar definitions and policies long after their applicability had become ambiguous. The agency, beset with many problems and conflicts, often clings to established rules and policies. Regulatory rules may make administrative, but not economic sense. Moreover, if the regulatory arena becomes too contentious, if the struggle between interests is too basic, the agency experiences additional pressures to become more formalistic. Regulatory delay and irrationality reach a point where business decisions are made uncertain. Regulated parties flee the regulatory arena for relief. New policy forums may then disrupt the settledness of regulatory conservatism. To describe this process in historical terms, the liberal-left regulatory activism of the Great Society period not only produced new regulatory agencies, but pushed the older agencies to become more open to democratic (or at least non-industry) demands. The traditional regulatory arena, long protective of (if sometimes also bothersome to) the major regulated interests, waxed inordinately contentious and politicized. This phenomenon pushed agencies to become more formalistic, more prone to time delays and drawn-out judicial challenges. In a period of high inflation, regulatory activism helped modify rate increases such that large service users paid a higher proportional share of the "cross-subsidy." These pressures magnified the economic incentives for large users to bypass the regulated system and for new entrepreneurs to offer unregulated services that would sidestep the regulated industry's delicate system of producer cartels and service entitlements. In response, the traditional regulatory agencies enacted new rules to thwart such bypass. CorpGrations, reeling under new obligations, costs, and time delays imposed by the new social regulatory agencies, counterattacked. They formed lobbying groups and foundations, and commissioned reports decrying the "overregulated" so<;iety. Corporations attempted to tie the decline of US economic productivity to excessive regulation. One effect of this corporate attempt to alter the reigning political discourse was to open up .a greater space for the analyses of academic economists of regulation, who had been writing about the inefficiencies of regulation for years. In a strange sort of way, the corporate effort succeeded and failed. With the backdrop of a crisis in public institutions consequent to Watergate and the economic "stagfla-
381 19
tion" of the 1970s, corporations largely succeeded in transforming a generalized populist dissatisfaction with government (including regulation) to a critique of regulation. But the regulatory agencies most affected were not the new social regulatory agencies so reviled by business. Rather, they were those agencies most criticized by academic economists-the New Deal price-and-entry agencies. Notwithstanding the usual conservatism of regulation, political dynamics and technological innovation and changes in political culture can alter the conservative tenor of "regulation as usual." By the mid~ 1970s an ideologically diverse political coalition-includ ing free-market economists located in key positions in the Ford Administration, historically pro-regulation liberals such as Senators Edward Kennedy and Philip Hart, and consumer advocate Ralph Nader-had emerged to reform regulation. Early reform stirrings coalesced around commercial airlines and the Civil Aeronautics Board. Despite vociferous opposition from the airline industry and nearly 40 years of CAB precedent, commercial air transport was deregulated. Early successes with airline deregulation (lower prices and reputedly higher efficiency) created further political impetus to deregulate other transportation carriers and other infrastructure services. Telecommunication was affected greatly by the general environment of deregulation, yet in some ways both broadcasting and common carriage had already experienced changes which made them ripe for .the deregulation impulse. The regulation of broadcasting had long been characterized by the protection of the conventional services of AM radio and VHF television from competitive entry. Although the FCC formulated various structural and content controls on broadcasters, their efficacy in securing "public interest" broadcasting was dubious. The broadcast reform movement set out to change this. The broadcast reform movement (the communications "wing" of the many liberal activist consumer groups of the Great Society period, consisting of a loose coalition of liberal, often minority-group organizations dedicated to altering the broadcast system) utilized three identifiable strategies in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The most widespread of these was that of conducting challenges to the license renewals of existing broadcast stations. Petitions to deny license renewal were filed on the basis that such stations had not fulfilled their obligation to broadcast in the public interest. Reform groups were greatly assisted in this endeavor by the judicial expansion of legal "standing." This expansion enabled parties without property interests to argue before regulatory agencies. The second strategy entailed a call for the right of limited, but mandatory ci.tizen access to broadcast frequencies. This included demands for airtime to respond to "controversial" advertisements, such as cigarette ads. Last, the reform movement initiated (or at least picked up and gave loud voice to) a new discourse on the potential of "new technologies" to alleviate the endemic problems of broadcasting. In particular, this discourse focused on cable television as a technology that could create a "wired democracy," able to transcend the limited and commercial system of conventional broadcasting. License renewal challenges and access demands caused short-term but severe regulatory problems for broadcasters, and caused them to flee the regulatory arena toward Congress for relief. Congress took up broadcast industry demands for license renewal relief in hearings which by 1976 became bound to the broader (ultimately unsuccessful) effort to rewrite the Communications Act. At the same
The Political Economy of the Media 1/
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time, the broadcast reform movement's "new technologies" discourse, resonating with the material interests of non-broadcast entrepreneurs, slowly pushed the FCC away from its traditional policies of protection. Broadcast deregulation emerged from an unexpected combination of new technologies and mutually contradictory rules designed to protect conventional television broadcasting. The advent of satellite-delivered programs to cable ·operators caused contradictions in the regulations designed to restrict cable television. The subsequent inadvertent relaxation of conflicting regulations provided the FCC with a real-world case for judging whether broadcasters were, in fact, being injured by cable. When broadcasters could not show that they were injured by the relaxation of specific cable rules, the FCC, now taken with the general notion of regulatory reform, relaxed inore of the rules. In addition, a crucial CQUrt case in 1977 established that certain other· FCC rules designed to protect broadcasters were_ unconstitutional. By the late 1970s, the FCC had moved from the New Deal cautious guardian model of regulation, to one which worked actively to liberalize entry in the broadcast business. The common carrier area had been dominated by a vertically integrated AT&T monopoly which was protected. by the FCC. AT&T controlled long-distance telephony, was the local service monopolist in most metropolises, and supplied all of its equipment needs through its own manufacturing subsidiary. By the mid-1970s, however, the internal balance of interests in the industry had shifted-partly due to the entrepreneurial opportunities created by technological innovation and partly to economic incentives to bypass the regulated system. Again, technology is not an independent, abstract force, but a dynamic situated within contexts of entrepreneurial opportunities and regulatory constraints. Underlying this shift were two "important factors: one, longstanding anti.trust problems over AT&T's vertical monopoly, and two, the needs of a powerful community of large telecommunications users which was inadequately served by AT&T and wanted freedom from AT&T-imposed options. -AT&T, so adept at providing universal telephone service, was always suspected of using its vertical monopoly to internally manipulate its prices in order to raise profits. Such antitrust considerations resulted in the 1956 confinement of AT&T to the provision of regulated common carrier telecommunications only. The large, vertical monopolistic structure also was responsible for the company's inability to satisfy the more specific needs of large telecommunication consumers in the postWorld War ll period of business expaQsion. In response to the demands of these large users, the FCC opened special small parts of the Bell monopoly's operating environment to competition. These small entry "liberalizations" were permitted only because AT&T could not serve specialized users adequately. They were not intended or envisioned to open up AT&T's monopoly. Nevertheless, the FCC could neither foresee nor control the consequences of its actions. Entry liberalization encouraged the emergence of new technologies and new players into telecommunications common carriage, notably in "private lines" (special lines dedicated between two points, used increasingly for data carriage) and "terminal equipment" (telephone instruments and switching systems). Over the years, these new players (particularly the MCl Corporation) and large users would push continuously at the borders of the Bell System with new technologies and new services.
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Such developments had two inadvertent but serious ramifications. First, they raised serious issues of public policy regarding the appropriate boundary between regulated and unregulated activities. And second, they placed AT&T's rate structure in potential jeopardy. These antitrust and liberalized entry matters became inexorably intertwined in the mid- to late 1970s. In 1974 the Justice Department filed an antitrust suit against AT&T, charging that the company had used its regulated profits to practice predatory pricing in competitive markets. Faced with new competitive players and unclear regulatory boundaries, AT&T found its external operating environment and its policy arena, both for decades remarkably stable and certain, becoming increasingly unstable and uncertain. By 1976, partly at AT&T's urging, and partly the result of the deregulation environment, the policy-making arena opened to include Congress in an attempt to rewrite the 1934 Communications Act. Soon, however, all branches of government were engaged in efforts to formulate new national telecommunications policy-a process likened by AT&T's Chairman Charles L. Brown to "nothing less than a three-ring circus." What began as a complex antitrust case in 1974 inadvertently became by 1981 a closed policy forum within which various economic and political concerns could be joined. In the context of Reagan Administration Justice Department negotiations, the need to solve pressing contradictions in domestic telecommunications common carriage could be reconciled with large users' demands for telecommunications options, with AT&T's desire to be freed of regulatory barriers, with national security considerations, and, finally, with the growing concern to protect and enhance American global interest in information technology. The transformation of the concept of the public interest posed by the deregulation of these industries involves a shift away from a concern with stability and a kind of social equity to a concern with market controls and economic efficiency. In this regard, the deregulation of telecommunications commands particular attention. For, again, it involves not only the usual issues of political economy in the spheres of commerce and antitrust, but is characterized centrally by issues of public utility and free speech as well. The divestiture of AT&T, and the relaxation of regulatory controls over broadcasting in particular, pose important questions about the nature of the modem public sphere. The foreseeable outcome of the divestiture of AT&T is increasing telecommunications options for business and the decline of the principle of universal service. The deregulation of broadcasting threatens to collapse the First Amendment's protection of messages to mean complete freedom for media owners only. Diversity and a free marketplace of ideas are declared to be delivered by the unfettered market. Telecommunications deregulation thus creates a distinctly modem political and philosophical paradox: how to guarantee meaningful freedom of speech in an age of information abundance. There are also basic questions about deregulation's effect on commerce. Given that a planned and stable telecommunications infrastructure was crucial to economic development and the free flow of commerce, will the opening of that infrastructure to competition secure similar results?
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Theories of Regulation
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Theories of Regulation
Theories of regulation spring from two main sources: welfare·economics and political theory. Welfare economics refers to the belief in the capability of state intervention to secure both socially desirable economic redistributions and general economic efficiency. Traditional theories of regulation invariably center themselves around a concept of the "public interest" which is rooted in welfare economics. This concept of the public interest strikes an uneasy balance between elements of a command, or government-directed, economy and classical liberalism's doctrine of preserving a strict separation between the state and private property. The public interest legitimates limited state intervention in the marketplace, even though in theory the marketplace operates best without interference. From political theory come various models of political dynamics that purport to explain the genesis of regulation and the behavior of regulatory agencies. Theories of regulation rooted in political theory are generally "private interest" theories. They assert that regulatory agencies serve private interests, whether those be the industries regulated or the regulators themselves. The literature on regulation is extensive and sometimes confusing. It spans several disciplines, mainly history, political science, and law, and, more recently, economics and sociology as well. Historical studies examine the legislative debates and otqer circumstances surrounding the origin of regulation, attempting to discover what groups or coalitions initiated regulation, and who was served by it. Legal studies discuss the legislative mandates of agencies and the history of judicial treatment of agency actions. These histories, though important in their own right, generally tell us little about what regulation actually did or does. Economic theories tend to focus on the empirically approachable outcomes of specific regulatory 22
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processes, tested by assumptions of market efficiency. Finding that regulation often does not live up to its welfare economics rationale, these economic studies often move quickly, however, to functionalist, generally unwarranted theoretical conclusions as to the general "purpose" or "function" of regulation. Studies from political science sometimes steer a middle course, looking at origins and attempting to follow the analysis into operations. Most often, these studies propose theories of private interest to account for regulatory origin and practice. Sociological analyses tend to study regulatory agencies as complex organizations. The difficulties of reconciling perspectives derive from the differences in approaches and in evidence considered. As Thomas K. McCraw'suggests, the method of historians is distinctively empirical; economists use a theory-oriented testing of market efficiency; and political scientists and lawyers center on due process, legitimacy, and reform. 1 These orientations vary in conception as to what the public interest actually is, as well as in conception of the underlying model of the state. Neither conception is always made explicit and theoretical. I group theories of regulation under five general, ideal-typical categories: "public interest" theory, regulatory failure or "perverted" public interest theory, conspiracy theory, organizational behavior theory, and capitalist state theory. To understand regulation, in my view, genesis and operationality can and must be separated but reunited at some later level of analysis. The creation of any specific regulatory body is wedded to the historical circumstances surrounding it, most impoJ1ant, the state of the industry and whether or not its internal market controls function to secure rational risk-taking, and whether or not the social and economic consequences of industry actions kindle popular ferment. How a regulatory agency operates once established, though not unrelated to the mandate of its creation, is a separate issue, resting upon complexes of organizational behavior and institutional constraints. Moreover, the dynamic of regulatory operation itself may change through time, due to historically altering relations within the industry, and changes within or without the agency itself. Conflation of genesis and operationality, also known as the "fallacies of origin and effect," is a major deficiency of much of the literature. 2 Yet any new theory of regulation and deregulation is indebted to, and also departs from, previous perspectives. Here follows a brief survey of the major theories, and their strengths and weaknesses. This survey is a necessary springboard into the theory offered in the chapter which follows.
"Public Interest" Theory The oldest of the theories regarding government regulation of business is the socalled "public interest" .theory. Public interest theory lies behind both the "official" view of legislative intent and the many scholarly analyses which look at the history of regulatory origin. Broadly, this perspective holds that regulation is established in response to the conflict between private corporations and the general public. The creation of regulatory agencies is viewed as the concrete expression of the spirit of democratic reform. The agencies are seen as institutional manifestations of the victory of "the people" in their successful struggle against various corporate special interests. Stimulated by market failures and especially monopolistic abuses
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Theories of Regulatio11
by corporations, popular clamor induced government to limit corporate prerogatives and to take control o_f some market activities. Made necessary by the unprecedented complexities of industrial technology and large-scale capitalism, regulatory commissio~s take as their ~uide, in the words of Charles Francis Adams, an early champiOn of railroad regulation, the "interests of the community." Informed regulators would harmonize the community's general interest with the specific needs of business. 3 Historically, public interest theory went through two main phases. The early phase might be characterized as the "Granger" period, referring to the anti-monopoly activism of the agrarian social movements of the late 19th century-the largest of which was the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, or the Grange. For the most part, the farmers' movement was social and educational, and sought to preserve a localized and personalized agricultural society. The Granger movement did not have a coherent political program, but its demands reflected the farmers' distrust of busi~ess. Believing that carriers and middlemen robbed them of their just compensatiOn, farmers argued that railroads and grain elevators should be placed under public authority. The agitation of these movements in the early 1870s helped induce local and state legislation to regulate railroad, warehouse, and grain elevator rates. The role of farmer activism has been overemphasized in many historical accounts of the political events of the 1870s. The regulatory legislation of that period-the ''Granger Laws'' -was in large part the result of earlier sectional disputes over discriminatory railroad and warehouse rates. Legislative control over railroad and warehouse rates was a response to the disruption of traditional patterns of trade by the emerging interstate railroad system. Localities sought rate regulation in order to alleviate the effects of discriminatory rates on trade. In this effort, older mercantile and commercial interests often led the struggle for controls over railroad and warehouse corporations.4 Nevertheless, because of the broad anti-monopoly sentiment which informed such state legislation, it is appropriate to label that political perspective "Granger" public interest theory. Crucial to the Granger public interest perspective was an amalgam of traditional assumptions regarding economics, politics and society, and a new supposition regarding power. These assumptions were that competition was good, in the sense that competing economic units allocated goods and services efficiently and equitably. Monopoly was evil not only because it was inequitable but becaus~ concentr~t~d economic power ramified into social and political power as well. Fmally, pohttcal power was "public" power, to be used legitimately to curb monopolistic abuses. In the Granger formulation, the public interest derives from the standpoint of the individual producer, wh<;> is taken to be the founding unit of the good society. This embodied the Jeffersonian ideal of the independent small holder, which Jay at the basis of .the traditional American con~eption of a democratic society. The Grange perspective held that by the late 19th century, corporate productive power had begun to displace the small independent producer in political, as well as economic importance. This perspective (adopted in many respects by the later Populist movement) reflected a profound distrust by local communities of the "alien" nature of large capital. Accordingly, the danger of the "trusts" and of economic power in
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general was perceived originally as a moral, rather than a purely economic issue. The legislative debates surrounding the passage of the 1887 Interstate Commerce Act and the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act convey this moral fervor.s In the subsequent pursuance of antitrust and railroad legislation, a contradiction soon became apparent between economic efficiency and political equity. The productive might and capacity of the industrial corporation had to be reckoned with. As the industrial corporation began to restructure the economy and society, the older moral vision of the independent producer (tied to a now declining agricultural social system) had to compete with a new and rising ideology which esteemed the economic efficiency of large-scale industrial production. Indeed, in the early decades of the 20th century, an ideology of "efficiency" came to command a normative power as a type of morality. 6 The early 20th century debate over "good versus bad trusts" reveals the ascendance of this ideology of industrial efficiency. The second phase of public interest theory, the "Progressive " phase, reflected the altered economic conditions created by the large corporation. The efficiencies of the corporation essentially created the modern mass consumer. Public interest theory registered a shift from a conception of regulation as protecting the individual as producer to protecting the individual as consumer. Regulation sought then to maintain the economic scale of the giant corporation while "curbing its abuses. "7 In the view of Progressive public interest theory, regulation was imposed by government to correct inefficient or inequitable market practices. Where monopoly reigned, regulation would act to restore some degree of competition. In those instances where economies of scale made "natural" monopolies necessary or possible, the regulatory agency would function as a watchdog for the general welfare through the oversight of rates and profit levels. In the perspective of the Progressives, then, democratic governmental power reconciled the tension between the needs of powerless consumers and the productive might of the corporation. This perspective can be found in the writings of Progressive Era intellectual reformers such as Waiter Ljppmann, Herbert Croly, and Waiter Weyl, and is also evident in many of the official justitications of the policies of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. 8 The Progressive public interest perspective informs the theoretical basis of an entire generation of American historians. From Benjamin Parke DeWitt through William Alien White, Charles and Mary Beard, Vernon L. Parrington, to Arthur Schltisinger, Jr., one finds similar versions of the histpry of reform as a successful moral drama in which the people, armed with democratic values, defeat the forces of corruption, exploitation, and privilege inherent in the "trusts. " 9 Progressive public interest theory did not jettison the moral tenor of its earlier Granger phase, it merely shifted the subject of protection from the independent producer to the consumer. Progressive public interest theory essentially became the official ideology of the interventionist state. Over the years, the theory expanded its scope from the justification of narrow economic regulation to embrace the vision of the federal government as the protector of the weak, the poor, and the powerless. Again, the notion of the public interest which implicitly underlies this theory is its identification with the interests of consumers. IO Progressive public interest theory abounds with faith in the administrative pro-
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Regulatory Failure, or "Perverted" Public Interest Theory
cess not only to protect powerless consumers, but also to effect rationality and fairness in the economy generally. Regulatory agencies are able to do this because of impersonal, nonpartisan, scientific expertise vested in a body which is continually in session. In the words of Joseph B. Eastman, Interstate Commerce Commissioner and later Federal Coordinator of Transportation from 1933-1936,
That public interest theory remains the yardstick _by which regulation is measured can be seen in the mammoth literature assessing regulatory failure. In this perspective, the public interest is posited as either a theoretical standard or as a historical fact of a regulatory agency's birth. Subsequent behaviors of agencies are found to betray or "pervert" the public interest standard, as measured by various criteria such as democratic due process, economic efficiency, or bureaucratic rationality. The perversion of the public interest is seen in the many studies which assert that regulation has tended to serve the private interests of the industries under regulation. Again, this theory rests on the same below-the-surface assumptions as does public interest theory. This is why, as a whole, this literature is so strident and condemnatory of regulatory behavior. Regulatory failure theorists are public interest theo· rists betrayed. This theoretical perspective marks an advance over public interest theory, in my view, because it confronts the rhetoric of public interest with the reality of empirical fact. The regulatory failure literature studies what regulation actually does. Much of it does a fine job describing the microprocesses of regulatory practice. After "exposing" the failure of regulation, these studies attempt to explain why·the perversion of the public interest happens. Here we find many different explanations often related to different political orientations. Whereas the proponents of public interest theory tend to be political liberals, regulatory failure theorists run the· political gamut, from free-market conservatives, to the epigones of consumer activist Ralph Nader, to neo-Marxists. The most frequently cited general reason for the perversion of the public interest is the overidentification of the regulatory agency with the industry it regulates. Indeed, this is the most common analysis of the regulation of broadcasting by the FCC. There are various explanations for this phenomenon, but most are "influence" models. They postulate that the regulated industries come to exercise (undue) influence on regulatory agencies. I see three basic types of influence models: "instrumental," "structural," and "capture." These, of course, are ideal-types, and many arguments do not fit neatly into a single.category. "Instrumental" explanations focus primarily on personnel factors. In this perspective, the failure of agencies to live up to their public interest mandates has to do with the specific orientation of key agency bureaucrats. The standard explanation points to a ''revolving door'' between industry and regulatory agency for experts and high-level administrators. 14 There are varied interpretations of what this empirical fact means. Because industry and regulatory officials are drawn from the same social class, one assumption is that they share a fundamental outlook regarding the proper relation between business and govemment. 15 The argument does not have to rest on social origins. Put simply, because regulators are drawn in large part from the regulated industry, they tend to conceive the purposes of regulation with the industry's mind's-eye. Another such interpretation posits the eventual "venality" of regulators. Venality is said to derive from factors ranging from outright bribes (or, more often, industry solicitude toward regulators) to the future-orienta-
Pubiic regulation used to be thought of merely as a means of protecting the public against extortionate charges. It has that purpose, but it also has a much wider sphere of usefulness. It is needed for the welfare of the industry itself, to promote order and stability, prevent exploitation, and curb destructive competition and waste. The public served needs it, not only as protection against extortionate charges, but to prevent unjust discriminations, promote safety, reliability, and responsibility of service at known and stable rates, reduce expense both direct and overhead, and avoid a financial demoralization which in the end is as destructive to the public interest as it is to the private investors . . . . Our regulation in the past has operated too much on the cure basis, dealing with complaints after they arise but forestalling them. National planning has been conspicuous by its absence.••
Public interest theory treats the creation of regulatory agencies as the victorious result of the people's struggle with private corporate interests. Agencies employ the positive power of the state to take advantage of economic efficiencies and serve the general welfare, and in so doing, regulation protects the consumer from.corporate abuses. Progressive public interest theory thus marries regulation as political response to corporate power with regulation as welfare economics. Regulation can curb abusive business practices and promote greater economic efficiency at the same time. The underlying conception of the state is a sort of positive pluralism. A neutral state can be mobilized through struggle to create administrative apparatuses which will serve the democratic public interest. Such apparatuses subsequently institutionalize within the state a "countervailing power" to powerful private interests. And such apparatuses "work" because they are nonpartisan and scientific. 12 The strength of the public interest approach is that, when sophisticated, it is grounded in historical understandings about the origins of some regulatory agencies.13 The theory is beset by some large problems, however. First, it generally places a Progressivist gloss on all regulatory agencies. In reality, some agencies were established not in response to the democratic demands of an abused public, but in response to the pleas of particular industries for protection and subsidy. Second, because public interest theory is tied to a pluralist theory of power, it slights the structural importance of the economy and of economic power. Hence, the.identification of the "public interest" as the consumers' interest cannot account for the complexity of actual regulatory goals and practice. Much regulation is designed to benefit industry. Indeed, most regulation is designed to facilitate commerce: the benefits of regulation to consumers or industry are bound up in the facilitation of commerce. This latter point indicates a singular failing of the theory: it fails to look at what regulation accomp~ishes once an agency is established. As I will argue, it is vitally important to look at the conditions of the genesis of an agency, its mandated · goals, and the dynamics of regulatory operation.
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THE IRONY OF REGULATORY REFORM
tion of regulators seeking to safeguard their employment opportunities in th~ regulated industry.J6 Other instrumentalist explanations point to the political and social-psychological contexts of regulators' working lives. Some analyses find regulators uniquely vulnerable to various political pressures. Pressures from.Congressm en who are selfserving and/ or who serve the interests of powerful regulated constituents may force regulators to become compliant. 17 Regulators must meet frequently with representatives of the regulated industries and require good working relations with them. In fact, the regulator's sense of professionalism is mediated primarily through his/her relations with indu.stry counterparts. Thus regulators have a built-in incentive to reduce interpersonal conflict. Evel)tually, the regulators come to see the problems and options of regulation in industry terms. 18 Notwithstanding the descriptive accuracy of these assertions, their theoretical contribution is less clear. Instrumental explanations are weak, in my view, because they rest on the personal motivation and behavior of individual regulators. It seems highly unlikely that regulators, who possess such wide latitude of discretion, would act in the same manner across the regulatory spectrum over such a long period of time. Surely there must have existed ''good" regulators. What explains the persistence of regulatory failure during the tenure of competent bureaucrats7 More "structural" explanations seem more appropriate. Structural analysis refers to the relationship between institutions which restrict and channel the possible options of the individuals who make decisions within those institutions. Thus, a structural explanation of regulator-regulatee "like-mindedncss" might argue that industries can influence the selection of agency appointments through the political spoils system. Because appointments to regulatory agencies are considered political plums without serious political liabilities, presidents use the appointments to reward and retain the political support of important regulated industries. In other words, because agency appointments are so tied in to the political spoils system, industry can indirectly influence the composition of a regulatory agency. A standard structural argument is that the regulated industries possess far greater resources than do the agencies (or other parties) in terms of personnel, money, and political influence. Arguing one's case in administrative or judicial arenas is so expensive that those parties with the most resources can be expected to prevail in most instances and over the long run. Usually poorly funded, agencies must depend on industry for technical information and expertise, and on Congress for their budgets. Compounding this (or perhaps, as a result of this), agencies are reactivethe regulated parties set the agency's agenda. In the case of the FCC, industry lobbying power is said to be magnified by the particular nature of the regulated industry. AT&T, at one time the largest corporation in the world, is infinitely more powerful than the FCC in terms of resources, intelligent attorneys and engineers, and political influence. 19 Because broadcasters have their fingers on the very means of publicity, local politicians are highly responsive to broadcasters' views, and the legislators make these known to the subordinate FCC. 20 A major subset of the· structural regulatory failure literature is the governmentsponsored investigations of regulatory performance. There is a virtual industry of these reports. 21 For all of their differences in underlying political sentiment, all the
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reports found that regulation had failed in similar respects. They generally plac_e _the onus of such failure upon bureaucratic irrationality. Often t~ey do n~t exphcttl_y claim that regulation serves the interests of the regulated pa~tes. That mference ~s left unsaid. The reports simply claim that regulatory agenctes do not fulfill the1r missions and public interest goals, and that they fail to formulate cl_ear an~ consistent policies. 22 All the government reports berate regulatory agenctes for mefficiency and for failing to analyze and plan. The re~sons po_stulate~ for this. general incompetence include the observation that, ordinanl7, publ~c servtce_ doesn t attract good people; or that high agency turnover rate and msuffict~nt fundmg prevent t_he establishment of an ongoing knowledgeable bureaucracy whtch can dev~lop contt~ uous, coherent policy; or that public agencies tend not to develop sufficient organizational capacities. The 1949 Hoover Commission Report, for example, argued_ that the quality of appointees was the single most crucial factor in the success or failure of regulatory agencies. . These reports and their recommendations are flawed, in ~y ~Jew, b~ca~se they imply that the failings of regulatory agencies are due to thetr mtsorg~mzatwn and poor leadership. The first Hoover Commission Report, for _example, rat led_ o~ abou! the FCC's failure to delegate authority. The report assatled the CommJss_wners preoccupation with minor matters because this prevented the~ from devotmg the necessary time and thought to the more basic issues of reg~Jauon. Sue~ structural explanations of bureaucratic incompetence usually rest on mstr:umentahst fears of personnel corruption and subpar job perfo~a~ce. The ~nalyucal flaws ~f these government reports are underscored by the dtstmctly vaned recommendatiOns offered to remedy the problem. Nearly all reports agree that there is a problem ?f too much outside influence over regulatory agencies. Some suggest the problem ts that agencies are not independent enough, particularly in th~ sense t~at their inade~ua!~ operating budgets force them to rely on the industry for mformatton and ex~ert1se. Recommendations to increase commissioner tenure or to separate execut1ve from judicial functions in commissions largely seek to insulate agencies from outside influence-includ ing politics and politicians. Conversely, other reports conclude that agencies are prone to industry influence precisely because ~hey are too far removed from political oversight. 24 They recommend reforn1s wh1ch would allow closer Congressional or Executive control over agencies_. Som~ reports recommend that agency "management" capacities be enhanced by mcreasmg the power of the agency chairman. 25 . . • Perhaps the most influential of the perverted pubhc mteres~ theo~1e~: and o~~ which pulls elements from instrumental and structural explana~w~s, IS captu~e theory. Capture theory is stronger than other perverted pubhc mtere~t theones. Whereas other theories claimed that, by various means, regulated part1es come to exercise influence on agencies and commissioners, capture theory asserts that agencies are taken over or "captured" by regulated industries. Capture is, in the la~t analysis, an influence model as well, but the strength and completeness. of th1s influence make it qualitatively different. The implication of capture theory ~~ that a captured agency systematically favors the private interests of regulated parttes and systematically ignores the public interest. . , . . The pat:agon of capture theory is Marver Bemstem s hfe c~cl~ of agenc1~s model, fonnulated in Regulating Business by Independent Commzsswn. Bemstem
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TilE IRONY OF REGULATORY REFORM
Theories of Regulation
postulated a history of regulatory agency evolution. His model poses four periods in the historical life of any regulatory agency, a pattern metaphorically equivalent to a human life cycle: gestation, youth, maturity, and old age. The gestation period finds aggrieved groups demanding legislative redress, culminating in vague, compromise legislation that creates a regulatory agency. In its youthful stage, the new agency operates with the benefit of a supportive public environment. Despite the vagueness of its mandate, the young agency is crusading and aggressive in dealing with problems and the industry generally. The agency is staffed by young, inexperienced professionals, eager to do their jobs and establish their reputations. Relations with regulated parties are generally hostile. As the agency matures, the brouhaha which created it subsides, and the agency adjusts to the conflicts it faces. Without sustained public support or much Congressional interest, the agency adapts to its new environment. Operating budgets do not rise very quickly and the "young Turk" staffers tend to leave the agency. The agency transforms itself from a policeman to a manager. Personnel turnover is high and expertise falls. The agency comes to rely on routine and precedent, and seeks to maintain good relations with its industry. As the agency hits old age, it becomes a bureaucratic morass which, because of precedent, serves to protect its industry. 26 The age variable seems crucial to Bernstein's and roughly similar life-cycle capture models. 27 The Bernstein model and capture theory generally are descriptively alluring. They suggest that regulatory impetus and operations change ·historically-that where agencies have been created by popular refonn, some process unfolds whereby they come to serve other interests. This basic argument is not new. Other classic confirmations of the main tenets of capture theory are G. Cullom Davis' description of the transformation of the Federal Trade Commission in the 1920s and Samuel P. Huntington's analysis of the early Interstate Commerce Commission. 28 One of the earliest statements of the essence of capture theory is the oft-quoted 1892 letter of Attorney General Richard Olney to the president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. In this simple and bald letter, Olney sought to dissuade railroad leaders from their efforts to exterminate the fledgling Interstate Commerce Commission. Olney proposed instead that the railroads "utilize" the agency. 29 The problem with Bernstein's model, and perhaps with capture theory in the generic, is that it is quasi-history. The relatively unitary treatment of agencies ignore~ the different circumstances surrounding, and reasons for, their creation. 30 Also, the theory is causally imprecise about agency behavioral stage progression. Bernstein's stages of an agency's "life" evolve according to natural law. The impreciseness of causation and definitiveness of evolution seem partially due to the questionable biological metaphor. 31 On the other hand, Bernstein's model provides helpful suggestions for a more complete theory. If (some) agencies move from a public interest orientation to a regulated interest orientation, one of the reasons, according to Bernstein, is a shift in political alignment and/or change in the larger political climate. In Bemstein's model a crisis or scandal.can initiate a return to the beginning of the cycle. Regulation to some degree responds to the "political agenda." As I see it, this correctly underscores the importance of political dynamics to regulatory practice.
Two of Bernstein' s observations are of particular importance for my theory. His work suggests that regulatory agencies face broad policy dilemmas because of _th_e conflicting demands-for instance, to promote and to police-mandated by ongtnating legislation. Also, Bernstein identifies the formalism of agency procedures and the conservative reliance on precedent as major features of the operations of the mature regulatory agency. . The problem of the vague and conflicting legislative mandate IS central to Theodore Lowi's version of capture theory in his influential book, The End of Liberalism. Lowi claims that the compromise legislation which marked the founding of many regulatory agencies called for contradictory goals, to be resolved _(or avoided and masked) by ceding tremendous discretionary power to the agenc1es. Upon close examination, Lowi found many regulatory stat~es_devoid of any ~ean ingful guidelines beyond a perfunctory and abstract proscnptton ~o regulate m ~he public interest. Unclear, internally inconsistent mandates along wtth the dele~atton of vast discretionary power created a new source of power both for the extenston of government into spheres of life from which it had been a~sent and for int~r~st groups to seize and manipulate. Claiming that pluralism and mterest group pohttcs have worked only too well, Lowi sees regulatory agencies as brokers of state power and largesse. They constitute centers of private pow~r wi~in the state. . . . He constructs a fascinating and complex analysts whtch finds admtmstrattve discretionary power increasing as newer regulatory bodies are created to deal with more abstract, general, and systemic aspects of economic activity. 32 Lowi lays out a functional typology of regulatory actions and purviews. It establishes that all agencies do not perform the same functions; that the antitrust regulation of the Federal Trade Commission involves different principles than, say, the price-and-entry regulation of the Civil Aeronautics Board. Lowi suggests in a later essay that political processes vary with different types of public policy outputs. 33 T~is marriage of political dynamics to organizational behavior represents a theoretical approach I share. Lowi's central, potent conclusion is that administrative discretion becomes a form of bargaining that favors the powerful and the organized. Regulation thus undermines the rule of Jaw and corrupts the democratic process. However, because in Lowi's view the broad delegation of legislative authority is the main problem, his analysis glosses over other real differences between _regulat~ ry agencies.The reasons for regulatory expansion (in the number of agenctes and m their functional purviews) are left unclear, if the consequences of such are not. In the last analysis, Lowi's model best accounts for the "client" or broker-state politics typical of New Deal regulatory agencies. It does not shed enough light on how and why the social regulation of the 1960s and early 1970s came about, or why, as I will argue, such regulatory agencies as the Environmental Protecti_on Agency and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are not necessanly examples of broker-state politics.
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Conspiracy Theory Conspiracy the
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the expense of the public. Where conspiracy theory is different is that it denies capture. The word "capture" implies that the agency existed in a different state previously. Capture theory thus admits a public interest origin of regulatory agencies. Conspiracy theory argues radically that agencies were set up at the behest of industries to serve their interests. Reform and public interest rhetoric may have been bandied about, but such rhetoric functioned only to mask the private nature of regulation-in both genesis and operation. Conspiracy theories generally emanate from two paradoxically diverse sources, left-wing political theory and conservative free-market economic theory. Horace Gray's seminal 1940 essay, "The Passing of the Public Utility Concept,'' is a major precursor to conspiracy theory. It is a nascent conspiracy theory because the position he outlines in the essay is fluid and in a sense undeveloped. Gray allows that the concept of public utility may have originated in public interest concerns to protect consumers against excessive charges and discriminations; The actual institution of public utility regulation, certainly in operation if not also in genesis, however, establishes and protects monopolies. In stinging language, Gray observes that capitalists appropriated the public utility idea in order to use the state's coercive power for the construction of protected monopolies. He writes: Thus, between 1907 and 1938, the policy of state-created, state-protected monopoly became firmly established over a significant portion of the economy and became the keystone of modem public utility regulation. Henceforth, the public utility status was to be the haven of refuge for all aspiring monopolists who found. it too difficult, too costly, or.too precarious to secure and maintain monopoly by private action alone. Their future prosperity would be assured if only they could induce government to grant them monopoly power and to protect them against interlopers, provided always, of course, that government did not exact too high a price for its favors in the form of restrictive regulation.34 In other words, public utility status was a commodity which industries clamored after. The flaw of regulation, in Gray's view, was structural and hence inevitable. He thought it a complete delusion that private privilege could be reconciled with the public interest by means of what he termed the "alchemy" of public regulation. Worse, because of the veneer of public control, regulation legitimized monopoly, exploitation, and political corruption. The clearest solution to this was public ownership. The most widely known example of conspiracy theory, the work of Gabriel Kolko, addresses similar themes. He writes in The Triumph of Conservatism, "It is business control over politics, rather than political regulation of the economy that is the significant phenomenon of the Progressive Era.' ' 35 Reversing the standard understanding of American economic history, Kolko marshals evidence to show that the centralization and concentration of capital was far more a desire of business than a reality at the turn of the century. The merger movement was an attempt by businesses to forestall or circumvent destructive competition, an attempt which failed. Mergers were not more efficient, Kolko argues. In fact, they led to more competition:Moreover,·attempts to stabilize prices and/or fix a division of markets through industrial agreement, such as the "Gary dinners" in the steel industry,
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failed miserably. This anarchic situation held in each of the six key industries analyzed by Kolko. Kolko argues that it was not the existence of monopoly that caused the federal government to intervene in the economy, but the lack of it. The genius of big business inhered in formulating a positive theory of the state, a "political capitalism." Taking their cue from the process that had transpired earlier in railroading, industry leaders realized that only the federal government possessed the power to rationalize the (inevitably chaotic) market. Thus they championed federal regulation of business. Moreover, centralized federal regulation would protect businesses from the less controllable states. Hence regulation could help regularize the conditions of doing business by providing a uniform set of rules formulated in the main by business leaders themselves. . In 1887, Kolko argues, large railroaders sought government regulation and supported creation of the Interstate Commerce Act in order to suppress the destructive, internecine competition for shipping contracts. Railroads sought federal authority to guarantee their pooling arrangements and thus free them from the destructive anarchy of the market. Likewise during the Progressive Era, big bankers favored the Federal Reserve Act because it would dampen interest rate competition. Established drug firms favored food and drug legislation because it would erect entry barriers to the quacks· whose practices had been undermining consumer confidence. Timber interests supported forest conservation because it would enforce preservation of the resource that yielded their profit. Meat packers favored federal quality standards and inspection because such controls would prevent smaller packers from producing and selling the low-quality products that might result in the banning of American meat from European markets. The Clayton Act and Federal Trade Commission were supported by business because they were thought to be useful tools in the suppression of competition. 36 Kolko's analysis was joined by subsequent revisionist histories. 37 James Weinstein looked at Jabor (workman's compensation) and antitrust (FTC enabling mandate) legislation, along with the municipal reform movement (drawing on the ~ork of Samuel P. Hays), and found in the National Civic Federation a class-consctous business elite capable of directing the structure and content of Progressive "reforms." In Weinstein's view, the reform impetus of the Progressive Era had lain in working-class upheavals. Nonetheless, a segment of the capitalist class saw political reform as a way of solving economic problems. These businessmen were able to coopt the reform impulse by virtue of their vast political influence and abil~ty to articulate a new ideology of social responsibility and efficiency. Under the gmse of political reforms, large corporations thus established a system where state power would supervise and rationalize private corporate activity. 38 Again, what distinguishes conspiracy theory from capture theory is that the former argues that the purpose of regulation, in genesis and in operation, is to serve industry, to rationalize capitalism through political means. In contrast to the other theories we have looked at, conspiracy theory looks closely at the politics of regulatory creation and finds the key participation of businessmen. However, conspiracy theory generally does not delve into the actual ongoing operation_s _of the regulatory agencies. On this point the model is deductive rather than empmcal. It
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reads subsequent regulatory behavior and outcomes back into genesis because of the structure and centrality of capitalist power. For all the heated debate over regulatory origins, conspiracy theory does not confront the fact that agency policies are frequently dismal failures. How such failures serve industry is left unexplained. For example, the railroad industry's desire for legalized pooling was not secured in law until World War I. But the legalization of pooling is cited as the main reason why the industry supported the Act to Regulate Commerce in 1887. 39 Moreover, with regard to origins, it is not enough simply to point out that some businessmen were involved in regulatory legislation. For example, other scholarship finds the impetus for national railroad regulation to be complex and multifaceted, involving various agricultural, mercantile, and railroad interests. Indeed, more than one study found that railroad men supported regulation rather reluctantly. An empirical study found that ICC rate policies before World War I responded far more to shipper than to railroad interests. 40 Other studies point out the complexity and divided nature of business support for regulation in various industries. 41 Though overdrawn in the assessment of regulatory origin, the conspiracy model brought a systemic approach and utilized new types of information. Both Kolko and Gray argued that, contrary to conventional understanding, the conflicts surrounding regulatory origin were those of industrial instability and competitioo, rather than those of monopoly. Kolko's analysis correctly highlighted the new interventionist role of the state, and its effort to rationalize capitalism in a period where the market alone could not do so. Regulation historically helped to address ongoing economic and social problems as a new political institution. This is a key insight. Furthermore, conspiracy theorists highlighted the important fact that capitalists very often supported federal regulation. But these theorists largely misinterpreted that fact. The reason that capitalists generally supported federal regulation (sometimes reluctantly) was not because they necessarily believed they could control such agencies., Rather, they supported federal regulation for the Weberian-based reason that centralized federal regulation alleviated the uncertainty and irrationality of conducting business in an environment subject either to internecine, lawless competition, or to a myriad of conflicting state and local regulations. Surprisingly, arguments similar to Kolko's began to be advanced by some economists, though without either Gray's preference for public ownership or Kolko's condemnation of ''political capitalism.''
er prices, higher production costs, and slower technological progress than would be the case without regulation. An early target of such studies was the domestic airline industry. Various studies claimed that domestic airline prices would be lower if there were no regulations. Using the Los Angeles-San Francisco and intr!l-Texas unregulated routes (unregulated, because intrastate air transport does not fall under Civil Aeronautics Board authority) as comparison, some economists concluded that CAB regulation significantly increased price levels and price discrimination. High-density intrastate airfares were found to be more than twice as cheap as analogous interstate airfares. The intrastate carriers were found to be more efficient operations as well. Regulation resulted in excess capacity-too many planes and too many flights for the existing demand for air travel. Though fares had been set at cartel levels by the CAB, profits had been wasted away through excess capacity. This led early economic analysts of airline regulation to the conclusion that regulation produced higher prices for the consumer, but without the industry itself benefiting from such, largely due to imperfect cartel management by the CAB. 42 Similar economic studies with similar conclusions were conducted on the regulation of gas pipelines and of surface transportation. 43 The excess capacity argument resonated with an earlier hypothesis made by Harvey Averch and Leland L. Johnson, in a now-famous article, "Behavior of the Firm Under Regulatory Constraint.'' The rate-regulated firm is permitted to earn no more than some fixed proportion of the value of its capital. This constitutes the basis of the regulatory formula expressed by the phrase "fair rate of return." Averch and Johnson (and another economist, Stanislaw H. Wellisz) found that firms subject to rate of return regulation have an incentive to use inputs in proportions that differ from expected cost-minimizing input levels. That is to say, so long as regulatory pricing made plant investment the most important component in the calculation of the rate base, regulated firms would tend to overcapitalize. The rate-regulated firm would find it profitable to employ more capital relative to labor than is consistent with minimization of costs for the quantity of output produced-resulting in overall inefficiency.44 Subsequent A-J-W school arguments found that the rate-regulated firm would seek to enter competitive markets since it could cross-subsidize any losses with the guaranteed profits of its monopoly market. The cross-subsidization of services would be profitable to the extent that it allowed the firm to expand its rate base. 45 Implicit in these empirical investigations was the theoretical premise that regulation is a means of cartel management. Formulated explicitly and with vigor by George J. Stigler, this theory saw regulation as a highly valued political benefit actively sought by many industries. Once acquired, regulation essentially is designed by the industry and operates to that industry's benefit. All firms seek to maximize profits, and profits will be increased if competition is reduced or government subsidies aie obtained. Four main mechanisms enable an industry or occupational group to be protected from competition: direct subsidy, control over entry, regulation& which affect substitutes and complements, and price-fixing. Of these, argued Stigler, entry regulation is best because it uses the coercive power of the state to restrict the number of benefiting parties. 46
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Economic Capture-Conspiracy Theory Exponents of the ''Chicago school'' of free-market economics argue that regulation is a crucial mechanism by and through which many industries seek to control entry and construct artificial cartels. Regulation is aform of government-sponsored "producer protection." Most economic analyses of regulation are not explicitly theoretical with regard to the genesis of regulation. Such studies consist of empirical examinations of particular regulated industries, based largely around price theory. The economiC studies conclude that price-and-entry regulation in competitive industries generates economic inefficiencies. These inefficiencies are manifested in high-
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Some industries, though, did not seem much affected by regulation. In a comparison of regulated and unregulated electric utilities from 1907 to 1932, Stigler and Claire Friedland found no measurable difference on the level of utility rates, on the charging of discriminatory prices, or on the market value of utility stocks. 47 In a somewhat different sense, health and safety regulations also have been accused of having· no efficacy. Several econometric studies argue that regulatory efforts to improve health and safety have been statistically insignificant in achieving these goals. Whatever small improvements had occured in traffic safety, environmental pollution, and workplace safety predated the activities of the. agencies. 48 And though they have little efficacy in achieving stated regulatory goals, the economists argued that such regulations do function to increase system-wide economic inefficiency. In this view, regulation acts as a significant sink on GNP and a drain on productivity. Murray Weidenbaum and Robert DeFina, then of the American Enterprise Institute, calculated that government regulation cost $66 billion in 1976 and up to $100 billion in 1979. And these figures are low compared to the US News and World Report estimate of $105-$130 billion a year. 49 It should be noted again that most empirical accounts of producer protection/cartel management are not especially concerned with general theories of regulation. They are concerned with the economic results of regulation, as tested within price theory. To the extent that these accounts are self-reflectively theoretical, they pose explanations of regulation which employ economic theoretical constructions, such as supply/demand and rational actor models. These explanations float between conspiracy theory and capture theory. The extent to which they are conspiracy theories depends on how functionalist and schematic are their explanations. Stigler's model, for instance, sets up an a priori functionalist explanation that regulation will be supplied to those who value it most. The external influence on, or creation of, regulatory policy depends not on the number of constituents interes.ted nor on the intrinsic social value of one policy as opposed to another, but rather on the illlensity of interest among those concerned. The unmistakable inference is that regulation, in genesis and in operation, reflects the needs and desires of the most interested regulated parties. Actual historical matters need not be consulted. Economic theories of capture (also characterized by a logical functionalism and paucity of historical presentation) utilize the "intensity of interest" argument and bring it to the regulatory process and legislative arena. The central notion underlying most economic capture theory derives from the work of Anthony Downs. Drawing from Downs, economic capture theory posits a government run by individuals who try to maximize a private, rather than public, utility function. Public officials are seen not as bureaucrats concerned with public matters, but rather as private individuals trying to maximize their own "utility" (staying in office, allocating more power to themselves, ensuring lucrative employment opportunities outside governmt>nt-just in case) in much the same way a firm maximizes profits. 5o In effect, regulation (and most political action for that matter) is just another commodity which obey$_ the laws of the market. The needs of politicians/regulators and the needs of interested industrial parties meet in the familiar field of supply and demand, with cartel theory helping us to locate the supply and demand "curves. " 51
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Richard Posner and Sam Peltzman thus argue that regulation is a device whereby politicians transfer income or power to well-organized groups if the groups will return the favor with votes and contributions. Peltzman, Fiorina, Niskanen, Weingast, and to some extent, Noli, to name the most widely known, all employ a "rational actor" model of regulatory behavior which focuses on the self-interested actions of key bureaucrats. With different emphases, they all essentially argue that the structure of Congressional politics makes for an "iron triangle" of legislators, regulatory bureaucrats, and industrial beneficiaries who work to mutual benefit. 52 Most economic capture theorists simply assert the historical validity of capture, or implicitly dismiss genesis questions as unimportant. Either it doesn't matter who runs the agencies, because the rational forces of politics and economics produce the expected results regardless, or such forces select for industry-minded regulators. Operationality is read back into genesis. But because some versi~n~ of c_ap_ture theory are predicated on intensity of interest, they concede that a prwn pred1cttons of the direction of income and power distribution are impossible to determine. Some versions of economic or rational actor theory thus remain open to the recognition of .. political dynamics. Richard Posner contends that much regulation may be the product of coaht10ns between industry and customer groups, the former obtaining some monopoly profits as the latter obtains better service or lower prices than either would in an unregulated market. Posner looks at the interaction of interest groups in the formation of regulatory policy to find a kind of state-sanctioned redistributive p_ol~tics-hen~e the ingenious view of regulation as a form of "taxation. " 53 But thts IS not pubhc interest theory. The interest group bargaining takes place at the expense of the unorganized. Moreover, there is no conception here of the state as a positive actor. The state is little more than the vehicle for private group compromise and the source of coercion to enforce that agreement. 54 The economic capture theory, like capture theory generally, is based on a pluralist view of the state. Governmental agencies, essentially neutral_appa~atuses of coercion, can be captured-sometimes even created-by the parttes wtth the most resources and most intense interest. Normally, that party is an industry-bu not always. Indeed, such a perspective of the state underlay a newer claim b} political conservatives that the advent of environmental and safety regulatory age~ cies in the 1960s and 1970s represented a different kind of capture. The argument ts that social regulation in particular (and regulatory activism in general) was advanced by, and marked the ascendancy of, a "new class." Consisting of young upper-middle-income liberal professionals who came of age in the context of postWorld War 11 affluence, members of the new class tended to wo~k in nonprofit institutions such as universities, hospitals, and especially government. This class was fundamentally resentful of private enterprise. Its power base was government generally, and regulation specifically. The new class was said_ to cre~te an~!or capture regulatory agencies in order to increase its power and to tmpose tts (ehttst) vision on US society. The "new class" aggrandized itself by championing the . expansion of the public sector. 55 Clearly, the "new class" argument is different from the standard economtc theory of regulation as producer protection. Yet it links up with one important
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variant of the economic theory-that regulation causes gross inefficiencies. The increase in the type and amount of regulation, and the subsequent prolongation of the timeframe for regulatory decisions (referred to as "regulatory lag") acts to slow GNP growth and causes general productivity decline. The major advance of the economic analysis of regulation, in my view, is its concreteness. Studies look at specific regul.atory policies and attempt to measure their effects against roughly comparabie ·examples of unregulated markets. The notions of producer protection and cartel management are particularly valuable, for they capture a central feature of traditional economic regulation. However, serious problems emerge, as I see it, when economic analysis moves toward a general theory. While economic measures may permit insightful empirical comparisons, they cannot assess things which do not easily compare or which are not measurable· in purely economic terms. One can plot the effects of health and safety regulations on economic efficiency, for example, but in so doing the researcher must exclude noneconomic variables from the analysis and must implicitly accept crucial, highly debatable assumptions about what constitute "effects" and "efficiency." Connating genesis with operationality, economic capture-conspiracy theories do not specify how industries manage to get regulatory agencies established. Even if agencies are seen as serving the general needs of regulated parties as a group, how do group needs get translated into group pressures and action? This, of course, is an argument regarding the fractured nature of "interests.'-' At the simplest !~vel, most regulatory agencies serve multiple regulated parties. The FCC, for example, regulates commercial and nonprofit radio ·and television, amateur and private point-topoint communications, international and domestic telf
This can mean different things. On the one hand, it means that organizations guard their autonomy, and thus are not easily influenced by any party. On the other hand, it may mean that agencies, buffeted by a myriad of demands and conflicts, and possessing limited resources to deal with complexity, operate with limited rationality and search for "satisfactory," as opposed to "optimal," outcomes. One variant of the organizational perspective resonates with the politically conservative argument that regulation imposes great costs on the economy. This view finds that regulatory agencies, concerned with organizational preservation, and regulatory staffs, preoccupied with professionalism, will be regulation-oriented rather than industry-oriented. Regulators want to do what they are hired to domake and enforce regulations. They are regulation-minded, that is, they act under the presumption that more and better regulations will solve the problems brought before them. The historical growth in number and size of regulatory agencies and the expansion of their jurisdictions are seen as evidence for this perspective. 57 Variations of this view are held by some former regulators. For example, John W. Snow, former transportation regulator, has written:
Organizational Theory To claim that there is an organizational "theory" per se may be overstating the case. However, there is a loosely identifiable group of studies of regulatory policy and behavior that considers the organizational imperatives of an agency to be the key variable in understanding regulatory behavior. In contrast to the "regulator as politician'' perspective, the subject of the organizational model is the agency as an organization per se. Organization theory finds that regulatory behavior can be best understood by examining basic, organizationally-rooted imperatives of the agency.
Agencies like NHTSA are created largely in an open-ended way. The Congress says that there is a problem of deaths and injuries on the nation's highways. They create an agency to solve the problem, but they do not tell the administrator or the staff of the agency what the time-frame is or how much of the problem the Congress thinks can be resolved through regulation. The administrator of such an agency finds himself with a strong mandate, a mandate to achieve safety with little or no consideration for the cost. Thus, there is a built-in bias to issue more and more regulation.ss
It remains for other theorists to argue that the plethora of regulations serve only the needs of agencies and regulators, and wreak havoc on the regulated industry. Economist Paul W. MacAvoy writes in this vein to some degree. In his early study of natural gas regulation, MacAvoy claimed that stringent regulation led to inadequate returns and "regulation-induced shortages." He expanded this thesis to other rate-regulated industries. He asserted that under the inflationary spirals and consumer activism of the late 1960s and early 1970s, coupled with the regulatory Jag in making rate decisions, agency-allowed annual percentage price increases were smaller and output growth larger than in those industries not subject to price controls. With reduced profitability, annual real net investment declined, slowing the growth rate of production, and causing regulated industries to Jag behind the rest of the economy by the end of the 1970s. Worse, according to MacAvoy, the investment cutback in energy and transportation industries governed by price and entry regulation would show up ten or so years hence in the form of serious and irreparable service shortfalls. With regard to health and safety regulation, because there are no price limits imposed by such regulation, MacAvoy claimed that the higher costs are passed on to consumers in higher prices, thereby reducing consumption growth and ultimately reducing economy-wide GNP growth. 59 "Regulation-mindedness" may not be the result of such pro-regulation bureaucrats. It may result from the need of regulators and inspectors to "cover their asses" from charges of laxity by dangerous political predators. As Eugene Bardach and Robert A. Kagan· argue in Going by the Book, there are strong political and bureau-
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cratic incentives for regulators to apply rules "unreasonably," that is, literally. 60 This is particularly true of the "social" regulatory agencies. If OSHA inspectors exercise discretion in the application of a particular rule to a particular workplace, they are open to charges of favoritism and corruption. So, the authors claim, even when a workplace is fundamentally in compliance, OSHA inspectors often enforce rules literally. Bardach and Kagan tie this organizational imperative of self-protection to the cost-benefit analysis of regulation found in most economic studies of social regulation. According to the authors, regulatory unreasonableness means that compliance entails costs which exceed the resulting social benefits. The sheer diversity of enterprises to be regulated under, say, an OSHA rule, makes it nearly impossible to devise a single rule that will "make sense" in scores of different workplaces and even across different industries. Bardach and Kagan argue that such regulation not only increases economic inefficiency, but generates intense frustration among businessmen-including those who generally support OSHA's objectives. 61 The other broad type of organizational theory posits an agency <;haracterized by rational goals and behaviors, but buffeted by conflicts, external constraints, and often the mutually exclusive demands of interest groups. The organizational imperative is to lessen such conflicts and demands. In Robert Chatov's almost psychological formulation, the regulatory agency will naturally attempt to diminish the conflicts that envelop it. The agency thus will construct, and become the focal point of, "consensus networks," within which parties will generally compromise and agree to general procedures and goals. 62 Paul Joskow's quasi-organizational view finds similarly that agencies fundamentally seek to minimize conflict and criticism. Once the agency "satisfactorily" balances the conflicting pressures from its external environment, it routinizes the organizational structures and procedures which fashioned that equilibrium. The agency then will operate in a predictable and reactiveeven passive-mode, repeatedly using these established structures and procedures.63 Hence agency organizational procedures come to reflect the balance of interest-group power. 64 So, "regulation as usual" may often be in the general interests of both the strongest regulated parties and the agency itself. This is an . important point for my theory. But, Joskow claims, a disturbance in the equilibrium-usually from rapidly transformed external conditions-may push the agency into an innovative stance. This describes the case of public utility commissions in the early 1970s, when their traditional pricing structures and regulatory procedures were rendered obsolete by rapid inflation. Two students of the FCC, employing versions of this organizational perspective, found that (contrary to Joskow's model), disturbances in the equilibrium· reinforced "regulation as usual." Vincent Mosco argues that in the FCC's regulation of broadcasting, the continuous complexity and uncertainty over pursuing mutually exclusive rational goals pushed the FCC toward ongoing simple and conservative decisions. "Regulation as usual" was the organizational response to unrelenting complexity. Don R. LeDuc' s study of FCC treatment of cable television from the 1950s to the ~arly 1970s found evidence of regulatory "sabotage." The agency perceived technological innovation as a tfireat to its standard definitions and
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procedures. The FCC undermined the promise of cable television by forcing it to fit into the structure of previously established regulatory formulae and policies. 65 This organizational perspective, then, looks at the behavior of the regulatory agency as a key variable in explaining regulatory policy. It does not have much to say about the genesis of agencies, but does have an implicit theory of the state. The state is seen not as a set of neutral apparatuses that groups may capture per se, or of politicians as private maximizers, but rather each apparatus has a certain organizationally based, self-regarding orientation. Though the agency may be primarily reactive, it is an actor whose actions are not reducible to the interests of external parties. However, as I will argue, regulation-as-usual tends to protect both the agency and the balance of power in the regulated industry.
Capitalist State Theory Recent neo-Marxist theorists on the capitalist state have not concerned themselves with the analysis of regulation per se. But their preoccupation with state policymaking makes their writings pertinent to this discussion. "Structurally" oriented Marxism looks at political institutions such as regulatory agencies within a larger theory of state intervention in the period of advanced capitalism. Such political institutions occupy a cruCial interstice between contradictory systemic demands to safeguard capitalist accumulation on the one hand, and to secure political legitimation on the other. Neo-Marxian structuralism looks at the rise and functions of state "apparatuses" (such as regulatory agencies) abstractly, as part of the myriad demands placed on the state in the era of advanced, or "monopoly," capitalism. Regulatory agencies in a sense are an institutional response of the political system to the demancls and contradictions created by the emergence of monopoly capitalism. The theory rarely looks at the actual historical events of regulatory origin; it is content to understand origin abstractly. This is a Marxist version of functionalism. Regulatory agencies arise due to the inability of the market to regulate capitalist behavior, whether in terms of intercapitalist competition or in terms of the social externalities of such behavior. In capitalist state theory, the state is considered inherently biased toward actions which will support the capitalist system. 66 This bias·is structural. Because the state is dependent upon taxes and is enjoined by the nature of capitalism and property law from engaging in production itself, the state must safeguard and enhance the private accumulation of capital. In other words, the state must act to keep the economy healthy and growing. It makes little difference who actually has their hands on state apparatuses-the structural imperative constrains the actions of all state ''managers," regardless of their ideologies. State intervention may take different forms depending on specific conditions and circumstances. In general, in the period of advanced capitalism, the state socializes more and more capital costs-giving corporations tax breaks and supplying essential services to corporations to induce investment. The capitalist state acts to provide social insurance programs, such as unemployment compensation and social security, to deal with dysfunctional externalities of a capitalist economy. The
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state takes on the costs of educating and training the next generation of workers. In those instances where private capital cannot or will not take the risks to invest in economically and/or socially necessary capital, the state will underwrite or subsidize such investment directly. The state socializes risk. James O'Connor argues that the state is indispensable to the expansion of private industry, particularly monopoly industries. 67 The state and monopoly sectors grow together, but the expansion of state activity and expenditure causes state budget deficits. Industries destabilized by the anarchy of the market call forth, or create a ·functional need for, some mechanism of social control. Regulatory agencies-a new institution of social control-act to maintain market order on behalf of the industry as a whole. This "long-range" interest of the regulatory agency in the industry it oversees may cause it to act against specific interests within that industry. Because the state assumes the role of rationalizer of economic contradictions, the various state apparatuses must exercise some degree of a1,1tonomy from any specific interest. A "structurally" capitalist state thus accounts for the paradox that state apparatuses exercise autonomy in their policies and actions and serve the long-term needs of capital. In fact, the theory argues that only because the state is autonomous, yet absolutely bound by the constraints of capital accumulation, can it perform its rationalizing function. 68 This is what distinguishes capitalist state theory from the more Marxist varieties of conspiracy theory. But if capitalist stale apparatuses are not simple reflections of interest-group politics, neither are they "neutral" tools. The state is structurally. biased toward capitalism. It should be noted that the structural bias. of the state toward capitalism-a cardinal principle of structuralist Marxism-is not necessarily a Marxist idea per se. The non-Marxist political scientist Charles Lindblom argues much the same thing:
respond to such struggles, but will seek to defuse and/or coop! them in ways which will not threaten continued accumulation and will be compatible with the expanded reproduction of capital. The character and intensity of legitimation demands, and the degree of economic crisis means that in certain periods the state has more leeway vis~a-vis capital. 70 The problem is that the state is unable to respond to the myriad demands of capital and popular agitation without also generating new contradictions, be these a state fiscal crisis or further legitimation problems. 71 In a certain sense, a capitalist state theory of regulation also conflates genesis and operatioriality, though the conflation is at such an abstract level that it may be meaningless. The theory assumes that genesis and operationality are indeed related-at the level of the accumulation-legitimation constraints placed upon the state. The abstract nature of the theory causes it to be extremely imprecise at any empirical level of analysis. Yet, the same abstract nature allows the theory to situate regulation within the larger context of the relation of state and economy. Moreover, the theory postulates the autonomy of regulators, but locates (albeit abstractly) the factors which constrain that autonomy.
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Because public functions in the market system rest in the hands of businessmen, it follows that jobs, prices, production, growth, the standard of living, and the economic security of everyone all rest in their hands. Consequently, government officials cannot be indifferent to how well business performs its functions. Depression, inflation, or other economic distress can bring down a government. A major function of government, therefore, is to see to it that businessmen perform their tasks . . . . But take particular note of another familiar feature of these systems. Constitutional rulesespecially the Jaw of private property-specify that, although governments can forbid certain kinds of activity, they cannot command business to perform. They must induce rather than command. They must therefore offer benefits to businessmen in order to stimulate the required .performance. 69 This structural relationship accounts for the privileged position of business in capitalist democracies. It means that most of the time and as a matter of course, state policies, including regulation, will favor capital.· Yet the state must and does respond to popular agitation, to demands for redistribution, to demands for fairness. In structuralist Marxism, there is a second major constraint on the state, that of legitimation. In a formally democratic polity, class and popular struggles cannot be ignored or simply repressed. A government must to some degree command the trust of the electorate in a democratic polity. In capitalist state theory, the state will
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Each of the theories examined above has something to offer to the understanding of regulation. Each theory, in my view, also has its drawbacks. Public interest theories, attentive to the origin of regulatory agencies, ignore the actual practice of regulation. They misapprehend the public interest to be the consumer's interest, and are peculiarly silent on the actual consequences of regulatory practice. Regulatory failure and capture theories, attentive to the results of regulatory practice, still understand regulation in the terms established by public interest theory. Consequently, their understanding of the nature of influence is limited and reflects an inadequate pluralist view of the state. Capture theories incorrectly conceptualize the state as a neutral apparatus of coercion, infinitely malleable and capturable precisely because the state is seen as having no essential functions or internal prerogatives. Economic theories of regulation help us gain a concrete appreciation of the effects of regulation in specific circumstances. But the application of a rational actor model to regulatory agencies cannot explain their genesis, nor is the model ultimately satisfactory in understanding how regulation actually works in other than strictly economic settings. Conspiracy theories are important in that they point us in the direction of the structure of capitalism and the nature of state intervention. Regulation is a new political institution which arises to deal with particular social and economic problems. But such theories are skimpy on empirical analysis of the practice of regulation. They proceed on the a priori assumption of the centrality of capitalist power and assume that the participation of businessmen means that businessmen control regulation. Organizational theories restore a sense of independence and autonomy to agencies, but this is just a small piece of the regulatory picture. Capitalist state theories are helpful because they are able to situate regulatory agencies within much larger structures of power and constraint. They are of much less use when analyzing a concrete phenomenon such as a specific regulatory agency or a particular regulatory policy. My theory accepts from structuralist Marxist theory the notion that the state is an actor within a capitalist democracy. The actions of the state and of state "manag-
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ers" are important, and are not "directed" by capitalists. However, the autonomy of such actions is subject to constraint. The state can function only within parameters constituted by the two fundamental system constraints of ''accumulation'' and "legitimation." The state must safeguard the conditions for continued economic growth and performance, and at the same time meet democratic demands relating to equity and due process. But for three reasons this is a selective borrowing. First, there is a problem with the abstract level of the structuralist model. As one moves into the empirical history of telecommunications regulation and deregulation, it becomes difficult to impute motives and/or interests to abstractions like "the state,'' which is made up of different apparatuses sometimes with conflicting agendas. Different regulatory agencies represent different constellations of political constituencies and administrative logics, and these differences are, to some degree, embedded in the functional mandate of each agency. Likewise, ''capital'' implies a structured unity which in large part. does not exist except on a very few issues. Second, the accumulation-legitimation dual constraint theory does not adequately recognize the interest of the state (or of a single state agency) in preserving itself. This is where organization theory is helpful. Recognition of a principle of raison d' etat maps onto a theory of regulation not just the national security dimension usually associated with raison d' etat, but also the desires for organizational integrity/autonomy found at many levels of state organization. In this, my analysis of regulation borrows from organization theories. Third, structuralist neo-Marxism, like most social theory, generally does not. recognize law as a "semi-autonomous" normative structure, irreducible to economic or political forces. It was Max Weber who best understood this. Indeed, the semi-autonomous nature of law helps us better understand the otherwise abstract notion of legitimation. Though legitimation demands are normally conceived as the popular demands of subordinate groups against the state,. particularly with regard to matters relating to the redistribution of wealth, legitimation is also found in the expectations associated with the rule of law. This is embodied in the expectation tliat similarly situated persons will be treated similarly, that standards of judgment be open and rational, that due process be respected. The Weberian analysis of substantive and formal rationality is a useful tool for understanding the binds of regulation and the paradoxes of regulatory practice. If this study utilizes neoMarxist theory to examine the origins of regulation and the institutional constraints on this mode of state intervention, it also utilizes neo-Weberian theory to analyze how regulation works in practice. A comprehensive theory should account separately for both the genesis and the operationality of regulatory agencies. The history and analysis of actual regulatory decisions should be considered within the context of the structure of American political power and fundamental economic conditions. The problem with most theories of regulation is the same of most theories of power-they are static. A proper study of regulation must account not only for the real differences between agencies, but also for the differences in the temporal political coalitions whose demands underlie the establishment of particular agencies. Each of the three waves of regulatory genesis is characterized by a general type of agency with similar functions. Each type of agency reflects a specific kind of
politics and a specific administrative practice. Notwithstan~ing, _there is n~ ~ault free way to predict which industries will be regulated and whtch wtll not. Th!s ts not a predictive, "modeling" theory, it is a historical theory. At the same ttm~ •. all agencies are situated similariy within the general institutional structure of pohtt~al power and, within that context of power, are constrai~~d b~ both the ac~umulatt~n needs of the capitalist mode of production and the legttimatton demands mherent t~ a democratic polity. Regulatory agencies are also limited by the difficulty of thetr tasks. Just because an agency is mandated to achieve a certain goal does not mean the attainment of that goal is administratively possible. Finally, because temporality and changes in political dynamics are factors in regulatory behavior, there is no single pattern to the behavior of agencies. 72
406 44
45
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The Political Economy of the Media II
Notes
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Chapter 1. Telecommunications and Their Deregulation: An Introduction · 1. United States Constitution, Article I, Section 8 [3]. 2. Max Weber, On Law in Economy and Society, Max Rheinstein (ed.) (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954), 98-198. 3. Jiirgen Habermas, Struktunvandel der Offentlichkeit (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1962); idem, "The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article," New German Critique 1/3 (Fall 1974), 49-55. Also, on the peculiar relation between capitalism and democracy, see Charles E. Lindblom, Politics and Markets: The World's Political-Economic Systems (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 161-233. 4. See, of course, John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Currin V. Shields (ed.) (lndianapolis: Bobbs-Mcrrill Co., 1956). Also see Justice Louis Brandeis' classic opinion in Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927), and Judge Learned Hand's opinion in United States v. Associated Press, 52 F. Supp .. 362 (S.D.N.Y. 1943), a.ffd 326 U.S. I (1944). 5. This is a sketchy description of the Federal Communications Commission's Fairness Doctrine and Equal Opportunities Doctrine.
Chapter 2. Theories of Regulation I. Thomas K. McCraw, "Regulation in America: A Review Article," Business History Review 49/2 (Summer 1975), 159-183. 2. Barry M. Mitnick, The Politicai Economy of Regulation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980); Barry R. Weingast, "Congress, Regulation, and the Decline of Nuclear Power," Public Policy 2812 (Spring 1980), 231-255. · 3. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., "Boston I," North American Review CVI (January 1868), 18, 25; idem, "Railroad Inflation," North American Review CVIIl (January 1869), 158, 163-164. Cited in McCraw, "Regulation in America," 161. 4. George H. Miller, Railroads and Granger Laws (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1971). 285
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5. Solon Justus Buck. The Granger Movement: A Study ofAgricultural Organization and Its Political, Economic and Social Manifestations, 1870-1880 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1913); Robcrt H. Wicbc, The Search For Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967). 6. Samuel Habcr, Efficiemy cmcl Uplift: Sciemific Management in the Progres.~i1•e Era, 1890-1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964); Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959). 7. Sec John B. Clark and John M. Clark, The Control of Trusts (New York: Macmillan, 1912). 8. WaiterS. Wcyl, The New Democracy (New York: Macmillan, 1912); Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life (New York: Macmillan, 1909); Waiter Lippmann, Drift and Mastery (New York: M. Kennerley, 1914); Richard Hofstadter (ed.), The Progressive Movement, 1900-1915 (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963); David W. Noble, The Paradox of · Progressive Thought (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1958). 9. Benjamin Parke De Witt, The Progressive Movement (New York: Macrnillan, 1915); William Alien White, The Old Order Changeth (New York, Macmillan, 1910); Charles Beard and Mary Beard, The Rise of American Civilization (New York: Macmillan, 1933); Vernon L. Parrington, Main Currents of American Thought (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1927); I. Leo Sharfman, The Interstate Commerce Commission (New York: The Commonwealth Fund, 1931); Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Roosevelt, Vol. I, The Crisis of the Old Order: /919-1933 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), Vol. 11, The Coining of the New Deal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959), Vol. Ill, The Politics of Upheaval (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960); David M. Kennedy (ed.), Progressivism: The Critical Issues (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971). 10. This is not to say that the Granger version of public interest theory disappeared. The Granger vision implicitly informed much of the muckraking journalism of the early Progressive Era. Perhaps· the most visible and effective heir to the Granger version of public interest theory was attorney and later Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis. Brandeis was a tireless advocate for the small producer. His and others' hatred of large corporations and faith in the efficacy of strong antitrust laws clashed with the Progressi~e public interest theory during the New Deal. See Thomas K. McCraw's compelling portrait of Brandeis in Prophets of Regulation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 80-142. On the clash of Granger and Progressive versions of the public interest theory during the New Deal, see Ellis W. Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966). 11. Joseph B. Eastman, address before the American Life Convention, Chicago, October 10, 1934. Cited in Marver H. Bemstein, Regulating Business by Independent Commission (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), 60. 12. James M. Landis' thoughts on the Securities and Exchange Commission are apt here: "As in the case of the Interstate Commerce Commission, it was not long before it became evident that the mere proscription of abuses was insufficient to effect the realization of broad objectives that lay behind the movement for securities regulation. The primary emphasis of administrative activity had to center upon the guidance and supervision of the industry as a whole." James M. Landis, The Administrative Process (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938), 15. See also J. C. Bonbright, Principles of Public Utility Rates (New Yorlc: Columbia University Press, 1961); Kenneth Culp Davis, Administrative Law Treatise (St. Paul: West Publishing Co., 1958); Harold U. Faulkner, The Decline ofLaissez-Faire, 1897-1917 (New York: Rineh!lfl, 1951); Merle Fainsod and Lincoln Gordon, Government and the American Economy, 3rd ed. (New York: Norton, 1941).
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287
The term "countervailing power" is, of course, Galbraith's. John Kenneth Galbraith, American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1956). On the Progressive faith in science and expertise, see the references cited in note 6 and Grant McConnell, Private Power and American Democracy (New York: Vintage Books, 1966). 13. See, for example, the work of Merle Fainsod, particularly the essay, "Some Reflections on the Nature of the Regulatory Process," Public Policy, C. J. Friedrich and Edward S. Mason (eds.) (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1940), 297-323. Stressing the importance of "political dynamics," Fainsod asserts that regulation comes about in two distinct ways, generally in two chronologically different periods of business history. In the first, economically weak parties invoke political power in an effort to secure a more satisfactory adjustment of relationships within the industry. If the industry is in a phase of expansion, "control groups" within the industry (including labor if it has succeeded in bargaining in the profitable industry) will resist any move toward regulation. The weak industrial parties and consumers constitute the impetus toward regulation; in the late 19th century by small businessmen and farmers, in the Theodore Roosevelt era by the progressive middle class, in the Wilson period and New Deal these above were joined by tabor. The dissatisfactions which produced the beginnings of regulation in expanding industries in the United States have been, in Fainsod's scheme., chiefly consumer in origin. He sees this type of regulation as essentially "negative," that is, it is reactive, designed only to curb the abuse of economic power. The second instance of regulation occurs in contracting or depressed industries. An industry in decline finds all parties seeking to shift the burden of readjustments to other interests. In partial response to threats of this type from other parties, each party (particularly tabor) may then seek help from the government through protective regulation, subsidies, or the control of economic competitors (e.g., railroads urged the extension of !CC regulation to trucking). The regulation of declining industries in Fainsod's view is "positive," it seeks to salvage and to guide. 14. Lawrence W. Lichty, "The Impact of FRC and FCC Commissioners' Backgrounds on the Regulation of Broadcasting," Journal of Broadcasting 612 (Spring 1962), 97-110; idem, "Members of the Federal Radio Commission and Federal Communications Commission, 1927-61," Journal of Broadcasting 611 (Winter 1961-62), 23-34; James R. Michael (ed.), Working on the System: A Comprehensive Manual for Citizen Access to Federal Agencies (New York: Basic Books, 1974); Robert C. Fellmeth, The Interstate Commerce Omission: The Public Interest and the /CC (New York: Grossman, 1970); lames Turner, The Chemical Feast (New York: Grossman, 1970); Mark J. Green (ed.), The Monopoly Makers (New York: Grossman, 1973); Common Cause, Serving Two Masters: A Common Cause Study of Conflicts of Interest in the Executive Branch (Washington, DC: author, 1976). 15. G. William Dornhoff, The Powers That Be: Processes ofRuling Class Domination in . America (New York: Vintage Press, 1978). 16. Studies of FCC commissioners, for instance, have shown that a large number take jobs in the communications industry after leaving the FCC. See Michael (ed.), Working on the System (New York: Basic Books, 1972), 262; Lichty, "Members of the Federal Radio Commission and Federal Communications Commission," 31-34; Robert G. Noli, Merton J. Peck, and John J. McGowan, Economic Aspects ofTelevision Regulation (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution,_ 1973), 123-124. 17. Waiter Emery, Broadcasting and the Government: Responsibilities and Regulation (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1971); Roger Noli and Morris Fiorina, "Majority Rule Models and Legislative Elections," Journal of Politics 41/4 (November 1979), 1081-1104; Louis M. Kohlmeier, Jr., The Regulators: Watchdog Agencies and the Public /merest (New York: Harper and Row, 1969).
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18. Barry Cole and Mal Oettinger, Reluctant Regulators: The FCC and the Broadcast Audieuce (Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley, 1978). 19. Roger G. Noli, Reforming Regulation: An Evaluation of the Ash Council Proposals (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1971); Jeremy Tunstall, Communications Deregulatioll: The Unleashi11g of America's Communications Industry (London: Basil Blackwell, 1986). 20. Louis Lessing, "The Television Freeze," Fortune XXXX (November 1949); Henry Geller, "A Modest Proposal for Modest Reform of the Federal Communications Commission," Georgetown Law Joumal, 63/3 (February 1975), 705-724; John M. Kittross, Television Freque11cy Allocation Policy in the United States (New York: Arno Press, 1979); Don R. Le Due, Cable Television and the FCC: A Crisis itl Media Control (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1973). 21. United States, Report of the President's Committee on Administrative Management (Washington. DC: Government Printing Office, 1937); United States, Report of the Commission on the Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government [the first Hoover Commission Report! (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1949); United States, Report of the Commission on the Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government [the second Hoover Commission Report] (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1955); James M. Landis, Report on Regulatory Agencies to the President-Elect (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1960); Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Inc., Organization and Managemelll Survey of.the Federal Communications Commission for the Bureau of the Budget (Chicago: Booz-Allen & Hamilton, 1962); The President's Advisory Council on Executive Organization, A New Regulatory Framework: Report on Selected Independent Regulatory Agencies [The Ash Council Report] (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1971). 22. Some government reports do find that regulatory agencies serve the regulated industries. The 1960 Landis Report stated, "Irrespective of the absence of social contacts and the acceptance of undue hospitality, it is the daily machine gun-like impact on both agency and its staff of industry representation that makes for industry orientation on the part of many honest and capable agency members as well as agencY, staffers." Landis Report, 71. 23. Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Organization and Management Survey of the FCC; United States, Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1949). 24. For example, both the Landis Report and former SEC Commissioner, William L. Cary, criticize the undue influence that Congressmen exercise over the FCC. William L. Cary, Politics and the Regulatory Agencies (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967). Other critics of the FCC warn against presidential interference with the independence of the FCC via the executive Office of Telecommunications Policy. Edwin B. Spievack, "Presidential Assault on Telecommunications," Federal Communications Bar Journal23/3 (1969), 155-181; and Thomas Whiteside, "Annals of Television (The Nixon Administration and Television)," The New Yorker, March 17, 1975, 41-91. Conversely, the Ash Council Report found that regulatory agencies suffered from their "remoteness" from the other constitutional branches of government. The report recommended that most regulatory agencies be moved into the Executive branch. Ash Council Report, 4. 25. A structural regulatory failure theory which does not rest on the behavior of regulators is that of Stephen Breyer. Breyer's explanation for the rise of regulatory agencies is in line with traditional public interest theory. He attributes the rise of regulation to market problems, though he finds regulatory mechanisms likely to create more problems than they solve. His empirically based analysis of regulatory failure rests on a theory of "mismatches" between the particular situation and structure of a regulated industry and the regulatory
411
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The Political Economy of the Media 11 289
instruments applied. Breyer claims that the market problems of transportation and energy industries are compounded by the regulatory "tool" of price and entry controls. He argues, for example, that the legitiffiate goal of transferring windfall profits from producers to consumers in the natural gas industry cannot be achieved rationally with a classical cost-ofservice rate-making regulatory regime. There is a fundamental mismatch between social goal and regulatory instrument, because rate regulation so skews underlying market forces in this industry. Far better to use a taxing scheme to effect income transfers. He asserts that the more that regulatory solutions deviate from the principle of competition, the less successful those solutions will be. Such regulation will create inefficiencies and welfare losses which are in contradiction to the original rationale for regulation. Stephen Breyer, Regulation and Its Reform (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982). 26. Marver Bernstein, Regulating Business by Independent Commission (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955). Bernstein confined himself to the analysis of the indepen" dent regulatory commissions only. Harvard Law School professor Louis Jaffe, an astute critic of the regulatory process, also put much credence on the age of im agency and the degree of its accommodation with the regulated industry. He called it "arteriosclerosis theory." Jaffe, however, did not subscribe to the capture theory. Louis L. Jaffe, "The Effective Limits of the Administrative Process: A Reevaluation," Harvard Law Review 6117 (May 1954), 11051135. 27. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash (New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1955); Cary, Politics and the Regulatory Agencies. Also, Jaffe, "The Effective Limits of the Administrative Process.'' 28. G. Cullom Davis, "The Transformation of the Federal Trade Commission, 19141929," Mississippi Valley History Review XLIV (December 1962), 437-455; Samuel P. Huntington, "The Marasmus of the ICC: The Commission, the Railroads, and the Public Interest," Yale Law Journal 61/4 (April 1952), 467-509. Davis describes the process by which the FTC, born of Progressive activism in 1914, became captured by conservative pro-business forces in 1925. The FTC changed for the simple reason that Presidents Coolidge and Harding replaced Wilsonian Progressive commissioners with pro-business conservatives. Under the reign of the pro-business forces, the FTC curtailed its own powers of publicity and investigation, began settling cases by informal, confidential agreement rather than by formal Commission order, and encouraged the use of Commission-sanctioned, industry-wide meetings so that businesses could formulate their own rules of behavior. Davis describes an agency initially hostile to business transformed into an agency serving business interests and needs. Huntington's study of the ICC poses a combination political and organizational behavior model of regulatory capture. He claims that the 1CC was created by the agitation of farmers and commercial shippers, and that up until World War I it was responsible to that constituency. As the political power of farmers and shippers declined, the ICC was forced to adapt to its new political environment, ·and thus shifted its responsiveness to the railroad industry. Davis and Huntington describe the transformation of particular agencies during particular time frames. 29. Olney's letter read, in part: "My impression would be that looking at the matter from a railroad point of view exclusively it [abolition of the ICC] would not be a wise thing to undertake .... The attempt would not be likely to succeed; if it did not succeed, and were made on the grounds of the inefficiency and uselessness of the Commission, the result would very probably be giving it the power it now lacks. The Commission, as its functions have not been limited by the courts, is·, or can be made of great use to the railroads. It satisfies the popular clamor for a govern~ent supervision of railroads, at the same time that the supervision of railroads is almost entirely nominal. Further, the older such a commission gets to be,
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the more inclined it will be found to take the business and railroad view of things. It thus becomes a sort of barrier between the railroad corporations and the people and a sort of protection against hasty and crude legislation hostile to railroad interests.... The part of wisdom is not to destroy the Commission but to utilize it." Letter of Richard Olney to Charles E. Perkins, cited in Matthew Josephson, The Politicos, 1865-1896 (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1938), 526. 30. Indeed, some regulatory agencies, such as the CAB and FCC, were meant to function as "managers" rather than "policemen." This distinction was made early on by James M. Landis, The Administrative Process, and elaborated by Louis L. Jaffe, "The Independent Agency-A New Scapegoat" [Review of Bernstein's Regulating Business by Independent Commission], Yale Law Journal6517 (June 1956), 1068-1076. 31. For Bernstein, age is a key variable, yet one empirical study found the age of an agency not to be a causative factor in regulatory behavior. Kenneth J. Meier and John Plumlee, "Regulatory Administration and Organizational Rigidity," The Western Political Quarterly XXXIII (March 1978), 80-95. See also Robert Chatov, "Government Regulation: Process and Substantive Impacts," Research in Corporate SoCial Performance and Policy, Lee E. Preston (ed.), Vol. I (Greenwich: JAIPress lnc, 1978), 223-254; Mitnick, The Political Economy of Regulation, 44-50. 32. Theodore J. Lowi, The End of Liberalism: Ideology, Policy, and the Crisis of Public Authority (New York: Norton, 1969); idem, The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States (2d. ed .. 1979). An earlier formulation of the mal-effects of expansive discretionary authority is Henry Friendly, The Federal Administrative Agencies: The Need for Beller Definition of Standards (Cambridge: Harvaid University Press, 1962). Another analysis of the "broker state" is McConnell, Private Power and American Democracy. 33. Theodore J. Lowi, ••Four Systems of Policy, Politics and Choice,'' Public Administration Review 3214 (July/ August 1972), 298...,.310. 34. Horace M. Gray, "The Pa.Ssing of the Public Utility Concept," Journal of Land and Public Utility Economics 16/l (February 1940), 1-20, at 9. 35. Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation ofAmerican History, 1900-1916 (New York: Free Press, 1963), 3. 36. Gabriel Kolko, Railroads and Regulation, 1877-1916 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965); also see George W. Hilton, "The Consistency of the Interstate Commerce Act," Joumal of Law and Economics 9 (October 1966), 87-113. 37. Charles 0. Jackson, Food and Drug Legislation in the New Deal (Princetoil: Princeton University Press, 1970); Norman Nordhauser, "Origins of Federal Oil Regulation in the 1920s," Business History Review XLVII (Spring 1973), 54-7 I. 38. James Weinstein, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, 1900-1918 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968); Samuel P. Hays, ''The Politics of Reform in Municipal Government in the Progressive Era," Pacific Northwest Quarterly 5514 (October 1964), 157-169. 39. Kolko, Railroads and Regulation. 40. Lee Benson argued that the single most important group behind the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act was New York merchants in his book, Merchants, Farmers, and Railroads: Railroad Regulation and New York Politics, 1850-1887 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955). Thomas C. Cochran found that railroad men gave only reluctant support to regulation in his study, Railroad Leaders, 1845-1890: The Business Mind in Action (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953). Gerald D. Nash attributed the regulatory impetus to various interests, but especially to Pennsylvania independent oil producers and refiners in his essay, "Origins of the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887," Pennsylvania . History XXIV (July 1957), 181-190. Criticisms of the Kolko thesis can be found in Otis L. Graham (ed.), From Rooseveltto
413
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291
Roosevelt: American Politics and Diplomacy, 1901-1941 (New York: Appleton-CenturyCrofts, 1971), 69-1 09; Morton Keller, "The Pluralist State: American Economic Regulation in Comparative PerspectiVe, 1900-1930," in Regulation in Perspective, Thomas K. McCraw (ed.), 56-94; Robert W. Harbeson, "Railroads and Regulation, 1877-1916: ~onspir acy or Public Interest?," Journal of Economic History 27/2 (June 1967), 230-242. 41. Robert H. Wiebe, The Search For Order; Richard H. K. Victor, "Businessmen and the Political Economy: The Railroad Rate Controversy of 1905," Journal of American History LXIV/I (June 1977), 47-66. 42. Richard E. Caves, Air Transport and 1ts Regulators (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962); Michael E. Levine, "Is Regulation Necessary? California Air Transportation and National Regulatory Policy," Yale Law Journal1418 (July 1965), 1416-1447; William A. Jordan, Airline Regulation in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970); George W. Douglas and James C. Miller lll, Economic Regulation of Domestic Air Transpon (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1974); Lawrence J. White, "Quality Variation When Prices Are Regulated," Bell Journal of Economics" and Management Science 312 (Autumn 1972), 425-436; Theodore E. Keeler, "Airline Regulation and Market Performance," Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 312 (Autumn 1972), 399-424; C. Vincent Olso·n and John Trapani Ill, "Who Has Benefitted From Regulation of the Airline Industry?," Journal of Law and Economics 24/1 (April 1981), 75-93. 43. Paul W. MacAvoy and Roger G. Noli, "Relative Prices on Regulated Transactions of the Natural Gas Pipelines," Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 4/1 (Spring 1973), 212-234; Richard Spann and Edward W. Erickson, "The Economics of Railroading: The Beginning of Cartelization and Regulation," Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 1/2 (Autumn 1970), 227-244. 44. Harvey Averch and Leland L. Johnson, "Behavior of the Firm Under Regulatory Constraint,'' American Economic Review 5215 (December 1962), 1052-1069; Stanislaw H. Wellisz, "Regulation of Natural Gas Pipeline Companies: An Economic Analysis," Journal of Political Economy 1111 (February 1963). 30-43. The Wellisz model dealt with the same sort of regulated firm as the A-J thesis, but it was concerned primarily with the effect of regulation on peak-load pricing rather than on input usage. 45. William J. Baumol and A1vin K. Klevorick, "Input Choices and Rate-of-Return Regulation: An Overview of the Discussion,'' Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 112 (Autumn 1970), 162-190. 46. George J. Stigler, "The Theory of Economic Regulation," Bel/Journal of Economics and Management Science 2/1 (Spring 1971), 3-21. 47. George J. Stigler and Claire Friedland, "What Can Regulators Regulate? The Case of Electricity,'' Journal of Law and Economics 5 (October 1962), 1-16. At least with regard to so-called "natural" monopolies, then, regulation would seem to do nothing. The differences between these varied findings of producer protection/cartel management, regulatory inefficacy, and regulation-induced inefficiency might be reconciled by looking at market structures. William A. Jordan found that the absence of regulatory efficacy occurred only in those industries with a prior market structure of natural monopoly. Natural monopolies appear largely unaffected by regulation. In oligopolistic and competitive industries such as transportation carriers, however, regulation registers significant increases in price levels, price discrimination, rates of return-all of which result in geneml producer protection. Inefficiencies, particularly excess capacity, occur partially due to incomplete regulatory control. Because, for example, the CAB cannot assign specific market shares and firms cannot compete on price to obtain larger market shares, firms compete over service quality. The continual purchase of newer equipment in airlines led to chronic overcapacity. William A. Jordan, "Producer Protection, Prior Market Structure and the Effects of Govern-
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men! Regulation," Joumal tifLaw cmd Economics 1511 (April 1972), 151-76. See generally the work of Ronald Coase, who is sometimes credited with having constructed the paradigm of the economic analysis of regulation. Ronald H. Coase, "The Problem of Social Cost," Journal of Law and Economics 311 (October 1960), 1-44. 48. See, among others, Paul E. Sands, "How Effective Is Safety Legislation?," Journal of Law and Economics Ill I (April 1968), 165-179; Robert Stewart, The Occupational Stifety and Health Act (Washington. DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1976); Aldon DiPietro, "An Analysis of the OSHA Inspection Program in Manufacturing Industries, 1972-73," Draft Technical Analysis Paper, U.S. Department ofLabor (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, August 1976); A. L. Nichols and Richard Zeckhauser, ''Government Comes to the Workplace: An Assessment of OSHA,'' The Public /merest 49 (Fall 1977), 39-69; Sam Peltzman, Regulation of Automobile Safety (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1975); H. G. Manne and R. M. Miller (Eds.), Auto Safety Regulation: Tire Cure or tire Problem? (Glen Ridge, NJ: Thomas Horton, 1976). A summary of several such studies of OSHA is found in Lester B. Lave, The Strategy of Social Regulation (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1981). A summary of the studies on the EPA is found in Robert W. Crandall, Controlling Industrial Pollution: The Economics and Politics of Clean Air (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1983). These studies were highly controversial and generated virulent counter-studies which attacked the economists' assumptions and sought to show that the benefits of regulation exceeded costs. See, for instance, U.S. House of Representatives, 94th Congress, 2d Session, Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, Department of Transportation and Related Agencies Appropriations for 1977, March 1, 1976, Part 2 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1976), 369-382; National Commission on Air Quality, To Breathe Clean Air (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1981). 49. Murray Weidenbaum and Robert DeFina, The Costs of Federal Regulation of Economic Actil•ity (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, Reprint No. 88. May. 1978); "'The Regulators,' They Cost You $130 Billion a Year,'' US News ami World Report, June 30, 1975, 24-28. It is not surprising that the criteria upon which such numbers are arrived at. are subject to wide dispute. Moreover, the meaning of such estimates is unclear. As George C. Eads and Michael Fix argue in Relief or Reform? Reagan' s Regulatory Dilemma, notwithstanding the high costs of regulation, at worst such costs only marginally affected either the decline in US productivity rates and or the rise in inflation. (Washington, DC: The Urban Institute Press, 1984), 17-44. 50. Anthony Downs, A11 Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957); idem, Inside Bureaucracy (Boston, Little, Brown, 1967). James Buchanan, awarded a Nobel Prize for economics in 1986, is another major figure in the economic theory of politics. James M. Buchanan, The Demand and Supply of Public Goods (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1968); idem and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations ofConstitutional Democracv (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962). 51. Richard A. Posner, "Theories of Economic Regulation," Bell Journal of Economics and Manageme11t Science 512 (Autumn 1974), 335-358. 52. Sam Peltzman, "Toward a More General Theory of Regulation," Journal of Law and Eco11omics 1912 (August 1976), 211-240; Morris P. Fiorina, Congress: Keystone of the Washi11gto11 Establishme11t (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); idem and Roger G. Noli, "Voters, Bureaucrats and Legislators,'' Journal ofPublic Economics 912 (Apri11978), 239-254; Roger G. Noli, "The Behavior of Regulatory Agencies," Review ofSocial Economy 29/9 (March 1971), 15-19; William Niskanen, "Bureaucrats and Politicians," Journal cif utw and Eco11omics 18/3 (December 1975), 617-643; idem, Bureaucracy and Represenwtive Govemmellf (Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1971 ); Barry R. Weingast, "Regulation,
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RelaRere'gulation, and Deregulation: The Political Foundations of Agency-Clientele tionships," Law and Contemporary Problems 4411 (Winter 1981), 147-178. Weingast's elucidation of this triangle is typical of this approach. He writes: "Interest and groups seek the benefits ·of legisiation and policy-making. Congressmen seek reeleetion general, in opinion political of wind the with bend they career advancement. This implies that . . . . and further the interests of attentive and politically active interest groups in particular members, on commissi and heads Agency Often agencies are the vehicle for this endeavor. budgets) as anxious to further their careers and goals of power and prestige (including large service to well as completing their own pet projects and policy initiatives, depend upon goals of the sense, real a In success. their for members e interest groups and key committe national these three· sets of players are compatible. Congressmen, seeking reelection and powerful aid Agencies groups. d establishe and new prominence, further the interests of important politician s-general ly congressmen on relevant committees, though presidents are particular a for relevant groups t constituen at times-by implementing policies beneficial to . This reelection aiding through s politician reward groups interest the policy area. Finally, , a key to advances Congressional careers and helps the potential success of policy initiatives 150-151. national prominence." Weingast, "Regulation, Reregulation, and Deregulation," s and 53. Richard A. Posner, "Taxation by Regulation," Bell Journal of Economic 22-50. 1971), Management Science 211 (Spring work of 54. A similar sort of economic group interaction model informs the theoretical and origin regulatory expected of James Q. Wilson. He constructs a comprehensive typology regulation of benefits and costs both When analysis. fit cost-bene behavior, based on a broad most of are widely distributed, he argues, we can expect "majoritarian" politics, where Act, Sherman the are this of Examples pay. to expects society benefits and most of society benefits are Social Security Act, the Federal Trade Commission. When both costs and where narrowly concentrated between competing groups, we can expect "int!!rest" politics, The aroitrator. an as acts agency regulatory the and interests other against works each interest . legislation labor much and ICC the inclui:le public is not much part of this process. Examples agency the where ensue, politics "client" diffuse, costs and ted concentra are When benefits Aeronautics serves the interests of that small group. The classic example here is the Civil n yield populatio the of segments small by borne costs at benefits Board. Lastly, general latent "entrepreneurial" politics, where skilled political operatives are able to mobilize regulatory such by ed exemplifi is This . legislation "reform" public sentiment in favor of ation. agencies as the Environmental Protection Agency or Food and Drug Administr lizing the conceptua in helpful quite is n interactio Wilson's economic model of group structure of relation between interest intensity, the type of benefits secured, and the expected few rational regulation. Indeed, Wilson's notion of "entrepreneurial politics" is one of the 1960s and late the in regulation "social" of rise rapid the for account to try to actor models n, Regulatio of Politics The in n," Regulatio of early 1970s. James Q. Wilson, "The Politics 357-394. 1980), Books, Basic York: (New (ed.) James Q. Wilson 1255. lrving Kristol, "A Regulated Society?," Regulation Ill (July/August 1977), Public The " n,' Regulatio 'Social New "The Ill, Miller C. James 13; William Lilley and Brunswick: lmerest4 1 (Spring 1977), 49-61; B. Bruce Briggs (ed.), The New Class (New AmeriDC: ton, (Washing Vision American The Novak, Michael Transaction Books, 1979); can Enterprise Institute, 1978). theory of Like most conservative political sociology, this analysis derives from the elite types. Pareto and Mosca that "propuce rs" constitute a class versus "unprodu ct;ve" Mancur 56. Chatov, "Government Regulation: Process and Substantive Impacts"; of Groups (New Theory the and Goods Public Action: Collective of Logic The Jr., Olson, York: Harvard University Press and Schocken Books, 1965).
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25 (Fall 57. James Q. Wilson, "The Dead Hand of Regulation," The Public Interest 1971), 39-58; Louis L. Jaffe, "The Effective Limits of the Administrative Process." 58. J?~n W. Snow, Deputy Undersecretary, Department of Transportation, 1975-76, Cited in and Admmtstrator, National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, 1976-77. DC: ton, (Washing (ed.) MacAvoy W. Paul Reform, y Unsettled Questionr on Regulator American Enterprise lnMitute, 1977), 16. of 59. Paul W. MacAvoy, ''The Regulation-Induced Shortage of Natural Gas,'' Journal and the Industries Regulated The idem, 167-199; 1971), (April XIV s Economic Law and railroad ~conomy (New York: Norton, 1979). See a roughly similar analysis of the early , Railroads American of Decline the of Origins Denied: e Enterpris Martin, mdustry, Albro 1971). Press, 1887-191 7 (New York: Columbia University of Reg60. Eugene Bardach and Robert A. Kagan, Going by the Book: The Problem .. This argument ulatory Unreasonableness (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982) at note 58. resonates with the reflections of former agency head John W. Snow, cited above the pace down slowing for criticized was agency the office, in t~me my "D_uring es, Snow.stat s and committee nal congressio before called were we at whtch regulatiOns were tssued, and more issuing by safety highway of cause the advancing not were we why explain to asked 11. Reform, y Regulator on regulations." Unsettled Questions Reform 61. Eugene Bardach and Robert A. Kagan, Social Regulation: Strategies for (San Francisco: lnstitute for Contemporary Studies, 1982), 12-14. 62. Chatov, "Government Regulation: Process and Substantive Impacts." in the 63. Paul L. Joskow, "Inflation and Environmental Concern: Structural Change (October 17/2 s Economic and Law of Journal n," Regulatio Price Process of Public Utility ," 1974), 291-327; idem, "Pricing Decisions of Regulated Firms: A Behavioral Approach 118-140. 1973), (Spring 4/1 Science ent Managem and Bell Journal of Economics Health 64. This point is made by David P. McCaffrey, OSHA and the Politics of 137. 1982), Press, Plenum London: Regulation (New York and Orga65. Vincent Mosco, Broadcasting in the United States: Innovative Challenge and the and Television Cable Due, Le R. Don nizational Control (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1979); in Day "A Dystel, Jay John and Johnson Nicholas also, See Control. Media in FCC:_A Crisis 1973), (July 218 Journal8 Law the Ltfe: The Federal Communications Commission," Yale 1575-1634. Political 66. Claus Offe, "Structural Problems of the Capitalist State," in German idem, 31-57; 1974); Co., Publishing Sage Hills: Studies, 1, Klaus van Beyme (ed.) (Beverly and Stress in n," Formatio Policy of Problem the and State Capitalist the of "The Theory Heath, D.C. n: (Lexingto (eds.) al. et Contradiction in Modern Capitalism, Leon Lindberg Crisis 1975), 125-144; idem, "Crises of 'Crisis Management': Elements of a Political The Fiscal Theory," International Journal of Politics 6 (1976), 29-67; James O'Connor, , Legitimation Crisis of the State (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973); Jiirgen Habermas y: Political ConCrisis (Boston, Beacon Press, 1975); Alan Wolfe, The Limits of Legitimac Block, "The tradictions of Contemporary Capitalism (New York: Free Press, 1977); Fred Revolution Socialist State," the of Theory Marxist the on Notes Rule: Not Does Class Ruling New Left (London: Socialism Power, State, s, 7/3 (May-June 1977), 6-28; Nicos Poulantza Books, 1978). 67. James O'Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State. 68. Claus Offe, "Structural Problems of the Capitalist State." Sys69. Charles E. Lindblom, Politics and Markets: The World's Political-Economic 172-173. 1977), Books, Basic York: (New tems Great 70. Fred Block looks at the scope of government action during the New Deal and vein. this in periods Society
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71. See Habermas' description of the liberal-capitalist "crisis cycle." Legitimation Crisis, 24-32, 130-142. 72. When 1 try to conceptualize what is required of a theory of regulation, or for that matter, the theoretical accounting of any long and complex historical phenomenon which involves the interaction of people and structures over time, I think of Waiter Benjamin's haunting metaphor of the "angel of history." Benjamin writes: "A Klee painting named •Agelus Novus' shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress." Waiter Benjarnin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," in Illuminations, Hannah Arendt (ed.) (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 257-258.
[20] Communication Policy in the Global Information Economy: Whither the Public Interest? William H. Melody
Information and communication developments have tended to erode heretofore separable areas of public policy, and to increase the probability of unforeseen implications arising in areas outside the purview of traditional policy analysis. Industrial policy, social policy and cultural policy are more integrated than they have been in the past. Each has significant implications for the others. The press, print, broadcast, library, telecommunication and computer industries are becoming more interrelated and interdependent, so that government policies toward one industry cannot help but have significant implications for others. The difficulty to date has been understanding the many important dimensions of information and communication policy issues, particularly when it comes to assessing the long-term implications. There has been a tendency for governments to recognize only those . immediate issues that have been thrust before them, generally in fragmented fashion,outside either a long.:term or a systemic context. The great challenge for policy research is to explain the complex set of interrelations among policy _1ueas that were previously thought to be reasonably discrete and separable, and thereby to provide a better understanding of the environment in which informed policy decisions must be made (Melody, 1989a). The successful development of new information and communication markets for the benefit of all sectors of society will require major adaptations by both private and public institutions. If markets in tradeable information are going to work efficiently and equitably, they must be developed upon a foundation of public information that provides the education and training necessary for citizens to function effectively as workers, managers, consumers and responsible citizens. Determining the appropriate adaptations, both by the public and the private sectors, to the new information and communication environment is a crucial task for public policy.
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Many individuals and organizations can benefit substantially from the rapid expansion of the information and communication sector, but at least some are likely to be disadvantaged, in both relative and absolute terms, especially if traditional public and social services are displaced, downgraded or made more expensive. To illustrate, a considerable portion of the information now accessible through public libraries is subject to commoditization and sale in private markets, where it would be accessible only through telecommunication-based information services. In recent years, many libraries have expanded access to a variety of bibliographic databases. But they have cut back their physical holdings of government reports and statistics, general research reports and studies, periodicals and even books. This has greatly facilitated research projects with the funding support to pay for computer searches and acquisition of the desired material. But most academic researchers, students, and the lay public can rarely afford to use computer searches, and are increasingly frustrated by the more limited access to hard-copy resources. The telephone system is being upgraded to the technical standards of an integrated services digital network (ISDN) that is more efficient for the plethora of new information services required by sophisticated high-volume users. But it may be significantly more costly for small-volume users and users with only local telephone service requirements. This could make it more difficult to achieve, and for some countries to maintain, a universal basic telephone service (Melody, 1989b). The characteristics of information markets create special problems associated with the transfer of computer and telecommunication technologies to developing countries. The market incentives are to sell new technology facility systems in developing countries to establish the infrastructure for both the domestic and international communication of information services. Given the established base of information in the technologically advanced countries, and their lead in establishing new information services, the information flows are predictable. Final consumer information, such as television programmes (often accompanied by advertising), is likely to domi. nate the flow from developed to developing countries. Specialized information markets that create value as a result of the monopoly of information are likely to generate a dominant flow of information about developing countries to developed countries and transnational corporations. These conditions may place developing country firms and agencies at an increased competitive disadvantage in their own countries because of an information deficiency about conditions there (Melody, 1985).
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A major challenge for public policy is to find methods to ensure that developments in the information and communication sector do not exacerbate class divisions in society and that the benefits are spread across all classes. This requires new conceptions and operational definitions of the 'public interest' and of public services. It requires new interpretations of the requirements of social policy, and the design of new institutional structures for its effective implementation. It also requires a re-evaluation of the role of information and communication in participatory democracy and the public policies necessary to encourage its diffusion across all segments of society. An increase in the quantity and diversity of information sources and communication opportunities seems to be upon us, as markets in this field have grown rapidly from national to global. The economy of the future has already been dubbed 'the information society'. But what of the public interest in the age of information overload and new communication opportunities? Is there still an important or even essential role for public interest policies, if the gap between theory and practice along the uncertain path to participatory democracy is to be reduced in the information age? This chapter explores these issues and suggests an updated interpretation of the public interest that is adapted to the changing information/ communication environment. Information, communication and participatory democracy Participatory democracy requires a citizenry that is both informed and has a continuing opportunity to be heard in the market-place of ideas. For most of history, dictators and even democratically elected governments have attempted to bias and restrict the. information made available to the public, while limiting and controlling access to the market-place of ideas. Indeed, this is perhaps the essential contradiction of democratic theory versus practice. For those in power, the practice inevitably falls far short of the requirements of theory. Spycatcher and Irangate are examples in two nations that have done much to further the cause of participatory democracy in the world today. In democratic countries, the rights of citizens to be informed and have access to the market-place of ideas have been accepted as an obligation of national governments. These rights have been enshrined in a variety of laws, policies and regulations. The right to be informed has been reflected primarily in programmes in three areas: (1) opportunities for universal education of the population, osten-
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sibly to promote learning and the ability to assess critically the changing world; (2) the widespread availability of public libraries as repositories of both historical and current information, and public access to information about the policies and practices of government and other dominant institutions in society; and (3) independent and widespread reporting and interpretation of changing local, national and international events by the mass media primarily the press, radio and television. Recognizing that it is technologically, economically and physically impossible for everyone to be read, heard and seen via the mass media, on an equal access basis, public policy has been directed to ensuring terms of mass media access that reflect the broad interests of the general public. These include: (a) requiring 'responsible' presentations and fair dealing· by those in privileged positions of power who control access to the general public through the media; (b) safeguarding rights of reply and legal protection from libel for individuals and organizations that feel unfairly treated; and (c) taking positive steps to maintain a diversity of information sources and a variety of content from the mass media. To facilitate direct intercommunication among the citizenry, interpersonal and interorganization communication networks have been encouraged through national public postal and telecommunication systems with a fundamental policy objective to provide universal service. Both the mass media and the post-telegraphtelephone (PTT) sectors of the economy have been recognized as being significantly different from other industries because of their importance to the preservation of citizen's rights to be informed and to communicate freely, conditions essential to political democracy. For the most part, these industries have been treated as 'business affected with a public interest', and subjected to special treatment under law and government policy. The institutional mechanisms for implementing and enforcing the public interest in the mass media and PIT sectors have differed among countries and among industries within the same country, and have changed over time. When new technologies have led to fundamental changes in the structure of communication industries, a reassessment of public interest requirements in the light of the changed conditions is almost always necessary (Melody, 1973). In recent years, both major communication sectors have applied a number of new information and communication technologies and have undergone substantial structural change, challenging traditional public interest notions· and the established mechanisms for implementing them.
20 Transforming Media Structures The press With the help of the Gutenberg press, the virtual monopoly over public information was wrested from the authorities (church and state) and the professional class (monks) in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Since then, a continuing struggle has taken place between the state and the 'independent' press with respect to the freedom of the press from state restrictions in providing information to the public. It was such a contentious issu~ in democratic Britain in the eighteenth century that the Amencan revolutionaries established freedom of the press as a fundamental constitutional protection from government. The historic concern with the press has been government monopoly and control of information, not private monopoly and control.
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Communication Policy in the Global Information Economy 21 proceeding rapidly. National anti-monopoly laws seem inadequate to the task of addressing the broader public interest implications, or of fashioning appropriate policies to ensure that the public interest is served. It would seem inevitable that public policy soon will have to address the issue of public interest implications of the continued private monopolization of the press. If diversity is going to be sharply reduced, and barriers to access thereby increased, then the public interest responsibilities of the press must increase, and stronger mechanisms of accountability be established (Melody, 1976; Owen, 1975). But this can only be done in the context of the changing information and communication sectors of the economy, of which the press is an important part. Radio and television Radio and television were introduced long after the press had won freedom from direct government control in democratic societies. Radio and television required use of a public resource, the radio spectrum. Effective communication required at least a system of licensing and technical regulation that specified frequency, power and other characteristics of broadcast signals, and restricted entry to the industry. The underlying technological conditions meant that government had to be involved, either as supplier of the service or regulator of the private suppliers. Different countries, each following its own traditions, adopted different institutional models for implementing the public interest. In many countries, government owned and operated 'public service' broadcasting entities were established. In the United States a model of government licensing and regulation of private broadcasters was adopted. Specific requirements for programming in the public interest were established. In other countries a mixed system was adapted. Under both the 'public service' models and the 'regulated private programming in the public interest' models of broadcasting, a policy of diversity of programme types in response to the diversity of interests in soci~ty (for example, news, public affairs, children's, religious programmes, etc.) was adopted as the responsibility of broadcasters. Under both systems a balanced programme schedule was required to be responsive to the diversity of interests in society and the broader public interest. Research has demonstrated how the characteristics of media content are heavily influenced by the structure of the institutions that make up the total broadcasting system.• The major differences in programme content produced by competitive commercial and
The Political Economy of the Media Il
22 Transforming Media Structures monopoly public service broadcasting are well known. But there is great variation within both the commercial and public service models. In the past, commercial broadcasting has not been totally ruled by profit maximization and often has provided some public service programming. Historically there have been limits on the extent to which commercialization is permitted to penetrate programme content. For example, there normally (but not necessarily on children's shows) has·been an observable separation between the programmes and the advertisements. Similarly, public service objectives are defined differently in different countries, and are constrained in varying degrees by cost and audience criteria. Some public service broadcast organizations emphasize a national public service while others emphasize a regional or local public service. Among those emphasizing a national public service, the BBC historically has interpreted its public service mandate, in the Reithian tradition,2 as a paternalistic educational uplifting of the masses. In more recent times this view has been under assessment both within and witho.ut the BBC. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) mandate is to promote national unity, to develop a national consciousness and to interpret Canada for Canadians. The US Public Broadcasting Service's (PBS) primary purpose is to promote artistic, cultural, public affairs and related programming as a supplement to the United States commercial broadcasting system. Other countries have different models of public service broadcasting (Melody, 1987a). In addition, the system of finance, the structural relations with production houses, the standards of accountability employed and other factors all affect programme content. These institutional constraints do not deny creativity and discretion so much as channel it in particular directions. Some of the most creative programming is channelled into advertisements. New communication technologies, including CATV, direct broadcast satellites and VCRs are opening a variety of new options for delivering broadcast content and for implementing new methods of payment such as subscription and pay-per-view. In radio, new radio frequency and station allocations and pirate radio are expanding listener choice. International television broadcasting is expanding viewer choice. In the past, international broadcasting primarily involved exchanges among countries of national programmes produced for domestic consumption. This is now being superseded by programme production specifically created for global markets, often involving eo-production among multiple countries and sometimes bringing together public service and private commercial broadcasters in eo-productions (Collins et al., 1988).
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Communication Policy in the Global Information Economy 23 Clearly the traditional distinctions between public service and private commercial broadcasting are being eroded. The former positions of privilege and power enjoyed by the dominant institutions in both systems are diminishing. For example, the BBC has a new potentially lucrative opportunity to enter global broadcast markets which will soon engulf the UK. But it would have to shift part of its programming away from traditional UK public service broadcasting. The CBC has been instructed by the Canadian government to direct its programming to global markets as a means of reducing its government subsidy. National governments everywhere are paying particular attention to the export potential of their public service institutions, including both education and mass media content. 3 This apparent surfeit of new opportunity and choice that seems to be arising in the· broadcast media could be interpreted as justification for a major relaxation, if not complete elimination, of public service and public interest obligations. However, greater choice does not necessarily mean greater diversity, adequate service to minority interests, or improved conditions of access to audiences for those desiring it. Clearly, the traditional conception of a quasimonopoly public service broadcaster playing media den mother to the nation has been superseded by events. But the public interest responsibilities historically assumed by the national public service broadcaster remain. The challenge to future public policy is to establish workable institutional arrangements that will ensure that those responsibilities are met by the system as a whole. Post-telecommunication networks The communication systems that have provided the greatest opportunity for the population at large to participate as initiators of information exchange have been the postal and telecommunication networks. The opportunity to influence a mass audience is not present, but as media that permit, indeed require, active participation in the communication of ideas, they can provide - and historically have provided- a major stimulus toward participatory democracy. Monitorhtg the postal and telephone activities of particular individuals and organizations is a major concern of totalitarian governments, and a not insignificant one in many democracies. Communication via post-telecommunication systems sometimes is viewed as not really important in affecting people's knowledge, beliefs and actions. The vast majority of messages are classified as commercial or sociai. .. But the vast majority of messages over the mass media are also commercial or social, and much less personal. Moreover, advertisers continue to find post-telecommunication
The Political Economy of the Media 11
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Transforming Media Structures
effective vehicles for reaching markets of significant size. Winning the hearts and minds of people one at a time may be more effective than mass conversions-modem television advertising and the church of the airwaves notwithstanding. Even more important, participatory democracy is enhanced by increasing the numbers of people actively participating, and capable of applying their own critical assessments of mass media messages. It is enriched by an increase in the number actively initiating communication in the market-place of ideas, and by a reduced effectiveness of mass media propaganda of all kinds. In almost all countries, the post was recognized early on as an important public service. Although the motives of national governments in extending the post were not the purest - for example, to facilitate taxation and military recruitment - the concept of a universal public service, accessible to all at a reasonable cost, was accepted in principle and implemented broadly in practice. It provided a major stimulus in the desire of many people to learn to read and particularly to write. With the introduction of the telegraph (1844) and later the telephone (1878), most countries absorbed these new technologies into the national public service postal monopoly. In the United States, where they were invented and initially patented, private companies were established. After periods of vigorous - some would say destructive - competition, government regulation of territorial monopoly telephone companies was established at the state level (circa 1910), and was followed by creeping Federal regulation, culminating in the Federal Communications Act of 1934. It is debatable whether monopolization led to regulation, or whether the Bell System was successful in its campaign to get itself regulated as a means of eliminating its competitors by law rather than superior efficiency. Canada elected to follow the US, rather than the British model of telephone development, after a very intense debate in the House of Commons in the early 1900s. The gap between theory and practice in the spread of universal telephone service has been significant. In North America, regulators were uniformly ineffective in getting the telephone companies to extend service to small towns and rural areas within their enfranchised territories. Near-universal service was eventually obtained by the establishment of municipal companies, co-operatives, small private companies, and in Canada, provincial companies. These developments were uniformly opposed by the private monopoly telephone companies, and sometimes by the regulators (Melody, 1989b). Among countries adopting the public service model for telecommunication, Sweden was unique in that it established a telecommuni-
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cation administration separate from its postal authority, and with very limited monopoly privileges. Sweden achieved universal service coverage some time ago. Those countries that incorporated telecommunication into the postal administration generally failed miserably in their attempts to achieve universal telephone service. Until a decade ago, household penetration rates in European P1T countries ranged from 10 to 70 per cent, with a general inferior quality of · service and usually long waiting lists for basic connections. The most common explanations are: the inefficiency of long-standing bureaucracies; the use of telecommunication as a profit-maximizing moneyspinner to subsidize the post, and general government coffers; and political resistance to committing funds for extending public service responsibilities beyond the post. The ubiquitous telephone is an essential component of building and maintaining widespread political, economic, social and cultural networks in many democratic countries. In others, its absence is a significant barrier to participation by major segments of the population. According to the International Telecommunication Union, a majority of the world's population lives more than two hours away from the nearest telephone. The renewed interest in telecommunication shown by national policy-makers in virtually all developed and many developing countries does not arise from a sudden recognition that universal service will facilitate participatory democracy and economic efficiency at the local and national levels. Rather, it is a recognition that the telecommunication infrastructure is becoming a crucial building block affecting the competitiveness and efficiency of the entire national economy in the evolving global information economy. This is prompting a fundamental institutional restructuring of the telecommunication sector in many countries (Melody, 1986a). In many countries, progress toward the achievement of universal telephone service is being achieved by removing the dead hand of bureaucracy, exposing inadequacies of service coverage and adopting commercial efficiency standards. In only a few years after privatization, British Telecom {BT) has increased its household penetration rate from about 65 to 80 per cent. However, charges for connection and local use have increased significantly and the overall quality of service outside the major central business districts has declined. Whether BT will push its household penetration rate beyond the point of profit maximization, and whether the new regulatory agency, Oftel, is capable of enforcing social policy objectives such as universal service .. in the new telecommunication environment, remain to be seen. Given the pressures upon the telecommunication network as a cornerstone of national industrial policy in many
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Transforming Media Structures
countries, the public interest in a social policy of universal telephone service may be difficult to achieve. Yet in the 'information society', increasingly dependent on the telecommunication system, the need for universal service is likely to become even more important. The historic models of public service or regulated private telecommunication monopolies have generally been ineffective, and clearly are not applicable for the future. But the public interest needs are increasing in importance. The information society
The growing significance of new electronic information and communication networks has brought to the foreground a recognition of the overwhelming importance of information and communication in society. The characteristics of information generation and dissemination affect the nature of markets and the structure of industry, as well as the competitiveness of firms, and the prosperity of regions and nations. They affect the internal structure of organizations, ranging from corporations to government agencies, political parties, universities, trade unions, libraries and volunteer groups. The implications of the changes now taking place in the information and communication sector are made all-pervasive precisely because they affect the characteristics of essential information and communication networks both for individuals and organizations. 4 Because of its pervasive penetration of economic and social institutions, the newly forming information and communication sector is not easily separated from other sectors. Essentially it consists of microelectronics; computer hardware, software and services; telecommunication equipment and services; the mass media and a plethora of new database and information services, as well as the more traditional forms of information and communication such as print, library and postal services. Stimulated by continuing major technological change, this sector has experienced a rapid rate of economic growth in recent years. Moreover, the direct economic effects are compounded by the fact that major parts of this sector provide important infrastructure services, or facilitate functions that affect the operation and efficiency of almost all other industries, as well as government agencies and most other institutions. Information gathering, processing, storage and transmission over efficient telecommunication networks is the foundation upon which technologically advanced nations will close the twentieth century as so-called 'information economies' or 'information societies', that is, societies that have become dependent upon complex electronic information and communication networks, and which allocate a
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Communication Policy in the Global Information Economy 27 major portion of their resources to information and communication activities. This sector may become even more significant to the development of national and international economic growth than any of the major transport expansion eras of the past, including canal, rail or highway. Moreover, the implications go much beyond national considerations. The expansion of the information and communication sector serves to integrate the domestic economy more easily into the international economy by means of efficient international information and communication networks. As international economic in.tegration is expanded, the impact of domestic public policies is reduced. Control over the domestic economy by national governments is weakened. These developments are forcing governments to recognize the need for a full range of international trade policies, addressed not only to direct trade in information and communication equipment and services, but also to acknowledge the implications of global information and communication networks and services for other industries. For example, these considerations are central to current discussions at the International Telecommunication Union {ITU} as well as GATT (ITU, 1989}. The international banking and finance industries have already been restructuring their organizations, and methods of operation, in the light of enhanced opportunities for transferring money and data instantaneously around the world. Many transnational corporations have been able to improve their organizational efficiency and control by centralizing more decisions at their world headquarters, while maintaining flexibility in decentralized production. This has raised the possibility that significant decision-making power, as well as research and development and information services activities, will be removed from 'national' subsidiaries that in some cases have been reduced to the status of branch plants. Medical, tax, credit and other detailed information relating to citizens and institutions of one country is being stored with increasing frequency in another. This raises important public policy questions in a number of areas, including for example, the terms of conditions of access to information, privacy of personal information, and the scope and limitations of national and regional sovereignty. It raises questions as to· the vulnerability of a country's economic and political decision-making systems to losses of essential information because of breakdowns in crucial information and communication networks that occur outside the country. Significant changes in information and communication networks require a reinterpretation of traditional notions of public information (for example, news, libraries, government reports and statistics),
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private information (for example, strategic corporate plans and forecasts) and the terms and conditions for access to such information. In more and more circumstances, information itself is becoming a marketable commodity. There are now many thousands of databases in the world selling a variety of information to clients over modern telecommunication networks, and the number is growing rapidly. Proposed changes in copyright laws now under discussion in several countries would permit a further expansion by strengthening legal property rights to information. Continuing growth in the information and communication sector is opening opportunities in a wide variety of information and communication markets, trading in both public and private information. Although these markets are adding value to international trade they are very imperfect markets. Their growth raises important questions, both of government regulation of. monopoly power in national and international markets, and of government policy with respect to access by the public to traditional types of public information. The public interest in the information society Over thirty-five years ago the Canadian economist and communication scholar Harold A. Innis observed, 'enormous improvements in communication have made understanding more difficult' {lnnis, 1951: 31). We would be hard put to demonstrate that the quantum leap in communication technologies, and the vast increase in communication and information transfer that now takes place using these technologies, have led to an increased understanding of human and social affairs. Communication opportunities have increased significantly for most organizations and many individuals. The volume and variety of communication over these new systems has increased dramatically. But these improvements in communication have also contributed to an incr~ase in the complexity of economic and social relations. introduced new elements of uncertainty. had negative effects for some people, increased class disparities and in certain instances debased our information and communication currency. Adjustments to a society in which new information and communication systems will play a more central role will require changes to existing laws, policies and regulations. These changes can either promote or retard adjustment patterns and can have very differential effects across sectors of society. It is not a simple matter of removing regulatory barriers and restrictions. It is a matter of assessing the implications of existing laws, policies and regulation,
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Communication Policy in the Global Information Economy 29 developing new policy op~ions and. assess~ng their _shor~- an_d lon~ term implications. In the mformat10n soc1ety, pohcy d1rect1on will become more important. Therefore, it is essential that it be informed and that it encompass the broad public interest. To begin the process of redefining the public interest in the information society, it is necessary to return to the essential functions of information and communication in modem participatory democracy, that is, to provide opportunities for citizens to be informed and to be heard. One might expect that in an information society, an increasing percentage of the population would be more informed and exercise more opportunities to initiate communication. An extrapolation of trends examin~d in this chapter indicates that, barring public policy intervention, the opposite may be true. The diversity of sources, both within the different media and across the media, is being significantly reduced. The diversity in broadcast programming that now arises from a variety of different national industry structures, ranging from national public service to commercial, is gravitating towards a. much more homogeneous international structure responding primarily to the interests of global mass-market advertising. For public service broadcasters, the increasing absolute costs of programming (which will be driven up further by high-definition television), the increasing ·opportunity costs of foregone commercial revenue, and the pressures for international eo-production for global markets are already directing them ever closer to commercial programming standards. This is a privatization of purpose, if not ownership. Indeed, without public policy intervention, the television broadcast media could become little more than a global electronic billboard (Melody, 1988). The decline in the quality of postal-services throughout most of the world in recent ye~rs_is expected to continue. In many countries important communication cannot be left to the post. The telecommunication system is being converted to Rolls-Royce Integrated Services Digital Network standards, but it may also require RollsRoyce costs for the basic telephone service needed by everyone. For the most part, new global information and communication services will only be used by the better trained, educated, informed and economically comfortable segment of society. These people will not be affected by the reduced public services noted above. They will have better alternatives. An overriding issue of social policy, it would seem, is to ensure the maintenance of existing public information and communication services to those dependent upon them during the transition to the electronic information society. An even more important requirement will be to enhance education and training programmes, so that an
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increasing portion of society obtains the skills and income necessary to benefit from the new opportunities. The public interest requires that the diffusion of the new opportunities be planned and implemented at a pace which minimizes the losses imposed on those who cannot benefit from them, and is accompanied by programmes to help the potential victims of change become beneficiaries of it. Yet, on the basis of current trends, it would appear that neither national public service suppliers nor national regulatory authorities are likely to be very effective in implementing public interest objectives. Both are likely to lose sight of domestic public interest requirements in the wake of national concerns about international competitiveness and new export opportunities in expanding global markets. Information/communication as a public utility Historically, certain industries have been recognized both in custom and law as •business affected with a public interest'. These are businesses that supply services under conditions where the public is dependent upon reasonable and non-exploitative treatment by a business monopoly. Inns, wharves, bridges, canals, grain warehouses, railways, electricity, gas, water, telephone and other services have all qualified in the past or do so at present. Each supplier was or is in a position of monopoly dominance in supplying an essential service to the general public. Because of this monopoly of an essential service, the businesses are •affected with a public interest'. They are required- by law to make their services equally available to the public under fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory prices and conditions. Although the concept of business affected with a public interest was initially developed in English common law, its application over the last century is generally traced to a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court in the case of Munn v. Illinois (1877): When, therefore, one devotes his property to use in which the public has an interest, he in effect grants to the public an interest in that use, and must submit to be controlled by the public for the common good, to the extent of the interest he has thus created.5
The concept of business affected with a public interest has found its way into various codes of law in ~any countries. It provides the direct basis for public utility regulation and government public service provision (including telecommunication and post) in most countries. It is an indirect basis for regulating broadcasting. Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of the information
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Communication Policy in the Global Information Economy 31 society is the increasing dependence of institutions and people on particular kinds of information and communication in order to function effectively in their economic, political, social and cultural activities. Although one could easily demonstrate that this always has been so - even in Greek city states and aboriginal communities - it is clear that the very different and more complex economic and social relations in the information society create a very different set of information and communication dependencies. In the information society this is governed increasingly by electronic communication networks which determine both access to information and the range of actual communication networks to which people and organizations have access. The types, structures, timing, selection and interpretation of information are unique, as are the needs to initiate communication in a timely and skilled manner in a variety of circumstances. In the information society, access to information and communication would appear to be the most essentially public utility. It would be a logical extension of national law and policy to declare the international media and telecommunica tion conglomerates to be international public utilities subject to international regulation. But this would overlap with the jurisdiction of national authorities as well as some existing international agencies, for example, the ITU. It would require new international law to be effective. Given experience in other areas, including the interminable debates over devising international law for the oceans and for space, this does not appear to be a promising option for the foreseeable future. It would seem that the global information and communication industries may have outgrown the national institutional mechanisms for ensuring that the public interest is seriously considered in their policies and practices. Could this mean that in the information society, the volume of information directed at passive recipients will increase substantially (especially entertainment and advertising), but that the population as a whole will be less informed and less capable of participating in the conduct of their own societies? Public interest research Perhaps the major deficiencies of public policy formulation generally are an inadequacy of substantive research and analysis on the public interest implications of policy options, and an absence of effective advocacy of concrete policy actions that would reflect the public interest. In the market-place of competing evidence, analysis and ideas, public interest advocacy has suffered. Regulatory authorities and national public service suppliers all too quickly become 'judges'
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and 'authorities'. Rather than seek out evidence on public interest implications, and give it great weight in the face of advocacy from powerful vested interests, they have tended to wait for public interest implications to be thrust before them under conditions where they cannot be avoided. This is illustrated well by a comment from a former chair of the Independent Broadcasting Authority, who explained that 'The public interest is what I say it is. And I was appointed because I know. ' 6 Whatever the institutional form by which public interest considerations are brought into the policy process, it will be ineffective unless there is a solid base in public interest research. It then must be followed up by advocacy of the practical implications for action. From where might this come? In a democratic society, public policy should be responsive to the quality and quantity of evidence and argument advocated for particular positions put forward by various interests. In these debates, there are two primary perspectives that require representation, but which in most cases are absent. One is the perspective of those groups in society that may be significantly affected by the policies adopted, but which do not have a sufficiently organized fi?ancial vested interest to mount a representation , for example, disabled users of the public telephone service, children's interests in television or probable victims of technological change. This perspective is necessary to ensure that in the final balancing of interests that underlies most policy decisions, consideration of the interests of important segments of the public are not omitted. The second perspective is that of society as a whole, focusing directly on the overall structure of benefits, costs and consequences for society. This perspective would examine those consequences that lie outside the normal realm of special interest decisionmakers, and would include an evaluation of ·economic externaiity, and social and cultural consequences of policy options (Ferguson, 1986). Public interest groups exist in many areas of society to advocate the special interests of neglected publics, for example, consumer associations, environmental groups, children's television advocates, etc. However, with severely restricted funding and inadequate research, effectiveness is limited. To the best of this author's knowledge, there is no public interest group advocating the information rights of the uninformed, or the right to have effective communication access to those denied it. Part of the problem, of course, is that it is very unclear what precisely should be advocated, given the underlying lack of research, evidence and policy analysis. Perhaps more than any other policy area, information and
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Communication Policy in the Global Information Economy 33 communication policies require an overall systemic analysis. They have enormous external consequences for the viability of political democracy as well as economic and social relations of all kinds. But what institution in society is likely to be in a position to undertake continuing research, policy analysis and effective advocacy of the public interest in information and communication? Academia and the public interest Academic researchers are in a unique position to provide a substantial contribution to policy deliberations from a systemic perspective in at least two important respects. First, the absence of a close connection with particular institutions that have a direct vested interest in the immediate results of policy considerations provides an essential detachment. This permits academic researchers to address the long-term societal implications of the issues more thoroughly, independently and continuously even than the policy making agencies. Second, by training and vocational practice, the perspective of academics should be more compatible with the exercise of research on long-run implications for society than that provided by any other institutional environment. For many aspects of policy issues, independen t academic research can provide an assessment of issues which examines aspects of reality that elude special interest research and the normal analytical horizons · of policy-makers. Due in part to the absence of a significant body of such research, at the present time there is no conceptual or descriptive map by which one can assess the size, structure and implications of information and communication in the information society. Without this essential background information, neither policy decisions by government nor market decisions by corporations are as informed as they should be, or could be. Academic research has much more to contribute to policy issues than might at first appear. Across the social sciences in particular, there is a substantial amount of fragmented research on a variety of information and communication issues. An assessment of its significance for policy requires that it be pulled together, integrated and examined from a systemic perspective. This knowledge then needs to be interpreted in the light of the major policy issues under debate. ·For the future, if more effective research co-ordination is established, the knowledge gained can be cumulative rather than fragmentary. Moreover, if the scope of this interdisciplinary research enterprise is extended to include implications for policy, and supported by
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strong programmes of dissemination to policy maker and lay audiences (as well as the research community), the benefits will 7 begin to penetrate the social system more effectively. Within the framework of this new model of policy research, it should be possible to develop a much clearer understandi ng of the role of information and communication processes in the information society · and their implications for policy. attention are fundamental research priority The areas that require information av;iilability on knowledge of state current ones. The extremely weak. Basic is society of sectors different by use and descriptive and statistical ·data are fragmented. Considered assessments of the public information needs of different sectors of society, and the terms and conditions of access necessary to meet these needs are required as benchmarks for public policy. Information indicators could be developed to measure, for example, relations between citizen needs, availability and uses of public information; the accessibility and use of public information by major segments of the population; and the rate of diffusion of essential public information throughout the population. Indeed we know from existing research that only a small proportion of minority cultures, and the poor of all cultures know their rights as citizens in democratic countries. If all the sick and elderly knew enough to claim all the benefits to which they are entitled, public health systems would be swamped and bankrupted in a few months. In certain respects, the function of post-industrial economies in their present form depends upon major sections of society not having sufficient information, skill and knowledge to exercise their rights fully. As society becomes more information- and communication-intensive, these class distinctions based upon information disparities are likely to increase. But research on information processes, disseminated widely and advocated in policy arenas, could do much to promote both information and social equity in society. A corollary of this line of research is the documentation of public information deficiencies and their economic and social implications. Parallel types of research are needed in respect of communication processes, especially those communication processes necessary to obtain access to essential information. This goes much beyond such questions as the availability of a universal telephone service, which is a precondition to electronic communication. It addresses questions of actual use, knowledge about how to acquire relevant information via the t~lecommunication system, and the extent to which useful information is actually obtained. If 20 per cent of the population is barely literate, does this indicate anything about their ability to find
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Communication Policy in the Global Information Economy 35 their way through a government bureaucracy using the telephone? The research needed here is neither on physical network connections, nor on idealistic rights to communicate. Rather, it is on the benefits obtained from actual communication, the barriers to access and the policies that encourage or prevent effective communication and the realities of information transfer. Research is also needed on guidelines for making sense out of an environment of information overload. Effective understanding, followed by rational action requires an ability to filter, synthesize and interpret information. For many in society, including all business and political leaders, effective comprehension requires that information be screened, assessed and summarized before it is even examined. In a society of information overload, this new role of information interpreter is becoming ever more essential to rational decision making. Research is needed, to understand the processes at work; to define the most appropriate ways for interpreting public information for the public; and to devise operational programmes for implementing public information interpretation services. It may well be that in future the new role of interpreting important information to the public could best be filled by public libraries. Given the trend of the public press, its interpretive role for the future is more likely· to decline than expand for the public at large. Libraries could become advice centres on public information, including not only the location of relevant information and how to access it, but also what the information means and what action might be considered by citizens exercising their rights. (This, of course, would be vigorously opposed by the legal profession.) An extension of this role could be an information ombudsman. The primary functions would be to break down barriers to public information, and to advocate the public's information needs in relevant policy debates. Several countries have established an information commissioner to deal with specific complaints by citizens that government agencies are withholding information from them that should be accessible. This is primarily the role of an ad hoc ombudsman and is concerned with the release of information by national government agencies to specific individuals and organizations. An unfortunate effect of U .S. 'sunshine' laws, which require open access to discussions by government policy makers, has been to make bureaucrats more, not less, protective of their information. What is being suggested here is a much more proactive ombudsman role that examines in a systematic manner the information needs of the general public and the best ways of ensuring that they will be met. It is a step toward stimulating national governments to develop a national public information policy that would apply not just to
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government agencies, but also to major corporations and other influential institutions in society. The standard for judgement would be, what does the public need to know in order to function most effectively as a responsible citizenry in a participatory democracy? A research strategy on information and communication policy is likely to find that such questions arise as important components of policy issues in many areas. Policy makers in seemingly unrelated areas may be unaware of the information and communication implications of the policy options they are considering. For certain kinds of policies, for example, the introduction of major new communication technologies such as ISDN or high-definition television, an information/communication impact statement might be a required consideration in the policy formulation. For other policies,for example, the environment, public health and so on, information reporting and communjcation requirements are likely to be an important aspect of effective policy implementation. A key factor influencing the actual information/communication implications of policy decisions of all kinds. will be the information/ communication diffusion processes throughout society. This is a subject about which academic research already has something to say. But much more is known from the far more extensive research on the diffusion of material technologies, than about the diffusion of information, or of communication opportunities. It is comforting to believe that there is a single policy authority and a carefully specified policy issue to which one's research and analysis can be directed. It is the policy authority's responsibility to seek out and consider the public interest in its policy processes. But when an authority is designated, for example, the FCC, IBA or Oftel, it represents only one of several loci where important policy decisions in the field are made. In the United States, for example, the Congress, executive branch, courts, state governments, one or more industries, foreign firms and governments, international agencies and potentially other institutions may exercise influence in the dynamic mosaic of policy development and implementation. Moreover, the formal policy-making authorities tend to have quite narrow remits defined by industry or technological boundaries, in comparison to the much broader agenda of information and communication processes in society. In addition, as indicated above, the authorities seldom go looking for public interest considerations. To a significant degree, only the research itself will expose the breadth of key policy decisions that affect public information and communication opportunities and uses. Just ·as the model of the paternalistic national public service operator is becoming less relevant in the information society, so also
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Communication Policy in the Global Information Economy 37 is the model of beneficent national public interest regulation. Both were imperfect mechanisms acquiring increasing imperfections as time passed and society changed. Policy formulation in the information/communication sector is becoming more diffused. The structure of the policy-making process is not easily identified, assessed or influenced. Indeed, the policy process, access to it and diffusion of policy information is itself an important area for research. It could assist greatly in keeping the doors of the policy arena open, and the public more aware of its rights in the policy formulation process. The policy research being suggested here would find its way into policy at local, state, national, regional and global levels in a variety of ways. Researchers would not be alone in seeking to place the knowledge gained from their research before policy-makers. Such knowledge will almost always find institutional support somewhere, ranging from public interest groups and government agency staff to specific firms and industries. Virtually all important policy issues are contested by several very different interests reflecting a variety of perspectives. In most instances, at least one of these is likely to find a common interest on any particular issue with the policy implications of knowledge gained from i.ndependent acad.emic research. For academic researchers, there ts a challenge to mterpret the policy implications of their research in light of the policy issues being examined, and to disseminate their res~arch res~lts in a fo~ that will be most easily understood by thQse mvolved m the pobcy debates. It should not, of course, be expected that academic research is going to yield magic answers to the formidable issues of public policy in the information society. In fact, the~e are likely ~o be f~w issues in which all the research will clearly pomt to a spectfic pohcy solution. The contribution of the research is to inform the policymaking debates, to raise the knowledge level of the discussion, to ensure that information and aoalysis relating to the long-term, systemic and public interest implications are included in the debates, and to attempt to guide the policy debates in the direction of the most relevant issues. A major contribution of this research is likely to be the elimination of policy options that could have negative consequences for the general public, but substantial beneficial consequences for a large vested interest. Rarely will it point unequivocally to a precise optimum policy. Moreover, the great~st influence of the policy research is more likely to come from tts integration into the on-going activities of the ~any ~r~ani~ations involved in the policy process, than from occastonal mJecttons of purportedly definitive policy research studies. . . . Some researchers may be concerned that on-gomg mteractton
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with organizations involved in the policy process runs the risk of biasing the research. Indeed, it does. But probably less so than the risk of bias that arises from a much lower level of information and knowledge about the real issues and problems, a very superficial understanding of the policy-making processes and a naive belief that detachment, innocence (and sometimes ignorance) avoid biases. More direct involvement is likely to force the exposure of judgements and hidden valuations so that their consequences can be assessed. The independence of policy research, and indeed all social science research, must ultimately be preserved by awareness and sensitivity of the problem of bias, which always exists in one form or another. Researchers must have sufficient confidence that they can maintain their intellectual independence when they bring their contributions into the market-place of ideas on public policy. The knowledgeable, independent views that have merit for application in public policy must be those that have stood the test of critical review of the evidence and analysis by those who disagree. Is this test any different from the test that academic research has always used in seeking the truth (that is, a critical review by knowledgeable peers), except perhaps that the public policy arena may provide a more rigorous application of it? Certainly a claim of independence arising from limited knowledge about the issues and non-involvement in the process cannot expect to carry much weight in a participatory democracy. The academic social science research community is a major institution in modern society. One of its fundamental purposes is to develop information and knowledge about the changing structure of society. This academic research community is uniquely placed to extend its activities to policy research from a public interest perspective, particularly on the implications of changing information and communication structures in society. It is uniquely placed to be the best advocate of the policy implications of its public interest research. No other institution in society is so well structured to research and advocate for the public interest. Should the research community take this responsibility seriously, the contributions of research can more directly influence the course of events Jn the world. The puplic interest can become a major, rather than a fringe, force in policy-making, and the academic research community can fulfil its own potential in participatory democracies.
Notes I For a comparative perspective see Noli et al. (1973); Owen et al. (1974); Cave and Melody (1989).
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Communication Policy in the Global Information Economy 39 2 The classic statement attributed to Lord Reith was 'few members of the broadcast audience know what they want, and fewer still want what they need', reflecting the ethos of the BBC under his leadership. . 3 For comparative perspectives on these issues, see Mattelart et al. (1984); Wedell (1983) and Commission of the European Communities (1984). 4 For an examination of social science research and training developments in this area in the UK, see Melody and Mansell (1986b). 5 See Munn v.lllinois94 US 113, 126. For discussion ofrelated issues, see Melody (1971). 6 Personal interview with the author. 7 Indeed, this new model for sricial science research in the field is being adopted by major new academically based research programmes in several countries. Examples are the Programme on Information and Communication Technologies (PICT) in the UK, and the Centre for International Research on Communication and Information Technologies (CIRCIT) in Australia; see Melody (1987b).
References Cave, M. and Melody, W.H. (1989) 'Models of Broadcast Regulation: The UK and North American Experience', pp. 224-43 in C. Veljanovski (ed.}, Freedom in Broadcasting. London: Institute of Economic Affairs. Collins, R., Gamham, N. and Locksley, G. (1988) The Economics of Television. London: Sage. · Commission of the European Communities (1984) Television without Frontiers. Brussels: EEC. Ferguson, M. (ed.) (1986) New Communication Technologies and the Public Interest: Comparative Perspectives on Policy and Research. London: Sage. Innis, H.A. (1951) The Bias of Communication. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. International Telecommunications Union (lTU) (1989) The Changing Telecommunications Environment: Policy Considerations for the Members of the /TU. Geneva: ITU. Mattelart, A., Delacourt, X. and Mattelart, M. (1984) lnternotiono/lmage Markets. London: Comedia. Melody, W.H. (1973) 'The Role of Advocacy in Public Policy Planning', pp. 165-81 in G. Gerbner, L. Gross and W. Melody (eds), Communica.tions Technology and Social Pp/icy. New Yorlc Wiley. ·· Melody, W.H. (1976) 'Mass Media: The Economics of Access to the Marketplace of Ideas', pp. 216-36 in 0. Aronoff (ed.), Business and the Media. Santa Monica, CA; Goodyear. Melody, W.H. (1986) 'Telecommunication: Policy Directions for the Technology and Information Services', pp. 77-106 in Oxford Surveys in Information Technology, vol. 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Melody, W.H. (l987a) 'The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Contribution to Canadian Culture' The Royal So~iety ofArts Journal, 125: 286-97. Melody, W.H. (1987b) 'Examining the Implications of Changing Information and Communication Structures: The UK PICT', Prometheus, 5 (2) (Dec.): 221-36. Melody, W.H. (1988) 'Pan European Television: Commercial and Cultural Implications of European Satellites', pp~ 267-81 in R. Paterson and P. Drurnmond (eds}, Television and its Audience: International Research Perspectives. London: British Film Institute. Melody, W.H. (1989a) 'The Changing Role of Public Policy in the Information Economy', Papers in Science, Technology and Public Policy. London: Imperial College and Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex.
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----------------------------------~~-------------------------Melody, W.H. (1989b) 'Policy Issues in the Evolution ofiSDN', pp. 53-60 in J. Ambak (ed.}, ISDN in Europe: Innovative Services or Innovative Technology? Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishers. Melody, W.H. and Mansell, R. (1986) Information and Communication Technologies: Social Science Research and Training, vols I and 2. London: Economic and Social Research Council. Noli, R.G., Peck, MJ. and McGowan, JJ. (l973},Economic Aspects ofTelevisionRegulatign. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Owen, B.M. (1975) Economics and Freedom of Expression. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath. Owen, B.M., Beebe, J.H. and Manning, W.G., Jr. (1974) Television Economics. Lexington, MA; D.C. Heath. Wedell, G. (1983) 'The End of Media Nationalism in Europe',lntennedia, 2 (415).
The Political Economy of the Media 11 The Mythology of Telecommunications Deregulation
[21] The Mythology of Telecommunications Deregulation by Vincent Mosco The evidence that lends plausibility to the myths "is insufficient to justi.fY an tnrcrltical acceptance of deregulation as a model for pubUc poUcy."
'"Nothing unpatriotic intended, " Townsend said "But what is it the Americans really know bow to make and sell? Not car:s. Our cars are junk. Not rockets. Our rockets blow up. Not stee~ or textiles, or fumiture, or electronics. \Ve cmt 't afford to pay the help. " "OkaJ\ "MwTay said, "wbat is it that tbe Americans know how to make and sell better tban anybody else in tbe world?" Toumsend drank deeply from bis still tax-deductible drink, and then, after a majestic pause, be said: '"Metapbor:s, my dear Murray. Metaphors and images and expectations" (18, p. 8). Deregulation, as with most things in life, bas to be done itz moderation; it has been carried too far. The free market is not always right; it surely is not always fair. It sbould tzat be tumed ittto a religion (28, p. 3).
With these pithy lines, Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper's, and Felix Rohatyn, partner in the invesunent banking firm Lazard Freres, pierce a dimension of public policy that receives too little attention in the academic literature. Lapham certainly exaggerates: The U.S. manufacturing sector, including high· technology production, continues to lead the world. Nevertheless, as countless analysts remind us, there is considerable evidence that this lead is slipping away to Japan and Western Europe. What is not slipping away, however, is the ability of th.e United States to inlluence the way Americans-and, just as impor· tant, people in the rest of the world-think about and justify major economic and political trends. Deregulation is central to the current American mythos. Rohatyn's important position in the U.S. economy lends special significance to his warning about "a climate of deregulation pushed to dangerous extremes" (28, p. 3). However, his pragmatism leads Rohatyn to miss a key point: Deregulation as the preferred technical instrument for creating or "restoring" free markets is as much the cornerstone of a belief system as is the faith in a free market. Vincent Mosco is Professor in the School of joumalism, Carleton University. Copyright © 1990 ]oumal oJ.Communication 40(1), Winter. 0021·9916/90/$0.0
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But, to his credit, Rohatyn worries about the consequences of turning an economic model into an icon (the stock market crashed three months after the article appeared) while most policy analysts are caught up with technical definitions and questions: Is a market free if there are two carriers or do we need more? Can a free market exist with one dominant carrier? Can a market be potentially free or (as they put it) "contestable"? Does a government-created pri'?lte cartel violate free market principles? Even if we define it as a "precompetitive arrangement"? Those familiar with debates in the history of science would see this as an effort to rescue a failing paradigm or conceptual scheme (23). More generally, it is myth making: creating a conceptual scheme or way of seeing that so structures our thinking about a subject that we come to believe it is an explanation of material reality. This article examines and assesses the mythological dimensions of deregula· tion in the telecommunications industry. I use the term deregulation broadly to incorporate a range of processes that some would refer to as privatization, procompetition policies, rate rebalancing, and other similar expressions. The goal is not to make technical distinctions among related terms; whole armies of economists have done this. Rather, I have tried to distinguish the underlying beliefs that support the deregulation mythology so that they might be examined in light of the available evidence. Specific-,illy, I address five myths of deregulation: 1. Deregulation lessens the economic role of government. 2. Deregulation benefits consumers. 3. Deregulation diminishes economic concentration. 4. Deregulation is widely supported. S. Deregulation is inevitable.
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journal of Communication, l'(lfnter 1990
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As I will show, the evidence is sufficient to make these five myths plausible, but it is insufficient to justify an uncritical acceptafice of deregulation as a model for public policy.
(17). Government research, development, and purchases sustained the computer business throughout the 1950s (8). In the 1980s, the government created MCC and Sematech, among others, to overcome japan's strength in the semiconductor industry. Moreover, the Stra· tegic Defense Initiative (SDI), including the StrategiC Computing Initiative, is arguably the government's most substantial intervention ever into the marketplace for research and development purposes (21, chapter 6). SDI has pro· vided General Motors alone with about $1 billion in aerospace and microelectronics contracts, fulfilling the pledge of the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency to assist "the automotive and aerospace industries in develop· ing computer-assisted design, manufacturing, and robotics" (33, p. 9). General Electric, the parent company of RCA and the NBC television network, has received over $500 million in SDI contracts. In 1988, the Pentagon, concerned about foreign control of high-definition television, announced a program that provides $30 million in funding for private research to develop HDlV systems. These recent extensions of government into the competitive marketplace are not exceptions to an otherwise non-interventionist policy in the Reagan years. In fact, government spending as a share of gross national product increased slightly In the Reagan administration. One can make a similarly good case that non-intervention is hardly the best descriptor of government's role in the telecommunications industry. The federal judiciary serves as the gatekeeper on precise details of market entry, pric· ing of services, and even rules, as it did in early 1989 in the case of a regional telephone company, on appropriate trade-offs among subsidizing local service, promoting new business ventUres, and protecting privacy (10). The Federal Communications Commission may operate differently, but it is no less interventionist In regulating competition than it has been in regulating a monopoly. The FCC is arguably more involved in the private marketplace now because the number of corporate players has increased substantially. Moreover, in its access charge ruling, the Commission has intervened in the private marketplace to redistribute billions of revenue dollars from local to long-distance telephone users. The decision to intervene at the expense of local users and to forego access charges for better-organized lobbyists, such as personal computer communicators, is further evidence of the myth of deregulation as non-intervention. Added to this substantial evidence is the creation of tl1e first government welfare system in the history of U.S. telephony. Admittedly, these assistance programs are carefully packaged. to avoid identifying them with traditional welfare programs. Earlier references to Phone Stamps have been discarded in favor of names like Lifeline, which offers discounts to low-income subscribers, and Link-up America, which subsidizes installation charges. The NTIA calls them "targeted subsidies" (32, p. 12). Euphemisms are important to the myth-build· ing process, but one does not require the expertise of a case worker to know that federal assistance programs accompanied by a means test, administrative bureaucracy, advocacy, and policing fit the general conception of a welfare program. According to a Rand Corporation study, the state of California, which led the nation with the first Lifeline program in 1983, has one million subscribers
Myth 1: Deregulation lessens the economic role of government. Supporters of deregulation claim that this policy diminishes the role of government In economic life by eliminating those rules that limit market competition. Moreover, government intervention and free markets are thereby established as end points on a continuum, with movement from the forme-r to the latter signaling economic progress. Defenders of this view frame their statements about it with a matter-of-fact· ness that lends it the stature of a myth-something that Is beyond the realm of discussion, let alone contention. As a 1988 report of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) puts it, "the trend domestically has plainly been toward a less interventionist, deregulatory role for Government ... This approach, moreover, has clearly been justified and has yielded substantial public gains" (32, p. 164). Most presentations no longer bother to substantiate the claim of diminished intervention. Those that do so point mainly to the increased market shares of minimally regulated or unregulated firms. just as important, supporters frame deregulation as a return to normal practice after a period of excessive government intervention:
The traditional public network was an appealing concept to many as an almost romantic sanctuary amidst the cold rationality of capitalism. It was a notion ofsbaring. interconnecting. and reaching every member ofsociety. Yet these are also the concepts of authoritarianism of both the far right and left. ... Thus in tbe future the telecommunications field will more closely resemble the rest of the economic system and will be less a part of the political decision spbere. It may be much more complex and perhaps less efficient in some aspects than the old system, but it will be a truer reflection of the underlying complex society (24, p. 47). This formulation is important because it illustrates the contemporary claim that, far from being a radical change in traditional U.S. practice-as even pragmatic capitalists like Rohatyn would claim-deregulation represents a return to markets free from government intervention, from the potential tyranny of despotism, however benevolent. But the historical record belies that view, particularly in the direct involvement of the U.S. government in the development of communications and information systems. Western Union built the telegraph network with financial and land grant-assistance from the federal government and overcame calls for nationalization by developing a lobbying force that its successors would envy (7). As a major customer and regulator, the government sustained the market dominance of A.T.&T. The government created RCA as its "chosen instrument" to beat the British in cable and radio (2). The government created COMSAT as its "chosen instrument'.'. ·to beat the Soviet Union In communications satellites
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and is spending in excess of H50 million in administrative costs (14). Over half the states now participate in telephone welfare assistance, and Rand expects this number to grow rapidly. It sees a "distUrbing possibility...that states may regard these programs largely as 'free.' ... But these programs are far from free. CostS are imposed on long distance telephone companies, their customers, and, in some states, on taxpayers as well" (p. 67). In essence, the regulatory body most closely identified with a less interventionist government position in telecommunications is responsible for initiating a growing national welfare program. In sum, the historical record and present practice suggest that the central question here is not whether the government will or will not intervene. Euphemisms aside, it has, it is, and-barring some political transformation far more substantial than we are currently experiencing-it will. The key questions are: What goals will intervention seek to achieve, and who Is to benefit from Inevitable government intervention?
local rates have been subsidizing long distance; cpnsequently, current pricing policies deepen the subsidy from the local customer. Others argue that it is impossible to make an economic determination, as the process is fundamen· tally politicaL Foe Peter Huber, whose report for the Department of Justice sup· ported speeding up the process of deregulation, "allocating trUly common costs among the activities they support is a mysterious and fundamentally arbitrary process" (13). For Anthony Oettinger, economic arguments are "fairy tales whose merit lies in how well they meet the needs or the goals of various stakeholders-companies, customers, regulators, politicians and so on":
Myth 2: Deregulation benefits consumers. Supporters of deregulation claim that the policy benefits users by providing them with lower rates and better service than they would experience under regulation or some form of nonmarket system. As with the first myth, tl1ere is sonie ground for making this claim. According to the FCC, interstate long-distance phone charges decreased by about 29.2 percent in real terms between 1984 and 1989, and consumers have a wider range of company and service options. Nevertheless, controlling for inflation, local rates have risen by about 44.1 percent over this same time period. Overall, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, telephone bills have increased on average at about the rate of inflation. However, "on average" masks the significant redistribution in the burden of paying for the national telecommunications network. Simply put, local callers are paying a substantially greater share of the system's costs. Since, according to A.T.&T., 50 percent of all residential subscribers make less than three dollars' worth of interstate calls a month and 80 percent make less than ten dollars' worth, the vast majority of subscribers are bearing the cost burden of rate redistribution (16, p. 26). The beneficiaries are large users who, as Dan Schiller (29) has shown, lobbied furiously for over two decades to achieve the windfall tl1at federal policy has offered them in the name of deregulation. The losers are individual subscribers, small businesses, and voluntary associations, who are paying significantly more for their largely local use of the telephone. Proponents of deregulation argue that this situation makes good economic sense, since local rates have been subsidized for years by long-distance charges, and that overall economic efficiency demands that prices be aligned with costs. Let us set aside for tl1e moment the principle that market efficiency ought to be the primary goal of communications policy; many artalysts, including supporters of deregulation, have raised considerable doubt about the economic arguments themselves. Economist William Melody and his associates (20) claim that, If anything,
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Whatever contending theologies or party lines are in z,ogue,. in practice tbe prevailing costing and pricing metbods reflect more or less faithfully and with greater or lesser time lags the prevailing political balances of their day. At tbeir best, costing and pricing methods are the means to policy ends, not the ends in tbemselves. What policy ends? Those in harmony with whateoer consensus or compromise is acceptable to tbe stakeholders and to the referees involved in tbe battle: providers, customers, competitors, regulators, legislators, the courts (25, pp. 12).
According to this view, the economic subsidy argument is a justification for a shift in policy that reflects the growing power of large users and the perception that, as telecommunications takes on greater global strategic significance, policies must be devised to meet the needs of these users. The argument is particularly powerful be<.':luse it carries the authority of economic science. It is a · modern fairy tale, one that convinces because it is constrUcted out of the technicism and scientism that today render such tales legitimate. Following Oettinger, you do not comprehend the policy process by srarting with the economic models tl1at justify tl1em; rather, you assess the balance of political forces in the industry arena. Supporters of deregulation counter by correclly pointing out that the impact of policy changes has not been so serious as to drive people off the nerwork, as many people had predicted. There has been no erosion in penetration: About 93 percent of households continue to enjoy telephone service, about the same percentage as before substantial local rate increases (32, pp. 206-208). As Noam (31, p. D3) puts it, "The worst fear of divestiture-that the poor or middle class would not be able to afford a telephone-has simply not come to pass. All consumers are generally better off." But this is the equivalent of justifying OPEC-inspired oil price increases by observing that they did not cause people to give up heating their homes. Such views stretch the mythology of consumer benefit rather thin. In fact, the stability in telephone subscriber rates merely underscores the importance of the telephone for most Aniericans, who do what is necessary to keep it, in spite of massive rate increases. Moreover, it reflects the political pressure of numerous groups, including educational interests, trade unions, and voluntary associations, who have pressured Congress and state regulators to slow down the process of rate redistribution, so that increases have not
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matched the levels that analysts predicted would lead to erosions in universality. Moreover, in spite of promises that a technological revolution would drive dowo the cost of communication, the period 1984-1989 has seen the reversal of a fifty-year trend in which the real price of telephone service declined 64 percent. Furthermore, the 1980s will likely mark the first decade of this century when telephone penetration rates did not rise to fill persistent and significant gaps in service. According to the General Accounting Office, 25 percent of Americans whose income places them below the poverty line do not have telephone service. This is also the case for 31 percent of households that receive food stamps and 24 percent of homes whose children participate in subsidized lunch programs (35). Universal service is simply not a reality for a large percentage of America's poor, arguably the group that would benefit most from the service. Moreover, "universal" telephone penetration in the United States is 5 percent less than that of Canada-a nation with a much larger land mass and lower population density-where a combination of low local rates· and government-oWned systems in sparsely populated provinces has been able to bring the telephone to 98 percent of households. Deregulation has led to a similar pattern of rate increases in other communications services, such as cable television. Following a rise of 6.9 percent in basic cable rates in the first year of rate deregulation, the rate increase nearly doubled in the second year, to 13.3 percent-more than 9 points higher than the Consumer Price Index. Rates for discretionary "premium" channels, whose subscribers tend to have higher incomes, have increased at a much slower pace. The economic principle that deregulation is justified by the competition that cable faces from other communications sources has proven to be another fairy tale. As an aide to Senator Howard Metzenbaum put it: "It's the worst of both worlds, you have monopolies but you have no ability to regulate them" (4). A final dimension of the myth of consumer benefit Is the claim that deregulation increases the availability and quality of service. This point is admittedly difficult to address because it leaves considerable room for subjective judgment. Nevertheless, there is little evidence.that the mass of residential subscribers demanded the enhanced or discretionary services that telephone and cable companies are currently offering and that residential customers are helping to pay for, whether or not they choose them. Moreover, In the case of the telephone, there is considerable anecdotal evidence that individual customers are dissatisfied with the quality of service and even more so with how they are billed for it (21, chapter 8). Over 2,000 complaints about overcharges reached the FCC in 1987-1988 in the narrow area of alternative operator services provided in hotels, hospitals, airports, and other institutions. According to one assessment on tl1e fifth anniversary of the A.T.&T. agreement, "For the residential customer who does not make a lot of long-distance calls, the breakup of the Bell system has come to mean two things--confusion and higher rates" (31). On the cable televjsion side, an FCC survey revealed a considerable drop In
access for broadcast television stations in the wake of the demise of "must carry" rules. Of 912 television stations responding, 31 percent reported 1,533 incidences of being dropped or denied carriage on cable systems, and 34 percent reported 1,274 incidences of having their signal repositioned from one channel to another on cable systems. The FCC survey, which resulted from a congressional request, did not reach any conclusions (26).
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Myth 3: Deregulation diminishes economic concentration. According to this view, deregulation opens markets to new service providers whose competition drives down prices and improves service. In the telecommunications area, supporters of this view point to increases in the number of long-distance carriers, including MCI and US Sprint, that challenge A.T.&T. for control of the long-distance market. It is instructive to begin an assessment of this myth with a look at the airline industry, which began to deregulate in 1978. At that time there were eleven major and eight secondary c-.1rriers serving the United States. In one decade that number has declined to eight major carriers, four of which control 61 percent of the market and six of which control 79 percent. Reinforced by a huband-spoke system that effectively divides markets among major carriers, the system is marked by less competition today than ten years ago. In an interesting, if dramatic, image, the chairman of the House Aviation Subcommittee summarized the process of reestablishing monopoly power: "I would compare it to a supernova. An immense star explodes and showers light out across the uni· verse. Then it collapses, and condenses, and becomes a black hole, an enormous magnetic force that draws everything into it" (6). Numerous analysts, including supporters of deregulation such as economist Alfred Kahn, now worry about the implications of airline industry concentration for ticket prices and airline safety. According to a former Assistant Transportation Secretary and promoter of airline deregulation, "To be very honest, in 1978 we envisioned that there would be a hundred airlines flying to every major hub. But I think the market has shown that's really not practical" (9). Deregulation in telecommunications lags behind the ·airlines. Moreover, one can make a good case that the telecommunications equivalent to the airline supernova was a popgun. A.T.&T.'s long-distance market share in interstate telephone service has undeniably declined since divestiture, to about 67.7 percent by the end of 1988. Nevertheless, there is little evidence to suggest that this share is likely to erode any further. In fact, the FCC's decision to replace traditional rate-of-return regulation with a system of "price caps" pegged ro a basket of services is likely 10 strengthen A.T.&T.'s hold on the long-distance marketplace. According to a 1989 Rand Corporation report, "The firm could cut the price of a service in the basket to below cost, hike prices elsewhere in the basket, and still comply with the overall price cap constraint" (15, p. 22). The FCC's response is to permit the carrier to raise or lower specific prices by no more than five percent. But, as the Rand report notes, this undermines the goal of price caps because "it may unduly restrain the carrier in responding to mpidly changing market conditions" (p.
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22). Moreover, as an analyst for Booz-Allen and Hamilton put it in the industry newsletter Trends in Communications Regulation (December 1987), "whether it's 60% share or 80%, that does not change the fact that AT&T Is dominant in the long distance business, that it sets the pace for others to follow." In fact, the analyst concludes that 60 percent would be a good market share, because it is both low enough to maintain minimal regulation and high enough to guarantee market dominance. Local exchange carriers continue to enjoy almost complete monopoly control of local service. Even in their own estimates of the likely erosion in market share due to customer bypass of the network, local carriers expect to retain all but one or, in the worst case, two percent of market share for the foreseeable future. As one report concludes: "While bypass is growing in absolute terms, the demand for LEC [Local Exchange Carrier] services Is growing even faster, both on an absolute and on a relative basis, so much so that persistence of the LEC's current position of market dominance into the foreseeable future is assured" (FCC Week, March 28, 1988). In March 1989 the FCC announced plans to extend its price cap policy to the seven regional telephone companies. Since these companies ace under no competitive pressure to cut costs, they can use the pricing system to retain their local operations as cash cows for other planned ventures in information services or outside this industry entirely. In fact, according to judge Greene, the regional .companies are already doing this. In his 1987 decision denying further expansion of regional company activities, he noted that, since divestiture, these firms have formed 150 businesses in such areas as real estate, financial services, software, and publishing. He concludes that
With the merger of Time and Warner into the world's largest media company, cable concentration is likely to increase. Time owns the second-largest cable provider and significant sources of programming, including HBO and Cinemax. Warner owns the fifth-largest cable firm and· is also a substantial programming source. According to Senator Howard Metzenbaum, in comments calling on the Department of justice to investigate the merger, Time-Warner threatens to monopolize the "ability to control both the conduit for programming (the cable wire) and the content of programming" (11).
the participation of the Regional Companies in these far:flung enterprises is bound to diminish their managements' interest in and attention to the local telephone business. . . . What is wrong from an antitrust point of view with the combination of (1) telephone rate increases and (2) Regional Company outside ventures is that these ventures appear to have been funded .from and are being supported, at least, in part, by the local phone rates (16, pp. 21-22). Local subscribers, with no regulatory or competitive alternative, ace underwriting regional company expansion plans. This action simply reenacts the political principle that deregulation is a euphemism for shifting the cost burden to the least powerful players in the policy arena. Concentration has deepened in the cable industry since deregulatory legislation was passed in 1984. Like local telephone companies, cable firms continue to enjoy local monopolies, now with considerably reduced government oversight. Moreover, multiple system operators control an increasing share of the market. One company, TCI, reaches slightly more than one out of every five subscribers. Such control helps to explain why TCI's president suggested to a congressional telecommunications subcommittee in 1988 that a "supermonopoly'' might be the most efficient way to serve viewers, since, he maintains, it would take a large company with secure market control to build and.manage a national network. The .next four largest companies ace large enough to give the top five control of about half the cable market. 44
Myth 4: Deregulation is widely supported. One can understand why both the telecommunications industry and the policy research community believe that deregulation is widely supported. In the language of discourse analysis, they make up a self-contained speech community; in more colloquial terms, they talk only to one another. Telecommunications firms ace unlikely to question the wisdom of policy changes, since most companies have profited from deregulation. Average return on equity among the regional telephone companies, which matched that of the top 1,000 firms in 1984, has exceeded the average since that time. Bell companies traditionally earned two percent below the return on equity of the Standard and Poor's 400; since divestiture, they have oureacned that average by up to three percent. In the second quarter of 1988, the regional company profits ranged from a low of 10.2 percent for NYNEX to 15.2 percent for US West. The national average for all industries was 6.1 percent (5, p. 10). The record for A.T.&T. is not as clearly positive, but part of this is attributable to losses taken in the form of asset write-otfs rather than to any noticeable decline in performance. Given the company's overwhelming market dominance and the introduction of price cap regulation, A.T.&T. should recover to make its 17 percent gain in earnings in the third quarter of 1988 a more consistent reflection of the company's position. Cable companies certainly have little cause to question the value of deregulation. Since 1984, when basic subscriber charges were deregulated, revenues from this service have practically doubled, from $3.9 billion to $7.4 billion in 19.88. Unregulated basic services, whose rates are sheltered from both competitive and regulatory pressures, now occupy what NTIA regards as "the revenue growth center for the industry'' (32, p. 544). NTIA, which has led the drive to deregulate, leaves no room to doubt the source of this revenue growth: "This is largely attributable to the fact that the Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984 virtually eliminated state rate regulation of basic service" (32, p. 544). One can understand why industry participants would readily accept the myth that there is general support fqr a deregulatory policy. Since much of the policy research community conducts research on behalf of the industry or the government agencies that have advanced the deregulatory position, it is also evident why the support would be so generalized here. More precisely, telecommunications policy researchers form a community in the sense that they are generally bound by a common world view centered on the promotion of deregulatoty policies: Differences that energize the community ace not about the world view itself; rather, they revolve around the most useful tactics to realize it. Chal45
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lenges to the common view, whether they come from maverick economists, social policy analysts, labor, or public interest groups, are sealed off from what comes to be defined as serious analysis. Observers have noted the tensions produced by this sealing off of opposing voices and their effect on the general field of policy research and education. The comments of Herman Leonard, who is directing a review of the policy curriculum at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, speak volumes about the state of telecommunications policy research:
One of the reasons that telecommunications policy analysts can claim universal support for deregulation is that they have so identified with finding the best way to carry out the policy that they have failed to reflect on how deregulation, whether in telecommunications, airlines, or trucking, has contributed to the elimination of jobs, the accelerated deskilling of remaining jobs, and the decline in the bargaining power of trade unions. Much has been written that justifies this action on grounds of technological determinism or international competitiveness. There is little on the consequences for the U.S. social fabric of this attack on a major component of the American working class-the large work force of skilled and semiskilled employees in regulated industries.
The traditional Kennedy process is that somebody has defined a problem, somebody has come up with· a set of alternatives, and somebody has defined the criteria by which to choose-now get to work. I'd like to see us roll back the problem to reveal some of our hidden assumptions, to ask: Who got to do the defining? Is that the only way these things can be defined? (19, p. 100). The tension in the telecommunications policy research community is reflected in the evolution of the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference, an annual event that comes closest to a general meeting of the research community. The TPRC began as a meeting of government, corporate, and research institute economists who generally shared a commitment to the deregulatory and procorporate world view. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, growth in the field, including the rise of a critical perspective that reflected the emergence of critical studies in numerous disciplines, led to an expansion in both the size of the conference and the perspectives represented there. The inter~ts of consumers, telecommunications workers, minorities, and the supporters of public broadcasting and telecommunications established a presence. However, the need to promote the exchange of ideas about how best to advance deregulatory policies took precedence over the need to debate the wisdom of the deregulatory principle itself. There was no room in the policy community for deregulation's ·losers or for those who would build alternatives to the paradigmatic faith, and the TPRC has returned to its roots as an annual ineeting of deregulation's tacticians. As a consequence, deregulation's supporters are generally not in touch with those who experience the negative impactS of the policy or.with those who evaluate it critically and would seek to build alternatives. Universal support of a policy is easier to maintain if the opposition is not heard. In addition to neglecting consumer-opposition stemming from rate redistri· bution policies, the telecommunications policy research community has gener· ally ignored trade union opposition or claimed that telephone workers' identification with the high status of high tech leads them to support deregulatory policies (24). Studies on telecommunications workers In Britain, the United States, Japan, Canada, and Australia argue otherwise (3, 12, 22, 27). One can certainly understand why telecommunications workers would oppose deregulatory policies. In the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), total employment in telecommunications has dropped from 1,234,800 in 1981 to 1,025,400 in 1988. Even if one were to subtract the 40,000 jobs that the BLS reclassified, there are 169,400 fewer jobs in telecommunications, 112,500 of these in nonsupervisory positions (34). 46
Myth 5: Deregulation is inevitable. If deregulation means less government, benefits consumers, decreases. economic concentration, and is widely supported, then it must be inevitable. Like the first four myths, this bears a ring of authenticity that derives from what appears to be the success of deregulatory policies worldwide. One cannot fall to see that numerous governments are incorporating policies to privatize, deregulate, and liberalize trade in numerous industries. In fact, it is not difficult to demonstrate that such global managerial strategies are a (if not the most) successful U.S. export (21, chapter 8). Nevertheless, arguments· for inevitability miss several important points. One does not eliminate opposition to deregul:uory policies by diminishing the powers of a regulatory agency. Those consumer, labor, social service, and other groups opposed to the policy simply shift the focus of their pressure from the FCC, for ex;unple, to Congress and state or local regulatory bodies. Supporters of inevitable deregulation confuse the displacement of political activity with its evaporation. Fearful that such opposition may begin to take on the character of open class conflict, more pmgmatic business people like Rohatyn call for slowing down deregulation or halting it altogether. Historian Anhur Schlesinger, Jr., sees the demise of deregulation in the end of what he considers the natural cycle of rule by first conservative and then liberal wings of American elites. According" to Schlesinger, the conservative downfall will be hastened by the damage caused by deregulation: Consider how many of our present ajJlictions are the result of deregulation. Deregulation has gravely weakened the securities markets, the savings and loan industry, the nuclear-weapons industry, the airlines, the banking system, environmental protection and safety in the workplace; and it has made an unholy mess of our telephones, once the pride ofAmerican civilization (30). Those who discount the strength of consumer and labor opposition to deregulation, who find it inadequate to shift the policy trend into a different cycle, should further consider how little deregulation does to eliminate, and more likely how it advances, government intervention (Myth 1) and economic concentration in the U.S. political economy (Myth 3). In essence, history teaches that pursuit of the unfettered marketplace, if not a logical impossibility, is sim· ply not likely to work. Monopoly and oligopoly tend to assert market power and win protective regulation from a government that has historically inter-
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vened to respond to shifting power balances. We hear more frequent calls for government to regulate the restructured oligopoly that airline deregulation brought about. We are likely to hear the same in telecommunications. Whatever their basis in fact, these myths continue to reflect significant political and economic interests. Moreover, they help to constitute those interests with a shared belief system. In the short run, those interests are promoting the dismantling of a public infrastructure and massive income redistribution up the social class ladder. In the long run, they want to advance the transformation of information from a public resource into a marketable commodity and a form of social management and control. Deregulation is more than a policy instrument; it serves as a cohesive mythology around which those who would benefit from these short- and long-run interests might rally. You might say that deregulation has a mindlessness of its own. The late A. Bartlett Giammati, literary scholar, President of Yale University, and Commissioner of Major League Baseball, told the story of fifteenth-century Italian poet Mateo Boiardo, whose resistance to a new order is instructive. According to Giammati: "He does not want to turn back the clock and regain the old world, but he does want to recapture the sense of control of oneself, if nothing else; that marked life under the old system. He wants to be able to praise something other than th~ giddy, headlong rush" (1, p. 60).
The Political Economy of the Media 11 The Mythology ofTelecomrnrmicalions Deregulation
15. Johnson, !.eland L Price Caps in Telecommunications Regulatory Reform. Santa Monica, Cal.: Rand Corporation, 1989. 16. Klmmelman, Gene and Mark Cooper. Diveslilure Plus Five. Washington, D.C.: Consumer Federation of America, 1988. 17. Klnsley, Mlchael. Outer Space and Inner Sanctums. New York: Wiley Interscience, 1976. 18. Lapham, Louis. "Paper Moons." Hatper's, December 1986, pp. 8-10. 19. Lukas, J. Anthony. "Is Competence Enough?: Harvard's Kennedy School." New York Times Maga· zine, March 12, 1989, pp. 36, 37, 68, 100-101. 20. Melody, William H. Report to tbe Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission on Cos/Inquiry, Phase Ill. Ottawa: Supply and Services, July 16, 1982. 21. Mosco, Vincent. Tbe Pay-per Society: Computers and Communication in tbe Information Age. Norwood, NJ.: Ablex; Toronto: Garamond, 1989. 22. Mosco, Vincent and Elia Zureik. "Deregulation: The Workers' View." Telecommunications Policy 12(3), September 1988, pp. 279-287. 23. Mulkay, Michael ]. Science and tbe Sociology ofKnowledge. London: Alien & Unwin, 1979. 24. Noarn, Ell M. "The Public Telecommunications Network: A Concept in Transition." ]oumal of Communication 37(1), Winter 1987, pp. 30--48. 25. Oettinger, Anthony G. The Formula Is Everything: Costing and Pricing in tbe Telecommunications Industry. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Program on Information Resources Policy, 1988. 26. "Real-World.Data on a Post-Must-Carry World." Broadcasting, September 5, 1988. 27. Relnecke, !an and]ullanne Schuhz. The Phone Book. New York: Penguin Books, 1983.
References I. Angell, Roger. "Celebration." New l'orker; August 22, 1988.
28. Rohatyn, Felix. "On the Brink." New York Review ofBooks, July 11, 1987, pp. 3-6. 29. Schlller, Dan. Telemalics and Government Norwood, NJ.: Ab lex, 1981.
2. Damouw, Erlk. Tube of l'lerrty. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.
-30. Schleslnger, Arthur,Jr. "How Goes the Cycle Now?" Wall Street journal, January 4, 1989.
3. Datstone, Eric, Anthony Femer, and Mlchael Terry. Coment and Efficiency: Labour Relations and llfanagemelll Strategy ill tbe State Enterprise. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984.
31. Slms, Calvin. "After Five Years, Customers Still Fault Breakup of Bell." New York Times, December 22, 1988, pp. D1-D3.
4. "Cable-1V Systems Offer More and Charge More." New York Time-t January 3, 1989.
· 5. Communications Workers of America. CWA Information Industry Report. Washington, D.C.: CWA, August 1989. 6. Cushman,John H., Jr. "Strike at Eastern Prompting Worry on Deregulation." New York Times, March 12, 1989, pp. 1, 26. 7. DuDolf, Richard IJ. "The RL•e of Communications Regulation: The Telegraph Industry, 1844-1880." ]oumal of Communication34(3), Summer 1984, pp. 52-66. 8. Flamm, Kenneth. Targeting tbe Computer. Washington, D.C.: Brooklngs Irtstirution, 1987.
32. U.S. Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration. NTIA Telecom 2000. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988. 33. U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Strategic Computing. Washington, D.C.: DARPA, 1983. I' .
34. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment and Earnings. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989. 35. U.S. General Accounting Office. Telepbone Communications: Cost and Funding Information on Lifeline Telephone Sen•ices. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1987.
9. "The Frenzied Skies." Business Week, December 19, 1988. 10. "Grcene Allows Ameritech to Provide Customer Name-Address Service Throughout Region, but
Revenues Must Be Used to Support Basic Phone Rates." Telecommunications Reports, February 13, 1989, pp. 1;-2. 11. llershey, Rohert D., Jr. "Senator Asks Study of Time Deal." New York Times, March 9, 1989.
12. Hills, Jlll. Deregufatirrg Telecorns. West port, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986. 13. Huber, Peter. Tbe Geodesic Network. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of]ustice, 1987. 14. Johnson, Le land L. Telepborre Assistance Programs for Low-Income Households. Santa Monlca, Cal.: Rand Corporation, 1988... 48
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When the first edition of this book appeared in 1981, relatively little had been published on media reform apart from governmentsponsored reports. This has changed. The media have become politicized as an issue, and the emergence of satellite TV. has prompted a debate about the future of broadcasting. There is now an intimidating plethora of articles, pamphlets, policy papers, reports, speeches, and books about media policy. This chapter is intended to provide a convenient summary of this literature. It tries also to chart different points of entry into the debate about media policy by mapping the main strategies for reform and describing the thinking that underlies them. At one level, policy discussion about the media is dominated by the debate between two opposing camps: disciples of the free market versus supporters of the public service approach. But within each of these two camps there are divergent tendencies. In the public service corner there is a split between traditionalists, who want to preserve the broadcasting system more or less as it was in the late 1980s, and radicals, who argue that public service broadcasting needs to be redefined and find expression in new institutional forms. Within the free market camp, there is also a broad split between those who oppose media regulation beyond the 'normal law of the land' and social market liberals who favour limited public intervention to secure specific public goals. These differences are presented in an ideal-typical form in Table 9. However, the debate about the media is also polarized between paternalists and libertarians. This creates a second axis that cuts across the divide between advocates of the free market and public service. The result is a ~omplex configuration of policy positions, which can be viewed at a glance in the simplified diagram on page 368. But for the sake of expository clarity, we will outline
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first the debate between free market and public service supporters, and then consider separately the arguments advanced by paternalists and libertarians. Only then will we try to piece the two together.
Free market approach The starting point of the free market approach is that consumers are the best judges of what is in their interests. Media policy should be geared therefore to creating the conditions of greatest possible competition in which consumers can exercise sovereign control. This produces a media system which gives people what they want: a diverse output to choose from; a 'discovery mechanism' by which consumers can extend their tastes and interests by shopping around; and, above all, media which are independent of government. Indeed there is no fundamental conflict, according to some neo-liberals, between the ideals of public service and the free market. 'All provision for the consumer on a competitive basis in a non-distorted market', writes the Financial Times journalist, Samuel Brittan, 'is a public service' (emphasis supplied). Since the press is organized on free market lines, most neoliberals see no need for reform. When confronted with evidence of press 'concentration and market distortion, they usually argue that new technology and the ending of restrictive trade union practices are in the process of reinvigorating competition. In any case, the threat to press freedom posed by state intervention is, according to many neo-liberals, more dangerous than the shortcoming that it is intended to remedy. Although neo-liberals are generally conservative in relation to the press, they are radical when it comes to broadcasting. The three main defects of public service television, they maintain, are that it is unresponsive to popular demand because it is dominated by a small elite; it is vulnerable to government pressure because it relies on state-sponsored privileges; and it costs too much because public service monopolies are a natural victim of trade union exploitation. Some also argue that public service broadcasting provides a protected haven for radicals. This is inmarked contrast to the competitive environment of the press where the consumer is sovereign and where, consequently, unpopular radical views get short shrift. Most neo-liberal~ argue, therefore, that broadcasting should be 'deregulated' and reconstituted along the free market lines of the
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press. Publicly owned broadcasting should be privatized. Regulation of commercial broadcasting should be abolished. Broadcasters should be subject, like publishers, only to the law of the land. Neo~liberals support this argument by pointing out that the traditional technical justification for public service broadcasting, based on the need to allocate and regulate scarce airwave frequencies, has been overtaken by events. The emergence of multichannel cable and satellite television has resulted in there being now more television channels than national papers to choose from· in some areas. Some commentators also pursue the press analogy by arguing that the technology exists for encrypting channels and programmes so that people can pay directly for what they view in much the way that they buy or subscribe to a newspaper or magazine. In short, it is now possible to remodel broadcasting along the competitive, unregulated lines of the press. This argument has created, however, considerable dissension within the ranks of neo-liberals. At the heart of the split between traditional and social market liberals on the right is the fact that conventional market rules do not apply in broadcasting. Television can put on extra 'sales' in terms of ratings at negligible additional cost. Consequently, advertising funded channels have an enormous financial incentive to concentrate on common denominator programmes which attract high ratings and a large advertising yield. A TV system based on advertising tends therefore to narrow consumer choice by ignoring minorities. On the other hand, pay-TV potentially generates a much wider choice because audiences have the opportunity to pay for the programmes that they particularly want. But pay-TV runs into public good problems because some viewers (and in particular low-income viewers) are excluded who could be catered for at little extra cost. Paychannels (i.e. subscription-based channels) do not provide the answer either. They are less sensitive to intensities of consumer preference than pay-TV but have the same public good defects. The solution, argue most neo-liberals, is to construct a broadcasting system which is based on a plural system of funding: advertising, pay-TV, and pay-channels. This allegedly overcomes the drawbacks inherent in each individual system of payment. But this is easier said than achieved. At the heart of the neoliberal dream is a vision, articulated with notable eloquence by Peter Jay, of 'electronic publishing' based on the nation-wide
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installation of fibre-optic cable. This would enable every household to have pay-TV sets with infinite channel capacity. The cable grid would be a two-way 'common carrier' permitting television producers to transmit any programme they wanted on payment of a transmission fee and enabling viewers to summon up any programme they wanted on payment of a programme charge. But although technically feasible, this would involve an enormous financial investment. For a time, many neo-liberals were under the illusion that this was a realistic prospect because they thought that British Telecom would install an extensive fibre-optic grid in the process of modernizing the copper wiring of household phones. 1 But as this prospect receded, so too did the dream of a perfect broadcasting market in which pay-TV would be a central feature. The failure of cable television to take off in Britain further set back neo-liberal hopes. It was fondly believed that private sector capital would help finance the installation of fibre-optic cable by developing a network of multi-channel cable television stations. But the anticipated boom in cable television never took place in Britain due to lack of demand. In early 1990, only 1.5 million homes had been passed by cable (including old as well as new systems) and of these homes only 19 per cent subscribed to cable television. In a desperate bid to boost flagging investment in cable television, the government relaxed in 1990 its restrictions on major holdings in cable television by· companies outside the EC. 2 But many commentators now believe that cable television has missed its historic opportunity to become established as a major force in Britain before the advent of direct broadcasting satellites. The. new generation of high- and medium-powered satellites is capable of transmitting television channels direct to peoples' homes over a large area, and requires only relatively inexpensive, small receiv-ing . dishes. On them incre·asingly rests the neoliberals' hope for creating a competitive market. In 1988, Sky Television launched its new four-channel satellite package for the UK market. This became a five-channel service when it merged in 1990 with ailing BSB satellite TV. In addition, the government announced a significant expansion of over-the-air broadcasting: three new national radio channels, the proliferation of new, local radio station!l on vacant frequencies, and the introduction of a fifth television channel capable of being received by the majority of households in Britain. In addition, some argue that MVDS (the cheap relaying of television channels in local areas by a low-
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powered transmitter) provides further potential for extending market competition. Neo-liberals are divided, however, over whether the competitive market has matured to the point when broadcasting can _be deregulated. The Adam Smith Institute led the way in 1984 by calling for the BBC to be broken up into 'an association of independent and separately financed stations', funded partly by advertising. Many neo-liberals now want to go much further and press the detonator button destroying all agencies regulating programme content. Cento Veljanovski, research director of the influential Institute of Economic Affairs, writes: 'Broadcasters must operate within the legal framework which governs taste and decency and the protection of privacy. But beyond the minimum constraints the market should decide.' The government, he adds, should simply 'sell franchises and then allow them to be traded among potential broadcasters'. 3 Even tough anti-monopoly controls (something that neo-libera.ls generally favour) can be set aside, in the view of some, .in order to promote investment in new television outlets and greater choice. As Rupert Murdoch argued in an eloquent lecture, 'cross-ownership of the media is a force for diversity'. 4 But there are aspects of the present situation that make even some convinced neo-liberals uneasy. The finite size of the advertising cake, and the lack of a developed pay-TV sector, make it potentially hazardous in their view to abandon all broadcasting controls. Premature deregulation now, they argue, could lower standards and reduce choice. They are the reformists who, when the crunch came, sided with the public service 'enemy' against free market revolutionaries. Their most notable monument is the social market Peacock Report (1986) on financing broadcasting. SoCial market approach Reformers in the social market tradition broadly endorse the core assumptions of the free market approach. Where they differ from traditional neo-liberals is in stressing that public intervention is needed to offset market distortions. The more interventionist among them also argue that a policy of laissez-faire is inherently incapable of producing the range of choice that free market theory promises, and consequently they favour public intervention to enlarge choice. This is usually justified with reference to the wider political or cultural role of the media in society.
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required to commission 25 per cent of their programmes (with exemptions) from independent production companies. But in fact a public service regime still remained at the heart of the broadcasting system under this reorganization. The BBC survived intact, without being obliged to accept advertising. Although Channel 4 will be compelled to sell its own advertising, it will also be assured a safety net income from television franchise companies if it makes a loss. This will enable Channel 4 to continue to be oriented towards minorities rather than a mass audience. Some public service. safeguards were also built into a bidding system for ITV (renamed Channel 3) franchises, ensuring that the top bidder will not automatically win. The 'light touch' new regulatory authority, ITC, has been given an arsenal of new powers - including the power to fine, and to shorten franchises with which to police Channel 3. And even the new Radio Authority has a remit to promote mixed programming and extend the range of local radio services in order to avoid back-to-back, mainstream . pop music. Whether these good intentions will be translated into practice remains to be seen. But the 1990 Broadcasting Act produced an ·angry response from the neo-liberal lobby, and indeed some criticism from social market neo-liberals on the Peacock Committee who complained angrily that their more radical proposals such as the privatization of BBC Radios 1 and 2, the auctioning of radio franchises, and the establishment of a Public Service Broadcasting Council had been ignored. In the event, social market reformism paved the way for the preservation of public service broadcasting by a new right government. But the social market challenge to public service broadcasting remains, and it has adherents on the left as well as the right. Typical of the left-wing variant is a plan for reorganizing radio services, advanced by Geof Mulgan and Peter Jenner from the libertarian new left of the Labour Party. Their starting point is that 'the BBC model of a large public bureaucracy has little to do with a modern idea of socialism'. It stifles risk and challenge, and is too closely linked to the state. More generally, they argue, the model of planned diversity through public regulation is insensitive to public demand. It 'implicitly assumes that radio should provide what people need rather than what they want ... regulation is used to impose its own idea of what is valuable', which in the case of the BBC means that the great majority of radio resources should be devoted to minority middle-class audiences. On the other hand,
This social market approach led the Peacock Committee to justify in the short term extensive public regulation of broadcasting. Its central thesis was that the best way of mimicking a fully competitive market in a situation where spectrum shortage limited competition was to make broadcasting organizations provide a mixed diet of programmes, and rely on different sources of revenue; 'Collective provision and regulation of programmes', concluded the Committee, 'does provide a better simulation of a market designed to reflect consumer preferences than a policy of laissez-faire' (emphasis supplied). This conclusion was influenced by two things: evidence suggesting that there was not sufficient advertising expenditure to fund a high level of programme investment in both the BBC and ITV; and research undertaken from the Leeds University Centre for TV Research which indicated that intense competition in the market-based TV system in the US restricted the diversity of peak-time programmes. Instead, the Committee argued for a phased-in introduction of a market system. In the first phase, the government should expand the broadcasting system, privatize a bit of it, promote independent production, and initiate the first steps towards deregulation. In the second phase (the 'later 90s'), the BBC should be funded by individual subscriptions. In the third and final phase, broadcasting regulation should be abolished. However, even in this final phase, the Committee suggested that there should continue to ~e a Public Service Broadcasting Council (PSBC) which would foster 'programmes of a more demanding kind with a high content of knowledge, culture, education and experiment (including entertainment)' because not enough of these programmes would be generated by a market-driven system. The PSBC would give grants to broadcasting organizations for the production of specific programmes, and would be financed by general taxation or rental payments for airwave frequencies. The government's 1990 Broadcasting Act largely followed the logic of this gradualist approach. It expanded the number of broadcasting outlets through more efficient spectrum management. It initiated some deregulation by announcing that ITV franchises would be put out to competitive tender, and that the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) would be replaced by the 'light touch' Independent Television Commission (ITC). Satellite television and licensed commercial radio would also be subject to less public service req1,1irements than the rest of the broadcasting system. And all television channels, including the BBC, would be
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argue that it should be strengthened. It should place the onus, it has been suggested, on large press groups to demonstrate that their acquisition is in the public interest rather than the other way round. The Act should also be extended to include the smaller regional chains, and the criteria for referring cases to the Monopolies Commission should be made more stringent. Other reformers argue that the situation has been allowed to deteriorate so badly that a policy of active divestment of the major press groups should be pursued. This could take the form of a set limit on the market share that any one group should be allowed to control in specified sectors of the press or a limit on the number of titles that any one group can control. Thus if press groups were restricted to owning no more than one national daily and one Sunday paper, ten local dailies and fifty local weeklies (paid-for and freesheet), it would result in Murdoch having to sell three national titles, Stevens and Maxwell each having to sell one national paper, the Thomson Corporation shedding three local dailies, and seven major groups having to sell between them over two hundred local ·weekly papers. Critics point out, however, that this divestment approach has considerable problems. Press chains could offtoad marginal or loss-making publications. Cut off from a corporate cross-subsidy, these publications could go under unless there was a public agency established to offer relaunch finance. Some local weeklies are also only viable if they obtain group editorial support. Furthermore the net effect of unscrambling a large number of titles might be merely to initiate a game of musical. chairs in which divested papers were bought by conglomerates like Lonrho, which were able to buy under the new monopoly rules. One way of circumventing these difficulties is to restrict divestment to the profitable powerhouse of the press - national papers. Labour's shadow media and arts minister, Mark Fisher, has also mooted the possibility of establishing a statutory option period in which sales of divested papers would be restricted to managementworker buy-outs or to independent consortia with no press interests. This could be organized in the form of an auction, with an independent market valuation establishing a reserve price. Bidders would be able to raise most of the money from private sources but could also apply for public venture capital. In this way, it is argued, anti-monopoly legislation would modify the capitalist character of the press and allow genuinely new voices to be heard. It has also been suggested that joint control of television, radio,
a policy of laissez-faire would encourage common denominator programming, concentration of ownership, and underfunding of the system. The answer, they suggest, is a third route in which a public agency would act as an enterprise board intervening in the market economy rather than. acting as a conventional regulator. Funded by receipts from spectrum fees or auctions, as well as public finance, its role would be to promote diversity in the ownership and output of the radio system. This would include new and innovative forms of ownership and control: employee ownership, subscribers with voting rights, consumer co-ops, and stations linked to institutions. Similar embryonic schemes have been proposed from the left in relation to television. They generally entail five elements: the defence of Channel 4; the promotion of an independent sector through a requirement on national networks to commission independently produced programmes; strict monopoly controls to prevent the growth of concentration in the independent sector; public subsidy for the development of a fibre-optic cable TV system which would provide a new delivery system for independently made programmes; and a revision of franchising arrangements for commercial television in a way that would encourage new forms of ownership and control. In addition, social market advocates on the left usually favour public intervention in the European television economy - something that we will review later since this has become a coalition position supported by, among others, public service traditionalists. The social market position in relation to broadcasting is still in the state of evolution, largely because discussion about broadcasting has been until recently defined by a public service consensus. Social market prescriptions are more developed in relation to the press where discussion has been grounded generally on acceptance of the market system. They boil down to three things: legislation to curb chain ownership; measures designed to assist the survival of weak publications; and public finance to assist the launch of new publications. Press anti-monopoly legislation was first introduced in J965, requiring large press groups to secure government permission before being allowed to buy new titles. Between 1965 and early 1990, 125 press acquisitions fell under the terms of this legislation. Yet permission for a take-over was refused in only five instances, none of which inyolved a major national title. 5 Because the Fair Trading Act has proved to be so ineffective, some reformers
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media. To avoid politically partisan awards, the supervisory board of the MEB would be composed of representatives from different political parties, media industry organizations (including both employers and ·unions), and relevant independent organizations like the Consumers' AssoCiation. The MEB would be an enabling organization, not a regulator. It could be funded by a levy on all media advertising, which if set at a flat rate of 2 per cent would ·yield a gross annual income of over £100 million. The other principal social market strategy in relation to the press is to promote competition through public grants. In some European countries, this has taken the form of blanket industrial subsidies such as postal or VAT tax concessions. These have the disadvantage of affording the greatest help to the strongest publications and so do little to offset the unequal competitive relationship between strong and weak papers. Advocates of this approach argue that a non-discriminatory approach avoids the danger of government control, and provides a subsidy cushion to an industry that has an especially important role in liberal democracies. The alternative approach entails the giving of selective aid to weak publications. This is justified on the grounds that small circulation papers benefit less from economies of scale than their larger circulation rivals, and tend to have lower advertising revenues per reader. The purpose of the subsidy is to equalize the competitive relationship between strong and weak papers, and thereby sustain a high level of competition. The most elaborate version of this approach is that in operation in Sweden: subsidies are awarded to 'secondary' papers. (i.e. non-market leaders) in relation to their circulation and volume of editorial newsprint, funded by a tax on all advertising. The danger of government manipulation is mitigated by organizing, as far as possible, the allocation of subsidies according to impersonal, automatic criteria. This has prevented a partisan allocation of subsidies to the government's friends in the press: indeed, the largest subsidy has long gone to a consistent right-wing critic of successive Social Democratic governments, Svenska Dagbladet. Left-wing critics of this subsidy system in Sweden complain that it fails to compensate down-market papers for the lower advertising generated by working:-class readers. Various schemes have been advocated in Britain which indirectly confront this problem by seeking to redistribute advertising revenue from strong to weak advertising papers, although all ambitious schemes
and newspapers should be prohibited by law as a way of promoting media diversity. The most notable effect of this legislation would be to force Murdoch to choose between Sky Television and his . British press group. Another anti-monopoly proposal, advocated by Bruce Page, is for the ownership of the Press Association to be divorced from the press chains. This would inject, he maintains, new variety into the press by encouraging a much-used news service to develop more autonomous news values. The second, much-canvassed social market approach _is to promote competition through the public funding of new ventures. This has been proposed in various forms: a National Print Corporation which would make available modern plant facilities, at subsidized prices, to under-resourced groups; or a Launch Fund which would aid the setting up of new publications with development grants, low interest loans, and management advice; or, more ambitiously, a Media Enterprise Board which would assist new companies and projects in both the press and broadcasting industries. The rationale for these proposals is that high market entry costs need to be offset if under-represented groups, with limited funds, are to gain a voice in the press. This will make the press more diverse and representative, and promote political debate essential to the healthy functioning of a democracy. An example of this policy working in practice is provided by the Press Subsidies Board in Sweden which helped to finance seventeen new papers between 1976 and 1984. The large majority of these papers survived, and their establishment helped to reverse the long-term trend towards increased market domination by a few, powerful press chains. Objections have been raised to public funding of new media ventures principally on the grounds that they could lead to a waste of public money in failed projects, and could be misused to help friends of the government or powerful media interests who do not need public subs_idies. Advocates of a Media Enterprise Board (MEB) have sought to meet these objections in the way they have framed their proposal. The MEB would be required to support only those projects which appear, on the basis of professional assessment, to have a reasonable chance of success. It would also support only consortia I) without extensive media interests, 2) with a demonstra~le need for public venture capital, and 3) whose projects would extend the cultural or political diversity of the
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so far advocated have technical difficulties. In a few instances, they might damage those papers which the redistributive scheme was designed to assist. This is because some strong advertising media would seek to offset an advertising levy by raising their rates, which could result in advertisers cutting out weaker papers in order to pay the increased rate charges. This possibility has prompted some reformers to advocate a narrowly targeted strategy geared to a limited objective: making middle- or down-market papers viable with a circulation as small as that of the Independent or Sunday Telegraph. One proposal, adapted from a: scheme already in operation in France, would award a cash bounty to national newspapers which receive less than 40 per cent of their revenue from advertising but devote over 25 per cent of their editorial content to public affairs. The grant would be allocated on a rising scale linked to circulation, until a ceiling of 750,000 was re·ached after which the grant would start to taper off. No British paper would currently qualify for this grant but it would encourage the launch and survival of new, non-elite · minority papers. Another proposal, also adapted from a French precedent, is to implement the press equivalent of a broadcasting 'common carrier' policy. A legal obligation could be imposed on wholesalers and newsagents to handle and display lawful publications· wherever they were requested to do so by publishers. The commercial interests of distributors could be protected, it is claimed, if a regulated administration charge were imposed on unsold copies and legal privilege was granted in relation to defamation cases. This would ensure, argue reformers, that minority publications gain as much access to the market in Britain as they do in France. Underlying discussion of these various forms of public intervention is a wider strategic debate. The main impetus behind their implementation in other European countries has been a desire to preserve the political press in the face of competition from more entertainment-oriented papers. But in Britain, the non-elite political press has largely disappeared: the rationale for a conservationist policy sustaining a political press in the name of editorial diversity has thus been partly overtaken by events. Times have changed, according to this argument, and public intervention designed to maintain the media as an arena of open public debate should concentrate on broadcasting. The counter-argument asserts that an aim of public policy should be to re-establish editorial diversity in the press. Priority
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should be given to assisting the birth of new publications through a public agency like the proposed MEB. But if the new -public agency is not to become an incubator for lame ducks, the ground rules of publishing also need to be modified to give new papers a fair chance of making their way. One reason why the Swedish Press Subsidy Board has been a successful midwife of new ventures is because it has also adopted a 'level playing field' policy that has given all minority papers a better prospect of survival. As for the wider contention that the press is not worth bothering about, interventionists argue that the press still performs a political function in liberal democracies and that its reform should be seen as part of a wider strategy for improving the media, for which there is growing support. Indeed, the proposal for a Media Enterprise Board, originating from the social market left of the Labour Party, has a .clear resemblance to the Public Service Broadcasting Council, proposed by the social market right on the Peacock Committee.
Public service approach Although the public service approach has been discussed already in this book, it may be helpful to summarize its main arguments here. Its central credo is that broadcasting should be publicly owned or regulated so that it serves the public good rather than private gain. Only in this way, it is argued, can broadcasting be prevented from becoming subservient to the commercial forces that make for low quality, cultural uniformity, and right-wing bias. Traditionalists argue that the ideals of public service broadcasting were successfully realized by the British broadcasting system in the late 1980s. Although the BBC competed with ITV for viewers, it did not compete for the same source of revenue. This produced, in their view, a creative balance of pressures encouraging both cultural purpose and audience responsiveness. The BBC had to attract viewers and listeners from the commercial system in order to justify the licence fee: it was thus under pressure to shed some of its Reithian paternalism. At the same time, the standards of ITV were raised through the active intervention of the IBA and by being forced to compete in quality against the BBC. As a consequence we enjoyed in the late 1980s, according to conservationists, by far the best broadcasting system in the world. This was manifested in various ways: high-quality programmes
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for both minorities and mass audiences; balanced and unsensational news coverage in marked contrast to the bingo-jingo press·; broadcasting provision that reflected the diversity of British society rather than a bland transatlantic culture; and a cheap, universally available service that did not discriminate against inaccessible areas or the poor. This celebration of British broadcasting is based on certain judgements about the role it should perform in society. In the view of traditional public service exponents, broadcasting should not be organized solely in order to maximize the gratification of consumer demand. Rather, it should seek to educate public taste by making accessible the best products of our cultural heritage, by sponsoring innovation and experiment, and by making available a wide diversity of programmes; it should also inform the electorate so that people are equipped to participate in a popular democracy; and it should entertain but within a publicly accountable framework that is sensitive to conventions of public decency and taste. Broadcasting, some traditionalists add, should also promote social cohesion at a time of increasing individualism and fragmentation. Public service supporters have attacked the Conservative government's broadcasting reforms on several counts. They claim that its 'greedy' fiscal policy of imposing a 'double tax' on commercial television in the form of an auction payment and a TV levy will result in less money for programmes and lower quality. They predict that the auctioning of the ITV franchises will lead inevitably to increasing commercialization - with more formula-based programmes and that this will depress, in turn, the quality of the BBC. Some also argue that the independent production quota is a way of undermining the core institutions of public service broadcasting. These arguments have given rise to a programme of restoration, which would undo the controversial features of the 1990 Broadcasting Act. Some traditionalists have come round to the view, however, that certain positive changes are needed in order to conserve the excellence of British broadcasting. Their first concern is that the public licence fee funding of the BBC - in their view, the cornerstone of the Corporation's political independence and public service commitment- may eventually be abolished in response to the combined clamour of left- and right-wing critics. These have argued variously that the fee makes the BBC vulnerable to political manipulation by governments, which alone have the power to authorize increases; that it has resulted in a
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growing gap between the funding of public and commercial broadcasting (with commercial television spending an estimated 62 per cent more on television services than the BBC in 1985); that it is inherently objectionable because it is a flat rate, regressive tax; and that it is too high due to the embargo on BBC advertising. The Conservative government's decision to peg the licence fee to the retail price index for three years from 1988 further underlined the need to rethink the funding of the BBC. Its effect was, in the words of the then Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, to impose 'in practice a substantial financial squeeze' since the inflation of broadcasting costs has long exceeded rises in the retail price index. Still more disturbing for traditionalists, the government indicated that it favoured replacing the licence fee in due course with a voluntary, private subscription. The possible implications of this were spelt out in the 1987 Jonscher Report which suggested, on the basis of a small market research sample, that there was no level of subscription fee which would finance the current level of funding of BBCl and BBC2. 6 Some people would opt out of paying the licence fee if it were made an optional charge for BBC services: this would necessitate an offsetting increase of the fee, which would deter further subscribers. A private subscriptionbased BBC would thus be a very different organization from what we have now. This has prompted conservationists to press for changes in the licence fee system as a way of answering critics and securing the long-term future of the BBC's public funding. The regressive nature of the licence fee could be mitigated, they suggest, if oldage pensioners and those on long-term benefit were exempted from payment, with the money made up by a Treasury grant. The BBC could also be insulated from political pressure through the establishment of an independent review body to advise the government about licence fee increases. Alternatively, the licence fee could be linked to increases in national earnings, which would remove the fee from the political sphere and guarantee the BBC a secure and rising income. Traditionalists' second main concern has been that satellite and cable television may undermine the public service tradition of broadcasting. Their response has been to press for the regulation of the new television industries so that they are an extension of the public service broadcasting system. They have met with only limited success. British satellite broadcasting has no statutory
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duty to provide high quality or mixed programming but following a late amendment to the 1990 Broadcasting Act, became subject to conventional impartiality rules. Public regulation of high-powered satellite television is made more difficult by the fact that it can be received by countries which have no jurisdiction over it. Traditional public service adherents argue, therefore, that there needs to be European-wide agreement to regulate satellite television in accordance with public service precepts. Each national government should be responsible for ensuring that these are adhered to by all broadcasting organizations that employ a satellite link-up within their jurisdiction or use satellite capacities or frequencies allocated to their state. In this way, the new 'space invaders' can be 'controlled'. The two agencies for negotiating such an agreement are the Council of Europe and the European Commission. The Council has a wider membership (currently 22 countries) but the 'conventions' it issues carry less force than the directives of the European Commission which are in principle binding on all members of the EC and require, where appropriate, changes in national legislation. 7 But while the machinery for securing an international public service framework is available, the political will is not. Europe has·different broadcasting traditions, and there is no unanimity in favour of a restrictive public service regime. In the event, the two broadcasting agreements negotiated at the Council of Europe and the European Commission in 1989 imposed no requirements for balanced news coverage, mixed programming, or programme quality. Partly at the insistence of the British government, provision was made to curb pornography and undue violence. But in the more important of the two agreements - the directive of the European Commission - the prohibition took the qualified form of an injunction against 'programmes which might seriously impair the ... development of minors•.s The implication is that pornographic or violent programmes which are transmitted late at night or which can be screened from children through technical means are perhaps not covered by the Commission's directive. There is another focus of concern which extends beyond the ranks of public service traditionalists to include a wider constituency: the fear that satellite and cable television will in the long run destabilize the economy of British broadcasting. British public service teleyision has flourished partly because it has been heavily protected. Its cornerstone is a restrictive quota that allows
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only 14 per cent of transmission time (with some minor exceptions) to be taken up with programmes made outside the EC. But satellite television is not subject to this restriction, and draws heavily on US television programmes because these can be bought at a fraction of the price of making new programmes (and, indeed, at only a small proportion of their original cost in the USA). The fear in essence is that cheap imported programmes, priced for international sale and transmitted across frontiers by satellite, will undermine the economy for making necessarily expensive programmes for a national market. The related concern is the effect that satellite broadcasting will have in the long term on the central institutions of public service broadcasting. If satellite television succeeds in building a significant audience, this will make it more difficult for the BBC to justify licence fee increases, and could reduce the advertising revenue of over-the-air commercial television. This could result in less. programme investment and lower quality. The combination of a contracting audience and a squeeze on revenues could also affect the policies of public service broadcasting organizations. They might cut back on minority programmes. They could also make more programmes for the common denominator of the global market rather than for the varied interests and experiences of the domestic audience - more series instead of single plays, more costume drama instead of contemporary fiction, more nature films instead of documentaries. Some have urged, therefore, the ret~ntion of some kind of protectionism. In particular social market radicals on the left have generally argued for two things: a limit on the proportion of nonEC programmes that are transmitted on satellite and cable television in order to sustain domestic television production, and a restriction on satellite and cable television advertising in order to protect the revenue base of publicly regulated commercial television. This has been strongly opposed by neo-liberals (including many social market radicals on the right) on the grounds that protectionism distorts the processes of the free market. In the event, the Council of Europe and the European Commission opted for an almost identical compromise in 1989. Advertising on all television channels was restricted to 15 per cent of daily transmission time, and a maximum of 20 per cent in any one hour - far more than regulators had been demanding. And only a permissive programme quota was agreed in which member states were required 'where practicable' to ensure that 51 per cent of television fiction
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and documentaries originated from the EC. This was a considerable dilution of what had originally been proposed in response to strong opposition from the British government and US television industry. In addition, some reformers have urged public service broadcasting organizations in Europe to work· closely together by, for example, initiating more eo-productions and selling to each other at a discounted price as a way of emulating the economies of scale of the US television industry. In particular, the European Commission should play a much more active role, they maintain, in preparing European television public service institutions to withstand open competition from the world's television superpower in the era of cross-frontier television. However, in 1989 the total budget of the Commission's 'Media '92' policy - which includes support for television productions using advanced technology, and the dubbing or subtitling of programmes - amounted to only £4.5 million. Just as right-wing reformers have argued that broadcasting should be remodelled on the press, so some left-wing reformers have advanced the same logic in reverse. Thus, Tony Benn has suggested that The Times should be established as a public corporation on the model of the BBC, while the former Labour MP Stuart Holland has argued that a publicly owned press distribution agency should be established in much the way that broadcasting transmitters were publicly owned. This would assist, in his view, the proper distribution of minority magazines which sometimes encounter censorship from newsagents and wholesalers. But the public service approach most favoured by a number of left-wing politicians is the regulation of franchised newspapers along the lines of commercial television. Labour MP Michael Meacher has proposed an Independent Press Authority, modelled on the IBA, which would franchise existing newspapers and require them to adhere to an ethical code of conduct and maintain 'a reasonable balance' in the presentation of news and opinion. These franchises would be subject to periodical review, and could be revoked. A more radical version of this scheme has been advanced by another Labour MP, Chris Mullin. Under his plan, the Independent Press Authority would franchise profitable groups rather than individual newspapers. Preference in the allocation of franchises would be given to staff consortia, companies with staff representa-
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tion, or companies without major commercial interests, all of which should be able, according to Mullin, to raise the necessary finance from the City due to the high earnings of the franchises. While the Authority would be required to ensure pluralism of viewpoints in its allocation of franchises, the newspapers concerned would not be obliged to provide balanced news coverage. Another variant of this approach has been advocated that would require papers reaching a specified circulation to allocate a set amount of editorial space to certain categories of content (such as public affairs coverage). This is in effect a press equivalent of the mixed programming duty imposed on ITV by the IBA. . Underlying this approach is the belief that British broadcasting is superior to the press. However, the two media are very different and some surgery is needed before a transplant will 'take'. For Meacher's scheme to work, for instance, a substitute would have to be found for the corporate cross-subsidies that keep alive some loss-making newspapers. Otherwise, a revocation of their franchise could result in their closure. And although the monopoly position of some local p~pers effectively precludes the establishment of new rivals, the press is not physically constrained, like over-theair broadcasting, by the availability of spectrum frequencies. This weakens the political justification for all press franchising schemes, particularly in relation to new papers. Franchising proposals which involve a wholesale change of ownership also invite the accusation that they are disenfranchising consumers. An alternative approach, preferred by some in the public service tradition, is to reform the press by taking 'skin grafts' from the broadcasting system and applying them to 'infected areas'. Successive Broadcasting Acts (including the 1990 Act) have restricted the acquisition of broadcasting franchises to individuals and companies in Britain or other EC countries. Since· becoming leader of the Labour Party, Neil Kinnock has suggested that the same stipulation should apply to the ownership of newspapers on the grounds that the current trend towards global concentration of media power is unhealthy, and that press controllers should be accountable to the communities they serve. This would have the effect of impaling Murdoch on the legislative eq!Jivalent of Morton's fork. Murdoch changed his nationality from Australian to American in the 1980s in order to circumvent the Federal Communications Commission's prohibition of foreign ownership of US television stations. Kinnock's proposal would thus force him to choose between his American television and British press
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interests. But it would also have other far-reaching consequences. The Canadian controllers of the Telegraph and Thomson groups would have to sell their British interests, while Maxwell would have to reorganize his empire currently controlled by a holding company registered in Liechtenstein. This perhaps explains why Kinnock's original proposal was watered down in Labour's 1987 general election manifesto to a commitment to 'ensure that ownership and control of the press and broadcasting are retained by citizens of Britain' (emphasis supplied). By implication, a citizenship requirement would apply only to future press acquisitions. Another skin graft proposal is for the Press Complaints Commission to be reconstituted along the lines of the Broadcasting Complaints Commission, first established by the 1981 Broadcasting Act. This would transform a voluntary organization, funded by the press industry, into a statutory body with teeth. It would have the legal authority to call for evidence and require publication of its judgements in offending publications. A more ambitious and innovative approach, rooted in the public service tradition, seeks to elevate editors into trustees of the public interest by reinforcing their autonomy and authority. Tom Baistow has argued that editors should be legally protected from improper pressure from proprietors, advertisers, and trade unions. Under his plan, editors could only be ~ppointed or dismissed . with the agreement of independent directors. This proposal leaves unclear, however, how independent directors would be appointed -whether by parliament, boards of directors, staff, elected readers' representatives, or a combination of these. It also allows considerable scope, in practice, for proprietors to exercise 'proper' control over editors through the allocation of editorial budgets. His scheme could also be criticized for championing the integrity of editors but not that of others employed on newspapers. However, a conscience clause could be inserted into journalists' and production workers' contracts of employment which would entitle them to appeal against unfair dismissal if they refused to· act in a way that was contrary to the Press Complaints Commission's code of conduct.
Radical pub_lic service There is a heterogeneous group of reformers which broadly accepts the core assumptions of the public service approach but which thinks that the ideals of public service cannot be equated with the flawed institutions of British broadcasting.
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Some reformers complain that the BBC and commercial television provide news and current affairs coverage from a narrow range of perspectives roughly corresponding to those of the leadership of the parliamentary parties. They point to broadcasting reporting of Northern Ireland which, they claim, has tended to define the crisis as being essentially one of maintaining law and order against criminals and terrorists, to the exclusion of other interpretations. This is merely an extreme instance, they maintain, of the way in which broadcasting generally reflects the ethos of the establishment. Another (though partly overlapping) group of critics advances broadly the same argument in 'cultural' terms. Although public service rhetoric sometimes stresses innovation and experiment, in practice British broadcasting provides, they allege, mainly safe and formulaic programmes. They argue that ITV is in reality a highly centralized network, geared to satisfying the lowest common denominator of mass viewing, while the BBC has largely abandoned its public service. commitment in favour of a shallow professionalism defined by market values. The BBC is also often criticized for being steeped in the culture of London and the Home Counties. While there is no unifying body of theory that informs the radical public service approach, the emphasis is on the role of broadcasting as a public sphere. This sees broadcasting as primarily an open arena of argument and debate, a public space in which different interests are negotiated and in which democratic pressure is exerted on government through the formation and expression of public opinion. Although this view of broadcasting usually refers to news and current affairs programmes, it can be extended to television drama which also provides a way of 'talking together about the processes of our common life'. Much of television fiction is, in a sense, a running commentary on the nature of prevailing social relationships. It provides a means for society to commune with itself, and for people to gain insight into the lives, circumstances, and needs of others. This conception of broadcasting is rooted in a view of society that stresses social association and mutual obligation, and tacitly rejects the neo-liberal view of society as an aggregation of contracting and exchanging individuals. 9 Television is seen not simply as a source of individual gratification but as an agency linking together different class, ethnic, and regional cultures. A central objective of broadcasting policy is therefore to ensure that television gives adequate expression to cultural diversity and
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political dissensus: that it is truly an institution of the public rather than of dominant power groups. This orientation has given rise to two broad strategies of reform: one, ameliorative and reformist, working with existing institutions and modifying them; and the other, a fundamentalist approach of reconstructing media institutions on the basis of entirely new blueprints. Each will be reviewed in turn. One reformist concern has been to try to reshape the formal control of broadcasting organizations so that it is more representative of society and more fully independent of government. This arises from two things. First, evidence that members of broadcasting authorities tend to be drawn from a narrow constituency. Thus, in early 1985, seven out of twelve BBC governors had been educated in Oxbridge. Nine out of twelve IBA members were also higher education graduates and, of the remaining nongraduates, one was a university Vice-Chancellor. Second, members of broadcasting authorities are all appointed by government and there are signs that this system is beginning to be abused. Increasing numbers of appointees are known friends of the government. Indeed the present Chairman of the BBC, Marmaduke Hussey, is a brother-in-law of a government minister, while his immediate predecessor, Stuart Young, was the brother of one. Concern about the political packing of broadcasting authorities has been reinforced by government attempts to chip away at the independence of television. The BBC bqard of governors tried to suppress in 1985 a controversial Real Lives programme about Northern Ireland in response to pressure from the Home Secretary, and relented only after an unprecedented strike by the BBC staff. It also emerged in 1985 that the state security service, MI5, had long been routinely involved in vetting recruits to the BBC (though this practice was subsequently restricted to a small number of appointments). In 1988 the government banned the direct transmission of political statements by members of named organizations in Northern Ireland (including elected politicians) as well as utterances supportive of these organizations. In a variety of direct and indirect ways, the Thatcher government also sought (as its predecessors had done) to generate pressure within broadcasting organizations for political self-censorship. Reformers have tried therefore to devise a better way of appointing people to broadcast authorities than direct, unmediated patronage by the .government of the day. Three alternatives have been suggested; the appointment of an independent review body
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to advise the government, direct elections, and nominations by representative national organizations and broadcasting staff. The superficially most attractive of these proposals- direct electionsis not without problems. Political parties are the only organizations really geared to mobilizing large numbers of people to vote. Direct elections may result therefore in the party in office gaining control of broadcasting authorities, which would frustrate the purpose of the reform - distancing public service broadcasting from the state. An alternative approach is to reconstitute broadcasting authorities along corporatist lines: with central and local government appointees, nominees from organizations representative of the plurality of interests in British society, and members elected by broadcasting staffs. Another preoccupation of reformers has been to find ways of extending the ideological range and cultural diversity of the broadcasting system through the adoption of new structures and guidelines. Campaigners in the radical public service tradition played a key role in persuading the Conservative government to establish Channel 4 in 1980. They argued that a new type of public service organization was needed - one that commissioned rather than made programmes, with a remit to innovate and appeal to minority audiences - as a way of reinvigorating the public service tradition. Channel 4 fulfilled its prospectus mainly perhaps because it was financed through subscription income by ITV companies. These had a vested interest in Channel4 remaining a minority channel. Some within the radical public service tradition argued also in favour of liberalizing the rules governing British broadcasting. The radical Changing Television Group claimed, for instance, that the injunction to report and interpret the news with 'due impartiality' was misconceived since there is no neutral point either side of which opposing viewpoints can be balanced. The difficulties inherent in the broadcasters' remit are resolved, according to the Group, through 'the homogeneous social, educational and economic background of the individuals who control and operate the BBC and ITV'. It would be far better, its representatives suggest, if broadcasting organizations had a public service duty to 'represent fairly and accurately the differences within society, and . . . produce programmes from the different perspectives in society'. This can be best achieved, in their view, by having openly partisan, clearly authored programmes 'given always the requirement to report with
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accuracy'. Their views thus converge from a different direction towards those of the neo-liberal right who want to deregulate. Some critics are in favour of going only half-way down this road. They fear that big business control of commercial broadcasting would cause it to lurch to the right in the absence of restraining guidelines; and that the personal prejudices of overwhelmingly white, male, and middle-class broadcasters would result, if given more play, in the ideological range of broadcasting contracting still further. They argue, therefore, that broadcasting rules should be liberalized but not fundamentally changed: the obligation to maintain an overall balance should apply not to individual series of TV programmes, as required under the 1990 Broadcasting Act, but to the full spectrum of programmes put out by any one channel. Some radicals in the public service tradition also pressed for a general relaxation of regulation. In particular, they argued that the IBA should be stripped of its pre-transmission censorship powers which were being used, they complained, to compress television's current affairs coverage into a consensual straitjacket. Again critics on the left echoed deregulators on the right, contributing to a climate of opinion in which the IBA was replaced by a 'light touch' authority. A variety of schemes have also been advanced from a radical public service perspective for reorganizing the BBC principally on the grounds that it is over-large (with over 20,000 employees), hierarchical, and bureaucratic. Among them are proposals that BBC2 should be established as an independent, regionally based channel, funded by a set proportion of the licence fee in order to avoid head-on competition with BBCl; that BBC television should be separated from BBC radio, with the latter funded by a radio licence; and that the BBC should lose responsibility for developing public service local radio. The alternative, fundamentalist approach takes the form of blueprints for a new media system that bears little relationship to what we have now but which is held up as an ideal to aim for. The proposal is for the leasing of publicly owned media facilities to the principal corporate interests in society or to dispersed, decentralized, and dem.ocratically run units. One example of the corporatist approach .is a plan for reorganizing the British media advanced by the Militant Tendency, a Trotskyist group within the Labour Party. It proposes that editorial control of both . newspapers and broadcasting should be vested in political parties
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in proportion to the votes that they win at general elections, and that specialist publications should be controlled by scientific~ technical, and professional groups and organizations. This scheme significantly omits how the important women's press should be organized. It is also only a quasi-pluralist plan since fascist political parties and specialist organizations without democratic structures would be excluded from having a stake in the media. A more pluralist version of the same model is afforded by the Dutch broadcasting system. This allocates both airtime and publicly owned production facilities, with technical staff, to different groups on the basis of their membership, linked to the sale of their programme guides. As a result, a variety of organizations from the commercial enterprise TROS, to political-cultural groupings like VARA (with close links to the Labour Party) and NCRV (a conservative, protestant organization) all provide a comprehensive package of services, with smaller organizations also being responsible for a limited quota of broadcasting hours each year. However, this system has encountered consumer resistance, reflected in the rapid development of cable television channels carrying a heavy diet of US programmes. An alternative approach is based on an evolutionary model in which pluralism is built into the media system through the development of a varied pattern of ownership including public trusts, self-managing collectives, public corporations with elected authorities, joint stock companies, and consortia launched with the help of public grants. This model is implicit in some of the radical social market and public service reforms that have been outlined. Lurking behind them is the hope that they will evolve over time into a media system in which all important groups and interests will have a voice. One common theme that runs through radical proposals for reorganizing the media is a debate about how much control should be exercised by· media workers. There is a basic split between those who favour media workers' control, on the one hand, and those who argue that outside interests should be represented since. media workers are unrepresentative of society as a whole. There is a further dispute as to whether media workers should be differentiated in terms of the spheres of operation that they should control or influence. One school of thought holds that journalists should shape editorial policy, while production workers should oversee the operation of production. Opinion also differs about what form eo-determination or internal democracy
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should take. The basic options in an ascending order of significance are: the right to be consulted about major decisions; participation in senior appointments; the election of senior per.: sonnel at regular intervals; representation on decision-making committees (editorial committees, boards of management, supervisory boards, etc.); and democratic control of all decisionmaking bodies. Reformers also differ in terms of how they propose the democratizing measures should be implemented. Some advocate a gradualist approach in which the terms of reference of franchiseand grant-giving bodies are changed to favour applications from organizations with democratic structures. Others argue that industrial democracy should be pioneered in publicly owned media, notably the BBC. A further group contends that workers should be given rights of representation by statute in all enterprises (including media organizations) where the majority of workers vote in favour of acquiring them.
Paternalism vs. libertarianism Overlaying the different approaches to media reform that have been outlined is a conflict between paternalism and libertarianism. This does not correspond to a simple dichotomy between free market and public service philosophies (although some in the neo-liberal tradition claim misleadingly that it does). There are free market paternalists as well as libertarians, just as there are public service paternalists as well as libertarians. Those in the libertarian tradition want to minimize restraints on freedom of expression. Liberty, as George Or well once powerfully put it, means allowing people freely to say things that one does not want to hear. It is a definition of freedom which many libertarians believe should be a foundation stone in our media system. The most prominent group among libertarians is made up of those who have campaigned for changes in the law. Their central argument is that greater weight should be given to the public's right to know the basis upon which all decisions affecting the common good are made, and to the fundamental right of freedom of expression, at the expense of other rights and interests which are overprotected by law. Many of them now argue that the right to freedom of expression should given special protection, whether in the form of a bill of rights, the incorporation of Article 10 of
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the European Convention on Human Rights into British law, or something more akin to the First Amendment to the American Constitution. They have also argued for the revision of a whole range of laws in a way that would extend the freedom of the media. Their principal target is the 1989 Official S~crets Act, which outlaws the unauthorized disclosure of information over. a wide area not directly connected with national security. For example Sarah Tisdall, jailed in 1984 for ·leaking to the Guardian ·how the government proposed to manage public opinion when the first US Cruise missile was sited in England, would still be liable for prosecution under the new Act even though her crime was to embarrass the government rather than endanger the country's defence. Another offensive feature of the Act, argue its critics, is that it fails to provide a public interest defence for those who reveal protected information. Some libertarians argue that the Official Secrets Act should be revised so that it applies only to the betrayal of secrets to a national enemy. They also argue that this reform should be accompanied by the introduction of a Freedom of Information Act which would give a legal right of access to documents in all government departments, with a High Court judge determining government claims to privilege. In their view, this reform would improve government by making it more accountable. They also claim that the arguments based on cost and efficiency that have been advanced against a freedom of information law are refuted by the experience of countries like Australia, Canada, and the USA where such a law has already been introduced. Libertarians also call for the abolition of a number of ancient and restrictive laws, most. notably the law of blasphemy and the Incitement of Disaffection Act which makes it an offence to encourage members of the armed forces or the police to disobey orders. Under its provision, Pat Arrowsmith was jailed in 1975 for distributing a leaflet to soldiers calling upon them not to serve in Ulster. A powerful case. has also been made that laws which make investigative journalism difficult in Britain should be modified. The contention is that the laws of confidence and copyright are being manipulated to turn information into a restrictive property right; that defamation law deters critical probing of the powerful while failing to provide adequate protection for the general public (since freedom from unjustified defamation is the only important
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civil right not covered by legal aid); and that the law of contempt prevents the publication of some information which should be in the public domain. A number of libertarian lawyers argue therefore that greater weight needs to be given in the courts to public interest justifications for breaching copyright and confidence laws. Contempt law needs to be abolished, some would urge, in cases not tried by juries since judges should be capable of reaching proper judgements uninftuenced by media reporting. Some reformers also contend that most libel cases (other than criminal libel) should be handled by a media ombudsman with the power to authorize retractions and award damages. This would diminish the lottery penalties of investigation, and make public remedy more widely available by making it much cheaper to initiate proceedings for redress. A similar reasoning is deployed in relation to invasions of privacy. Many libertarians are opposed to the introduction of a privacy law on the grounds that it would discourage the exposure of wrongdoing by powerful individuals. They argue that unjustified intrusions of privacy and other excesses of tabloid journalism are best curbed by a voluntary code of conduct, whether upheld by readers' representatives on individual papers or by the Press Complaints Commission. Ultimately, this system of selfregulation depends on sanctions taken by employers against individual journalists. · · An alternative, beefed-up version of this approach is provided by the system of self-regulation in Swed~n. where a code of conduct is negotiated between the publishers' organization and journalists' union. Journalists have the right to refuse to write a story that transgresses the code of conduct: the collective organization of journalists thus underwrites the exercise of individual responsibility by its members. In addition, members of the public can appeal to the Press Ombudsman for redress. Where the alleged offence is a serious one, the case is referred to the Press Council which is vested by publishers with the power to fine and order publication of its judgements. This model thus seeks to establish an effective system of self-regulation without resorting to statesanctioned, legal control. Some lawyers argue also that the exercise of prior restraint is also an often unjustified limitation on media freedom. A major obstacle to investigative reporting is, they maintain, the readiness with which High Court judges issue injunctions if it is suggested that a forthcoming' programme or article will infringe the law. The granting of injunctions can amount, in their view, to a form of
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pre-censorship since it can result in delays causing the report to become out of date and unusable. It also makes for bad journalism since it discourages journalists from cross-checking their stories for fear of provoking a gagging injunction. Some lawyers argue, therefore, that there should be no prior restraint by court injunction except in relation to information which damages the national interest or prejudices criminal proceedings. The only remedy for breach of confidence or copyright (other than patents) would be money damages assessed after publication or transmission. Alternatively, it has been suggested that no injunction banning publication of material should be granted without the judge first hearing both sides argue their case. Some libertarians also argue that obscenity and indecency laws should be modified. Their views influenced the Williams Committee (1979) which recommended that legal restraint should be formally lifted from all explicit writing in publications where there is no offensive illustration. However, it also advocated that forms of pornography, 'whose unrestricted availability is offensive to reasonable people', should not be sold to persons under the age of 18, and that pictorial pornography featuring under-age or sadistic sex should remain subject to specific prohibition. The Committee's recommendations, which would have led to a significant liberalizing of the law, were rejected. Critics have also attacked the Video Recordings Act (1984), complaining that it has resulted in a massive apparatus of censorship involving the inspection of all videos featuring sex or violence (with minor exemptions). This has led, they maintain, to an unnecessarily restrictive policy. 'Video nasties'- the target of the Act - could be better dealt with, in their view, by empowering the British Board of Film Classification to respond to complaints from the police and public about specific videos and, where desirable, prohibit their sale. Libertarians usually oppose the suggestion frequently mooted by public service radicals that broadcasters should be subject to a duty to 'combat racism, sexism and class bias'. They argue that laws already lay down the acceptable levels of racial intolerance, obscenity, and defamation, and that to impose a more restrictive code on broadcasting is an unacceptable limitation on freedom of expression. They also argue that it sets a precedent that could become the basis for a widening gyre of censorship extending for example to communism and other forms of political thinking judged to be anti-social.
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The conventional libertarian argument is usually constructed in terms of securing the maximum legal freedom of expression of the media compatible with the public interest. But essentially the same argument has been recast by some libertarians in a differently inflected form: securing the maximum freedom of expression through the media. It currently costs up to £2 million to establish a local commercial radio station; over £15 million to establish a new national daily; about £30 million to develop a cable television station; and well over £500 million to establish a new, multi-channel satellite service. These high costs explain, according to some libertarians, why it is necessary to lower the barriers to media ownership through public intervention if wider interests are to be represented and true diversity of expression is to be secured. A similar argument is sometimes articulated in terms of extending access to the media through a legal right of reply. The former Labour MP Frank Allaun proposed a celebrated private members' bill in 1981 which would have extended readers' freedom of expression in the press by giving them the right, enforceable in the courts, to secure· counter-statements to 'distortions'. Others have since argued for a more circumscribed right of reply to factual misrepresentations in newspapers enforced either by the courts or by a press ombudsman. The legal right of reply exists in many European countries, and is notionally available in the case of British television and radio through.the Broadcasting Complaints Commission, set up in 1981. Finally, libertarian arguments are sometimes deployed in support of internal democracy within the media. The case for extending the freedom of the media is recast to justify extending freedom within the media. A small flick of the wrist, so to speak, changes the trajectory of the argument. The freedom of proprietors - the locus of media freedom in conventional liberal rhetoric - is redefined as a constraint, limiting the freedom of expression of journalists. Whereas libertarians stress the benefits of freedom, paternalists stress the harm that may result from licence. Certain individual rights - the right to privacy, a good reputation, a fair trial, security, and property - should override freedom of expression unless an overwhelming case can be made to the contrary. In the paternalist approach, these rights are also broadly defined to ensure adequate protection. For example, the right to security covers not only the protection of defence secrets and other matters relating to national security but also the maintenance of law and
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order, support for discipline in the armed forces, the protection of minors, and the prohibition of incitement to group hatred .. Some paternalists also argue that the freedom of the media should be curtailed so that it conforms to the moral consensus of the nation or, at least, does not violate the sensibilities of reasonable people. As the Broadcasting Standards Council argued in its 1989 code of practice: 'The assumption of freedom in broadcasting still requires some expression of a responsible understanding between audience and broadcasters on how and when it is to be expressed.' 10 This implicitly goes beyond the case for limited censorship - the prohibition of communications which do manifest and unjustified harm to others - to a plea for a broader measure of control in the name of social responsibility. This can become the basis for censorship over quite a wide area: for example, bad language that may cause offence; displays of indecency which offend a sense of sexual modesty; and portrayals of violence that cause distress. The protection of sensibilities can override, according to this logic; the disclosure of information wfth a strong public interest justification. Thus, it has long been customary to sanitize the reporting of wars by editing out pictures that may upset people even though these pictures may have the effect of encouraging aversion to unjustified violence. Public harm is also invoked as a justification for suppressing communications which are still widely available - namely displays of pornography and gratuitous violence. It is claimed (with little empirical justification) 11 that the depiction of violence encourages imitative acts of violence, while pornography leads to sex .crimes. A more sophisticated version of this argument postulates a more indirect causal relationship: namely that certain forms of porno7 graphy promote indirectly male violence against women by reinforcing misogynistic elements within male culture, while television violence (particularly when portrayed in a positive light) feeds violence in real life by fostering aggressive elements in popular culture. Censorship is also advocated as an instrument of social engineering. Pornography expresses anti-social attitudes, it is argued, that should be -suppressed. It is inherently oppressive: it demeans with its constant suggestion of women's availability, and it fosters through the expression of scorn and contempt values that give rise to discriminatory acts against women. A parallel is sometimes made between pornography and incitement to racial hatred on the
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grounds that both detract from the status of the victim. But in fact, incitement to racial hatred is only usually prosecuted in Britain when public disorder is likely to be the outcome - a criterion that excludes most racist communications. The gathering impetus towards moral censorship in the 1980s gave rise to changes in media regulation. The Broadcasting Standards Council was established in 1988 to provide a focus for public concern about sex, violence, and standards of taste and decency in broadcasting. Its remit was to monitor the performance of broadcasting, respond to public complaints, and draw up and maintain a moral code of conduct for broadcasting. The Council was strengthened in 1990 by being put on a statutory footing with the power to compel publication of its indictments by offending channels, although it does not have the authority to enforce its moral code. However, the 1990 Broadcasting Act requires licensed broadcasters not to transmit programmes offensive to public feeling, and charges all broadcasters to 'reflect the general effect' of the Council's code. Broadcasting was also made subject for the first time in 1990 to the Obscene Publications Act. Paternalism in a broad sense has been the guiding philosophy underpinning the organization of broadcasting since its inception, and the demand for increased moral regulation can be accommodated through existing structures of control. But demands for increased moral and ethical regulation of the press - prompted in part by a backlash against the excesses of tabloid journalism - can only be realized through the adoption of new measures. The two most strongly canvassed proposals in the late 1980s were the introduction of a restrictive privacy law, and the establishment of the Press Council as a statutory body able to exact fines and compel publication of its indictments.
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joined conservative traditionalists like Mary Whitehouse in calling for greater moral regulation of the media (for a summary guide, see Table 10). Indeed, both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party are split over media policy. While these splits are not coterminous, there are striking points of similarity. Table 10
Politics of the media Paternalism Reithian
Thatcherite
Puritan feminists
Mary Whitehouse
Franchising newspapers
New legal controls Conservative policy on broadcasting
Free market
Labour policy on broadcasting
--------+-----Conservative policy on press
Regulated market
Labour policy on press
Libertarian New Left
Adam Smith Institute
Map of media politics The simple dichotomy of left and right does not adequately describe the politics of the media. In broad terms, those on the right are still more inclined to support a free market policy than those on the left. But this difference is overlaid by a cleavage between paternalism and libertarianism that does not correspond to a left...:.right split. This has resulted in strange convergencies. The radical community radio movement and the right-wing Adam Smith Institute have both pressed for the deregulation of broadcasting: similarly, some left-wing feminists like Clare Short have
Libertarianism
One powerful group of radicals in the Conservative Party, epitomized by Margaret Thatcher, are neo-liberal paternalists who favour both a free market regime for the media and extensive moral and national security controls. They pressed for more privatization and commercialization, including the introduction of advertising on the BBC. But they also urged the setting up of the Broadcasting Standards Council to check the permissiveness of television,
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pressed for concerted European regulation of pornography on television, and backed the television ban on Sinn Fein. There is another radical group within the Conservative Party, represented by the nominally non-aligned Adam Smith Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs, who favour the relaxation of both content and economic controls over broadcasting. Believing in both the free market and libertarian reform, they increasingly clashed with their right-wing allies, accusing them of 'new-style authoritarianism'. As Samuel Brittan, an influential figure on the libertarian new right and a former member of the Peacock Committee, put it: In putting forward the idea of a free broadcasting market without censorship, Peacock exposed many of the contradictions in the Thatcherite espousal of market forces. In principle, Mrs Thatcher and her supporters are all in favour of deregulation, competition and consumer choice. But they are also even more distrustful than traditionalist Tories of policies that allow people to listen to and watch what they like, subject only to the law of the land. They espouse the market system but dislike the libertarian value-judgements involved in its operation.l2 . But the main body of opinion in the Conservative Party still falls within the neo-Reithian tradition that is committed to a regulated broadcasting system dedicated to informing, educating, and entertaining. It includes traditionalists who attach importance to defending standards of excellence and maintaining British cultural standards as well as some revisionists, influenced by neo-liberals, who feel that some modification in favour of the market-place is desirable. This centrist tendency, epitomized by Douglas Hurd, who as Home Secretary presided over the 1990 broadcasting reorganization, favoured a compromise: expanding the broadcasting system, liberalizing it a little in economic rather than in moral terms, but leaving it fundamentally unchanged. These Conservatives (with a small as well as a large 'c') were the dominant influence shaping the 1990 Broadcasting Act. There is also a dominant, centrist bloc within the Labour Party, flanked on either side by strongly paternalistic and libertarian wings. On the paternalistic left there is a dwindling group of oldfashioned Reithians, morally affronted by commercial advertising, who at heart favour a public service monopoly informed by the belief that 'few know what they want and fewer still know what they
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need'. There is also another, growing group, who are in a sense the modern heirs of Reithian paternalism. They want to restore a sense of mission to broadcasting - but as a force against sexism and racism. Some of them favour controls over sex on television not far removed from those advocated by the moral regulators of the traditional right. On the libertarian left there are a number of groups. One idealistic group with limited influence would like to go back to the drawing board and create a new broadcasting system based on autonomous, local units. Another niore significant group, represented by GLC veterans like Geof Mulgan, are committed to the liberalization of programme controls within the framework of a social market economy for broadcasting. Their views on broadcasting policy are more closely aligned, in practice, to those of the libertarian new right than to paternalists on their own side. However, the dominant tendency within the Labour Party wants to slap a preservation order on the broadcasting system as it was in about 1989, and is fearful that the development of a new greenfield site in the form of satellite television may in due course undermine the listed buildings of . British historic past. As represented by Roy Hattersley, their views on broadcasting policy are remarkably similar to those of traditional Conservatives like :Oouglas Hurd. They believe in a publicly regulated mixed economy of broadcasting, informed by a commitment to inform, educate, and entertain. Their only significant difference from their Tory counterparts is that they are more opposed to gradual economic liberalization (in particular, the auctioning of franchises), and are more inclined to favour economic regulation of satellite television. In conjunction with the dominant bloc in the Conservative Party, they represent the consensual, middle ground of broadcasting politics. There are also parallel lines of cleavage within the Conservative and Labour Parties over press policy. However, internal differences over press policy are less pronounced than they are over broadcasting because the press is judged to be less controversial. They are also less symmetrical. A sizeable bloc within the parliamentary Labour Party - once a majority but now probably a minority - wants no real change in press policy. This bloc is flanked, on the one hand by public service regulators who want to franchise newspapers and, on the other hand, by social market radicals who want to .promote newspaper competition and diversity. The Labour Party is also
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divided between those who want to curb the excesses of tabloid journalism through new legal controls, and those who want to liberalize media law (with some quixotically wanting to do both). A new consensus appears to be emerging, however, within the parliamentary Labour Party in favour of 'doing something about the press'. This is likely to result in an official commitment to social market reform within a libertarian framework: new antimonopoly controls, accompanied by a freedom of information law and liberalization of the Official Secrets Act. The majority of the Conservative Party wants no change in press policy. But it too has competing libertarian and paternalist wings - one favouring a liberalized Official Secrets Act, and the other pressing for tougher legislative controls, including a privacy law. While there is no right-wing equivalent to left-wing socialists who want public service regulation of franchised newspapers, there are some on the neo-liberal right who are as committed to curbing the growth of media monopoly as radicals on the left. In short, the real battle lines in the debate about media reform do not correspond to the dragooned confrontations between 'whipped' MPs in the Commons. Even within the two major parties, there are groups which have more affinity with their opponents over media policy than they have with people on their own side. Adding to the fluidity of the situation is the dynamic created by rapid change in the technology of the media. In this unpredictable situation, it is just possible to hope that a modified media system may emerge over time: one with power and respon·sibility - but to the public rather than to proprietors and governments.
Notes 1. This is a central flaw at the heart of the Peacock Committee Report [Report of the Committee on Financing the BBC (London, HMSO, 1986)]. 2. However, this restriction had been evaded with the connivance of the Cable TV Authority through the creation of trust companies registered in the Channel Islands. It is unlikely, therefore, that the relaxation of this restriction will make much difference. 3. Cento Veljanovski, 'Competition in broadcasting' in C. Veljanovski (ed.), Freedom in Broadcasting (London, Institute of Economic Affairs, 1989), p. 24. 4. Rupert Murdoch, 'Freedom in broadcasting', MacTaggart Lecture 1989 (London, News International, 1989), p. 9.
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5. Derived from Royal Commission on the Press 1974-7 Final Report (London, HMSO) pp. 131-2; written answers from the Department of Trade and Industry to Austin Mitchell MP (19 December. 1980) and Mark Fisher MP (29 January 1990). 6. Subscription Television: A Study for the Home Office (London, HMSO, 1987). 7. For a useful discussion of European broadcasting politics, see in particular Vincent Porter, 'The Janus. character of television broadcasting' in Gareth Locksley (ed.), Integration: The Single European Market and the Information Communication Technologies (London, Pinter, 1990). 8. Council Directive (3 October 1989), Official Journal of the European Communities, No. L 298/23, Article 22. A more restrictive formulation is contained in European Convention on Transfrontier Television, Council of Europe (text adopted 15 March 1989), Article
7. 9. For example, see. Richard Sparks and lan Taylor, 'Mass communications' in Philip Brown and Richard Sparks (eds), Beyond Thatcherism (Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1989). 10. British Standards Council, Annual Report 1988-9 and Code of Practice (London: British Standards Council, 1989), p. 9. 11. See Guy Cumberbatch and Denis Howitt, A Measure of Uncertainty: The Effects of the Mass Media (London,.Libbey, 1989). 12. Samuel Brittan, ·'The case for the consumer market' in C. Veljanovski (ed.), op. cit., 1989, p. 40.
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[23] The regu latio n and dere gula tion of telev ision : a Briti sh/W est Euro pean • n comp artso Howard Davis and Carl Levy
Abstract This article compares and contrasts the systems of regulation and deregulation in the British and West European television industries. Although all television systems were an:ected by the information revolution and neo-liberal political economy in the 1980s, m many respects the British experience was unique. The evolution of a mixed public/private system over forty years and the unique position of the BBC as ~ ~ource ofskilled ~~hour and as a cultural benchmark for the entire industry, placed it m a stronger position than other public service systems to meet the new challenges to its hege.mony. ~he British televisio~ industry demonstrates the tenacity of well-established soc1al structures and pohcy-making behaviour. This will be shown by revie,ving the history of the recent Broadcasting Act The European dimension ofbroadcasti ng policy and regulation is discussed in terms of the EC Directives ·and support fo~ high definition television. This shows that the aim of protecting European mdustry and culture is not dissimilar from the ambitions of national regulation at an earlier stage.
Introducti on The ground rules of European broadcasting are being rewritten more compreh~nsive.Iy than at any time in their history. To recognize and interpret all the d1mens10ns of the process is a challenge to broadcasting research ~ec~us~ hitherto its main orientation has been towards the political, mstltutwnal and cultural aspects of broadcasting rather than economic questions, and essentially within national boundaries. International institutions and international programme flows existed but were restricted in their new media environment calls for a political economy of ~ims an? sco~e. mternatlonahzatton, but one which continues to recognize the distinctiveness of national broadcasting institutions and the continuities as well as discontinuities of the policy process.
!he
Economy and Society Volume 21 Number 4 November 1992
© Routledge 1992 0308-5147/9 2/2104-0453 $3.00/1
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Three varieties of political economy of communication are identified by Dyson and Humphreys (1990). They are, first, the neo-liberal interpretation represented by Thatcherism, which justifies the values of competition and choice on the grounds of the universal and unavoidable exigencies of international technological and market rationality associated with the emerging 'information society' (Dyson and Humphreys 1990: 231). The second is neo-mercantilism, or the pursuit of 'economic statecraft' in the interests of national wealth and power. Both, according to Dyson and Humphreys, overstate the importance of trends they select as being significant: 'neoliberalism exaggerates the 'supremacy of markets over politics; neomercantilism exaggerates the supremacy of politics over markets' (ibid.: 231). They propose a third alternative, neopluralism, in which communications policies are viewed as being shaped by highly complex configurations of forces, international and domestic, within which institutional structures and policy networks play a central role (ibid.: xii). There is virtue in this more open account, especially as a starting point for empirical investigation, and yet notions of contingency, complexity and conflict are not in themselves a sufficient basis for explanation. The following analysis shows that the continuities of national policy-making have tended to produce similar solutions to the problems ofbroadcasting, finance and control, even in the new environment Traditional policy assumptions and institutions continue to be influential at the national level, and may involve greater coherence than is implied by the concept of 'neo-pluralism'. They may also exert a similar influence· at the international level as the European Community (EC) expands its functions as competition watchdog and promoter of European culture. This article compares and contrasts the systems of regulation and deregulation in the British and West European television industries. Although all television systems were affected by the information revolution and neo-liberal political economy in the 1980s, in many respects the British experience was unique. The evolution of a mixed public/private system over forty years and the unique position of the BBC as a source of skilled labour and as a cultural benchmark for the entire industry, placed it in a stronger position than other public service systems to meet the new challenge to its hegemony. Comparisons not only reveal differences between policy-making traditions within West European broadcasting, they also contribute to the broader debate m·er the nature of privatization and deregulation throughout \Yestern Europe. The British tele,ision industry clearly demonstrates the tenacity of well-established social structures and policy-making beha\iour. The history of the recent Broadcasting Act discussed in the first section shows the strong continuities over decades of the practices and ethos which inform the British model of regulation. The second part compares the British S}"Stem "ith counterparts in western continental Europe in the light of those 'European' television policies which are now emerging. Broadcasting policy-making is characterized by certain methods and tempi that have not changed for decades (Le\-y 1990). The process itself is still highly fragmented amongst cabinet offices, nationalized and (now priYatized)
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industries and technical advisory committees. Furthermore, informal selfregulation carried out by broadcasting professionals themselves has been as important in shaping implementation of policy as statute law. At least until the early 1990s the British duopolistic system, with its unique mixture of public and private influences, retarded and moderated the more drastic effects that deregulation has visited upon other European nations. The strength of the dtiopoly had been-its ability to produce high quality programmes, fulfil public service requirements and yet cater to the populistic or 'American' tastes of a substantial percentage of the television audience. It has been therefore quite able to meet the challenges of North American and off-shore satellite competitors with well-supplied programme catalogues. At the moment there is a fear that - due to pressures from British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB), the recession, the effects on those who paid over the odds for their franchise and the necessity to strengthen balance sheets to confront predators after 1994- the ITV (Independent Television) companies may televize their own soap operas to rival those of BSkyB, add mor~ games shows and further marginalize documentaries and special news programmes. But ITV and the BBC have always claimed that they were the defenders of quality television while lamenting the passage of the golden age of television. Fear of the decline in standards in television has been a constant since commercial television first started in 1954. But it is just this mixture of populism and public service broadcasting which has placed Britain in an extremely good position to sell English language programmes not only to its European neighbours but to be intimately involved in American markets as· well. If the Japanese and the Americans have dominated the hardware of the media revolution, the British have become a significant if junior partner in the diffusion of its software. But how junior this partnership might be vexes the British television industry's relationship with those of other member-states of the European Community. Attempts to create a single market for the production and marketing of the hardware and software of the information revolution in general and television in particular have been manifest since the early 1980s. The SEM (Single European Market), the Directives of the European Community and the Conventions of the Council of Europe have clashed with the peculiar role Britain plays as middleman between Hollywood ' Madison Avenue and the non-anglophone European cultures. and Market European One of the most important reasons why the Single Economic and Monetary Union have been thrust to the centre of the European Community's agenda was the fear that the next generation of technology would consign the European industrial economies to the second division. The high stakes involved are revealed in the chequered history of the Europ.ean collaborative projects on High Definition Television (HDTV) (Negrme and Papathanassopoulos 1990; Niblock 1991; Gavin 1991;Joosten 1991; Corcoran 1992). The Japanese and global company programmes threatened to undermine the viability of one remaining area of electronic consumer goods - televisions - where the Europeans actually had some
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advantages. The manifold usages of HDTV technology in computers, medicine and industrial production was an added and ominous threat (Skapinder 1991; Joosten 1991; Corcoran 1992). Yet Britain's special relationships with both the US and Japan made her, to use Stephen George's phrase, an awkward partner (George 1990). We shall return to this in greater detail in the second part of this article, here we merely point to the fact that Britain's ambiguity towards a European regional trading bloc, its long-term goal under Labour and Conservative governments to defend its extraEuropean trading links that privilege the service industries and invisibles, is reflected nicely in the television industry's deep ambivalence towards European projects which jeopardize other crucial markets (George 1991). Until the end of the 1980s, it was widely believed that the inflationary costs of television production might undermine the viability of the British system. Pressures from the government to limit television licence fee increases, and the growing resentment by advertisers towards the inflationary costs of ITV companies' monopoly of advertisement slots, encouraged the Thatcher government to inject free-market mechanisms into this system. But as we will show, the perverse effects of policy-making have assured the continual dominance of a moderately altered old guard for at least the next decade. While it is certainly true that the ITV companies and the BBC have felt the rigours of the marketplace, it was the new media which were almost killed off by it (Levy 1990: 169-70). Until this year cable could only be termed a promise unfulfilled. It has been saved by substantial investments by the American cable industry but it is still . expanding very slowly. As for satellite, BSB (British Satellite Broadcasting) was on the verge of bankruptcy when it merged with Sky Television in the autumn of 1990. At that time, Sky was losing over ten million pounds a week and almost drove Murdoch's News International to the brink. Since then News International's debt has been restructured and British Sky Broadcasting is now recording a modest operating profit but still must service interest payments running at more than two million pou~ds a week. Currently between one and two million homes are receiving cable and 13 per cent of homes are receiving satellite television (Independent Television Commission 1992: 24; Firzancial Times 21 May 1992: 8). But what is the saturation point? Will satellite penetration stagnate at two million homes? Success may come, but it will probably be more modest than Murdoch ever dreamt. At the moment BSkyB's two bright spots are its virtual monopoly of subscription film television in Britain and its freedom to buy the rights of public sporting events. The recent football deal \vith the BBC not only shows the capability of public broadcasting in parrying the threat from satellite, it may also underline the future ability of Murdoch's organization to establish strategic alliances with BBC and tl1e ITV companies. Altl10ugh the BBC will show recorded football games, the principle that viewing live games requires an extra fee is a serious erosion of the public domain. Financially, public sporting events and films, plus a smaller specialist audience of businessmen, have increased the chances
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that BSkyB may contribute some profit to its parent group by the turn of the century (Snoddy 1991a: I; Bell1992: 34). As for the advertisers who saw the new entrepreneurs, the information revolution and Thatcher's government as three sticks to beat down ITV's advertising costs, their hopes have been cruelly delayed by the recession: neither advertisers nor agencies can benefit from lower costs when markets stagnate. But even when recovery occurs their hopes may not be redeemed. If the new media revolution does fragment markets, it will probably do so in an uneven fashion. ITV will11till be the only place to achieve effective coverage, reliance on narrowcasting will only bring patchy iflucrative markets. It could even be argued that before the utopia of universal fibre-optics introduces the public to cheap access to hundreds of channels, fragmentation will increase the monopoly power of the ITV companies (Tunstall 1990: 249-53; Snoddy 1991a: I). While talking about the sovereign choice of the consumer, the new media moguls, the advertisers and their agencies seemed to have done little surveying of public attitudes towards television in general and the new media in particular. Although the Thatcher government was motivated by neoliberal ideology and a repudiation of post-war corporatist muddle, the confusing and contradictory policy adopted towards the technology of the new media bore striking similarities to the industrial plans of Labour and Conservative governments since the late 1950s. Cable and satellite had its national champions, its unrealistic boosterism and a suspicious Treasury which in the first case bridled at public projects and in the second stopped the very tax incentives to allow private entrepreneurs to get on with investment (Levy 1990: 163-7).- It has also been noted by commentators on the right (Cento Veljanovski 1990) and left (Grahame Thompson 1990), that as Thompson writes: One of the most remarkable features of the 'Conservative turn' experienced in the UK. since 1980 is the paradoxical emergence of extensive reregulation of economic activity in a period of drastic deregulation. Under the official rhetoric of regulation reform and competitive advance, supported by a deep ideological commitment to the virtues of market led solutions to economic problems, the Conservative governments since 1979 have presided over what can only be characterised as a new renaissance of intervention. (1990: 229) The Broadcasting Act is an excellent example of reregulation with a vengeance. As a disillusioned member of the Peacock Committee, the libertarian free marketecr journalist from The Financial Times, Sam Urittan, put it, In principle, Mrs. Thatcher and her supporters arc in favour of deregulation, competition and choice. But they are distrustful ... of plans to allow people to listen to and watch what they like, subject only to the law of
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the land. They espouse the market system but dislike the libertarian value judgements involved in its operation ... (Quoted in Curran and Seaton 1991: 299) If there was a sharp break with the history of broadcasting regulation in the 1980s, it lay in the relative decline oflabour markets and institutions which guaranteed the training and professionalism which supported the· public service ethos of the duopoly. We now turn to the history of the regulatory environment which allowed it to flourish. 1. The history of the regulation of British broadcasting The BBC television service could trace its origins to the same curious mixture of commercial and public interests that had transformed the British Broadcasting Company (1922-6) into the Royal Charter British Broadcasting Corporation in 1927. Reith had argued that a private or public monopoly was required in order to regulate spectrum scarcity and this argument was regularly used until the communications revolution of the 1980s. But whether or not this argument even remained valid in his own time is beside the point; other interests within ·British political, cultural and social life seemed to support a broadcasting monopoly during the inter-war years. It is important to stress that both the public and private sectors strongly supported this solution. Wireless manufacturers wanted to choke off American competition, musichall proprietors and talent unions wanted to restrict American imports and the newspaper industry regarded broadcasting technoiogy as a potentially serious rival for advertisement revenue and exclusive news items (Levy 1990: 143-9; Curran and Seaton 1991: Partll). Reith's genius lay in his recognition of these commercial private interests, while ruthlessly promoting the BBC's corporate non-profit image, one associated with cultivation and in diametrical opposition to the supposed hucksterism of American-style radio. He also identified the BBC with the presumed superiority of southern English and particularly Oxbridge middleclass values. Very quickly the BBC emerged as an institution habifually placed alongside the monarchy, the Bank of England and Parliament. BBC English became the standard spoken form by the 1930s. The BBC became an essential element of an invented or negotiated British identity in the age of universal suffrage. But the ethos of the BBC was identified with the belief in the benign rule by an educated and professionally trained elite which had become a dominant theme amongst the educated middle classes since the 1880s (LeMahieu 1988; Scannell and Cardiff1991). Reith was also crucial in setting in place the strong tradition of selfregulation, even if he encountered some difficulties in the British Broadcasting Compa.ny concerning the degree of government influence present during the 1926 General Strike and over questions of pre-censorship in the 1930s concerning unemployment, left-wing politics and rearmament (Scannell and
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Cardiff 1991). Indeed it was this pre•censorship that always remained an unspoken assumption of the 'middle ground' until consensus broke down in the 1970s and the enlightened elite of the professional programme-makers were caught between the rather undemocratic first premises of their Fabian ancestors and the need to confront unprecedented new topics. And yet the BBC also was flexible and aware of the growing democratization and popularization of British culture in the 1930s. Before the war, when BBC radio reached a hegemonic influence, it had modified its Oxbridge version of hi/dung, to accommodate popular tastes. Before television was reintroduced on a popular scale in the late 1940s and early 1950s the distinctive mixture within its programming strategy had already been set. To sum up the effects of the early history ofbroadcasting upon its future shape, the BBC's ethos of cultural-enlightenment and technical professionalism was impressed upon the corporate culture of television long before the duopoly emerged. As the radio service began to measure its audience and expand its light entertainment, so too did television adopt some of these lessons. Although never consistent, this ability to bend with public preference greatly strengthened British non-commercial broadcasting. Here there is a definite continuity with future television history. However, the policy of protecting British technology has had a ·more ambiguous record in the recent past than in the earlier period. The BBC interested itself in developments in infant television technology from the late 1920s onwards, and in 1934-5 a Committee on the Future of Television agreed to recommend the public transmission of television in 1936. Just as the BBC had been formed by a consortia of radio manufacturers, so too the Corporation worked closely with British electronic interests. In both the development of radio in the 1920s and television in the 1930s, new technologies were given crucial protection from American competition through the broadcasting monopoly. The creation of a reliable and cheap source of electricity through the National Grid also stimulated impressive developments in the consumer electronics industries in which Britain exceeded its nearest European rival, Germany (Tunstall 1990: 224-5). The political, social and consumer pressures which helped push forward commercial television in the early 1950s were certainly also present thirty years later. A striking parallel with the 1950s was the language of the free marketeers during both sets of campaigns. This should not be surprising, since it was the very Tory backbenchers, who supported Norman Collins in the early 1950s, who taught Margaret Thatcher the language and logic of her own politics! Certainly the free marketeers of the 1980s hoped to finance the cabling of Britain through a new consumer-led revolution which harkened back thirty years. Unfortunately the revolution of the 1980s was led by the VCR which undermined the financial viability of cable-driven free-market television. The dreams of financing a revival of Britain's economy on an information revolution dependent on teleshopping, telebanking and teleworking remained a dream, partly because the potential of cable for telephony
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was ignored. The trends of tl1e past thirty years were merely deepened: a revolution in telecommunications heightened tl1e _role of invisible~ and services in the economy. Temporary recovery was based upon asset inflation due to London's role as the tl1ird leg in the electronically deregulated world financial markets. The hardware of revolution was imported to Britain. The model electronic entrepreneur in tl1e 1980s was not the managing director of GEC but Alan Sugar the commercial trader (Tunstall1990: 225). What is different in the 1980s from the 1950s is the number of occasions upon which tl1e government and its supporters clashed with the management and staff of both the Corporation and the ITV companies (Levy 1990: 15961). The main voice of criticism against the BBC had been raised from the left before the Thatcher government detected unpatriotic and biased minds at work. In the 1970s and early 1980s the left accused the media ofbias against the black community, strikers and socialists, but by the end of the decade the BBC and tl1e ITV companies seemed to be the underdogs, not powerful members of an Establishment. But in the late 1970s an extraordinary coalition of supporters from left of centre programme-makers who wanted an alternative to tl1e 'middle ground' of tlle duoploy and free marketeers who were attracted to a newer style of entrepreneurial television which would weed out the smug duopolists, pressuri2;ed tlle Annan Committee to sanction the creation of a fourtl1 channel. But Channel4 was essentially a logical extension of public service in what was now recognized as a pluralistic society and culture. After tlle 1982 Act tl1~ Thatcherite free marketeers turned tlleir sights on tlle duopoly itself. Reporting from Northern Ireland was criticized, tlle BBC was seen to be 'too' even-handed during tlle Falklands War in 1982, but tlle real trouble boiled over in 1985-7. In 1985 tlle Real Lives interview with a sympathizer of tlle IRA (as well as a sympatllizer of the Protestant paramilitaries) was broadcast only after a postponement caused by tlle veto of the Board of Governors. In 1986 Norman Tebbit accused a BBC journalist of bias during tlle American bombing of Tripoli. Finally, tlle Glasgow offices of tlle BBC were raided by tlle Special Branch in 1987 and tlle video tape of an expose of a secret British spy satellite· project (The Zircon Spy Ajfoir} was seized. Recently, it also has been claimed tllat Thatcher decided to support an auction system against ITV after Thames Television's expose of SAS actions in Gibraltar through its Death on tlze Rock programme (The Indepet~dent 21 September 1991: 4). Furthermore, what particularly outraged Mrs Thatcher were work practices in tlle ITV companies. At a seminar for television executives held in Downing Street in 1987, she described ITV as tlle last bastion of trade union restrictive practices. In tlle 1980s the government increasingly employed tlle Fair Trading Act and references to tlle Monopolies and Mergers Commission to reduce tlle influence of the unions. Here too preparations for tlle 1990 Act were influenced by political pressures: tlle support for independent production was seen as a way to cut down on cost inflation and weaken trade unionism tllrough growing casualization.
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The changes in employment practices within television and the rise of independent production are certainly important innovation.s within British television, yet the cycles and procedures of government policy-making ha~e changed little over the past forty years (Tunstall1983: 24; Levy 1990:168, 178; Curran and Sea ton 1991; 239-45). The post-warperiod is characterized by five major cycles of policy-making. White Papers on broadcasting and ensuing legislation have been relatively frequent, although their loosely drawn quality left great scope for interpretation. The actual implementation of regulations and the ensuing unforeseen financial consequences have been left largely to broadcasters and programme-makers to work out. Each major policy-cycle has taken up to twelve years. It has generally taken seven years for committee suggestions to be translated into a new channel. Each round of policy-making has resulted in a Broadcasting Act- 1954, 1964 1980 and 1990. In turn each act has led to a new television channel ITV ~nd its regulatory body the ITA (Independent Television Authority) in 1954, BBC2 in 1966, Channel4 in 1982, and ChannelS by 1994 or 1995. The 1984 Cable and Broadcasting Act created a Cable Authority to regulate cable television while the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) (changed from the ITA in 1971 when its duties were extended to the regulation of commercial radio) was given the task of awarding and regulating the new DBS franchises. The Peacock Committee's (1985-6) recommendations influenced the White Paper on Broadcasting (Broadcasti11g i11 the 90's: Competition, Choice a11d Qpality), which paved the way for the 1990 Broadcasting Act. T~is resulted in a major reorganization of the ITV system. ITV became Channel 3 with regionallO-year licences awarded, in autumn 1991, to bidders with the most financially viable business plans that passed a quality threshold assessed by the new Independent Television Commission (ITC). It replaced the IBA and the Cable Authority and licences all non-BBC television, including cable and satellite. Companies failing to keep obligations could be fined and in the end have their licenses withdrawn. The obligations on Channel 3 licence holders include allowing sufficient time for news, current affairs, regional, children's, and religious programmes. Equally, Channel 5 also takes on board public service requirements. Channel 4 became an independent corporation selling airtime in competition with Channel3 and ChannelS. Channel4 retained its remit to transmit innovative and minority programmes, and, while the ITV companies lost the right to sell advertising on it, Channel4 was given a fiscal safety net in case its advertising revenues would not be sufficient in the future. The BBC continued to be regarded as the cornerstone of British broadcasting but the Government looked forward to the eventual replacement of the licence fee by subscription, after the review of the Royal Charter in 1996. However, the BBC licence fee was pegged at less than the RPI (Retail Price Index) and it was compelled to reorganize and reduce its own workforce. The BBC and the ITV companies were forced to have at least 25 per cent of their programmes made by
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independent producers. Concentration of media interests was also regulated, though not to the extent to which the Labour Party would have liked. A Broadcasting Standards Council was established to reinforce standards on taste and decency and depiction of sex and violence was placed Qn a statutory footing (Fi11ancial Times 16 October 1990: 16). But whether or not this reorganization signals a major change in the methods of regulation depends on how the Act is implemented. It is therefore important to compare the old system of regulation with the new. The first six years of ITV have many parallels with descriptions of the new media. Launched with excessive speed, the independent sector had grossly inadequate planning and finance. In the mid-1980s Murdoch, Maxwell and the investors in BSB must have looked back on these early years in which independent television was characterized by a rapid evolution from a desperate struggle to survive to a sudden and enormous success generating some of the most impressive capital gains in any post-war British industry. Recent fears about wall-to-wall soap operas and quiz shows imported to Britain via DBS had its antecedents in the undoubtedly low-brow fare offered by ITV in its first hectic years. Nor were the media moguls· of the 1980s without their predecessors. The television barons who dominated London, Birmingham and Manchester were either press barons (Roy Thompson), or cinema and theatre tycoons (Lew Grade and Sidney Bernstein), who were as flamboyant and self-obsessed as Murdoch and Maxwell. Another curious parallel with the 1980s was the light-touch regulation of the ITA in the pioneering years. In the years before the second cycle of broadcasting policy-making (the Pilkington Committee, 1960-2), the ITA behaved more as an advocate of the industry's interests rather than as a regulatory agency. It bore a remarkable resemblance to the activity of the Cable Authority between 1984 and 1990 and certainly neo-liberals would have liked an ITC modelled ori the ITA in its first phase, but in fact the ITC still bears a closer resemblance to the IBA after Pilkington. Indeed the duopoly was only really constructed in the wake of its report. The competition from the ITV companies forced the BBC to invest heavily in television, and under the dynamic leadership ofHugh Greene and Donald Baverstock, the BBC nurtured a generation of highly professional programme-makers, controllers and technicians who dominated television for the next two decades, and it was Greene's ability. to approach the Pilkington Committee with great finesse that turned the tables on the commercial competition (Levy 1990: 148). By the late 1960s the duopolistic pattern was established and held firm until the mid-1980s. ITV achieved 50 per cent audience penetration, BBC1 40 per cent and the new BBC2 10 per cent. The BBC returned to the form its radio had achieved in the late 1930s and 1940s: it had become popular, it had maintained quality programming and it had been in the forefront of technological change by introducing 625 line UHF colour television for the
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first time in Europe in 1967. It had also achieved universal and excellent coverage for the entire country (Levy 1990: 148). The regulatory system itself also kept cultural and technical standards generally high. It is therefore interesting to compare the internal workings of the duopoly with the new system installed after the 1990 Broadcasting Act. We shall look at the networking system and the methods of awarding franchise holders for the ITV companies. We will then turn to the effects on the shift in elites within the IBAIITC and the BBC Board of Governors since the mid-198os. The networking system, which was created after Pilkington, withstood regional and fiscal pressures for over twenty years (Levy 1990: 148-52). In its heyday networking was one of the clearest examples of the 'private regulation' of the ITV system. In fact it may have been more important than the official broadcasting policy cycle. Even after policy travelled from committee stage to White Paper to legislation, usually bearing scars of fights between Home Office, the Department ofTrade and Industry and the Treasury, it still left the IBA staff with a great deal ofleeway in the manner in which the law would be implemented. It was at this point that the interaction between the networking system and the IBA was crucial. In order for the ITV network to be effective major companies must agree about policies and programmes amongst themselves. Before 1962 coordination was largely non-existent and this resulted in their defeat by the regulatory-minded Pilkington. Networking took on importance once Pilkington mandated the ITA with the task of establishing weekly programme schedules. By the mid-1970s a pattern of weekly evening programming had been established. The ITN news occupied the 10-10.30 p.m. slot, local news was programmed at 6.0p.m., serious programmes were also allocated, so were sports. This left a few slots for popular programmes such as Coronation Street. The BBC usually replicated the ITV schedule so that this cartel arrangement maintained diversity within each channel's programmes and also probably made more difficult programmes available to wider audiences. It avoided one of the prime structural bases for a public service ghetto (Davis 1990). The centre of dispute between networking companies was who obtained which prime slot. Each participant agreed to make one-fifth of the network programmes and show the other four-fifths in their own regions .. However, since the regions were not of the same size the balance had to be readjusted continually. This aspect of the old networking system began to change even before the 1990 Broadcasting Act, with a more open system of broadcasting time and programmes opening up to a wider number of companies through the so-called 'flexipool' system in which all compete (Financial Times 19 December 1991: 14). The IBA also liaised with all the commercial companies through the Independent Television Companies Association (ITCA). The IBA met in regular strategy meetings of chief executives and senior staff every two months, and weekly detailed meetings of network programme controllers.
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Furthermore, the ITCA complemented the IBA by monitoring television advertisement scripts through their own copy clearance department and the Copy Committee. These formal and informal negotiations between ITCA and the IBA were founded ·on a code of professionalism, that noticeable pattern present within the British Civil Service (Levy 1990: 157). The greatest power the IBA held over the ITV companies was during franchise renewal time (Levy 1990: 153-4). Although the exact criteria for awarding franchises was never made clear, interviews and written submissions were taken into account. The economic viability of a candidate as well as the commitment to public service and quality were important. Indeed the latter two attributes seemed to predominate. The process known as the 'beauty contest' may have led to tightening of quality which Pilkington demanded. But players were gambling for high stakes. Franchise time was likened to the Klondike Gold Rush with consortia of companies banding together economic clout and media personalities to promise the award panel great things. Since economics seemed to take a backseat, and the IBA did not usually pressurize successful candidates to fulfil their more extravagant promises, it was forced to nurse sick franchises back to health (LWT and TV-am) while ignoring their betrayal of solemn promises about quality programming. While it can be shown that the franchise award process did not increase public accountability, it could be argued that the peculiar fiscal system and the networking process had in fact contributed something to the maintenance of higher programme standards than before 1963. The exact formula employed to levy the tax varied over time (Levy 1990: 155). Between 1963 and 1974 the levy was based on revenue, with costs not taken into account. After 1974 the levy was based on a sliding scale of net profits, not advertising revenues. From 1986 to 1990 the Treasury changed the system, so as to capture 25 per cent of foreign profits. From 1990 the system was based on a percentage of advertising revenue. Until recently ITV companies have been dependent on the monopoly control of all television advertisements. Since sponsorship had been forbidden, ITV companies sold spot advertisements, much as newspapers sell space between columns. Monopoly profits, during periods of economic upturn, were heightened by the relatively short average of five to seven minutes of advertisement slots sold each hour. The fiscal system encouraged the ITV companies to invest in expensive drama since excessive profits maximalization was penalized after Pilkington, and costs could be written off against tax on profits. After the late 1970s, the system came under strain due to the rapid increase in eo-productions, film company subsidiaries, foreign sister organizations and the sale of f?rmats. Thames became adept at realizing profits through off-shore compames and writing off costs for prestigious productions in Britain and thereby avoiding the levy. Later attempts at cross-Atlantic investment by TVS ended in disaster just as it had done for Lew Grade's ATV. Nevertheless the attempts at tax
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avoidance, the feeling that the opaque franchise award process was giving away monopoly rents to commercial companies and Mrs Thatcher's personal dislike for Thames, the largest ITV company, led to the inclusion of an auction system within the 1990 Broadcasting Act (Levy 1990: 150-6). Curiously enough, the neo-liberal Peacock Committee, which preceded the Act by four years, decided that neither pay-as-you view television nor advertising on the BBC would recapture monopnly rents without destroying quality. The Committee came to the conclusion that the duopoly succeeded in replicating an adequate marketplace but they did recommend an auction when the new ITV franchises came up for renewal (Curran and Sea ton 1991: 298-9). Along with the future of the ITV network, the other great battle over the 1990 Act had to do with the nature of the auction. Critics of the auctioning process did not argue that the earlier method of awarding franchises should go unmodified. For example, The Financial Times argued in December 1989 that since the economic turnover of commercial television was roughly equlvalent to Britain's seventy-fourth largest company, it made no sense to lay greater emphasis on the maximalization of Treasury receipts than on promotion of quality. Echoing the Peacock Committee, The Financial Times chided ministers for wrongly behaving as though a broadcasting market responsive to individual preference already existed. It concluded that for the foreseeable future 'the quality ofbroadcasting will be greatly influenced by the necessarily subjective decisions of regulation'. It added that for the interests of transparency, 'bids for Channel3 and 5 licences should be published. But the ITC should not be obliged to accept the highest bid, provided it explains the reasoning behind its decision' (FiTzancial Times 14 December 1989: 18). In the aftermath of such public pressure, as well as private talks from over fifty Conservative MPs, Home Office Minister David Melior modified the auction process. (Melior's concern for quality television has been underlined recently in his capacity as Heritage minister.) Discussions about the future of the BBC after 1996 have seen him stress the need to retain a licence fee whilst criticizing the Corporation's organizational structure. Whether or not his proposed solutions to this problem would undermine public service broadcasting will be discussed further on; here it is worth noting that due to his earlier attitudes towards the ITV companies, he is perceived by supporters of public service broadcasting as someone you can do business with. The importance of quality was heightened in the Act,. even if more of it dealt with the financial complexities of the auction process. But it was the ITC which in fact carried out the quality tests of franchises, operated the auction and will be responsible for licensees living up to their commitments (Levy 1990: 174). In late 1989 both David Glencross, director of television and George Russell, the chairman of the IBA but soon to become ITC, advocated detailed contracts for franchise holders. They certainly did query closely whether candidates in the autumn of 1991 could afford the commitments they had made in their prospectuses. So although the ITC will not formally vet
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daily preparation of schedules of Channel3 in the way the IBA did for the ITV network, the institution of a central scheduler and the detailed commitments which bind the winners of the 1991 franchise auction will keep the present system of regulation more or less intact at least until the question of renewal occurs towards the second half of the 1990s. As Glencross remarked in late 1989: 'Most of what we have done, we will continue to do. It \vill just be done in a different way' (T7ze Observer 17 December 1989: 61). The appointment of a central scheduler will ~nvesfin this person the power to commission£450 million worth of programming (Rogers 1992). This office was a result of a compromise between the government and television executives. If the network was necessary, the government insisted upon a 'fair and transparent' system of allocating programming. The central scheduler, with an operational budget of £5 million and a staff of fifty, will choose the best programme ideas from Channel3 companies and the independents. He/she will complete an entire schedule even if this means penalizing the largest television companies. Channel 3 companies did not want to give up full control of their resources, ratings and futures to one individual and his/her staff. Also under the new legislation the companies rather than the ITC have legal editorial responsibility for their programmes. How, was it asked by their executives, can they entrust this to a central scheduler? The solution demonstrates the persistence of the unofficial system of regulation. The companies will have their own policy committee to liaise with the central scheduler. Furthermore, the independents who wanted direct access to the central scheduler to avoid a new informal and unfriendly Channel3 cartel, will have to deal in the first instance with the companies but have been given the right of appeal to the central scheduler. In this way one can detect within the so-called 'light touch' the re-emergence of a complex system of regulation, indeed in some ways more centralized than the old one. Ifthe auction did not signal the dawn ofthe 'lighter touch', did it set the seal on the older corporate and labour ml!.fket structures of the ITV system? At the end of the day the change in players was not that great. Thames, TSW, TV-am and TVS lost, but this was no different in magnitude with shake-ups in 1967 and 1980. The corporate structures behind commercial television were little i::liimged. Although much attention had been devoted to the development of large multi-media empires in the 1980s, in fact since the origins of the ITV system powerful financial and industrial interests have predon:llnated. Newspapers owners, recording and cinema companies and the one new playerthe large independent producers- have predominated in the 1980s. The list of shareholders after the 1991 franchise round did not change. So some of the key players in the new franchises are other television companies such as LWT, Scottish TV and Central TV and newSpapers such as the Guardian and the Daily Mail, financial service companies such as MAl and institutional investors. Finally the London-Midlands axis (where a majority of programmes have always been made) has been strengthened. Carlton's Michael Green is a friend of the chairman of L WT and probably intends to share
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studios, transmission equipment and regional news programmes. Carlton also controls 20 per cent in the new morning television franchise, Sunrise, and has a longstanding interest in Central. Central itself has a 20 per cent stake in Meridian and a possible stake in Anglia. Commercial television remains a tighdy knit corporate system (Snoddy 1991b: 14; Maddox 1991: 13). The controllers have also not really changed either. Traditionally the Bi3C Board of Governors and the Independent Broadcasting Authority were populated by 'gifted amateurs' appointed by the Home Secretary. In educational terms they were overwhelmingly Oxbridge graduates, although a smattering of trade unionists and representatives of ethnic communities were present, as were special representatives for Scodand, Wales and Northern Ireland (Levy 1990: 158). With the series of unprecedented crises over controversial programming and the possibility that the BBC might be forced to take on advertising, the purge of the old guard by Mrs Thatcher in the 1980s was seen by some commentators as a further blow to the Establishment. The new Chairman, Marmaduke Hussey, and the appointment of an accountant, Michael Checkland, was seen as the supplantation of consensus governors for Thatcherites. In fact their appointments of controllers demonstrates a continuity with the past rather than any revolutionary change. Paul Fox, the managing director,Jonathan Powell, controller ofBBC1, and Alan Yentob, controller ofBBC2, were all products of the public service tradition. John Birt, Director-General designate, may, however, be breaking the mould. A product oflTV he has shaken up the BBC news service but not in any way which could be considered outside of public service traditions. However, as the advocate of Producer Choice, the controversial plan which is the biggest shake-up in the BBC's internal history, he may change the BBC from a producer to a commissioner of television and thereby undermine the skills pool which has underwritten the public service ethos ofboth commercial and public television in· Britain. Indeed Birt seems to have clashed with Checkland who has been revealed as a stronger advocate of public service broadcasting than Mrs Thatcher must have believed. But it remains to be seen to what extent Birt's free-market radicalism is merely a tactic to hold offThatcherite MPs which will be modified as the future plans for the BBC are finalized (Snoddy 1992b: 7; Brooks 19~2: 21). One can detect the same continuities in the ITC. Six of the ten part-time members of the ITC had served on the old IBA. All of them had 'the sort of credentials which could qualifY them to serve on groups of any description: a sense of public duty, fair-mindedness and a variety of skills and experience acquired during careers largely unconcerned with the subject in question' (de Jonquieres 1991: 10). 1 The basic structures which govern the television have not really changed. After the crisis at the BBC in the 1980s the government ordered an audit by a firm of City accountants which concluded that the BBC's service was value for money. But the reference up/down system of decision-making within the
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BBC did leave too much decision-making power in the hands of junior producers which may have led to the 'Real Lives' and 'Zircon Spy' affairs. While the former Director General, A. Milne, may have been unable to }?e on top of all developments, it is also fair to say that the part-time 'gifted amateurs' on the Board of Governors did not present themselves as a competent body to judge programmes. The clashes between the government and the BBC in the 1980s revealed a disturbing authoritarianism on the part of the former, while the Board of Governors' actions seemed to limit the self-regulation previously enjoyed by television professionals (Levy 1990: 160). Although the new leadership recouped the situation, this was done through force of personality not by changing the structures of governance. This disturbing authoritarianism has been incorporated into the 1990 Act. The potential for extensive censorship is now in place with the Broadcasting Standards Council supplementing the powers of the BBC Board, the ITC Board, the Channel 4 Board and the Obscene Publications Act (Curran and Sea ton 1991: 334-5). Although it is fair to say that little has been seen of this potential. The other real changes· have been in the effect of the 25 per cent independent rule which has increasingly made the publisher/broadcaster model popular. Of the hundreds of independents, not more than fifty escape from living a hand-to-mouth existence. Of the 526 independents which Channel 4 dealt with in 1989-90, only 28 were valued at over one million pounds (Lander 1990: 16). The largest now effectively control· the most important commercial television companies in Britain but most are merely sub-contractors of Channel 4 or the other commercial companies, whose workforces are de facto employees without incurring the overheads of job security and pension rights. It was argued that independents weakened the overstaffing and industrial disruption of unionized workers. But the older system may have assured the teclulical excellence to which the British public has grown accustomed. David Elstein of Thames recendy argued that the decline of studio-based production may also in the long run be more expensive because it destroys a larger body of individuals needed to staff the laboratory in which creative ideas can be tested. Besides, perennial favourites could probably be more cheaply produced in permanent internal organizations (Maddox 1991: 13). The new 'giants' of British television originate from the independent production sector, but will their model of internal organization predominate? Carlton will probably have no more than 300 employees; even when Thames lost its franchise it still had 1,400. In the aftermath of its defeat it projects to have no more than 250 as an independent production company. But will Granada or Central follow suit? Granada's David Plowright was recently replaced by an accountant, while Leslie Hill of Central is an accountant from outside the industry. It is conceivable, however, that auction windfall winners might use some of their money not only to bolster balance sheets against predators but also to build up their own production capacity (Bell1992: 34).
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The BBC too has been affected by the 1990 Act. In September of1991 it announced radical plans to create its own internal market (Producer Choice, see above). All programme-makers were forced to seek the cheapest source for design or other services within or without the BBC. Television service departments will have to earn money from selling space and services to other BBC departments and outside commercial companies rather than receive fixed budgets. A nominal system of charging rent and capital costs within the BBC was also introduced. This, it is hoped, will finally reveal to BBC accountants what the true price of each programme really is. Consultations (held in the public service tradition modus vivendt) by BBC executives and key staff in the spring of 1992 seemed to reinforce this system for the future of the Corporation (Brooks 1992: 21). Its advocates argue that this will save the licence fee, the rea1linchpin of public broadcasting. Its supporters also link it with the possibility that the BBC will go upmarket while retaining a broad spectrum of popular and minority programmes (Snoddy 1992b: 7). But is this sophisticated essay in cost accounting too costly? Although drama seems to have even exceeded its 25 per cent quota of independent production, contracting out and internal markets may endanger the jobs of 10,000 BBC employees. Unions also fear that the BBC may force through derecognition but this, at least in the short term, seems improbable. It is probably too early to judge whether this will ultimately undermine the BBC's skills base and therefore British television's programming quality . and audiences.
2. The European dimension In this section we will look more closely at how European television policy meshes with the changes in Britain since the 1980s. There are several reasons why European policy has become predominant in discussions throughout the EC and the rest of Europe. Television in a number of countries has already changed in fundamental ways as the control of the medium slips from the hands of public bodies which have been the vehicles for political control and the 'trustees' of national culture. Furthermore, the technical means for the delivery of television programmes through ·cable, and especially satellite, require international control. Technical advance has also meant the promise of greater quantity, choice and better quality sound and image. As we noted above, the major development in prospect for both consumer television technology and industrial applications is HDTV. Until the middle or late 1970s, the British public service model of television was respected but never really replicated. Although the Reithian ideal that spectrum scarcity needed a unitary and centralized organization financed at least partially through licence fees was followed by most other nations, they did not adopt the model of duopolistic competition between organizations funded from different sources of revenue. When, for instance, advertising was
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introduced in Italy (1957) or France (1968), it occurred within the state-owned system. Channels within these unitary organizations competed for advertising and government revenues, and in order to maintain their market position they were forced in the 1970s to increase imports, quiz shows and low-budget fare before full privatization occurred. The system which British free-market liberals hoped the Peacock Report would introduce was to some extent already in operation here before Berlusconi arrived on the scene (Negrine and Papathanassopoulos 1990: 19). Liberalization and privatization also occurred largely in systems in which the government of the day took a very direct interest in its quasi-autonomous operation. With all its weaknesses, the Reithian public corporation did not exist in Europe. Television reflected closely the political balance of power. So, for instance, Dutch television was largely controlled by the religious and political 'pillars' that dominated Dutch political and cultural life. Italy's television was divided between Christian Democratic, Socialist and to some extent Communist interests. French television was dominated by the Gaullists and their allies. In the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) the Liinder were responsible for regulation but the government was in charge of overall telecommunications. and television policy-making (Lange and Renaud 1989: 77-8). Television policy-making was fragmented and therefore appeared to be even more incoherent than the British when itconfronted the rapid changes of the late 1970s and 1980s. Fragmentation and confrontation meant that when deregulation occurred it was regulated through the Constitutional Courts in the FRG and Italy and through the Constitutional Council in France (Lange and Renauld 1989: 63). Finally, since television had been politicized and to a certain extent commercialized in a way not yet experienced in Britain, there was no consensus amongst the educated middle-class opinion makers or the Establishmentto guide or mould the reform in any particular way. France is an interesting example of a case in which the alternation of governments in the 1980s led to rapid changes in the framework of broadcasting in 1982 and 1986: indeed there had been little continuity in policy from the 1950s (Palmer 1990). British policy has been based upon the tradition of self-regulation by corporate bodies in which the state set ground-rules but did not interfere in a direct and forceful manner. This traditional lack of state policy is evident in the absence of a Ministry of Communications and the Arts. The Ministry of Information was disbanded after the war and was said to be extremely unpopular (Tunstall1990). It also explains why many ofMargaret Thatcher's closest supporters bridled at the thought of state interference even to achieve market mechanisms within the duopoly. The impetus behind changes in European television occurred because cultural change and political stalemate between parties allowed the private sector a window of opportunity, the new media afforded a toe-hold for entrepreneurs within terrestrial systems, and the fears engendered by Europe
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losing out to Japanese hardware and American software galvanized conservative and socialist politicians to rely on a new private sector strategy to meet this challenge (Negrine and Papathanassopoulos 1990: 112, 146). The spread of liberalization and privatization occurred just when the strategy of using national champion electronics and computer firms linked to PTTs and the military establishment was somewhat discredited. The imbalance of trade with Japan in electronics goods, and the American investment programme caused by Star Wars, spurred on many European politicians (Tunstall and Palmer 1990: 15). In themselves the new media were not profitable enterprises. PanEuropean television channels, whether of the commercial or public varieties, have been failures, cultural and consumer symbols still do not translate well across borders, as many advertisers have found to their cost. Even in 1991 The Financial Times could only describe cable television as an important but loss-making industry (21 October 1991: 1). Although cable penetration is still at miserably low levels in France, it has picked up somewhat in the FRG and Britain (21 October 1991: 1). It has only reached American levels of density and profitability in the Low Countries and Switzerland where high or at least higher quality programming from large neighbours in the same languages is available. In other countries either cabling was considered too expensive or VCR penetration (as in Britain) assumed the role of an alternative channel. In Italy, Spain and Greece liberalization led to the creation or the expansion of the traditional system (Negrine and Papathanassopoulos 1990: 19). Satellite, too, was less successful than predicted. High-power DBS was needlessly expensive and space disasters slowed down the progress of this medium. Only Luxembourg's strategy of being the premier off-shore private television location allowed this national industry to profit by hosting Astra's ventures (Financial Times 21 October 1991: II; Dyson 1990). The failure of national champions led European policymakers through a two-step process. In the first step the new media entrepreneurs were encouraged to expand their operations. It was felt that this would create an adequately large market to stimulate the revival of the European consumer electronics industry. When this strategy ended in failure and fiasco (the wired society scenarios in both Britain and France failed because national champions, governmental departments and new media interests were continually at cross-purposes), a new version of the national champion was transformed into the European champion. This meshed nicely with a revival ofEuropean Community industrial policy in the 1980s. But before we discuss these developments in the context of the HDTV project, it will be necessary to review the growth of transnational forms of television regulation (Porter 1990; Hirsch and Petersen 1992). The need to regulate European television was recognized even by neo-liberals, since off-shore satellite could even avoid that legitimate form of regulation: the law of the land. The originally laissez foire Single European Market also required rather detailed regulation so that moves towards the
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achievement of a level playing field in commercial television could be realized. ·
It was, as Brigid Gavin writes,
The tacit acceptance of the principle that television could not be treated in a manner similar to motor cars or refrigerators in the run-up to 1992. This was no mere academic distinction for a long-standing controversy had surrounded the question of the Commission's role regarding the media. The core of the controversy was that, while the competence of the Commission in liberalising services was accepted unequivocally, the competence of the Commission to regulate in matters of cultural policy was questionable. (Gavin 1991: 42) But fears of the Americanization of national culture through television, threats to smaller language communities through anglophone programmes (Meier and Trappel 1992) and a protectionist impulse to protect European integration from an American threat, all played their contradictory, indeed incoherent, roles in these developments. President Mitterand's pronouncement in 1989 expressed these rather unfocused fears nicely: 'American images, together with Japanese technologies, greatly dominate the European market ... if we do not act now, the cement of European unity will start to crumble' (Negrine and Papathanassopoulos 1990: 67). The first significant EC document was the Green Paper of 1984 (Hirsch and Petersen 1992). This had three main aims which took the market philosophy into the then new territory of broadcasting. It aimed to demonstrate the importance of broadcasting for European integration; to illustrate the significance of the Treaty of Rome for those involved in broadcasting production, transmission and reception; and to submit for discussion the Commission's thinking before sending formal proposals to the European Parliament and . Council. It offered a warm welcome to the possibility of'free skies over Europe' and expressed concern about the commercial restrictions on information flow; also the technical barriers arising from the adoption of different standards. The Green Paper proposed measures to co-ordinate specific aspects of member states' laws regulating broadcasting and advertising, to co-ordinate copyright, and to co-ordinate 'fair play' laws. In other words, the Community would provide a general framework of norms within which national guidelines would continue to operate. It would have the effect, for example, of preventing a member state from banning advertisements retransmitted from a foreign satellite through cable in that country (Gavin 1991: 48-52). These proposals met with strong reactions from national politicians (who were jealous of their national cultural institutions) and from broadcasters (who rejected the proposed funding for coproductions because it would have ·involved supervisory powers over the editorial process). On the other hand, the Green Paper seemed to express the general concern over the internationalization of broadcasting and offered a more or less coherent way of organizing the relationships between national and transfrontier broadcasting.
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The subsequent Draft Directive (March 1986) was much more precise.in its proposals. This was intended as a vehicle to establish a common market in broadcasting and broadcast advertising by creating the market scale necessary for economic profitability and removing obstacles to the free circulation of programmes, and by paving the way tor the (further) commercialization of broadcasting. Responses were again vigorous and often hostile. National broadcasting organizations resisted quotas as a threat to their monopolies. Satellite channels feared loss of revenue from advertising restrictions and restrictions on cheap imports. US programme suppliers lobbied vigorously against the non-EC programme quota. The UK government questioned the Commission's competence to deal with 'cultural issues'. Intellectual critics were often against the idea of television programmes being ~eated like commodities, insisting their value derives from their symbolic content and not just their marketability. On the other hand, the ITV companies felt a' quota system might endanger their American markets. However, the arguments in favour of partial regulation (in a European market) tended to prevail over the arguments for complete commercial freedom. In October 1989, the EC Directive, Television without Frontiers, was agreed. The Directive included: - 'where practicable' more than half the programmes should be made in the Community, i.e. member states must 'aim for' a maximum of 49 per cent ceiling on foreign programmes. This was ·a 'political commitment', not enforceable in court; - advertisements: 15 per cent ceiling, but up to 20 per cent in peak viewing time; - feature films to be interrupted only once during each forty-five minute segment; - no tobacco advertising, and restriction on alcohol; - the prohibition of programmes which threatened the 'physical, mental or moral development of minors- in particular those that involve pornography or gratuitous violence'. While earlier plans for a European-wide audiovisual industry were dropped, there was support for a programme of research and development (Measures to Encourage Development of the Industry of Audiovisual Production MEDIA 92). This was supplemented by SCRIPT (Support for Creative Independent Production and Talent), BABEL (Broadcasting Across the Barriers ofEuropean Languages), EURO-AIM (The European Organisation for an Independent Audio-Visual Market) and EFDO (The European Film Distribution Office) (Gavin 1991: 97-118). These are all worthy causes but rather toothless. They have been plagued by low budgets and are entirely dependent upon public funds during a recession (Negrine and Papathanassopoulos 1990: 71). The Council of Europe, in its Convention on Transfrontier Television,
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adopted a more consensual approach and had the advantage ofincluding most European nations (Gavin 1991: 19-40). Concluded in 1989, this Convention was rather similar to the EC Directive. It included: - a limitation on advertising to 15 per cent average airtime; - the requirement to have a 'reasonable proportion' of European programmes; - a prohibition on indecent material. The problems with these approaches are manifold. Since these are framework laws they are in fact only indicative. Advertising time still varies widely across Europe. Besides the methods through which advertising is apportioned also vary. While the Germans are supporters of block advertising due to pressure from their powerful press lobby, the British are wedded to natural breaks. The Convention and the Directive ignored the question of the nationality of production and distribution companies, which are disproportionately controlled by the Americans (Negrine and Papathanassopoulos 1990: 85). The Americans' tempers have cooled after the quotas row. By June 1990 an important EC official claimed that quotas were last year's battle and belonged to the past. With European television hours set to expand from 260,000 to 400,000 hours between 1987 and 1995, many European production companies and channels are busily forming alliances with HBO, Disney, Paramount Cables, Time-Warner, and others (Snoddy 1991a: 5). Another extremely explosive problem still not resolved is the question of EC television ownership rules. It is an essential part of the SEM that cross-national takeovers should be permitted so long as they do not infringe the merger and state aids policy of the Commission. It would also seem a natural component of the drive to create sufficiently large companies that could compete with the Americans for extra programming hours needed in the 1990s. However, these neo-liberal and protectionist aims clash with two very important barriers. First of all, many of the leading cross-national media entrepreneurs are controlled through complex but family controlled corporate structures. Bertelsmann, Kirsch, Berlusconi, the late Robert Maxwell and Murdoch (although family control here has been watered down due to the recent debt restructuring) are family-owned.and controlled empires (Negrine and Papathanassopoulos 1990: 112; Mazzoleni and Palmer 1992). Ownership regulations are still in force in Germany where the Liinder prefer 50 per cent or more ownership by German citizens, the Greek government limits foreign ownership to 25 per cent, while France and Spain limit ownership to any individual or company to 25 per cent. Leslie Hill of Central Television has recently complained about these restrictions, noting that while the 1990 Broadcasting Act incorporated a reading of the Treaty of Rome which will allow European predators to launch raids on British television companies, the British are prevented from expansion into continental Europe (Snoddy 1992a: 3). 2 Britain's ITV
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companies are not very well placed to leave their junior partnership with the Americans in any case. They are relatively small or medium-sized, with until the last few years very little experience in diversification, and British owned (Rizzoli/Corriere della Sera have a small stake in Carlton's newly won franchise and Wait Disney have a more serious minority stake in Sunrise TV). They have also had a mixed record (except for Thames and the BBC) in the international markets. The naive behaviour of TVS in the American syndication market is an illustration of a disastrous failure (Maddox 1991: 13; Levy 1990: 176). At the moment the British government is pursuing a complain~ through the European Court ofjustice, arguing that other nations' restrictions on British ownership of national television companies violates the SEM. The Court's decision should provide a new element of controversy in this vexed problem. This will also clarify the role of European case law in the transnational regulation of television. Gavin has argued that the SEM will privilege European Community institutions and especially the European Court of Justice: The impact of EC law on national broadcasting will be considerable when the whole institutional system of the EC is taken into consideration. This system was expressly conceived to ma:ke it possible to attain the objectives of integration even in political situations which could be hostile to those objectives. This is apparent from the precise wording of the treaty, the direct applicability of many of its provisions, the possibility for majority voting and, above all, the fundamental role of the European Court of Justice. A whole legal order, which is effectively a prototypiCal constitutional order at the European level, ensures the correct application of the treaty, the necessary legislative developments and a system of judicial review in which both the initiative and the decision have been taken out of the hands of member states. (Gavin 1991:42) In the light of the post-Maastricht reaction to a drive towards a European federal structure, it seems that the principle of subsidiarity will dilute majority voting at the Council level. Furthermore, the Commission has refused to include the European Parliament's suggestions to deepen transnational regulation. The European Court has always been the most consistently federal influence on the Community but the effect of its case law on the transnational regulation of television has been uneven. It has merely acknowledged the fact that transnational broadcasting cannot be prohibited. Rulings do not affect 'national systems of licensing, administrative authorisation, taxation, financing and the content of programmes' (Gavin 1991: 47). Neither does the 'approximation of national competition law ... form part of the Community's 1992 programme' (Gavin 1991: 50), even if this may serve as 'an obstacle to the free movement of goods and services within the single European market' (Gavin 1991: 50). Community law is also far from clear in
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reference to the crucial problems of exclusive licenses to broadcast public events or in the thorny issue of domestic and transnational copyrights (Gavin 1991: 52-6). However, the potential for a more robust control of media monopolies or the undue indirect influence of the new media moguls seems to be growing as case law is forcing member states to tighten their national laws (Gavin 1991: 52; Mazzoleni and Palmer 1992). A more fundamental problem with the EC approach is the fact that there is very little trade between France, Italy, the FRG and the UK.. The UK focuses on the anglophone Commonwealth countries, the US and Scandinavia; France on francophone nations in the Third World; the Germans on the German-speaking areas of Central Europe and the Italians on Spain and Greece. The success of European eo-productions, with the exception of Eurocops has been modest (Negrine and Papathanassopoulos 1990: 22). This is linked to the problem of creating a common European culture so that audiences can identify with shared symbols. The EC Green Paper which preceded the Directive said: European unification will only be achieved ifEuropeans want it. Europeans will only want it if there is such a thing as European identity. A European identity will only d~velop· if Europeans are adequately informed. At present, information via the mass media is controlled at national level. (Quoted in Davis 1989: 10) This document makes some rather sweeping assumptions. The first is that television mediates 'national cultures' in a positive way and that information is the key to identity formation. The underlying motivation appears to be to project public service broadcasting onto a European level, by allowing it to act as an integrative, homogenizing force, producing an informed community, conscious of its shared history and traditions. This begs fundamental questions which have only recently been addressed. Firstly, is this a legitimate objective under the Treaty of Rome and is it within the Commission's power to promote what is clearly a cultural goal? The Directive was a victory for free marketeer and commercial interests and seemed to negate this aspect of the Green Paper. Secondly, the concept of a European 'cultural space' lacks definition and may be misguided since in practice it tends to be defined negatively in broadcasting as anti-Amerjcanism. The collapse of the Old Regime in Eastern Europe has also opened up the whole concept of the boundaries of Europe. What is more, the recent upsurge of racial violence against non-residents, residents and citizens of Europe can lend a sinister interpretation to this exercise. Finally there appears to be a contradiction between the economic motivation for a free European market for television programmes and the cultural objective of encouraging a European identity and/or European cultural protectionism. The means for creating the first are likely to lead to an uneasy mix of genuine imports and exchanges between national television cultures and new forms of ersatz 'international production' (there were several alliances between Channel 4
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and French and German companies in this respect). But this Will be a long term process. As Philip Schlesinger has noted, the 'imaginary community' constructed by EurocratS lacks conviction (Schlesinger 1991: Chapters 7-9). At present, the threats and promises of transfrontier television are. more significant for their impact on national broadcasting policies than for the actual changes at the international level- which so far have o.nly been felt at the margin. Similar contradictions are apparent in the European HDTV project. Like previous episodes of technical change in broadcasting- the shift from 425 lines of 625 lines and colour in the 1960s and satellite transmission in the 1970s - the question of transmission standards and the manufacture of new receivers goes far beyond technical matters alone and involves policy at the highest level (faylor 1992: V;Joosten 1991). The television transmission systems in current use rely on several line standards which have varying degrees of compatability. They have evolved through a series of decisions taken at the.nationallevel With a certain amount of discussion in specialized international technical conferences. The framework for European HDTV is international from the outset. HDTV has two main features which imply major changes at every stage in the delivery of television signals. The first is the Wide screen format, changing the present aspect ratio (of Width to height) of4 : 3 to 16 : 9, which is similar to a cinema screen. The second is higher definition pictures, made possible by increasing the number of lines from the present 625 to 1250. The improvement in resolution means that larger, flatter screens of up to 50 or 60 inches become feasible Without additional weight or bulk. Sound quality can also be improved. Interest in HDTV technology goes back nearly twenty years, to research in Japan in the early 1970s. Despite the promise of apparendy radical change, both the Japanese and the Europeans are committed to developing a more sophisticated version of conventional 'analogue' technology. In the longer term digital systems may look like a more attractive alternative- pardy because of their capacity for interaction With the viewer through the use of computer software. The Japanese system With 1125 lines is incompatible With existing technology and its adoption will involve a comprehensive programme of replacement of existing sets. The European strategy, developed later than the Japanese, is designed to resist the challenge by adopting a more hierarchical, incremental approach. The first steps towards a strategy were formulated in 1986 in an agreement reached by the European Broadcasting Union (representing European broadcasters and the EC) to adopt the MAC (multiplexed analogue components) standard for European satellite broadcasts. It uses the 625-line format but the Wider frequency bandWidth of satellite transmission makes it possible to double the number of scanning lines in order to give high definition. Thus an HO-MAC receiver constitutes 1250 lines, while an ordinary MAC receiver treats the signal as a standard one With 625lines. The
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establishment of MAC as a general European transmission standard was postponed by a meeting of the ITU's International Radio Consultative Group (CCIR) in May 1986 after lack of agreement between Britain, France and the FRG. The European Commission after 1986 actively promoted research and development into HDTV technology through the EUREKA 95 programme, which co-ordinates about 30 companies (including Bosch in Germany, Thomson in France, Ferguson in Britain, and Philips in the Netherlands) and broadcasting organizations across the continent. There are ten project teams, each working on one aspect of the technology. This programme has been generally acclaimed as successful from a technical point of view, and working prototypes were on display from 1987 onwards. However, successful R&D is only a first step and the European strategy has been in danger of foundering on other problems. The creation of a European infrastructure for HDTV requires the co-operation of manufacturers, public and private broadcasters, regulatory bodies and, of course, consumers prepared to invest in new equipment. Manufacturers have been keen to co-operate because of the. dire consequences to their business ifJapanese technology were to be adopted as a world standard. Public broadcasters, like IBNITC, who have been much involved in the development of the new technology, have supported HDTV but are influenced by national circumstances when it comes to setting standards. The search for a common European standard led to a compromise in which different countries chose different variants of MAC. Germany and France, for example, adopted 02-MAC which has a reduced bandWidth which allows the signal to travel through relatively widespread cable networks in those countries. Britain adopted the broader bandWidth D-MAC system and the IBA required BSB to use this under its license agreement. This disrupted the manufacture of microchips and caused some loss of confidence among manufacturers. More serious was the decision of the private companies broadcasting from the Astra satellite (Sky from 1989, and four FRG channels) to broadcast in the traditional PAL standard. Astra is technically a telecommunciations satellite and therefore escapes the restrictions of the original EC directive. This leaves the European market for PAL receivers With inbuilt satellite decoders unprotected by patents (which expired during the 1980s) and vulnerable to imports from the Far East. This led the technology commissioner in February 1991 to discuss With interested parties the case for either strengthening or relaxing the rules on broadcasting standards (Ga'vin 1991: 71-96). Later in 1991 a draft directive seemed to sound the death knell for PAL. Astra plans to send up two more satellites- 1C in 1993 will have both PAL and D-MAC capacity and ID in 1994 With four transponders devoted to HOT (Price 1991: 11). The preference of private companies has been towards a gradual introduction of new standards and to expand new services in response to
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proven demand. The motive of public broadcasters has been to move in an incremental and regulated fashion towards HDTV while continuing to protect national interests. The EC's main motive is to support an independent European manufacturing industry and, if possible, to consolidate this by creating a world standard for HDTV. This is also reflected in the tension between the commercial Astra satellite and the government consortium controlled Eutelsat which has recently been criticized on competition grounds for its cosy relationship with the PTTs. This mixture of motives is further complicated by the increasing doubts about consumer demand for higher resolution television and cinema-style screens in the living room. Furthermore the liquid crystal screens are still posing serious technical and financial burdens for manufacturers, although leading European, American and Japanese companies have poured billions of dollars into research and development because of their use in computer screens (Corcoran 1992). The question is further clouded by the fact that the Americans have opted for investing into research for terrestrial digital HDTV and it is even mooted in Europe that D-MAC technology only has a five to eight year life-span which has served to delay the Japanese competition until digital HDTV technology could be married to compressed broadband cable systems to integrate telephonic, televisual and other computer services in an updated version ofthe 'wired society'. But there is nothing certain about this scenario because the pace of technological development, markets, regulation and policies are uncoordinated and inherently contradictory (Joosten 1991). The 1992 Barcelona Olympics were selected as the occasion for the public demonstration of HDTV. The pictures may be available but it is too early to gauge what consumer reaction will be. At the moment the price ofHDTV sets and the lack of software still leaves its position in the consumer market uncertain. Nevertheless by the summer of 1992 the EC had moved forward in declaring its support for HDTV. In May the Community formally adopted a Directive which required all HDTV transmissions to use the Europeandeveloped HO-MAC standard. The previous month the European Commission approved an 850 million ECU action plan to encourage wide-screen television services as the first step towards full HDTV. By June forty European television broadcasters, satellite operators and equipment makers agreed to act together to promote HDTV. But this declaration fell short of the legally-binding document which the European Commission originally hoped that the key players would sign. Manufacturers have agreed to sufficient quantities of D-MAC wide-screen sets. The Commission had hoped to see bilateral contracts signed between groups of companies and the Commission, but this depended on whether funding would be available in the postMaastricht environment of financial stringency. But even if the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament eventually do support the plan
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Europe's IT trade deficit has continued to deteriorate in the past decade, industry profitability is poor and there are few fast-growing product markets in which European electronics companies are world leaders. (Taylor 1992) Conclusion This case seems to represent the continuity of policy-making in the sphere of broadcasting rather than a radical break. The pattern of EC regulation and intervention is like national intervention and regulation writ large. The desire to protect and promote European industry and the desire to regulate the expansion of public communications parallels the activity of national governments in earlier phases of broadcasting. So do the competing interests of 'public service', 'cartels' and the 'free market'. It would be illuminating to see similar efforts in other national contexts as those of Curran and Seaton in the most recent edition of their excellent textbook (1991: 335-72). They create a map of British media politics in which the regulation of media is divided into four types; free market, social market (and left social market), public service and radical public service. Not only is this an interesting exercise in understanding the political map of Britain generally, it highlights the complex bundle of sensitivities that opinion-makers and elites have towards direct interference in economic or cultural life. Similar exercises carried out on the political force fields of other European national broadcasting systems would underline the fact that policies for the future of television in Europe have not emerged from a single coherent philosophy but are fragmented by the variety of industrial, economic, broadcasting and consumer goals, and by the variety of national policy assumptions. Acknowledgements This article follows up some of the themes from an earlier comparative study of the cultures of European broadcasting conducted for the Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli (see C.-D. Rath et al. 1990). The authors gratefully acknowledge the role of the Foundation in supporting this study. It is an amended version of a paper presented at the British Sociological Association Annual Conference held at the University of Kent at Canterbury, April1992.
Eliot College, University ofKent at Canterbury and Goldsmiths' College, University ofLondotz Notes
sceptics point out that in spite of all the R&D efforts the performance of the European IT industry has still to show any substantial improvement.
1 They included two professors, the Rector of the Royal College of Art, the retired headmistress of a famous girls' school, a Welsh psychotherapist, a Kenyan-bom
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lawyer, a Scottish earl and a business consultant. George Russell was thought to have been a hardheaded businessman, but he quickly went native. 2 Although the recent endorsement by the ITC of the merger of Tyne Tees Television with Yorkshire Television is a domestic response to this uneven playing field.
References Bell, Emily (1992) 'Silver lining in Sky's soccer coup', The Obseroer, 7June. Brooks, Richard (1992) 'Auntie's head on the block', The Obseroer, 17 May. Corcoran, Elizabeth C. (1992) 'Trends in consumer electronics. Picture perfect', Scientific American, February. Curran,james and Seaton,Jean (1991) Power witholll Responsibility. The Press and Broadcasting in Britain, London: Routledge. Davis, Howard (1989) 'Transfrontier ofTV in 1992: obstacles to a Common Market for TV in Europe', Canterbury: University of Kent at Canterbury (paper presented a the UKC Seminar Series: '1992 and beyond. Perspectives of the Single European Market', 25 October). - - (1990) 'Televisione e cultura nazionale in Gran Bretagna', in Rath et al. (eds) (1990). Dejonquieres, G. (1991} 'Russell and the heartbreakers', Financial Times, 18 October. Dyson, Kenneth (1990) 'Luxembourg: Changing anatomy of an international broadcasting power', in Dyson and Humphreys (eds) (1990). Dyson, Kenneth and Humphreys, Peter (eds) (1990) The Political Economy ofCommunications. International and European Dimensions, London: Routledge. Gavin, Brigid (ed.) (1991) European Broadcasting Standards in the 1990s, Oxford: NCC Blackwell. George, Stephen (1990) An Awkward Partner: Britain in the European Community, Oxford: Oxford University Press. - - (1991) Politics and Policy in the European Community, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hirsch, Mario and Petersen, Vibeke G. (1992) 'Regulation of media at the European level', inK. Siune and W. Treutzschler (eds), Dynamics ofMedia Politics, London: Sage. Independent Television Commission (ITC) (1992) 'Satellite watch', Spectrum,
6. Joosten, Matthieu (1991) High and Digital? Convergences and Collisions in the Old and New HDTV, London: CCIS Working Paper No. 8. Lander, R. (1990) 'The bonanza that might never happen', Financial Times, 16 October. Lange, A. and Renaud,Jean-Luc (1989) The Future ofthe European Audiovisual Industry, Manchester: Manchester University Press. LeMahieu, D. (1988)A Culturefor Democracy: Mass Communication and the Cultivated Mind in Britain between the Wan, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levy, Cad (1990) 'L'immagine Europea della Televisione: il Passaggio dalla TV tradizionale alia neo TV in Gran Bretagna', in Rath et al. (eds) (1990). Maddox, B. (1991) 'What the next deals will be worth', Financial Times, 19 · December. Mazzoleni, Gianpietro and Palmer, Michael (1992) 'The building of media empires', inK. Siune and W. Treutzschler (eds), Dynamics ofMedia Politics, London: Sage. Meier, Wemer A. and Trappel,josef (1992), 'Small states in the shadow of giants', in K. Siune and W. Treutzchler (eds), Dynamit;S ofMedia Politics, London: Sage. Negrine, Ralph and Papathanasso. poulos, Stylianos (1990) The Internationalisation ofTelevision, London: Pinter.
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Niblock, Michae1 (1991) The Future HDTV in Europe, Manchester: European Institute for the Media. Palmer, Michael (1990) 'France', in Tunstall and Palmer (1990). Porter, Victor (1990) 'The Janus character of television broadcasting', in .. G. Locksley (ed.), Integration: 17ze Single European Market and the lnfonnation and Communciation Technologies, London: Pinter. Price, C. (1991) 'Star wars over Europe', Financial Times, 4 October. Rath, C.-D. et a/ (eds) (1990) Le Televisioni in Europa, Turin: Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli. Rogers, Peter (1992) 'Fair play', Spectrum, 6. Scannell, Paddy and Cardiff, D. (1991)A Social History ofBritish Broadcasting. Vol. I I922-39, Oxford: Blackwells. Schlesli~ger, Philip (1991)Media, State and Nation, London: Sage. Skapinder, M. (1991) 'Satellite group merger clouds HDTV picture', Financial Times, 3 December. Snoddy, Raymond (1991a) 'A palace of varieties', Financial Times ('Cable and Satellite Broadcasting'), 21 October.
- - (1991b) 'European TV picture is slow to Focuss', Financial Times, 4 June. - - (1991c) 'Now for the deals', Financial Times, 19 December. - - (1992a) 'EC television ownership rules..., a fuzzy picture', Financial Times, 20January. · - - (1992b) 'Plenty to chew over', Financial Times, 18/19 April. Tay1or, P. (1992) 'Shrieks of Eureka', Financial Times, 17 March. ThoD1pson,Grahame(1990)The Political Economy ofthe New Right, London: Pinter. Tunstall,Jeremy (1983) The Media in Britain London: Constable. Tunstall,jere01y (1990) 'Britain', in Tunstall and Palmer (1990). Tunstall,jere01y and PalDler, Michae1 (1990) Liberating Communications, Oxford: NCC Bhickwells. Ve1janovski, Cento (1990) 'The political economy of regl.ilation', in P. Dunleavy, A. Gamble and G. Peele (eds), Developments in British Politics 3, Basingstoke: Macmillan.
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[24] Excerpts from The Miracle of Fleet Street: The Story of The Daily Herald.
THE MIRA CLE OF FLEE T STRE ET * HE Daily Herald has been the property of the British Labour and Socialist Movement since September, 1922. The General Council of the Trades Union Congress and the Executive Committee of the National Labour Party now own all the shares in the ViB:oria House Printing Compa ny-the Company in which the ownership of the Daily Herald is vested. After eleven years of almost superhu man effort on the part of thousands of men, women and children, the paper is at last recognised as the official daily exponent of the principles of life and co.nduB: the Labour Movement exists to proclaim. For the first time in its history the paper has paid its way over a period of nearly twelve months . Although this is the case much remains to be done before it can be said the paper is safe. A larger and better printed sheet is needed; a norther n edition, printed in Manchester, must take the place of the very inadequate late evening paper with which Labour support ers in North Britain must be content. All this is but a question of time and detracts nothing from the fact that at long last the despised and rejeB:ed of Fleet Street is paying its way, and so bids fair to become one of the chief corner stones of present day journalism. In saying all this I must not be taken as boasting, but as simply stating faB:s. Some of us regret the loss of freedom which this change of ownership and control involves. It is, however, a rule of life which has brought this about. In every movement it is a handful of enthusiasts who start a new organisation, which later on becomes a church or something official. The original people either become officials of the reorganised official body or break off into new spheres. Those who helped in starting the Daily Herald desired above all things to have a paper free and indepen dent of all control. \Ve believed, and I believe still, that all such movements as ours
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need the stimulus which independent thought and expression alone can give. Officialism always dries up initiative and expression. By· the grace and goodwill of tens of thousands of friends who for nearly eleven years have stood by us, we have been able to say exactly what we pleased. During that period we succeeded in keeping the paper alive; maintaining all the time a spirit of rebellious adventure. None of us cared overmuch for our future. We took risks, fought forlorn hopes, made it our business to support all who were striving for more freedom and a fuller life. Now, the difficulties, mainly financial, have proved too difficult, and the paper has become the official organ of the combined Labour and Socialist Movement, and as such has a much greater claim on official and non-official support than could be claimed by us in our days· of freedom. I hope even in its official guise those in control will always remember the Labour Press exists to voice the desires and aspirations, not of Governments or caucuses, but of the whole Movement, of which it is our privilege to be a part. Some of my friends have protested that the paper is no longer free; this is true only in part. No doubt when I was editor my responsibility to the Movement was undefined. For all that I w3:s responsible to something bigger than an executive, which was the Movement as· a whole. In any case, no one can deny the right of the official Movement to control the policy of the Daily Herald. It is folly to imagine that any executive committee will pay people to destroy its influence and power in the columns of a paper they find the money to support. It is as well at the start to record the fatl: that in assuming responsibility for the paper the Movement has not taken over any liabilities other than such as are represented by preference shares· held by Trade Unions and other friends in the Victoria House Printing Company. No interest is payable on these preference shares unless it is earned, and the interest is not cumulative. If ever the Trade Unions get tired of owning a daily paper, they will only need to
express their decision by resolution and instruct the directors and shareholders elected by the joint bodies to close down, and it will be done. There is, however, little likelihood of this happening, because whatever else the experience of the Daily Herald may not have taught us, it has certainly taught the value of a Labour Press. We shall surely realise this more fully now the money of official organisations is involved and official management ensured. In the circumstances it is more papers we shall struggle to secure, while at the same time using every effort to make the Daily Herald a bigger and bigger success. We owe the financial position in which we now find ourselves very largely to the goodwill of those Trade Unions and private persons who held debentures in the Daily Herald Company, and who, on the winding-up of that Company, accepted preference shares in the Printing Company in exchange for their debentures. Gratitude from the Movement is also dueto the Right Honourable Arthur Renderson, M.P., who, through longwearymonthsofnegotiation, held on to the end, and at last had the satisfatlion of seeing his work accomplished and the paper, together with the printing works, become the sole property of organised Labour. There are others of whose generosity and selflessness a word must be said. I mean those middle-class friends who surrendered all their cash claims againstVitloria House Printing Company and their shares in that Company to me, and thus enabled the transfer of all the shares, including my own, and all cash loans to the nominees of the National Labour organisations. These transactions alo·ne involved the transfer to the Movement of property the net cash value of which is at least £Js,ooo. These facts are put on record, not because anybody desired publicity, but solely that members of Trade Unions and members of local Labour Parties and Socialist organisations may understand that now the paper and printing works are their property all that is needed to ensure success is that all of us, whatever organisa-
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tion we belong to, should buy the paper daily and send all printing orders to the Victoria House Printing Company. It cannot too often be stated that the paper needs now a bigger and bigger circulation. Once we reach a million sale we shall be in a position to start papers all over the land. Another factor to be remembere d is that advertisements follow circulation, and cash paid for advertisements makes the whole business run smoothly and prosperously. In connection with this question of money, we must also bear in mind that, speaking literally, tens of thous~ds of men, women and children are responsible for the fact that at the end we had something to give, for without the heroic self-denial, generosity and goodwill of its many thousands of readers, the Daily Herald would long ago have been dead and buried. It was this fact alone which impelled all of us who owned shares in the late Daily Herald Company or in the Victoria House Company quite cheerfully to hand over the property free and untrammelled to the General Council and Labour Party Executive. It will be of interest to my readers to record the fact that on several occasions when we were sending out S.O.S.'s to our friends, approaches were made to us by rich men, always of course privately, to sell out. Had we ever responded, we could have received quite enough to pay out all our creditors and receive cash for our shares. Our one answer to everybody was that the Daily Herald would never pass voluntarily from our control except as it has now passed to the Labour Movement. Y.le would prefer to see the paper die a glorious death rather than see it become the property of the Liberal Party, masquerad ing as friends of Labour. The men who desired to buy the Daily Herald and Victoria House were well aware that any newspaper with a circulation well over 4oo,ooo is very valuable to anybody who desired a newspaper property. It is to be hoped Trade Unions and others will also-realise this. 'Ne may be told that some Unions have spent considerable sums of money on the paper. This is true. During the 4 ~
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CURREN T COIN TO BE USED So long as there is plenty of coin there will be plenty of current. Every penny for an extra copy of the DAlL 'L HERALD is another shock to the (Capitalist) sysl:em.
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twelve years of our existence we have raised, as will be recorded later, very large sums of money, all of which have been spent as capital expenditure. Our return is the circulation figure, which to-day is well over 40o,ooo. We have, during general elections and other times of crisis passed 54o,ooo: To obtain this all newspaper proprietors are obliged to expend huge sums of money. One Liberal peer alone subscribed as a first initial sum £soo,ooo in order to Sl:art a new London morning paper. This was only part of the capital involved. It is well-known that this particular paper has been steadily losing money, although as a result of huge expenditure it is building up circulation. I am confident the noble lord thinks that so long as the circulation figure rises, his £soo,ooo is quite safe, because the return he wants is not money dividend, but a dividend expressed in influence and power over men's minds. In these days, when political parties and commercial magnates spend millions a year on political propaganda, organised Labour must at least be willing to spend its thousands in an effort to counteraCt the pernicious influence of purely capitalist daily and weekly newspapers . . No business man, certainly no newspaper business man, would ever consider money lost if in return for money spent he was able to boast a circulation such as ours. We have spent a lot of money. To-day, in return for our expenditure, the Movement has secured as its own property a daily newspaper with an increasing sales and advertisement revenue, together with a well-equipped printing works, housed in business premises held on long leases, situated in the centre of the newspaper world, off Fleet Street. I may be asked: Why write a book about the Daily Herald? There are many reasons why this should be done. First of aJI, it is only right that our Movement, which makes so many calls upon its members and friends, should have a permanent record of a piece of work initiated and kept going quite unofficially by working men and women, aided financially, it is true, by some middle-class friends, 6
but which can also cJaim that in the very darkest days of industrial warfare and in the reaCtionary days of the war kept bright and clear before its readers the true ideals for which the working classes must stand, and in spite of many mistakes and much blundering has kept its daily and weekly message going, even in days when the clever, the learned, and the cultured all declared the mere existence of such a paper to be a downright impossibility. The book is therefore a record, not of the work of individuals, though these will, of necessity, be mentioned, but to put on record the successful struggle of that indefinable multitude known as the rank and file, whose sacrifices and work alone made the paper possible. 1'v1y conneCtion with the paper came about in a qui le casual and unexpeCted manner. Of many things I had hoped to do in my lifetime, I had never imagined that part of my future day's work would be either editing or managing a daily newspaper. Had I been given time to refleCt or had even paused before replying to the request to join in, I should have said "No." In faCl:, I should have said "No" to lots of things I have tried to do if once I had thought of counting the cost; hut my nature is not made up that way. Once I am convinced something should be attempted, however impossible of achievement it may seem, my first and last impulse is to· plunge right in, neck or nothing. The Daily Herald appealed that way to me when Ben Tillett, over a cup of tea in the House of Commons, first asked me to join the Daily Herald Committee. In the year of Grace 191 I, I was returned to Parliament as Member for Bow and Bromley. I had previously fought many eleCtions, but failed to secure the magic letters M .P. until reaching the age of 52. My life since a boy has been a strenuous one, always working from early morning till ]ate at night. Earning my living took up only a small part of my time. I can truthfully say most of my days have been spent trying to help forward the cause of the common people, to whom I am proud to belong. At this moment, when asked 7
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to assisl: in founding a daily Labour paper, I was a Member of Parliament, a Poor Law Guardian, Borough Councillor, . and member of the London County Council. In addition, I was in business, earning my living by the sweat of my brain. In my spare moments I wrote articles, served on Labour committees, and spent nearly every week-end addressing two or three Labour meetings in towns and villages from John o' Groats to Land's End. Knowing all this, Ben Tillett and his comrades, who had been appointed to raise money and organise the production of the Daily Herald, asked me to join their committee and assist in the enterprise. I suppose they asked me because they accept as true _the statement that only those who are most busy ever find time to help causes that need special help. I joined, knowing little or nothing of the task we \Yere set to accomplish, but full of enthusiasm to see the business successfully through. My own frrst connection with journalism took place many years ago, some time between 1874 and 188o, when, a~ a member of the Whitechapel Church Young Men's Assoctation, I wrote essays for a manuscript journal produced by a group of youngsters whose ages ranged from 16 to 18 years. vVe were a cheeky, impudent set, with no sort of respect for elders-or tradition. We quesl:ionec;l the basis of everybody's creed and were so blatantly agnostic that the then Rector of Whitechapel, in order to save our souls and prevent the disruption of his church, started for our special benefit_a .study class ·at which we gave each other the headache stnvmg to understand Butler's Analogy, a ponderous theological work designed to prove beyond the shadow of doubt the truth of Christianity, but in my judgment much more likely to create philosophic doubt, agnostics and atheists. Later on we organised ourselves as a "Fourth Party" in a Parliament established by the same society, taking as our political godfathers in good manners and respect for our elders Arthur Balfour, now Lord Balfour, the late Sir John Gorst,SirH.Drummond Wolf and Lord RandolphChurchill. 8
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Those far-away days of my early manhood were great ones, so far as my personal life was concerned. I learned Republicanism from reading books such as the Secret History of the Court of England and The Impeachment of the House of Brunswick; and sitting at the feet of Annie Besant, Charles Dilke, Joseph Chamberlain, Charles Bradlaugh, VVilfred Lawson, W. E. Gladstone, C. S. Parnell, Michael Davitt, John Bright, lots of Tories, including on one occasion Benjamin Disraeli, on the other side of things. I attended South Place Institute and heard Moncure Conway, Frederick Harrison and others. In cathedrals and churches I listened to all the great Anglicans and Catholics, such as Farrar, Temple, Manning, Newman, Spurgeon, Parker. and many another; studied newspapers, such as the Dally Telegraph (then a radical organ), theDailyNews,Reynolds's, The Echo, and the Star, and all the time wondered wherein lay the power of newspapers. Like all youths who take to politics, I occasionally sent letters to ~orning, evening and weekly newspapers, and for a short period assisted to edit and manage a Radical Labour monthly, published at Row, called The Coming Times. I may here remark that in my youth there was a very robust republican spirit in many daily and weekly newspapers. Although this experience gave me knowledge of and interest in newspapers, I had no ideas as to the organisation and work of a daily newspaper office. These were quite outside my knowledge. Consequently, for a long time both on the committee for raising funds and in management of the Daily Herald, I was more or less a passenger trying to learn from the splendid workmen who served on the Committee. I cannot adequately express my appreciation and admiration for these workmen, who unselfishly gave time, energy and money to the enterprise. They certainly thought they knew how a newspaper should be produced, even if they did at all times refuse to stop a moment to count the cost, but ju~t went ahead leaving to-morrow and our creditors to take care of themselves. T. E. Naylor, now M.P for ':Valworth, was 8 9
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always a tower of strength, as also were H. W. Hobart and \~7. F. Rean and David Walls. J. T. Hayward, who acted as Manager, was an optimist pure and simple; ·we were always going to do marvels. At last we launched our Co-operative Society, sent out our appeals and secured the sum of about £300. \Vith this, to us a big sum, in hand we decided to make a start, fixing April IS, I9I2, as the day on which we would launch our paper. My faith is said to be great; often I have been told my optimism is marvellous. This may or may not be so; but this proposal to start a national Labour daily with a capital of £300 knocked all optimism and faith out of me, and left me speechless. I went back to the House of Commons from the decisive meeting, reflecting how mad some people were and how impracticable even sensible people could become when carried away by blind enthusiasm. One of my colleagues, who did notknowmyview, wrote to me protesting against what he described as a fool's proposition, vaguely insinuating that we should all be sent to prison. Neither my own solid conviction, that to start a newspaper under such circumstances was sheer lunacy, nor my friend's denunciation of us as bucket-shop swindlers, made much difference when the persuasive Ben Tillett once more appeared on the scene. Those who only know Ben by reading about him do not know him as he really is-one of the most persuasive persons to be met with in our Movement. He wrestled with me quite a long time. All through the interview I felt like a rabbit when a stoat is after it-just mesmerised. All the time he seemed to be saying: "I will not let you go unless you say Yes." And at last I agreed to join in what my common sense told me was a madcap scheme, and my name, therefore, remained as a member of the committee, and I was responsible with the others for our fateful start on April IS, I9I2. I remember taking some of my younger children for a long tram ride round about East London to look at the big posters announcing our birth. I felt quite grand, and had a great sense of ownership and im-
portance riding pasl: the hoardings and looking at the announcements telling of Labour's own new daily paper. From the first moment, so far as money was concerned, we were in the "soup," to say nothing of every other kind of difficulty. One thing is certain: the paper would never have appeared but for the goodwill and cash credit given by Mr. Drew, Manager of Victoria House, .and his principal, Sir F. Newnes, and the paper merchants, Messrs. Bowater & Co. All these gentlemen must often have smiled when reading about Catholic, German and Bolshevik gold in relation to the Daily Herald, for the three of them know, as few others could know, what terrible :financial difficulties the paper always had to face in its day-by-day struggle to exist. Even our bank manager was not quite so hard on us as bank managers generally are, and often allowed us to overdraw to a very considerable extent. At one period,just after the close of the war, our bank overdraft always amounted to over £3o,ooo. For some unknown reason this was stopped. !suspect, because big business interfered. In any case we were stopped and were only saved by the goodwill of the National Union of Railwaymen, who became bankers for the purchase of paper on our behalf. The fact that I was connected with a business, was also an M.P. and public man, turned people's attention to me whenever the question of debts was raised. Only the good providence of my guardian angel saved me from bankruptcy and worse. Ben Tillet has often said he wonders however we escaped prison. What he means is that the one and only miracle is how we both escaped Carey Street, for day after day we accepted responsibility for paper bills which neither of us could ever have met without the aid of the Movement. Some friends have rebuked me for this, saying we were guilty of misleading people. This is not the case. From the first I warned ail our creditors that they might perchance lose their money. I took on responsibility for an overdraft at the bank, which in a few weeks we were called upon to pay off, and were only able to do this by
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the sheer goodwill and generosity of all sorts and conditions of men. And so in the early days the paper Struggled along. \Ve met day by day, a rather weary, haggard-looking Board of Directors, yet in spite of our looks and worries nobody ever suggested we should give up. A sort of rule of honour always kept us tongue-tied, when by all the rules of life and conduct we should have closed down. We always parted in a Micawber-like spirit, praying God something would turn up. Our firsl: meeting place after the paper Started was the board room of a pub in Fetter Lane. At one of our meetings we were visited by our paper merchant, immaculately dressed, very polite, very determined. This was his message: we owed his firm so much; we wanted paper for next day's issue, but not a yard could we have unless money was forthcoming. We asked for our pass book. We were overdrawn. The merchant looked at me as much as to say: You ought to know better, you are a business man; what do you think of yourself and colleagues? After recovering my breath, to the astonishment of my colleagues I said: "Look here, sir, we haven't any money, any credit or securities, so you must use your own judgment whether you give us paper or not." Then Ben Tillett weighed in: "Take no notice of our chairman, he is an alarmist; you will get your money some day. The Movement has not woken up yet; "·hen it does you will be all right." After some more talk our merchant went off satisfied, and although he is not our \Yay of thinking, and has had some rough times with us, I do not believe he has ever regretted the good turn he did us twelve years ago. On another occasion we solemnly met in a House of Commons' committee rooni and, after much sorrow and anguish, passed a resolution to wind-up. I left to go to speak at Hanley and Crewe. On leaving the hotel in Crewe next morning a boy sold me a copy of the Daily Herald. I honestly said to myself, the day of miracles is not over. How had my colleagues managed? Simply this: some of the
workmen knowing we were likely to stop looked round the paper store and found some part reels of paper and some old out-size reels. These Mr. Drew, Manager of Victoria House, gave us in order that we might have 24 hours' breathing space. The paper for this particular day was all sorts of shapes and sizes, but we did not care, seeing we had managed to keep going. On another occasion when we \vere faced with a stoppage, Harry Hease came to me and said: "Will you sign so telegrams, if I pay for them, asking friends to help the paper, and will you tell me some people to whom they should be sent?" I agreed, and once more the paper was saved. A well-known SocialiSt, who is a brilliant literary genius, replied: "Neither you nor anybody else can keep a daily Labour paper going., For this reason he did not send either money or good wishes. I am glad his prophecy has proved as wrong as I think his judgment of the paper has always beenthat Is, when he happens to see a copy. Another of our intellectual giants, in answer to another S.O.S. sent out later) wrote on a postcard: "Why should I help a Labour paper? What has Labour or the Daily Herald ever done for me?" I should not be writing this Story if the ordinary men and women of our Movement were not possessed of a higher, nobler and more human vision. The firSt reply to our telegrams came from a man and woman whose love and devotion to righteousness and truth, as they see these things, I have never ceased to respect. The Rev. W. H. Paine and his wife sent us £ISO. This for them was real sacrifice. When sending they put responsibility on me by saying: "If this will help save the paper, it is yours." Gerald Gould and his wife sent £so. Muriel Countess de la Warr also sent a substantial sum, and has always been one of the first and most generous of our friends; there has never been a crisis overcome without her help. She is one of the few titled women in our land who for years past has sl:eadily supported our Movement; and not only the Labour cause, but other unpopular movements-the Irish and Indian demand for Home Rule, 13
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Women's SnlTrnge, and the great cause of Pacifism. Her son, Earl de la \Varr, was a member of the firSl: Labour Government. If he serves the Cause as wholeheartedly as his mother has served all good causes, Labour in him will have secured one of its fineSl: recruits. Others sent smaller and larger sums, and we 'vere once more safe for a day or two. Other crises took place. On one occasion£ I ,ooo from Si me Seruya saved us ; this comrade has helped us directly and indirectly on other occasions. Another friend well known in Fleet Street came to us full of enthusiasm and goodwill. Owing to miscalculation and an optimism which could not pay our debts, he went under and for a brief period it seemed to us that the paper muSl: Sl:op and Carey Street finish us off. On this occasion we had the brokers in and brought the paper out on three days with these gentlemen in possession. On the third day vans arrived to move our furniture. Robert Williams, Ben Tillett and myself for some time filled the doorway while a parley took place, and ft'om somewhere came the funds to purchase our tables, chairs and desks back again. It was a regular devil's dance for an hour or two. Our friends as ever brought us through, the Official Receiver selling me the title and copyright of the paper for £Ioo. We formed another company and called it. "The Limit"-this because Lloyd George in reply to a question re the Dai~v Herald, put to him during the Marconi Inquiry, exclaimed "That's the limit" MoSl: of the shares were in my name, and once again we Sl:arted on our career, penniless but hopeful. This is a good place to say a word about Miss Lilian Troy and Baron von BorSl:. I met this lady and gentleman firSl: in connection with the lock-out and Sl:rike of dockers. They both worked hard and collected a good deal of money in order to feed the children of the strikers. Hearing of our difficulties the Baron offered his services to help organise a ne'v company to replace the Co-operative Society and, in fact, advanced £150 to pay for the registration of a new company. After a few weeks we
disagreed, and I had the pleasure of being served with a writ for the amount advanced by the Baron-viz., £!5owhich in due course was paid. That is all the financial or other connection the Baron had with the Daily Herald. and while it laSl:ed there was not the slighteSt myStery or concealment. In fact, he attended our meetings fairly regularly and became pretty well known to all who in any way were connected with the paper. I am sure that if we could have seen our way to conduB: the paper on the business lines he and his friend thought would be successful, he would have helped us; but we disagreed on fundamentals and so patted. A big newspaper man from America, representing one of the big truSl:s, also nibbled at us for a time, but he too sheered off when he discovered our principles were not for sale.. One friend who helped us considerably, and by doing so made the Daily Herald possible, is H. D. Harben. At the moment in 1913 when I had left Parliament and was being prosecuted ·and sent to prison as a "piller and robber from beyond the seas," he came forward with large sums of his own money and energetically set to· work amongSl: friends to raise us sufficient to carry on with. At one meeting held on February 13, 1913, in the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, it was mainly by his efforts that nearly £12,ooo was raised. It is a thousand ·pities he is not in the House of Commons, giving us the benefit of his ability, enthusiasm and experience. When the war came in 1914 he had so arranged matters that with a little good luck we should soon have paid our way, but this was not to be. So as a daily we shut down and became a weekly, reserving the money raised and to be raised until the war was over. We were always attacked on the queSl:ion of money, some people declaring we were in the pay of Jews, because Joseph Fels was my trueSl: and best friend; others that we were in the pay of His Holiness the Pope, because Hilaire Belloc and G. K. CheSl:erton wrote for us. After one more than usual violent attack H. D. Harben published the following note:-
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Sm, It may interest your readers, in view of the article that appeared in last week's John Bull, to know that from December, 1912, till September, 1914, the whole of the money which was required, week by week, for the financing of the Daily Herald was furnished by myself from money subscribed, either by me personally or through me by my personal friends. During the whole of that period, no subscriber, except myself, sat upon the Board of the Company, and I and all other subscribers were expressly precluded from having any voice or vote on matters connected with the policy of the paper. I need hardly add that the persons of foreign nationality mentioned by John Bull did not have any connection with the paper, financially or otherwise, during the time to which I allude, and that several offers of financial help were refused by us, because they were conditional on having some control over the policy of the paper. Yours truly, DEAR
HENRY
D.
HARBEN.
Our history from August I9I4 to November 1918 was an interesting one, as will be told in other chapters. Financially it was our easiest time. We were very successful as a weekly, and although we did not actually pay our way, the losses were manageable and fairly easy to meet. We often appealed to friends for help, and never appealed in vain; so when the Armistice was declared we at once set our plans afoot for restarting as a daily. This we did on March 3 I, I919. Difficult as our financial task was from 19I2 to I9I4 it was in some ways child's play compared with what we have endured since. The price of paper and labour costs have all been exceedingly high, and from the very first \Ye have been faced with recurring crises, each more severe than the last. Not the least of our difficulties has been the fact that at the start the big merchants and manufacturers of paper, with the exception of the firm already mentioned, deliberately refused to supply us. So bad was their conduct that Robert Williams was sent by our Board as a deputation to Lord Burnham, threatening a strike or boycott of all paper mills unless the boycott against us was removed. Although this slightly eased the situation while we were still a weekly and also after March, I9I9, we were still in no end of diffiI6
culty about paper supplies. \Ve were obliged to send agents about the country to buy paper secretly, having it consigned to us in fictitious names, so as to secure what we needed. People who talk of the tyranny of Trade Unionism have very little conception of the open and secret tyranny exercised by the capitalist against those he wishes to destroy. At the time of which I am writing there was no talk of Bolshevik or other influence in our paper; these capitalists simply hated us because of our Labour origin and point of view, and were determined to down us if this was at all possible. Lord Burnham did his best for us, but powerful as he is he was not able to get us what we wanted-viz., fair play. Shortly after our start in I9I9 we knew our fate as an independent paper was settled, and therefore decided to ask the Movement to take us over by subscribing for debentures. \Ve made a mistake in asking for this apart from the Trades Union Congress and the National Labour Party. Looking back, and in the light of after events, it is possible now to see that had we asked the Movement officially to become responsible, and had the request been acceded to, many things which have injured us would not have happened. There is this to be said on the other side: although the Movement has now become officially responsible for the paper, it is not at all certain that the members of the two bodies named above would have been willing to do so in 1920-that is, two years before the General Election which made the Labour Party the official Opposition in the House of Commons. It is this latter fact which has forced men and women in the Party to realise the absolute importance of securing that our own point of view shall find expression in the daily Press. As matters turned out, our appeal for £4oo,ooo resulted in a sum of juSl: over £I oo ,ooo being raised from Trade Unions and about £29,360 from Co-operative Societies and private individuals. We guaranteed interest on these debentures at the rate of 5%, which was regularly paid until the company was wound up. There were always some societies and individuals who either returned the interest or instructed us 17
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not to send it. The Miners' Federation of Great Britain alone subscribed £42,046 17s. 6d. of the amount raised from the Unions; the National Union of Railwaymen did not take up debentures, but became bankers for us in the matter of paper stocks, paying for these on arrival and receiving payment as and when this was used. In the end, the loss made on this transaction was set off by preference shares. During 1920 we went through a period of very severe trial and testing, a testing which few individuals or newspapers could have survived. I had visited Russia and came home to find myself the subject of the most scurrilous attacks from organs of the Press. I must say that usually when attacks of a personal character are made against me, I think there is only one thing to do- ignore them, and while these attacks remained purely personal I did ignore them. During August and September, 1920, the British Government was on the point of war with Russia. Councils of Action were formed, and by the finest exhibition of workingclass solidarity that proposed war was stopped. The Dai~v Herald rendered great service during that crisis. vVe published Sunday editions and altogether gave the Government a rough time. The incidents connected with this period and the charges brought against us by the Government are dealt with in the chapter on Russia, Many people sent us money, some of it anonyn;wusly, because,likeNicodemus of old, many good people do good without being ·known or wanting to be known. I am open to make an offer to Lord Younger, Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Asquith. If these gentlemen will privately give me the names of all the persons who, at any time, have anonymously subscribed to their political funds, and in return for their money have received honours, titles and jobs, I will do my best to supply the names of all the people who have subscribed sunis from 6d. to £I,ooo towards the upkeep of the Daily Herald. My list will be a long one, because lots of the money came in small sums, but it will be as good a list as the noble lord and right honourables named above can produce; and much more
honourable, for those who gave money to us did so ha ping it would be used for the common good, neither expecting n.or receiving any individual benefit for themselves. Our-shareholders and debenture holders have always been registered at Somerset House, as this is an obligation all limited companies must obey. All the talk about the Daily Herald and its funds would never have arisen but for the fact that we were living, and are still living, in abnormal times; the Daily Herald was and is the champion of all those struggling for freedom, whether at home or abroad. Our office for over twelve years has been a social and political Mecca, to which in times of trouble come Trade Unionists and Socialists from every part of the world. Scarcely a day passes but American friends call in. We established relationships with Colonel House, exPresident Wilson, 'Villiam Bullitt, Lincoln Steffins, Fred Howe and many a hundred distinguished Americans, including a goodly number of members of the I.W.W. Irish NationaliSl:s,FreeStaters and Republicans were also frequent visitors. James Connolly, bravest and best of men, cruelly and foully murdered by order of the British Government, George Russell ("lE''), poet, philosopher and agriculturist; James Larkin, of whom nobody can ever say he forsook a friend or a cause; the late Sheehy Skeffington and his gifted wife; Countess Markievicz, and many another whose names and memories are enshrined in all our hearts. Especially is this true of Sheehy Skeffington, also done to death by British guns, and J ames Connolly. Then there were the men from Australia, chief of whom were W. J. Ryan and the present Premier of Queensland, E. G. Theodore; the South African deportees, and later their Communist comrades. Of men and women of a different coloured skin from ourselves we daily receive visitors, who hail, some from Africa, others from Asia; the Mohamed brothers, recently in prison in India; Zaglul, also released from prison; Tilak, the wonderful old fighter from India, now no longer with us; Lajpat Rai, the Indian writer, whose book, Young India, published
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THE "PRESS" GANG-NEW STYLE The old Press Gang merely knocked the victim on the head and marched him off to fight. The new "Press" Gang intoxkates its viC!im with martial spirits and printer's ink until he will fight for anybody but himselfl 20
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in India, we dared to reprint in this country, only to find our Indian Home Rule office raided by the secret police, who, after turning our offices upside down, discovered the whole edition had been distributed to members of the House of Lords and the House of Commons. From India also came Annie Besant, full of faith and hope for a British Indian Commonwealth, bringing with her an innumerable host of comrades and good friends, among whom none is more lovable than youpg Krishnamurti, the Indian prophet of goodwill and love for all mankind. There also came to us some real gentlemen from Burmah, so gentle, kind and loving that all of us felt there was nothing too difficult for us to attempt on their behalf. Altogether, although life in our office for the period of our existence as a paper has been strenuous and very worrying, surely there is not one amongst us but would like to go through it all over and over again, mainly because of the fat! that our lives for good or evil were in very deed being developed in the stream of things, especially those things that matter to-day and throughout eternity. Also daily, during the war, men came to us from the trenches, telling us grim, bloody stories of the crimes and blunders of war and the futility of war. Later some of these same men came back to tell how they were plundered and robbed by the Pensions Department, and to tell us of the crime of unemployment. Yes, this paper has brought all who have had any hand in its production into touch with the realities of life. Our first days brought us up against the "Titanic" disaster, to be followed by lock-outs and strikes and the women's fight for freedom. Later we put our ·whole weight against Jingoism and war. To-day we arc in the vau helping to organise the workers in their struggle for political power. It can with truth be said that we have all the time been with those whose lives were dedicated to fight for freedom and justice. " For the cause that needs assistam:e, The future in the distance And the good that we may do.'' 21
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True it is we have ever been on the side of the downtrodden at home and abroad, and almoSl: always in a minority. Sometimes .we may have wished it otherwise, although we have always believed we were right and others wrong. Once Francis Meynell said to a Liberal statesman: "I should like for once to be with the majority." "V\Then you are," replied the statesman, "you may be sure you will be wrong." 1 hope in the days to come the Daily Herald ·will continue to be found taking the same side in all struggles for true progress. We who were responsible up till September, 1922, for its editorship and management may take this comfort and satisfaction to ourselves. Our enemies and our friends all know and appreciate to their fulleSl: extent our blunders and our muddles. The worSl: and beSl: is known of us. This also is known: for over ten years, with the assiSl:ance of the moSl: loving, truSl:ing comrades ever given to a body of men, we have been able to keep alight the flame of revolt againSl: unjust, inhuman conditions of life. Nobody with truth can ever charge us with popularity-hunting or money-making. Most of us in other ways could have been much more popular in the sense of being in with the majority and more prosperous if at any time we desired to sell out. As it is, we have tried to do our day's work without fear or favour, conscious always of our o\vn want of ability; but conscious also that we ,~,·ere engaged in a great piece of work which will grow and flourish long after we are dead and gone; and conscious also that good as well as evil lives after us, and come what may, our cause, the cause of the common people, will surely triumph; and whether here or passed away, wherever we are, we shall know that our work, our sorrow, our joys, our trials, and our triumphs, all helped to make the victory of the common people over evil conditions of life not only possible but certain and sure.
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FINANCE
T
*
HE committee of workmen, clerks .and others appointed by the proprietors of the Strike Sheet to raise money for the purpose of establishing a Labour Daily Newspaper, asked their friends and supporters to provide a sum of £Io,ooo as sufficient capital with which to make a start. After months of circularising and much speech-making, £300 was raised, and with this sum in hand the paper was born. The motive which decided these enthusiaSl:s to Sl:art the enterprise with so small a sum was the fact that the Morning Leader, a morning paper nm on similar lines to the London Star, was doomed to die on April I 3. It was this announcement and the further fact that various rumours were afloat that the Social Democratic Federation intended to Sl:art a daily paper, and that Keir Hardie was also determined to bring out a SocialiSl: daily, that stirred David Walls and his little band to action, and without the leaSl: idea how the Sl:art could be made. Nevertheless, they boldly announced April IS, 19I2, as the day on which Labour's Daily would appear, and appear it did, after a most terrific Sl:ruggl~, amid circumstances of difficulty and poverty, such as no other daily paper before or since has experienced and overcome. At the end of the firSl: night's run, the queSl:ion aroseWhere was the next day's news, ink and paper to come from ? So far nobody had been paid a penny. Sir F. Newnes and his manager were prepared to machine the paper for a few days longer till money came in. Paper was a different proposition; cash was required, and from all and sundry odd pounds. were scraped together and paper secured. One or two of the big wholesale newsagents behaved very well indeed to this ill-fed, badly-nourished banding, by paying for a portion of their supplies daily and weekly. Some advertisers paid in advance, others paid a day or two after advertisements appeared. Hayward, the then Manager, was a 157
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The Political Economy of the Media ll
perfect genius in producing money from the clouds. The members of the committee also did their share. The busineEs side of the paper was a perfect scream, for nobody knew from one day to the other what was to be our fate, and nobody, not even the wholesale newsagents, had the least idea what our sales consisted of. I can truthfully say that not a single member of the committee, or the Manager, had the slightest idea whether we were selling one copy or I ,ooo; all we knew was that we were printing hundreds of thousands of copies. As to payment of wages and salaries, these were the laSl: consideration. Carriage and postage could not be secured on tick, so that these came first. Ben Tillett, often at the end of a week, was tol
vived the ultimatum. I believe Tillett, if he cared to do so, could a tale unfold, but he has always been discreetly silent. I think he and one or two others pledged all they had or were likely ever to have, and much more, in a great effort to postpone the evil day. Certain it is the paper came out, and we had time once more to appeal to friends for help. Our appeals were always pitched in a high key. We never, on any occasion, allowed our financial worries or even worries connected with the Sl:aff, to colour either our speeches or our writings. We wrote as if our life was assured, and that the difficulties confronting us were only momentary, and as a result, always managed to scrape through. This sort of life went on till the war broke out. During the years from August, 1914, to March, 1919, we managed fairly well, except that during the paper shortage we were obliged to collect waste paper to exchange for newsprint. Our readers raJlied to us in a magnificent manner, and thus enabled us to surmount what at the time appeared likely to prove an insurmountable difficulty. When we needed money for special efforts such as the Leeds Conference, the Albert Hall meetings, or the publication of the Secret Treaties and the 'Vorkers' Charter, we had only to appeal to our readers and all we needed was soon forthcoming. In spite of the great rise in costs, our price remained all through the war at one penny. The days following our weekly publishing day we always employed at least fifty street sellers, sometimes more. Consequently, our placards and front page became almost as well known on the streets of London as those of newspapers ·with much larger circulations. Looking back over the years of the war-from August, 1914, to March, 1919-I think it is true to say that after the first few months our actual money worries, big as they were, were never so acute as the troubles which assailed us from 1912-1914, or from 1919 till September, 1922, the date the Trades Union Congress and Labour Party assumed full responsibility for our existence. During 1920, 1921 and 1922 our financial position excited much public curiosity, and produced an amazing mass of I
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stories concerning the source of what was described as our wealth-our wealth always consisting of our debts, debts which weighed like a nightmare on us all. Our readers were never alarmed at what was said about us; the more we were attacked the better pleased they were. The financial position of the paper, when it started as a daily in 1919, was clearly set out in a manifesto issued to all branches and executives of Trade Unions and Socialist Societies. In anhouncirig our resurreCl:ion to the Labour Movement, we put all our cards on the table, and asked for a voluntary contribution of £ro,ooo to enable us to advertise the paper, and in a few weeks raised, through the paper, more than that amount. Our posters, designed by that brilliant young artist, the late Lovat Fraser, were some of the very best, especially that of a rooster heralding the dawn. Owing to the heavy price of paper, our success in circulation was our undoing. The more copies we sold, the more money we loSt. We hoped against hope that the other penny papers would raise their price. Owing to the usual jealousy, proprietors determined to go on losing in the hope that weaker ones would be squeezed out. Although our position was always desperate, we managedto hold on.
between ourselves and other Unions took a very long time, and often we were on the very brink of stopping. In the midst of this effort, and juSt after the miners had paid in their very handsome contribution, and at the moment, in August and September, I 920, when the Councils of ACl:ion were formed by the Trades Union Congress and Labour Party to prevent the participation of Great Britain againSt Russia in the Russo-Polish war, the Government sprang upon us the direCl: Statement that the Soviet Government was financing the paper. Further particulars of this incident will be found in the chapter dealing with Russia. After the events of the summer and autumn of 1920, our friends in the Labour Movement made greater efforts to secure the capital needed to put the paper on a safe foundation, but at no time did the money come in faSt enough. Our paper was costing us sd. and 5 ~d. a pound; every copy we sold was sold at a loss. The rise in circulation, following the Government's attacks, brought us nearer and nearer to disaster; consequently, quite early in September, we raised the price to 2d.; for a few weeks we paid our way, flattering ourselves we were now safe, but, alas, all the other po·pular London morning papers refused to raise their price. Our two moSt formidable competitors, who were slowly but surely capturing readers from us, would, in spite of this, have gladly joined in raising the price; but the proprietors of the papers boasting bigger circulation absolutely refused even to consider an increase. It is worth a passing reference to ask readers to refleCl: what might have happened if all the London Liberal morning papers and the Daily llemld had been competed out of existence by the huge combines controlled by millionaires. The danger is not yet past; we may still live to see the day when all independent newspaper criticism will be impossible because there will be no independent newspapers; only big corporations like our Trade Unions can possibly compete on equal terms with the Bosses who control all our sources of information through means of daily and weekly newspapers. r6r
Nobody can say how we got through, but get through we did, largely owing to the help given us by our readers, and the magnificent propaganda carried on by Barbara Gould, who, with one or two other womon, fairly waked up the Movement from one end of the cou·ntry to the other. WhiSt drives, dances, draws, conferences, demonstrations, and every kind of propaganda was resorted to, and by these means many thousands of pounds were raised, which enabled us to carry on from ·week to week. During the autumn of 1919 we decided to try and induce the bigger Unions to take debentures, and this many of them did. The miners put down £42,000. This money from the miners was among the first we received, and it did not reach us until the summer of 1920. The first amount of, I think, £r,ooo came from the taxi-drivers. The negotiations 160
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I regret that this should be so; it is the money question, and the money question alone, which has placed the Daily Herald under the control of Labour Organisations. This, however, is much more tolerable, and certainly more democratic, than groups of papers controlled by one or two men whose only right to the position is their great wealth. My view is that all news should be circulated by the Government and Municipal Authorities through news sheets and broadcasting; newspapers should publish propaganda and not touch up news or pervert ne\vs for propaganda purposes, but this by the way. Our twopenny venture almost got us down, and once again the Movement came to our aid, making us grants, giving us loans, and in every way possible kept us alive. We had a bad fright early in 1922, during which our obituary notices were written and ready for publication in every newspaper office throughout the land. The staff, as usual, stood loyally by us, although all, from the editor to the charwoman, were under notice; all made substantial weekly contributions in order to keep us alive. The London Society of Compositors loaned us £3,000 on my personal security, backed by my Victoria House shares; this loan, I am glad to say, was paid back. All through this difficult year the Right Hon. Arthur Henderson, M.P ., was indefatigable in his efforts to help tide us over until the Labour Party Conference at Edinburgh in June and the Trades Union Congress at Southport in September. Both these gatherings agreed that the paper should be taken over as the property of the Movement, together with all the shares and property belonging to the Victoria House Printing Company, a property of the net value of at least £3o,ooo. The price of the paper was reduced to one penny, and on my resignation Hamilton Fyfe was appointed Editor. After the enthusiastic scenes and wholesale promises and pledges at Edinburgh and Southport, we again imagined all would be better than well, and that our financial worries were at last at an end. As is usual with those who embark on new enterprises, our Board of Directors, ably aided by a special 162
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committee, set on foot a big propaganda campaign, coupled with a Pledge Scheme suggested by our very good friend Norman Angell. This scheme pledged all who signed it that if a morning paper of any kind was bought it should always be the Daily Herald first; with this scheme was coupled a twelve-page paper. Alas for the vanity of human hopes; our circulation rose, but very slowly; the twelve-page proposition ate into all our money, and before we knew where we were we found ourselves on the rocks. It is absolutely necessary for me to say that as soon as it was evident we should not pay our way with twelve pages, I reported to the Board that in my opinion we ought to at once reduce the size of the paper and in the most drastic manner cut down staff and expenditure. It was not a very pleasant thing to do, but as I saw things it was our only way of safety. My colleagues thought otherwise, so that by August, 1922, our end seemed once more assured. The General Council and Labour Party Executive financed us up to the meeting of the Congress at Plymouth, but in reporting to Congress threw the responsibility on the delegates as to whether the paper should live or die. There has been some internal controversy as to who saved the paper; I think it can safely be stated the paper was given another chance solely because the delegates realised that bad as the position was, and black as the outlook seemed to be, it was their bounden duty to act as they would act in a Labour dispute, and refuse to say die while a glimmer of hope remained. In conjunction with the Editor, I had formulated a scheme of retrenchment which would cut our loss by more than half; a committee from our staff also worked at this business of retrenchment; together we were able to show that, given the opportunity, we might, in spite of the past, still make good. All the Unions connected with the newspaper trade also took up our cause, and as a result of speeches by the Right Hon.J.H.Thomas,M.P.,a ndF.O.Roberts,M.P.,the Trades Union Congress at Plymouth, on the motion of the Right Hon. Stephen Walsh, M.P ., moved on behalf of our staunch 163
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The Political Economy of the Media 11
friends the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, agreed to raise a sum of £12,ooo to carry us on till the New Year, 1924. The Congress also appointed a special ad hoc committee to investigate the entire arrangements under which the business was carried on. This committee, in conjunCtion with the Staff Committee already mentioned, made a series of recommendations, the bulk of ·which, immediately after the Congress, had been put into operation. Others 'vere found not to be praCtical. Altogether the various committees, the management and the editorial found themselves in agreement as to what was possible to be done. There is one aspecl: of newspaper produCtion .in London which needs to be stressed-the whole business from top to bottom is conduCted on lines of blackleg-proof organisation. The Newspaper Proprietors Association support Trade Unionism in every department. The late Lord Northcliffe was among the strongest supporters of shorter hours and high wages; consequently, while most other British workers since the war have suffered severe cuts in their wages, London newspaper workers are all receiving not iess than the wages paid in 1918, in some departments there have been increases; in addition, hours and conditions are all elaborately worked out, and no departures are allowed. A limit is set to what overtime each man may work; in faCt, as I see it, a very big step forward in regard to workshop management by the workers has taken place in this trade. It is a great pity other Trade Unions are not able to enforce their claim to a higher standard of life as effeCtively as do those engaged in this trade. Because of this condition of affairs very little economy could be effeCted on our produCtive sid€'?. 'Ve were able to cut down the size of our sheet, which was a great pity, as half an inch in width or depth makes a lot of difference when looking at a paper; we dispensed with travellers and some features in the paper. These and other economies were most distasteful to all of us, and I still hope we may soon be in a position to restore them all again.
We who went to Plymouth representing the paper, went bankrupt so far as money was concerned, but we took in our hands a property worth to a willing buyer some hundreds of thousands of pounds, and what is more a property in which was embodied the very soul of our Movement. I say this in spite of all our mistakes and bitterness. Had the Congress turned us down hope would have gone out of thousands of hearts and the whole future of our Movement badly jeopardised. As for myself, I was dead beat; the eleven years' struggle looked as if it must end by our closing down. The day before the decision was taken it was impossible for me to attend Congress; my mind would not keep still, so I chartered a motor-boat at Plymouth Hoe, sailed up the Tamar, and came back to Mo-qnt Edgecumbe refreshing my mind and body lying in the broiling sun, seeking in solitude to find peace of mind, and found it. I went back prepared for anything. I wrote after the decision, Joy cometh in the morning, and came back home much younger in mind and body determined we should win through. ·within a few days Mr. Baldwin made his famous Plymouth speech, which led to the General Election and our salvation. From OCtober, 1923, to the present time we have never looked back; for over a year money for the paper has not troubled me one bit; the coming to office of a Labour Government sent our sales steadily rising; the General Council paid off our debts, but from January to December, 1923, we have needed no money from anybody for our ordinary work, but have just paid our way from advertisements and sales revenue. The General Council has generously granted the money needed for special purposes. During the last eleCtion-OCtober, 1924-we exceeded all previous records; on several days our circulation was over half a million; we printed a Special EleCtion Number, of which we sold over 79o,ooo. Earlier on in the year we issued a special "No More War!' Number, of which over 45o,ooo were sold. Our Christmas Special, at 2d., also sold very well, over 47o,ooo copies were circulated. Bobby Bear, I6S
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with his winsome mischievous ways, has also added to our revenue, because his Annual is so popular that tens of thousands are easily sold each year. I cannot say all financial troubles are over; we have still to print in the North and somewhere in the West Country, but \Ve are free of daily financial worries, and are not obliged each day to ask-How long do you think we shall be able to carry on ?The people-and theirnameisle gionwhohave given and are still giving time, energy, devotion and money-may now rest assured that their labour, service and love are not in vain. We shall establish a great Press not to-day, perhaps, not to-morrow, but sure as the sun will rise so sure is it that in the fullness of time our mighty Movement shall come into its own, and the daily dissemination of the principles of Socialism shall be accomplished. Meantime this chapter must not conclude, even at the risk of some repetition, without recording the fact that although it is true tens of thousands of working people-wom en and men, girls and boys-made the Daily Herald possible by subscribing pence, silver and gold, it is also true to record that hundreds of men and women not of the working classes helped us, time and time again, with money-befo re the war, during the war, or during the years since the Armistice. I cannot number or name all those who helped, but one name should always be held in the highest esteem by our Movement·, and that is, Muriel ·countess de la vVarr. Again and again, either through H. D. Harben, or direCtly to the paper itself, she has given assistance which has saved us. I mention her specially only because she is typical of many others, and because she is one of those who took sides with the Labour and Suffrage Movements long before the days when it may be "prosperous to be just." In the crisis of our fate in 1923, Clifford Alien (Chairman of the I.L.P.) also helped us, and by that charming persuasivenessof his, which jumps money out of people'spocke ts, raised as loans and gifts some thousands of pounds in money and securities. All these special securities and loans have been repaid.
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Again, on money, I record the simple faCt that those who value the Daily Herald owe thanks a hundredfold to the brave band of bonny fighters who refused to he terrorised, and, with great faith, started the paper on that memorable day, April 15, 1912, with a paltry capital of £3oo. ·vve also owe a debt, none of us will ever be able to pay, to the vast army of men, women and children who sent an answer to every appeal-some their jewels, some thousands, some hundreds, and some single pounds and tens of thousands who sent us sixpences and shillings. ·when the paper is prosperous, as it assuredly will be, I hope the millions who will benefit from its advocacy of Labour's cause will spare a thought for these unknown thousands, and be inspired by their example to labour on behalf of the cause we all so dearly love until all the citadels of prejudice, ignorance and vested interests are levelled to the dust.
Printed at the Pelicli11 Press,
2
Carmelite Street, E.G.
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[25] I0 Alternatives and Precursors
Direct access and box pop The summary demand for access to radio and television is in keeping with the popular pressures on other established institutions described in Part One. People find it increasingly intoler. able when institutions, many of them ostensibly set up for the public's benefit, seem and sometimes actually are more concerned with being able to carry on their business undisturbed by outside 'interference'. Parliament and local government, supposed to represent the. people, are felt to be remote from the people; bureaucratic procedures cause all sorts of institutions to lose sight of their main purpose so that 'in hospitals patients may be woken up to be given sleeping pills, in prisons the socially inadequate are deprived of all initiative, and in schools an insistence upon obedience and punctuality may take precedence over the development of independent thought' ;1 public libraries are shut at the very time when the public is free to use them; mothers of small children have to rush to catch the post-natal clinic when it is open. People are more and more impatient with institutions which function autocratically and, as a result, perversely and stupidly. Thus students want seats on the Senate, many parents want a say in the government of schools and still more want physical access to schools and their staffs. It has always been recognized that, in principle, politics is too important to be left to the politicians. The insight is being extended : education is too important to be left to educationists; housing to housing managers and committees; planning, in general, to the planners. 'Broadcasting is really too important to be left to the broadcasters.' So Anthony Wedgwood Benn, in a speech delivered in 1968, crystallized the same wood of resentment, the same sense of
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exclusion, in relation to radio and television. He returned to the theme in his Fabian Tract, The New Politics: The public, as a whole, are denied access or representation in these new talking shops of the mass media as completely as the 94 per cent without the vote were excluded from Parliament before 1832. The real question is not whether the programmes are good, or serious, or balanced or truthful. It is whether or not they allow the people themselves to reflect, to each other, the diversity of interests, opinions, grievances, hopes and attitudes to their fellow citizens and to talk out their differences at sufficient length. . . . The press and broadcasting authorities have a responsibility for providing enough accurate information, at the time when it really matters, to allow people to acquire greater influence. The people for their part, have the right to demand a greater ease of access to the community through the mass media. 2
At a May Day rally in 1971, Berm made a specific demand for time on television for the trade-union movement: The time has come when the trade-union movement should demand the right to regular programmes of its own on the BBC and I"fV, to allow it to speak directly to its members without having everYthing they say edited away by self-appointed pundits and producers. Surely the trade-union movement, with nearly Io,ooo,ooo members, should be entitled as an absolute minimum to, say, a quarter of an hour out of the 200 hours of BBC output each week.
Doubtless Wedgwood Berm is right when he observes (in his Fabian pamphlet) : 'The democratization, and accountability of the mass media will be a major issue for the 1970s and the debates on it are now beginning.' In his contribution to the debate. Benn has argued in favour of direct communication as distinct from mediated communication. In his May Day speech he said that if time were allowed to the trades unions on the networks that would allow them to present in depth and free from bullying interrogators, the needs and problems of those who earn their living in industry. He expanded his idea in the Sunday Mirror: The trouble is that most of what we see and hear is filtered through someone who is an expert in communication - maybe a producer, or a journalist, or an editor. They feel it is their job to make their material interesting.
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Direct Access and Box Pop 163
But making it interesting means that someone plonks himself down between us and the real situation. You just don't_ hear people who are actually working in indtJstr J talking in their own language about their lives and problems. If a shop steward in one of those car factories was given enough time to tell us, in his own words, what it was all about, or if we heard the manager talking directly about his side of the case, their words would have a special ring of truth about them.3 It is an attractive proposal, and the impulse behind it is similar to my own. It seems to follow from all that I have said that one of the chief aims of reform should be that viewers should have greater access to the medium, so that it is much less a oneway medium through which a select band of communicators may address everyone else, and much more a medium through which the heterogeneous sections of a society in process of confusing transformation may effectively communicate with each other. But is Berm's proposal the best way either to democratize television or to use television in the service of a participatory democracy (two separate questions, frequently confused)? The Dutch are attempting something of the kind through the Nederlands Oucroep Stichting, which allows interest groups to create broadcasting societies with direct access for presenting their views in proportion to their membership. It will be important to observe the successes and failures of the Dutch scheme and it would probably be worthwhile to conduct similar experiments in Britain. Wedgwood Berm's idea has encountered considerable scepticism, but this could be a short-term effect of its novelty. Some critics doubt whether trade unionists are articulate enough to pull it off ('most trade unionists are at a considerable disadvantage compared with people who have always regarded words as their natural means of communication').4 This is not a serious objection. It is basically a snobbish objection. The spoken- word is in fact a tool of trade to every shop steward and trade-union negotiator, and in any case people with a capacity for expressing themselves can learn to adapt to the exigencies of an unfamiliar medium. More telling perhaps, is the fear that trade unionists are articulate enough, but boring:
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Has Mr Benn ever watched the TUC at their annual conference when trade unionist after trade unionist gets up and- has his fiveminute say? Anyone watching three days of that would conclude that the less trade unionists exposed themselves unfiltered and unedited the better. The fact is that most trade unionists, as do most politicians, churchmen and businessmen, talk more conventional, cliche-ridden nonsense about themselves than not.s British experience of direct access has not been reassuring outside broadcasts from party political conferences, the party political broadcasts themselves, for example, do not do much, if anything, to irrigate the arid channels of democratic communication. Wedgwood Berm himself anticipated one of the difficulties. If the trade unions had the right of access, presumably management would want it too: If that meant giving the same time to the Confederation of British
Industry as well, at least we should be hearing from managers who are also experiencing complex problems of human relations in industry. One of Mr Benn's supporters was the secretary of an ex-serviceman's organization, who wrote to The Times envisaging a place for his society in such a scheme. Somehow it would be necessary to ration scarce time on a handful of channels not only between the TUC and the CBI, but on behalf of the British Legion, the Boys Brigade, Toe H and the Townswomen's Guilds, Rotary and Round Table, ACE and CASE, Shelter and Snap, the British Humanist Association and the Salvation Army, Release and the Adult School Union, rank upon rank of interest societies, voluntary bodies and pressure groups. Not impossible in practice, but daunting. More importantly, would it be worth the effort, even if (as some see reason to doubt) the resulting programmes were viewable, interesting, peopled by passionate enthusiasts with a reality to communicate and 'with a ring of truth about them'? I fear it would not. Benn was demanding a quarter of an hour a week in which to present 'in depth' the needs and problems of the industrial workers. Fifteen minutes: and it could not be more, with that press of industrialists, ex-servicemen and vegetarians
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Direct Access and Box Pop 165
all queuing up for their share of time. But how could any of them present themselves in depth under these circumsta'lces? Who would view? How effective would they be in communicating or in promoting dialogue and social change? Experience of such a scheme might prove otherwise, but on the face of it those who demand access to the networks are on a false trail. No doubt many of the resulting programmes would have a valuable authenticity and freshness, but to claim parity of opportunity with professional broadcasting is to want an equal right with the broadcasters to a medium of staggering inefficiency and ineffectiveness, as analysed in Part Two. Advocates of 'direct access' are recommending the wrong message for the wrong medium. They are really hankering for a multi-channel situation, for cable television, for the wired city. What they propose would be socially desirable and feasible in practice if the technology were right, and it is in that direction that the argument based on their premises should run. It is largely in order to promote such direct access that the extension of cable television is being seriously considered in Canada and the United States. 'The wired city' is an extension again of CA TV in conjunction with other electronic devices. Wilbur Schramm is one of many authorities who regard such a project as realizable before the end of the century: The wired city ... means essentially that most homes, schools, industries and businesses will be served by coaxial cables with a capacity of twenty to forty television channels each, and a far greater number of voice channels. These will enable business and industry to do much of their work, and operate many of their automated factories at a distance. Much marketing will be done on these new channels, and many meetings will be held on them. The wired city will connect our homes with storekeepers, lawyers, doctors, libraries and an adult education centre for life-long study and retraining. It will provide us photo-telephones, and let us choose from much more news and entertainment than we can now receive.6
The demand for direct access is in tune with the temperament of the time, but the demand is vitiated by the technology of the time. Its impracticability does not show the demand to be unreasonable - it exposes the contemporary technology of open circuit network television as for some purposes old fashioned.
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There is not much point in attempting to broaden the range of voices with the right to suffer from the same communications blocks which make television, and much of the professionalism associated with it, ineffective and spurious. Another attempt to use television for democratic participation, employing quite a different communications model, nearer in concept to the wired city, has been attempted in West Germany. The system (called ORAKEL) combined televised documentary and discussion with the techniques of phone-in and electronic opinion poll. Three progr~es were transmitted on consecutive evenings in the summer of I97I, the first starting at 9.30 p.m. and going on until 1.30 in the morning. It started with a cartoon criticizing the gap between government and people on the pollution question, and went on with documentary film to remind viewers of the kind of problems created by pollution. There the resemblance to a conventional programme ended. The rest of the time consisted of 'organized conflicts' on television, phoned-in questions from viewers, and viewers' answers to poll-type questions processed by computer. The 'organized conflicts' were aggressive exchanges of opinion between representatives of industry, government, doctors, consumers and other interests. These exchanges were influenced by two panels, one consisting of thirty representatives of the general public who could join in the discussion at any time on open telephone lines; the other a group of experts in the studio whose task was solely to supply factual information, interrupting participants when necessary if they made factually false statements or unjustified generalizations. Mter each bout of conflict, viewers phoned in answers to questions- 3000 were able to do so, using thirty available lines. At the end of each line a student recorded the viewer's answer (rated on a five-point agree-disagree scale), and noted the demographic characteristics of respondents. No names were taken. The resulting data were punched directly on to cards and analysed by the computer. The answers were then considered in the next round of organized conflict. It is reported that the Federal Government was suspicious of this experiment but that viewers were enthusiastic. Clearly the technique could be abused, and fears were expressed that this could lead to a reversion to manipulative government by plebis-
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cite, using the most up-to-date techniques. The organizers, a group of scientists from the Heidelberg Study Group for Systems Research (largely financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Science) were encouraged by the success of the experiment, methodologically and politically. The programmes went out on the third (educational) channel, and therefore the poll results (based on an unrepresentative sample suffering acutely from what social scientists call 'volunteer bias') were not at all a scientific measure of public opinion; nevertheless the force of the arguments deployed and the reaction of 3000 viewers to them did persuade_ the Government to give more funds and support to pollution control. As an effective expression of public opinion, the Heidelberg experiment was at least as proper, democratically speaking, as the exercise of influence by pressure groups or the changing of a political climate through the correspondence columns of The Times. The Heidelberg team proposed repeating the experiment later in 1971 and the BBC attempted something similar but technically much less ambitious on BBC-2. On I October 1971, the BBC staged a three-hour debate on the Common Market. One thousand viewers (selected as rep:J;"esentative by Gallup Poll) had been asked to vote on the Market issue a fortnight previously; they were then assembled in six studios and asked to vote again in the light of the Great Debate, as the programme was called. However, the computer went wrong and Robin Day, the chairman, had inelegantly to confess that 'After the great debate, now follows the great cock-up.' The ORAKEL model is more promising, under present technical conditions, than Wedgwood Benn's plea for direct access. But it is still not the only possible one. Mounting it calls for a suspension of normal broadcasting procedures and the creation of ad hoc machinery. These are not arguments against it, but they are factors indicating that though change could come along this route, or something like it, it would come slowly, especially in Britain, where we are not given to the enthusiasm for gadgetry which is implied by ORAKEL. 7 It would be more fruitful to look for models which extend present practices and which would grow more securely because they derive more organically from already accumulated experience.
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,f
I am not making the cynical recommendation: if you want to achieve something new in Britain, disguise it to look like tradition. I am saying that to make progress it is worth looking at the resources, experience and traditions that we already have and then pressing for their adaptation so as to achieve something new. There is to hand the inheritance that is wanted as a foundation, but it needs looking at from in front, with the eyes of the future, instead of from behind. Three approaches It appears that the slogan, 'Broadcasting is too important to be left to the broadcasters' is too vague to be much of a guide to action. Even demands for 'access', for enabling people to talk to each other through the media, conceal a good deal of confusion. The weakness of Benn's analogy of Parliament with the media is that the various Reform Bills which gradually democratized Parliament obviously did not enable fifty million people to sit in the House. The discussion so far about democratizing broadcasting has tended to confuse two distinct issues- (a) how broadcasting is governed, and (b) how broadcasting is used. I am primarily concerned with the latter, while recognizing that the two are connected. At the level of use, three different lines of reform may be distinguished, all of which could be based on existing experience. The first is Berm's more precise advocacy of air time for trades unions and other interests, which I. have already discussed. This is the mode of which we have least experience, and that not altogether encouraging. It would be an attempt to democratize use by making the broadcasting organizations act as publishers, relinquishing all or some editorial command to outsiders but providing technical support for them, creating more programmes on the analogy of party political broadcasts. Some of the most creative workers in television have demonstrated a second approach with a potential for reformist growth: they pay socially sensitive attention to the formats and contents of their programmes, producing for empathy instead of for impact. As specific a production matter as set design, for example, may contribute to the sense of remoteness, of show biz out-thereness and artificiality which can work so much against real audi-
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ence involvement that the impact achieved is democratically counter-productive. The tendency for television to turn what matters not only into a show, but into a 'mere' show, is often due to such design decisions. When a chairman, for instance, sits on a rostrum, elevated and removed from those he is 'confronting', who sit behind elegant panels, or on strange fantasy furniture, it may make for a clean, visually 'interesting' set. But it is also likely to make for a visually inappropriate set, dominating the proceedings instead of serving them; turning the medium into an end in itself; emphasizing studio contrivance and presentation at the expense of what has to be presented; oppressing and moulding those who take part. This kind of subordination of communication to style emasculates even experts and professionals: how should laymen survive it? Why should it persist at all, this obtrusive legacy from the Ziegfield Follies? It is important that there are a number of producers who are aware of the ideological aspect of production style. Sometimes they make mistakes by going· to the other extreme. John King, for example, the bold BBC producer responsible for a series of programmes with the significant title Free for All, deliberately eschewed over-production and went instead for an undisciplined, unstructured form of presentation in a raw studio, packing itwith, say, a crowd of students (or of students' critics) and virtually letting them sort themselves out. Doreen Stephens attempted something similar when she was at London Weekend, with a series of programmes called Roundhouse. They tried to recreate in the Roundhouse the vigour, spontaneity and raucousness of Hyde Park's Speakers' Corner. These experiments turned out to be unworkable, confused rather than free, raucousness getting the better of spontaneity, but they were a healthy reaction against 'over-produced' programmes which cause format overkill. More such daring explorations are needed. When successful they create a more democratic tone for the output, which too often distances itself from the public and reduces that public's real psychological involvement through an authoritarian professionalism. Some producers also attempt to use the medium in a more democratic way by having non-professionals taking part in the T.P.-9
I
programmes. In principle, there is nothing new or intrinsically democratic about such participation. For years ordinary members of the public have been variously encouraged either to make contemptible idiots of themselves, or, more humanely, to show off their skills for the entertainment of others in talent contests (such as Opportunity Knocks), and party games (Take Yottr Pick, Double Your Money, The Golden Shot and others whose enormous popularity make their own comment on the power of the get-rich-quick fantasy in an alienated age). It is much more innovatory, however, when producers apply this approach in other kinds of programme. John King has tried to make programmes quite literally in the spirit of Wedgwood Benn's plea that 'the people' be allowed 'to reflect, to each other, the diversity of interests, opinions, grievances, hopes and attitudes to their fellow citizens and to talk out their differences at sufficient length'. He has summed up this philosophy in the television' and he has been quoted as saying: maxim 'People
are
The medium is shackled by pre-set ideas of what is good, bad, or even possible, basing the measurements on what has gone before. I believe we must open it up to the audience. 8
Early in 1971 King invited people 'virtually to walk in off the street and take over a television studio' in Bristol. The result was an interesting shambles. It was an attempt to make television as free as an Arts Lab or like a meeting of the London Film Makers' Cooperative, and it failed. This is not to say that nothing of the kind could ever succeed. At their best, even the much more deliberately produced David Frost programmes began to show that it was possible for television to stimulate real discussion, involving, thought-stirring discussion, between experts and ordinary members of the public, as distinct from over-dramatized argument which often has about as much cognitive value as all-in wrestling. It may be that King's drastically radical interpretation of 'direct access' would work on CA TV or on local radio, even though it may fail on network television. Like the broader case for 'direct access' itself, this may be another instance of the wrong message in pursuit of the wrong medium, a good intention at odds with the available technology and the existing institutional structure.
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There is, however, a third approach to programming which would release television's power on behalf of participatory democracy. This approach would satisfy the impulse behind the approaches already considered (television as a form of publishing; and participation programmes), it would overcome some of the difficulties they seem to entail, and it would occasionally even require the kind of programmes they envisage, but as part of a larger and more articulated process. In so doing it would begin to help television establish new relationships with the audience, thereby enabling the medium to cure itself of some of the weaknesses discussed in Part Two. I shall call this third approach Participatory Programming. Participatory programming is a democratically responsive social process, in which television programmes are a component in a multi-media mix, or in a multi-agency complex acting in consort to achieve social, community or political change and development. This approach, which will be concretely described in the chapters that follow, would not only enable us - broadcasters and public together - to make television more than a mirror (which symbolizes its quietist effect), and much more than a window on the world (which symbolizes the screen as alienating barrier). It would also do more than enlarge its representativeness as a forum, which is what 'direct access' implies. It would give television another capacity altogether, turning it into a chief instrument in an orchestra of means of communication organically integrated with society, so that we may use it as a power tool for shaping our destinies instead of being wagged by them. There are two essential preliminaries to a description o.f what would be involved in participatory programming: first, the 'neutrality' question needs to be faced; and secondly, existing precursors to participatory programming should be identified, both because they make the exposition more intelligible and because their very existence shows what is proposed to be feasible. The 'neutrality' issue is unavoidable because this approach to the use of television is without doubt interventionist. To misquote the most famous expression of Marx's impatience with academic philosophy (in the eleventh of the Theses on Feuerbach): 'The broadcasters have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.'
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To those who fear that broadcasters already editorialize too much, such an interventionist policy may sound dangerous, implying an abandonment of the editorial neutrality enjoined on the broadcasters through the BBC Charter and the Television Act. Although some working in the medium may chafe at the constraints imposed by the need to be impartial, most would probably insist that while giving information about the world and endeavouring to interpret that information in various ways was a chief part of the job our society gives to television, changing the world is emphatically not. In short, this could seem like a recipe more likely to find sympathy with totalitarian governments or with the new crop of democratic regimes suffering from a bout of neo-Bonapartism. In fact, as will appear, television may be both interventionist and neutral: indeed, its neutrality is essential if its interventions are to succeed. But it is wise to recognize that the neutrality of broadcasting does not always work in democracy's favour. Broadcasting has to be impartial on controversial matters; controversial matters are usually important; yet such issues are often handled in a way that induces boredom, and boredom is not the frame of mind in which a democratic public should approach areas of significant disagreement. To take a typical example: an ambitious programme with the altogether laudable aim of rendering intelligible the Conservative Government's Industrial Relations Bill concluded with a debate. It was predictably chaired by Robert McKenzie; it was inevitable that Vie Feather would appear, and that made it equally unavoidable that he would be balanced by Campbell Adamson, along with two other similar-dissimilar pairs. The unintended disservice to democracy was effectively diagnosed by the critic Philip Purser: You can almost hear the yawn that convulses the nation whenever the kindly but immovable face of Mr Feather fills the screen. Does anyone cry, 'Goody, it's Campbell Adamson again'? Purser was not being flippant: In this instance the presence of the big guns was justified. . . . But their presence has been devalued by too many occasions when some routine piece of industrial news has been expressed in terms of a collision between these two men, or their predecessors, as if they
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were hereditary champions of worker and boss. Since both of them occupy positions which are by definition fixed, there is never any real swirl of ideas. It's equally the fault of television for reaching for them so often, and their fault for accepting.9 There are many occasions when producers decide on a less conventional interpretation of an issue imd engage less predictable, more provocative, spokesmen or scriptwriters to display it. This approach frequently precipitates protests from weighty interests such as the motor industry, the :film business, the medical and teaching professions, who resent -it the moment a producer shows a sign of having a view of his own which is perhaps less flattering to the interest depicted than the one it maintains of itself. Programmes which dare to such candour sometimes properly, sometimes less responsibly, have helped to nourish a campaign to make television more accountable (in itself a desirable end), which sometimes masks an altogether undesirable pressure to make television more conformist and less of a Fourth Estate. It is harmful to note only those occasions when producers seems to be insufficiently democratic by being unaccountable, without also noting those probably more frequent occasions when they are insufficiently democratic because they are too conventional, making programmes that damage debates which are supposed to lead to surer understanding. The trouble goes deeper thari the stereotyped casting of top spokesmen of established opposing interests. Spokesmen are spokesmen; they would not be doing their job if they really talked together: they are condemned to thwacking each other with ·verbal bladders. Furthermore, broadcasting tends only to be neutral within a subtly shifting area of mainstream disagreement. It is rarely neutral when the dispute is between a representative of some strand of the conventional wisdom and someone outside the respectable or fashionable consensus of the day, who could be a dangerous bigot but could equally well be Moses or Jesus. If broadcasting is to serve an increasingly pluralistic democracy, then it has to be more rigorously neutral than at present and not treat certain groups which exist within British society as though they were interlopers from alien cultures, to be ignored or guyed. The polarization of American society shows only too luridly
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the perils of playing a consensus game, trimming now to liberalism, now to the silent majority, while always overlooking the fundamental ideological stresses until they erupt on campus and in ghetto. So, television must be neutral if it is to be a trusted vehicle shared by all the Alternative Societies within society, all the Counter-Cultures within the culture. But "it also has to be interventionist. It can be both, and the dissolution of the apparent paradox - a more active, interventionist role for television as a chief instrument of a participatory democracy - will readily occur to anyone familiar with the theory and practice of community development. Community development workers accomplish change by enabling the people among whom they move to clarify their own objectives, improve their own relationships, overcome for themselves the obstacles in their way. The community worker is not primarily a leader, inspiring people with his goals; he is primarily a catalyst, helping them to diagnose, clarify and implement their own. His neutrality is consequently an essential asset, not an embarrassment. For the same reason, television's neutrality and objectivity is one of the chief advantages it already possesses which will enable it to be the effective carrier of other people's voices, not its own. The neutrality of community workers is not absolute. They are not equally impartial towards democrats and anti-democrats, for example. They cannot be because the raison d' etre of their work is democratic; but they will normally be objective in their dealings with different sub-cultures, attitudes and policies within the frameworks of values actually subsisting in a society. 10 The policy I shall propose, for new kinds of programme and new sets of relationships with socit!ty and the audience, does not therefore presuppose any fundamental departure from accepted practice on this particular point of principle. Broadcasters will need to extend the range of their professional ethic, and apply it more fastidiously, not abandon it. British precursors Since the purpose of participatory programming is to precipitate creative social change, there is a good deal more to it than the programmes themselves. Nevertheless, television programmes
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are still at the heart of the process, and they need to grow out of experience already acquired of programmes which are interventionist in intent or effect, and of programmes supported by materials in other media and actively responded to by people working in non-broadcasting institutions and agencies. There are at least five classes of programmes which could be regarded as useful precursors, since they have a potential for provoking participation, sometimes in a quite rudimentary form but sometimes achieving more significance and effectiveness. These are: I. Programmes which strengthen the participatory moments in the processes of representative democracy.
Programmes which crystallize or intensify a public mood that creates an ambience for participatory activity.
2.
3· Ombudsman-type programmes. 4· Programmes which provide a channel through which social change may be promoted. 5· Programmes which, by changing the way members of particular professions act on society, may begin to change society. I. The most important programmes that strengthen the participatory moments in the processes of representative democracy are by definition those which inform viewers about the parties and policies competing for their votes at a general election. Despite the healthy self-criticism expressed in the SFTA discussion (see above pp. I09-II), there is ample evidence from the research of Trenaman, Blumler, McQuail and others that television's influence at such times can be substantial.U This particular case illustrates a more general point. When there is something that people are expected to do, and can do, because the social mechanism for action is at hand (i.e. in this case, voting), and when the issues touch people in their daily lives, then the information pouring off the screen becomes, for a few weeks, unusually useful; consequently, it is attended to; consequently it sticks, and viewers become measurably better informed, more receptive, more thoughtful. For most people most of the time however it is not clear what if anything can be done with the information received, so it is badly assimilated, if at all.
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The key example here is of historical significance, though 'transmissions' is a more appropriate term than programmes. By televising the Soviet invasion of their country, Czech television enabled a great deal of the world to monitor the operation; more importantly, it involved and strengthened the Czech people throughout the inevitably changing forms of their struggle to preserve their new socialist democracy so that, in defeat, they were better able to maintain the spirit of it. Without television in those key days in August 1968, run by men and women of courage and resourcefulness, the Czechs might quickly have become confused; many could have succumbed to the Soviet newsreel interpretation of those crucial events. The most notorious domestic example of this category in recent years was the documentary dr~a Cathy Come Home, which vividly depicted the persistence of poverty in a prosperous society, the continued crisis in housing, and the associated harassment of vulnerable citizens. By capturing the imagination of viewers, and provoking the indignation and comment of these in authority, both the conscientious and the complacent, this play provided an emotional climate humid enough to promote the growth of Shelter's fund-raising and political agitation.
2.
3· Ombudsman-type programmes have been produced in anumber of different forms in recent years. They all push television well beyond its mere window or mirror functions, because they all make the medium interfere with ongoing social processes. Cause for Concern (BBC), for example, set out to investigate prima facie cases of injustice and ·sometimes succeeded in righting past wrongs. By using an outside broadcasting unit linked with a studio in Manchester, On Site (Granada), confronted representatives of authority with people with a grievance against that authority. The conflict would sometimes be between parties between whom communication had broken down. By arranging for them to meet without meeting, On Site avoided the embarrassment of pre-transmission sociability and enabled viewers to see the aggrieved party in their own setting. The choice of Ray Gosling as Granada's man on location was a wise piece of casting - in terms of his credibility in the role on television and in terms
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of his own active social conscience. (He used to follow up particular issues after the programme was over) 12• The first series of On Site ran for forty-one weeks and was up to that time (May 1969) Granada's most popular local programme. No cautious planner in broadcasting need fear that the new mission for the medium being proposed in this book is a prescription for plummeting ratings. On Site was so successful that Granada converted it into a network programme. It suffered. In order to make it appeal nationally, Granada dropped Gosling, probably a mistake, and heightened the dramatic aspect of the format. Instead of being a catalytic link in a chain of real social conflict, the programme exploited real conflicts as an end in themselves, in short turned them into a 'show'. Dramatic overstatement went too far, even for its own good, when some unemployed men from Netherton were taken to a gale-swept, frost-bitten piece of waste ground on Merseyside, there to discourse with their bosses, cosily relaxing in the warmth of Granada's studio. There have been other such ombudsman programmes on both channels. 4· Programmes in this category are either meant to get things put right, or to get new things tried. Campaign (another of Granada's local programmes) combined both. The last programme in the 1970 series looked back over the progress achieved. It claimed that because of Campaign, a farmer's simple gadget for testing cattle for brucellosis would soon be commercially available; a temporary day nursery had been set up in Rochdale while a new one was being built; clubs and organizations were being formed all over the Manchester area to help epileptics; and Lancashire's coastal towns had become aware of their pollution problems. The National Suggestions Centre (now the National Innovations Register) which aims 'to provide a platform for ideas and to stimulate action: to encourage innovation and experiment' (both technical and social), collaborated with Thames Television to provide the What? Spot, every Monday night on Eamonn Andrews's local magazine programme, Today, in the first quarter of 1970. In three months, viewers sent in 1000 suggestions, the best of which were featured in the programme, the 'inventor'
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discussing his suggestion with critical experts. The Post Office Corporation and the Housewives Trust agreed, as a result, to discuss the practicability of a dial-the-price telephone service (up-to-date information about the retail prices of perishable goods); London Transport took seriously the notion that buses on tourist routes could provide taped information (paid for by those mentioned) - 'Stop here for Swan & Edgar's, Lillywhite's and Simpson's ... Woodstock is showing at the Empire, Leicester Square.... ' 13 Richard Luce, director of the National Suggestions Centre, was understandably impressed by the more ambitious Norwegian programme Bank of Ideas. In two years, this programme, with more resources than Thames's modest but effective What? Spot, achieved many social reforms and practical innovations, especially benefiting the remote areas of the country which are easily forgotten. Those responsible for Bank of Ideas are proud of it, but they have nevertheless stopped making it. The more seriously such a programme is taken, the more it becomes a social service fronted by a television feature. To sustain Rank of Ideas required a larger administrative apparatus than the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) could manage within the resources available to it as a broadcasting organization. This is an organizational point of some significance, for which a properly articulated policy of programmes for participation will have to provide. 5· The series mentioned so far are precursors of fully fledged programmes for participation chiefly because of their subject matter. What? Spot and Bank of Ideas also begin to indicate some of the problems of methodology and administration to be faced if television is to be fully harnessed for a more active democratic life. Experience in the solution of these problems is now being acquired by many broadcasting organizations throughout the world. Educational broadcasters are already working out ways of combining television with other media, to strengthen the messages of each, and also with ways of connecting multimedia teaching materials with an appropriate face-to-face organization on the ground, to make comprehensive learning systems, without which the media acting on their own can ac-
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complish little. There is some irony in the realization that educational television, which tends to be regarded by many mainstream broadcasters as an aberrant form, is actually at work on techniques and approaches which will enable current affairs broadcasting as a whole to find a major new role within a new kind of democracy. Since I shall have to look abroad for examples of programmes which clearly exemplify the part that television could be playing in the development of democracy, it is encouraging that the illustrations in this last category of precursors are all British. This is not to strike a banal chauvinistic note : it is to make again the important point that practical experience relevant to participatory programming is already being built up in this country and that this is happening within the present constitutional framework of British broadcasting. Although the future route I am outlining may seem in some respects unfamiliar, at least we set out from a base in the present. No utopian wholly-new-start will be necessary. My three examples are, then, all from educational television; but they all highlight matters of importance to the practice of participatory programming. They are Living and Gro'Wing, a sex-education series for primary-school children, made by Grampian Television; Heading for Change, a series on the application of management techniques to secondary-school administration (Harlech Television); and Representing the Union, a BBC series on productivity bargaining for shop stewards. When a producer wants to make a feature programme, documentary or item in a current-affairs magazine, he decides what it will be about and then usually picks a good many· brains before he goes into production. He will retain an expert in some capacity, as presenter, writer, researcher or consultant. The object is to make the best possible programme on the subject with the widest possible appeal. When the producer of an educational series (educational programmes, as distinct from educative ones, are in series by definition) makes his programmes, then from the start he has a different relationship with his advisers. Some of them (in the Schools Broadcasting Council, or the IT A's Schools Committee, for example) may have suggested the sub-
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ject for the series in the first place. Others will suggest ways in which matter and manner should be tailored to fit the needs of teachers working with children of a given age range. The advice is not meant to help produce good television, attractive to the largest possible audience and a threat to the ratings for the other channel; it is meant to produce good television relevant to the specific e(iucational needs of a highly age-specific segment of the audience, viewing in groups under the guidance of teachers. The relationship producer-adviser-audience is a much tighter one because the audience must be able to use the programme as well as enjoy it. When Grampian Television decided (as a result of advice from educationists) to make a series of sex-education programmes for children on the edge of puberty, the company found itself obliged (as did the BBC some two years later) to create an even more elaborate net of pre-production relationships. In addition to the normal processes of consultation associated with schools television, the aura of taboo affecting the subject made Grampian adopt a procedure like that used in community-development work. An extended series of meetings was held throughout the region not only with educational administrators and teachers, but also with clergymen and above all parents. Should the programmes be made at all? For what age group? Dealing with what particular topics? Pilot programmes were shown and evaluated at a second round of consultations with parents and teachers. By the time these programmes finally went on the air, Grampian knew precisely what was wanted, knew what problems to deal with, what type of expert presenter to · engage, using what varieties of vocabulary, with what sorts of visual illustration. As a result, the programmes themselves quickly broke down embarrassment, unleashed talk of a kind never possible before between the curious, nervous, eager children and their shy, inhibited, ill-equipped parents and teachers. The procedure was like that of community development; but the objective was educational (though with consequences for home-school relations and for personal relationships between the generations going far beyond that specific goal). What is wanted now are experiments using similar community-development approaches for programmes with community-development objectives.
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Whereas conventional broadcasters customarily unloose their arrows with optimistic prodigality, hoping they will land somewhere and not get caught up in the trees, the enormous success of Living and Growing portends a much less speculative, wasteful situation for the broadcaster making programmes for participation. His audience wili help him select arrows of the right calibre, advise him on the most effective trajectories and then busy themselves actually putting the butts into position. Effectiveness of communication instead of hit-and-miss, responsiveness on reception instead of indifference to 'chewing gum for the eyes' - these are the rewards for the participatory broadcaster prepared to undertake an unwonted amount of consultation and, as will appear, as yet rather unfamiliar collaboration with other agencies and media. Grampian's programmes were made for schoolchildren. To enable teachers to make best use of them, the company also published a booklet summarizing each programme, with advice about the place of the series in the curriculum, and suggestions for following up the programmes in discussion projects. This combination - programmes plus teachers' notes, occasionally plus wallcharts or workbooks for pupils - is the standard kit for any school programme whether on Independent Television or BBC. Although embracing several media it would be an affectation to say that this combination embodied a multi-media approach. It is not, however, pretentious to describe Harlech's Heading for Change as a modest multi-media system. The preparations for Living and Growing provided an elementary model (in a cognate field) of how to set up a participatory programme. The components in Heading for Change are similar in principle to those needed in successful participatory programming. In two other respects, this project was useful as a model from which to learn : it was prepared for adults who could as easily opt out as volunteer to take part; although it constituted an episode of in-service training for the teachers who viewed, since its subject matter was management, the programmes (or rather the multi-media system of which they were a part) led to changes in the way that some schools in Wales and the West of England were run. Changing institutions through changing the professionals who work in them clearly points to the next step;
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changing society through changing the people who live in it. There is no reason why it should be surprising to employ television for the critical reform of society, since it is already engaged in recyclage (as the French neatly call professional updating), one of the by-products of which may often be to change the texture of society as well. The Heading for Change programmes were also transmitted, simply as programmes, in the Midlands, where they apparently had some effect. But the full system (used in Wales and part of the West Country) consisted of eight television progranirn.es which went out at 4.25 p.m., the end of the school day, between April-June 1969; 250 viewing groups meeting in secondary schools, teachers' centres, institutes and colleges of education, with a total membership of 3000 viewers; a workbook consisting of white pages (notes on the subject matter of each programme) alternating with blue pages (simulated 'in-tray' materials evoking the range of challenges faced by the management of any modern secondary school). The success of this simple multi-media system depended on the creation of a partnership between HTV and the educatiomil world in its region. The company started with an advantage in that its education officer had a reputation in his own right in the region. He and his small staff established a sound working relationship with the Director of the University of Bristol School of Education, Professor William Taylor, who wrote the workbook, scripted and presented the programmes and briefed the leaders of viewing groups. Because the need for such a course had been accurately diagnosed, local education authorities readily used their own machinery to set up the viewing groups. Significantly, it was not necessary for HTV to employ extra staff to create the face-toface component in the system. Enthusiastic partners in the field did it for them. There is much to learn from this experiment. The lesson to be drawn is not, in this context, the pedagogic effectiveness of multi-media teaching systems which are based on television or include television in a media mix. If that were the point, the Open University in Britain, the NHK Correspondence School in Japan or the Telekolleg in Bavaria would provide more sophisticated illustrations. The Grampian Television and HTV projects are important because they begin to
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demonstrate the potential for social change through audience participation in this approach. It is no coincidence that they were originated by two of the smaller companies in the mosaic that makes up Independent Television, working at their local regional level. It is easier for such a company to be in relatively close touch with its audience, and much easier for its personnel to get to know those with responsible positions in other agencies. (Some years earlier in 1964-5, Westward Television, another small company, proved this by anticipating the HTV project using a less elaborate system. Westward collaborated with the Department of Education at Exeter University on the production of in-service training programmes for teachers called Teachers' Workshop. On that occasion, grants from the Department of Education and the Gulbenkian Foundation gave the programmes an extra life at home and abroad by paying for their transfer to film.14) Since it was also a success, my third example proves, however, that it is possible to mount a project of this kind on a national scale; to the key features present in the two local projects, this new dimension was added. The system on this occasion embodied these main characteristics: (a) collaboration between a broadcasting organization and major organizations outside broadcasting; (b) television as part of a multi-media teaching system; (c) strengthening viewers' capacity for participation as a consequence of education (an instance of what the French, in another felicitous phrase, call Telepromotion). The BBC's chief collaborator in Representing the Union was the TU C. Even working together (which at national level they usually do not) the agencies of trade union education (the TUC itself, the Workers' Educational Association and university departments of extra-mural studies) could have only reached shop stewards by the score or the hundred. By working with television it was possible to reach thousands - in principle to reach all 16o,ooo of them. But if the BBC had decided unilaterally to educate shop stewards, its target audience would have been missing. As many trade unionists still suspect that the BBC is the voice of the Establishment, they would expect trade union education from that source to be managerial brainwashing; but it follows, from the processes of news selection already discussed -
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the conscientious distortion built into the very concept of news - that shop stewards have a public reputation as the irritants of industry, rather than its lubricants (the distinction in fact made by the producer of the series). They know that television, Establishment or not, is largely to blame for this image. So, in order to do effective work - not only trustworthy but trusted - a collaboration between the BBC and the TUC was essential. The TUC was able to advise the BBC on content and relevance, was in a position to stimulate the formation of viewing groups, was able to give its approval and the benefit of its joint auspices to the programmes and other components in the system. The BBC, through its field liaison officers, also had to consult management representatives whose blessing for group viewing in works time was sought. Just as many union leaders looked for the management fist concealed in the BBC's velvet glove, so many managements feared a touch of subversion, a school for militancy. And it was not possible to please everyone. Modern managers accept the necessity for example of showing union representatives the firm's books; more traditional managers shudder at the sacrilege committed by such disclosure. For broadcasters to win and deserve the confidence of those with whom such difficulties have to be resolved, without contracting anaemia in the process, it is essential for them to interpret their neutrality in a vigorous and positive manner, reinforced in such a case by academic integrity towards the subject matter of the programmes. Unless they respect the body of knowledge identified by responsible experts as the core of, say, productivity bargaining, they cannot hope to gain the respect and cooperation of the audience or of other outsiders on whom they may depend. Such problems are soluble, and in this instance, they were solved; as I write, the BBC has decided to run the project for a second year, encouraged by the enthusiasm among shop stewards for the series, as discovered by research carried out by the Commission on Industrial Relations. Apart from the ten half-hour programmes on different aspects of productivity bargaining, the system comprised a BBC special programme publication (also called Representing the Union) with notes and background information (26,ooo copies were sold), plus a set of TUC booklets (Work Study and Payment by Re-
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sults, Job Evaluation and Merit Rating, Productivity Bargaining and Costs and Profits), all these to be used by individual viewers but chiefly by the leaders and members of viewing groups, following and discussing the programmes in their fac· tories and workshops. (u,ooo of these packages for groups were sold.) Dr Fred Bayliss, formerly Senior Economic Adviser at the National Board of Prices and Incomes, has estimated that the successful operation of a national prices and incomes policy depends crucially, on half a million key people - on the management side as well as the union- understanding the issues. I have already noted the widespread ignorance of economics which exists; Bayliss finds it also at this very level where it matters most. Words he used in 1967 have since proved abundandy true: Unless there is an understanding of what some current issues of economic policy involve, these policies simply cannot be mounted. The main one ••. is the prices and incomes policy. The links between incomes, prices and productivity are extremely complicated. They are not self evident. And only when there is an understanding of the relation between these main economic factors is there g
No educational policy was built into it. The outcome is painfully familiar to everyone who is daily amazed or distressed at how quickly wages and salaries lose their value. Although a small effort when measured against the need, the BBC-TUC project is the most ambitious attempt yet to do something effective (not only good teaching, but good teaching on the right scale) about one specialized, but complex aspect of economic policy. In that it helps shop stewards to represent their members more ably in productivity bargaining, it also strengthens their power to take part in the running of modern industry. In this sense, these educational programmes are already indirectly a species of programmes for participation. Participatory programmes in the full sense, however, are those
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which address viewers not merely as workers or professionals with an influential purchase on society at large, nor merely as citizens; but as citizens expected and expecting to act, to create an active society by showing that action is possible and that it works. For examples of such programmes it is necessary to look abroad.
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Chapter 10 I. C. Hannam, P. Smyth and N. Stephenson, Young Teachers and Reluctant Learners, Penguin, 1971. 2. A. Wedgwood Berm, The New Politics: A Socialist Reconnaisance, Fabian Tract 402, 1970. 3· A. Wedgwood Berm, Sunday Mirror, 2 May 1971. 4· Mary Holland, Observer, 9 May 1971. 5· Milton Shulman, Evening Standard, 6 May 197r. 6. W. Schramm, 'The future of educational radio and television', Japan Prize Lecture, NHK, Tokyo, 1970. 7· On 2 December 1971 several papers reported that a similar scheme, initiated by Peter Fairley, science editor of ITN, was being prepared when the 1970 General Election intervened. It is characteristic of the British scene that the project has been called 'Friday night is voting night' and that the Guardian called it 'a political version of Hughie Green's Opportunity Knocks'. 8. J. King, Daily Sketch, 17 March 197I. 9· P. Purser, Sunday Telegraph, 14 March 1971. ro. See, for example, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Community Work and Social Change: A Report on Training, Longman, 1968: T. R. Batten, Communities and their Development, Oxford University Press, 1957· I 1. See references for chapter 7, note 7. 12. T. Gould, Profile: Ray Gosling, Listener, 17 July 1969. 13. R. Luce, 'Switching on ideas', What?, vol. 2, no. 2, r~;qo, p. 30. 14. B. Groombridge 'Adult education: the formative phase', in G. Moir (ed.), Teaching and Television, Pergamon, 1967, p. 89 15. F. Bayliss, Address to the Annual Conference of the National Institute. of Adult Education, Adult Education, vol. 40, no. 4, 1967' p. 212.
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The strengths of participatory programming These foreign examples were modest but effective demonstrations of a new use for television. Revitaiizing democracy, making it easier for more people, including those most unfamiliar with power, to take part in the business of democracy, is more important than democratizing television. But participatory programming shows that when it is purposefully used on this work of democratic invigoration, television itself becomes more democratic. People from all strata and milieux sometimes find themselves involved in the selection of themes for programmes, that is they have access to the medium by influencing its programme planning; sometimes, once the theme has been chosen, they are in a position to affect the contents of the programmes and the way they are treated. The definition of issues, the delineation of the actual areas of controversy, the selection of protagonists become much less top-down and ~uthoritarian than in conventional broadcasting. In television as we know it, everything is left to producers whose antennae are attuned to the consensus as currently defined by the Establishment and influential elites. In participatory programming the people also have access by influencing programme research and by providing a community stimulus for editorial response; counterbalancing the normal pressures of oligarchy. And sometimes, when the theme and treatment demand it, representatives of the people have access by taking part in the programmes. In participatory programming broadcasting professionals do not dominate the proceedings, as in conventional programme making, but they do not abdicate either, as they are apparently
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expected to by some radical advocates of an alternative television. In participatory programming, current-affairs topics are the . basis of socially relevant adult education through television, helping people to decide for themselves what policy they wish to adopt or action they wish to take. Having helped the people move themselves, television can then report the news generated by the resulting social change. And throughout the process it can do this because of its trusted neutrality, or, as in the Swedish case study, because of its trusted objectivity (Swedish SR was hardly neutral as between polluters and anti-polluters, but it was not propagandist either - its social concern expressed itself through confronting the Swedish people with. the stunning results of disinterested academic research). Participatory programming enables people to Clarify their ideas and wishes, and then to channel their responses in a socially or politically effective manner. Thus the information provided by television becomes worth having, assimilating; evaluating, accepting or rejecting, because it is information which can be used. There are visible outlets for social action to hand, an integral part of the social machinery into which television itself is fitted. These tentative experiences of integrating television with other media, media with other social agencies and institutions, experts with laymen, information with education, education with debate and dialogue, talk with action, show how the problem about television itself should be redefined. We should not be dealing in isolation with the question : how can broadcasting be made more accountable? or how can the people have access to television? The issue that calls for discussion and experimen~, research and development is this : how can the media resources of society be brought into relation with channels of social decision and action so that the people are involved in an increasingly participatory democracy? The future of television is central to the main issue, but it is not in itself that issue. By focusing too exclusively on the politics of broadcasting, we are in some danger of missing the fundamental matter; the future of democratic politics itself and the role of broadcasting, as the key figure in a family of media, in that future.
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Review of British resources - television Participatory programming is, then, a process in which the media are used chiefly as a stimulus to participatory democracy but also in part as themselves a forum or outlet for participation. Television must (at least at first) occupy a central place in attempts to use the media for these ends because of its popularity · and its reach. As I remarked at the very outset, television still predominates in what social scientists now call the 'time budget' of leisure watching it consumes more time for more people than any other activity apart from work or sleep; and no other spare-time activity begins to rival it. No one knows for how long this sociological phenomenon will persist, but it is now two decades old and it continues to be a central fact about social life in Britain today. Furthermore, as we have seen, television is now for most people the chief source of information about what is going on in Britain and the world. This is a much more recent phenomenon and it is too soon to assess its stability. For the time being, however, it is another social fact of major significance, which gives to television a strategic and tactical importance in any process designed to improve communication and action within a wouldbe participatory democracy. Television is popular, not only in the sense that the great majority of the population use it and devote most of their spare time to it, but also in its related sense that they like it and trust it. Despite a growing volume of public criticism of broadcasting, the confidence in it of most members of the public is undimmed. The sheer size of the audience which exhibits this trust was made possible by the attitude of successive British governments towards the provision of broadcasting. Until the advent of local radio, Britain has always maintained a strictly egalitarian policy, in that a listener or viewer living in a rich city would receive no more and no less broadcasting than a crofter in the Orkneys. Capital investment decisions and engineering choices have always'had to be made on the basis that any signals have to be provided equally in all parts of the kingdom. Everyone paid the same licence fee; everyone had as many channels and programmes to choose from. The creation of Independent Tele-
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222 Mobilizing British Resources for Democracy
vision has made no difference to this principle, and engineers regard it as a cardinal duty to find ways of sending signals over or round obtuse mountains, however few people there might be living in the valleys on the other side. This egalitarianism is in marked contrast to the traditional policy of the United States, which has adopted a market approach - different places have as much broadcasting as advertisement revenue can sustain. The result of official policy and engineering pertinacity is that the country is almost totally penetrated by television, a fact of considerable political significance, whichever political way you look at it. It could continue to be significant as Britain moves away from oligarchic democracy to participatory democracy. At certain levels of action, political effectiveness depends on this reach and penetration. Community action on a small scale can lead to the erection of a bus shelter, even to the provision of a bus service, but community action cannot be restricted to such parochial endeavours. To achieve results on a regional level, as through Metroplex, or on a national level, as in the concerted Swedish assault on pollution, the use of television is essential. We could make a start now, on participatory programming spearheaded by television, without changing fundamentally the constitution, organizational or managerial structure of the broadcasti~g organizations. I have argued already that an explicit reference to democratic goals should be included in the legislated responsibilities of broadcasters, to strengthen the development of policy and clarification of planning, but a revision of the terms of reference (which would condition many other kinds of programme) is not a prerequisite for action in this particular direction. There may be good reasons for advocating, as many do reforms in the administration, and it is possible that organi' zations which are themselves hierarchic may turn out to be msufficiently sympathetic to participatory programming as a socially desirable objective. On the other hand, even syndicalists are not always as sensitive to the democratic responsibilities which an institution has to those outside and whom it is meant to serve, as they are to the internal democracy of the way the enterprise is run. Such a role for television would, however, require some strengthening of the external relations of broadcasting, though
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not at all along unprecedented lines. The relevance of the adult and further education output of the BBC and ITV to the needs of its target audiences already depends in large measure on consultative machinery. Educational programmes (including those for schools) are always planned in the light of advice from the educational world. This is channelled through to the broadcasters not only by a series of advisory committees, of a kind which do not (as yet) exist in any other programme area (except religion), but also by small teams of specially trained fieldliaison staff, capable of listening to what educationists want, of interpreting their wishes to production personnel, and, in turn, of interpreting the broadcasters back to the world of education. This system is especially well developed in the BBC, and the success of Representing th? Union was largely due to it. Participatory pmgramming would be encouraged by an extension - in their numbers, skills and terms of reference - of these specialized liaison workers. . It might be objected that education is itself a specialized sector of social life, whose institutions and leaders are readily identified and located. It is one thing to liaise with them over the levels and subjects of series tailor-made for educational use; it would be quite another to negotiate with the whole population over the infinite range of political, social and cultural issues which, with participatory potential, might be treated in documentary, current affairs and news programmes intended for mass consumption. This valid contrast is easily overstated, however. Although education, as a system, is readily isolated for contact, the possible subject matter for educational programmes is also as infinite as life itself. This has not made impossible the pragmatic application of criteria of priority. Furthermore, nobody would or could advocate a wholesale conversion of large segments of the output to the participatory mode. It is inevitable that such programmes should constitute only a modest proportion of serious output, especially while they are being tried and tested; but even later, when broadcasters have more experience of them, they would still only take up a fairly restricted amount of air time, concentrating inevitably on a few projects of cardinal social value (but establishing thereby a new mode of relationship with the audience which would begin to
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leaven the tone and approach in the more conventional forms of programme, .and to influence the criteria by which their success with audiences would be judged- 'understanding' and 'usefulness' finding their place alongside 'impact' and 'appreciation'}. It is important that the participatory sector of the output should be enlightened by the work of community liaison staff who would not have to shoulder the entire Mettoplex-like burden themselves. They are necessary because consulting the audience, and moving among the population segments that make it up, are as important as - indeed cannot be separated from efficiently addressing that audience. In participatory programming, as much professional attention needs to be devoted to reception and use as to production and transmission. Although some enlargement of field forces would be necessary, participatory programming would not call for any increase in production resources: they only need to be partly re-routed in this new direction. That could call for certain inter-departmental adjustments within broadcasting, notably closer collaboration between features, education, news and current affairs (so that, for example, some documentaries would become part of a thought-out system of stimulus - educational input - coverage of social effects). It would also call for the familiarization of production personnel with the new social values. Furthermore, the broadcasting networks do not transmit networked progra:mmes all the time. All Independent Television companies are committed by their contracts with the ITA to provide programmes of many kinds (features, news, regional magazines) solely for their own regions (and never intended for networking), so that some participatory programmes could count against their 'local origination' obligations. The BBC still produces some television output exclusively for regional use. These existing categories of provision could readily be adapted for contributions to Anglicized Metroplex Assemblies. Also, both broadcasting bodies are already devoting considerable air time to educational series for adults. Education is one of the two areas, religion being the other, in which the BBC and ITV regularly plan together instead of competing. Participatory programming, in at least some of its phases and in one of its major dimensions, is, as I have suggested, a species of educa-
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tional television. Accordingly, it is not fanciful to envisage a project in which, for example, an ITV company contributed regional programmes dealing with its content, while the BBC (which has a well-established 'community' strand in its furthereducation output) could make a complementary series (for wider transmission) on the methodology of this and similar projects (e.g. how to conduct a community self-study, or how to create and sustain a pressure group).
Review of resources - local radio Participatory programming is good for society, for audiences and for television itself, because through its methods it disavows the preposterous presupposition of present practice - that television is or can be an all-purpose medium dominating the other media in a competition for audience loyalty. Britain is becoming increasingly rich in communications resources, but haphazardly, and they are in no clear relationship with each other. We need to experiment with different ways of associating them. Potentially the most important collaborator with television in the participatory programme process is local radio. National radio still has an important part to play in the creation of an educated public, for the moment overshadowed by the supremacy of television as as information medium. Its limitation - that it can only describe events which television can actually show - is obvious; its strength - that oral exposition can be more explanatory, subtle, complex and comprehensive than a sequence of pictures with or without commentary - is too often overlooked. Moreover, audiences do not at present have the habit of using television and radio in conjunction, deliberately turning to programmes such as Analysis or From our Own Correspondent to make better sense of items of which the colourful iceberg tip has been glimpsed on television. Nor, apart from modest attempts at collaboration in the curricular educational field, do the controllers of the BBC do much to encourage such a habit. The alternative media are just there, alongside each other, the one upstaging the other, their complementariness unexplored. Participatory programming would provide opportunities for joint-media production by broadcasters, and joint use by the public.
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In developing strategies for participatory programmes local radio seems likely to have a strong place. It is difficult to treat people as people through network broadcasting: reduce the scale to a locality, even to a region, an area in which the broadcaster will meet his listeners in the street, send his children to the same schools, be as well known to the Rotary Club and the Trades Council as an editor of a local paper, and broadcasters find themselves more easily adopting a tone which would be too real, too human for the show business audience grabbing ethos of the networks. The authority which local radio may acquire, young though it still is, and restricted as yet to VHF, was shown in the summer of 1971 by a documentary programme on BBC Radio Merseyside. It dealt with aspects of life in the terraces of Toxteth in Liverpool 8, with its black population, its cosmopolitan character and high crime rate. The programme criticized the local police for harassment and brutality and it opened with a statement by a Liverpool City Councillor who said: I have seen people soon after these allegations of harassment or brutality. As a medical practitioner, I have occasionally been called on to examine people, and I have certainly formed the opinion in some cases that brutal behaviour - unnecessary brutal behaviour has in fact occurred. I am further strengthened in this belief because on one or two occasions - and I don't want to exaggerate this- I have had an opportunity of talking informally with members of the Force. From these conversations, and from having heard a little from the other side, and putting two and two together, I have no doubt at all that in some cases it certainly adds up to four and adds up to an unnecessary display of violence. The programme quoted from a statement made to its makers by a Liverpool policeman, and then commented: As a serving constable, this is a clear breach of police discipline, and it is a measure of the concern that some police officers feel that they should risk their careers in this way. It could also be taken as an indictment of existing procedures within the organization of the police force. The officer said that in certain police stations, particularly in the city centre, brutality and drug-planting and the harassing of minority groups take place regularly. On one occasion, the officer witnessed a police sergeant attack a teenage youth who had reported
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to the station while on parole. The sergeant poured insults on the youth, picked him up by the coat lapels and banged his head against the wall several times, before throwing him into a chair. The youth was then dragged out to a police jeep and driven away. After hearing the word 'agriculture' used on a number of occasions by plain-clothes police on duty in Liverpool 8, the officer asked what it meant. The reply was : 'Planting- but you can leave that to us.' I The programme was scrupulous, recognizing that the police have a difficult task in the city, but it was a bold piece of investigatory journalism. The Chief Constable of Liverpool undertook to investigate its allegations. This authoritativen ess is important, especially in the early days when listeners will judge local radio by expectations derived from network radio. But it is essential for local radio to acquire new styles and a new manner if it is to be an apt instrument for participatory programming. Fairly soon after its formation, Marghanita Laski . experienced this change of tone. She wrote perceptively of getting 'over the shock and into the feel of local radio': The shock is at entering a dimension radically different from that of national broadcasting. It is like knowing your place on a map of five miles to the inch, then moving to one of five inches to the mile. People are on a new scale. Radio London's 'experts', for instance, are the parish priest, the small shopkeeper, the local pensions officer, the borough councillor. You have to get used to less competent speakers, but speakers who know, from the ground up, what they're talking about. The most potent effect seems to be an entirely different quality · of discussion programme.2 She cites a discussion, typical of the regular slot in which it appeared, about the demolitions and rebuildings in Christchurch Street, Chelsea, which were debated by the Chairman of the Chelsea Society, the leader of the residents' association, the vicechairman of the borough's planning committee and others who 'all knew the place on the ground' : The principles involved - the value of mixed-class housing, the laws on demolitions and local-council grants, the significance of preservation as against conservation orders - emerged because each had had to find out, for his protection, his passion or his job, how far these
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were relevant and could work for him. It was only on hearing this that one realized how much, and necessarily, nationally broadcast discussions start from or must quickly pass to the abstract, invoking the particular only illustratively; and we have tended to accept, no matter how ill founded, discussion based on largest-scale principles as the norm.
Her verdict on this programme, which certainly did not achieve its success just because it was local (which could have meant poorly produced parish pumpery), but because the producer had already learned how to address his physically close audience with a new kind of seriousness which often eludes producers of national programmes: This debate about a Chelsea street, which perhaps a quarter of the listeners would know at least roughly, lasted only half an hour but seemed spacious and elbow-roomed, and left us with applicable knowledge of concretely-founded principles.
Marghanita Laski's summing-up is pertinent: For high-grade entertainment and for intensity it's necessary to turn to national programmes, but for enrichment of ordinary living at most ordinary levels, I suspect that, at least potentially, local stations may have it over national ones.
This combination of broadcasting's traditional authoritativeness with localness of tone and allusion has enabled local radio to go beyond investigatory journalism, often allowing a wide range of representative members of the public to take part. Radio Merseyside has already contributed to a project which was a Metropolex in miniature, with local radio as the spearhead medium. There is a great stirring of community feeling and action in Liverpool. Much of the best community-development work and adult education in Britain is to be found there, inspiring selfconfidence and political participation among people who face daunting social conditions. Community councils are being formed and hitherto gravely disadvantaged people are succeeding in talking, on something more like equal terms, with 'the Corpy', as everyone calls the City Corporation. The EP A (Educational
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Priority Area) Project director, Eric Midwinter, can provide abundant evidence for the claim to 'have nailed conclusively the myth of apathy and lack of concern among lower-workingclass parents'.3 In this physically depressed but spiritually reviving atmosphere, Radio Merseyside and the Workers' Educational Association mounted their mini-Metroplex. At the kernel of it were six fifteen-minute discussion programmes - pointed up with relevant popular songs and dramatized inserts - called Living Today, dealing with the family, the neighbourhood, the church, the school, the local authority and the government. They were well enough made to interest anyone on Merseyside, but they concentrated on the problems social change was creating for men and women living in the EP A. House to house canvassing in the EP A led to the formation of a dozen listening groups, meeting in houses, community centres and pubs, led by 'resilient' (i.e. not stuffily academic) animateurs recruited by Mr Tom Lovett, the WEA's so-called 'unattached' worker who also wrote the scripts. The group discussions were successful. Bob Jones, the producer, said: 'When you see forty men and women talking about common problems in the Seven Stars pub off Scotland Road you feel that education can be brought back to the people.' These were emphatically not the kind of men and women normally recruited for more formal courses and classes run by university extramural departments, the WEA or even by what used to be cal1ed 'night schools' and 'evening institutes'. One group, for example, consisted entirely of young housewives. All except one left school at fifteen and did unskilled factory work before marriage; they all had two or three children; most of them lived in houses under compulsory purchase orders - two bedrooms, no bathrooms; outside lavatories - owned by often unscrupulous landlords who saw no point in doing repairs, however urgent. Several of their husbands became unemployed during the 'term'. These women were eager but unused to handling ideas, like most of the other participants. Yet the discussion groups produced practical suggestions and important questions to or criticisms of authority on such a scale that Radio Merseyside remade the series, includin~ this time representatives of the groups
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face to face with councillors and local government officials to talk with them. The housewives felt that discussions like theirs should be tape-recorded for use in secondary schools - with the aim of disabusing girls in particular of their sentimentalized picture of marriage and parenthood; they wanted schools and church buildings used more as community meeting places; they urged schools to be more open and responsive to parents instead of referring to them only when there was trouble; they recommended that the Corpy should have an efficient, adequately staffed centre for complaints and information. Given the network of functional relationships between voluntary and statutory agencies in Liverpool, the advocacy of such suggestions stood a good chance of success, reinforced by the continuing dialogue between the people and authority taking public and audible form through Radio Merseyside. I have described this venture in some detail because of its effectiveness and more general validity. The scale was small, the resources were exiguous, but the method is capable of imitation and development, especially in harness with regional television, and especially when the issues, locally defined, affect people everywhere. Review of resources - other media and agencies The popularity and penetration of television, its status and resources, mark it out as the chief component in participatory programming aimed at major social or political effect. The localness of local radio makes that medium the most appropriate for local situations or for the local treatment of national questions. But it is now apparent that this philosophy of communications use may be applied to any media resources, the media chosen and the mixture of media involved depending on the nature of the issues and the geography and demography of the participating population. Apart from broadcasting, the most neglected resource is CCTV (closed-circuit television) and mobile VTR (video-tape recording). All forms of broadcasting share one democratic virtue of considerable significance : they are public media whose signals are available to anyone with the right receivers. They reach into every home,. not merely into those of the influential, the leaders
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or those on a subscription list. This virtue is denied, by definition, to closed-circuit television. Those running closed-circuit systems would have to recruit audiences specially if they were to play a part in a participatory process, and members of the public would have to be keenly motivated to gain· access to such systems or their offerings. Nevertheless, the community has already invested many millions in the installation of the CCTV plant operated by four local education authorities (Glasgow, London, Plymouth and Hull), by most universities, many colleges of education and further education, and even by several enterprising schools. These systems could be used to transmit specially prepared materials for particularly dedicated sections of a community, looking at a theme intensely within a smaller geographical area, or from the point of view of people with special responsibilities for leadership, or whatever. This could sometimes be a planned follow-up to broadcast programmes, sometimes the initiating component. Discussion could be fostered at a level midway between the relatively impersonal level of broadcasting and the intimate level of face-to-face groups. But as yet, except for student magazines at Leeds, Sussex and other universities, these facilities are used only for academic, curricular purposes. The democratic possibilities of CCTV were hinted at some years ago- many years ahead of time in that these CCTV systems did not then exist, when the now defunct Television Viewers' Council sponsored an experiment using ad hoc equipment at Loughton Hall, the base of Debden Community Association. Using improvised gear, a community was able to talk to itself in a way never possible before.4· The community use of CCTV for democratic participation may gain impetus from the as yet tentative experiments being undertaken by such groups as TVX (an Arts Lab spin-off, associated with a former film editor, Gordon Woodside, and the same imaginative Underground 'entrepreneur', John Hopkins, who helped initiate IT and the Pink Floyd) and members of the staff at Goldsmith's College, London. VTR already has a wide range of applications - in industrial training (salesmen can see their own negotiating demeanour as it rea11y is); in many forms of sports coaching (golfers and athletes are learning to
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improve their individual performance; rugby players to gain insight into the group dynamics of the scrum, the line-out and rucking in the loose, by seeing themselves on tape); in police work (Lancashire police with a VTR can courteou·sly convince ~rrant motorists by pl~ying back a tape of their road behaviour); m schools (one Nottmgham head is reported pleased by the power of VTR to persuade long-haired pupils to get their hair cut; others are making serious educational use of it) and in colleges of education (student teachers can see themselves as others see them). The technique could be applied to community selfstudy projects - an appalling environment to which inhabitants have became inured confronts them and others with its horror on VTR - and to the necessary business of fostering communication between people and bureaucrats; why should an elderly unlettered council tenant have to cope with forms and telephones when a community service VTR could easily provide a document on tape showing that she does have rats in her basement? Why should a hou~>ing association not present its case for a zebra crossing across a dangerous road by presenting a tape on which the hazards are visible instead of a written report that has to prove the authenticity of its arguments? These are the first thoughts on early experiments, but they are clearly acorns with a future. 5 Metroplex experience in the United States has already shown the useful part that local newspapers can play in participatory programming, by providing news coverage, by acting as a recruiting agent for viewing posts and discussion groups, by reproducing the texts of significant documents in the case. Works magazines, professional journals, parish magazines and other forms of print could all be involved, according to the theme of the project and the population segments taking part. New reproduction techniques make it easy for people to produce attractively designed newspapers of their own. In the Vauxhall area of Liverpool a newspaper provides information about, e.g. preschool playgroups and holidays for old people, and acts as a sounding board for community feeling on local issues. The paper is produced by a part-time community worker with the voluntary help of twenty local people; It is financially viable with a sale of 3000 copies.
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In Stavely, a small town in Derbyshire, a band of volunteers from all parts of the community produce an occasional newspaper which sells 3000 copies; Its originator envisaged that: our newspaper could be prospective, describing and influencing matters as yet unsettled, not retrospective, describing events already past. It would not use information as entertainment (like most newspapers). We might assert tbe individual's right to coritrol anything tbat affects him/her. The thing would have to take root among local people, become their paper.
It apparently did so. Ad hoc publications could also be prepared for use in any Metroplex-like operation. The BBC and ITV customarily produce pamphlets, wallcharts, tape-slide presentations, film-loops, discs and other devices as supports to educational series, any of which could be made available as part of the data input for a participatory project. Data has not only to be fed into this system. It also has to be gathered for diffusion (which suggests a new mode of extension work for universities, libraries and other centres of knowledge), and critically assimilated by its recipients (involving informal and traditional agencies of adult education). The recipients have to be recruited (via the gamut of voluntary associations and also through schools and other institutions with means of evoking the interest of the many people who do not join organizations), and provided with channels of participatory action (statutory channels, relevant pressure groups, ad hoc instruments for articulating need). It remains to be seen whether cable television will in due course become available for this and other communications purposes in Britain. It is as yet a remote prospect here, but not in Canada, the most 'cabled' nation, per capita, in the world. In I 97 I over four million Canadians watched cable TV, and their numbers were growing at the rate of 25 per cent a year. Challenge for Change, published by the National Film Board of Canada, has supplied practical advice to interests and groups wishing to make programmes and to promote feedback to them, and illustrates the programme possibilities by such examples as:
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a documentary ·on the unemployed made by the unemployed; live city-council meetings, with home audiences phoning in questions ... before or after the meeting; what the militant poor mean by welfare rights; ... regular accountability sessions with federal and provincial M Ps; ... a picture of the local Indian reserve, made by the Indians themselves; a lively Ukrainian feast-day celebration; a rap session with young long-hairs in a drop-in center, and a discussion with a church youth group, followed by an exchange of ideas between the two sets of young people. (Add a couple of parents I )6
Cable TV would help complete the mesh of communications needed. Meanwhile, it would pay us to experiment with different permutations of the various media that we do have, starting with combinations which demonstrate convincingly one of the main strengths of participatory programming; by using different media, national and local, in a multi-media system, the advantages of each are combined, so that large-scale issues may be brilliantly presented, and their repercussions in different localities considered in depth by people with the authority of their place in the place, which may be quite unlike the. authority of experienced performers. There is no reason why experimentation, based on the experience derived from the British precursors described in chapter 10 and on the foreign projects reviewed in the previous chapter, should not begin in this country, using available institutions acting in accordance with their own limits, and broadly within existing budgets, but acting, deliberately, together. It should be entirely feasible, for example, to mount something like a Metroplex Assembly in one of the regions served by an Independent Television company. The media and agency components in such a project would, by definition, depend upon the ultimately selected themes, and determining these would, again by definition, not depend solely on the broadcasters (or any other collaborating agencies). The population has to be and can be involved in the pre-production planning stage. One can envisage many topics keenly exercising the inhabitants of a particular region, but (remembering the policy of the prototype The Whole Town's Talking) not them alone- the siting of an airport; the conflicting and even irreconcilable pressures on land and water in, say, the Lake District or the New Forest; the
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ambivalent effects of motorways; cultural deprivation of the countryside; conurban planning, and many others not necessarily taken from one aspect of political life as these examples are. Participatory programming increasingly feasible To say that participatory programming is feasible is not to pretend that it would be easy. The broadcasting organizations in Britain have sometimes found it difficult to collaborate with other media and agencies, using different logistical styles, attitudes, and so on. The relevant American experience shows in particular that it is often peculiarly difficult to weld production personnel and research workers (survey research or productionreconnaisance research are often valuable ingredients in such enterprises). But nevertheless British experience in educational broadcasting, the experience of R TE in mounting Telifis Feirme and ORTF's close association with Rennes, show that the mode is possible. It now needs trying out on a broader political-social-cultural plane. There are reasons to expect, however, that certain changes are taking place, some short range, others longer term, that will make participatory programming increasingly manageable and demanded. These are I. Changes in the relationship between broadcasting and other institutions at national level, being brought about for strictly educational reasons but relevant in their consequences.
Changes in the rationale and remit of field agencies of adult education, which is that part of the educational system potentially closest to the democratic process, and changes in the organization of the social services. 2.
3· Most long term, but fundamentally most significant, changes in the expectations and capacity of the public. The kind of programming I am advocating does not even exist at present, but it is important to see it is not only in tune with the fundamental political dynamic discussed in Part One, but also that it will become more feasible, not less, because of other developments in the environment of broadcasting.
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The broadcasting authorities are expected, as I write, to have seats on the governing body of the new national organization for educational technology, destined to be the successor to the Nationa l Council of Educatio nal Technol ogy (N C ET). This apparently dry piece of constitutional .information could turn out to be relevant. The new organization will, among other functions, provide a rn"ore satisfactory framework for collaboration between the different providers of educational software and between them and the users of the software, at all levels of the educational system, and in industry and the Armed Forces. When N CE T was set up, its terms of reference emphatically made it clear that it would not intrude upon the autonom y of the broadcasters. The broadcasters now accept that the new body does not need to be more sensitive about the broadcasters' sovereignty than about that of the many other instituti ons with which it will deal. Furtherm ore, the broadcasters recognize that collaboration is right and inevitable in this field. It is an important shift of emphasis, and likely to ·go further, especially as the partners hip with the Open Univers ity becomes second nature, and especially as the new centralizing and coordinating body should display more interest in adult education as a sector of provision in its own right. And it is precisely through adult education that the boundar y between educatio n as such on the one hand, and social work, commun ity development and politics on the other becomes so blurred. NCET will foster the habit of systematic association between autonom ous agencies, and one result of that could be increasing confidence among several of the potential parties to participa tory program ming. 2. The field of adult educatio n is itself changin g in ways that would make the field compon ent in participa tory program ming more sophisticated and able to provide an adequate infrastru cture for the media effort. Whereas in the United States, adult education has had such a commun ity orientati on that 'community development' and 'adult educatio n' often seemed to be coterminous, the British tradition has hitherto been individualistic, and this despite the social conscience of the WE A and the declared aims of the Nationa l Federati on of Commu nity Associations. Commu nity associations certainly played a develop-
I.
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mental role before and shortly after the war in helping to humanize new housing estates, but their energies have tended in the last twenty years towards providin g sociable activities in community centres. This is often a long distance from promoti ng social change through the encouragement of grass roots democratic activity. The commun ity claim of the WEA is stronger because the Association has always shown an active interest in the politics of education (at all levels, not just adult education) and because its ideology relates the pursuit of education to active citizenship. There is a big difference, however, between addressing education to individuals in the hope and expectation that they would become better trade-un ion officials, city councillors and citizens, and addressing educatio n to groups of people or to strategic segments of the populati on in order to mobilize their energies for informed, self-determined social change. Now however the word 'commu nity' is on everyone's lips in the adult education world, and many agencies are beginning to think about how they may service the needs of the commun ity, whereas once they were introvertedly obsessed with the problems of recruitin g people to their routine programmes of courses and classes. In addition to this general change of emphasis, some agencies are deliberately exploring adult education as a resource for social change - not as a device for solving problems, but as an instrument to help people analyse problems and devise their own solutions to them with more confidence. This is happeni ng notably in the Liverpool Educatio nal Priority Area, as we saw, but the outward-looking techniques and approaches being tried there are in principle appropr iate to any environm ent, not simply to one officially classified as deprived and disadvantaged. This change of climate in adult educatio n means that when the broadcasting organizations attempt to work with the heterogeneous mass of different agencies which that sector comprises, they will meet with much more understa nding of what they are talking about than they would have done less than five years ago. Furthermore,• the exploitation of media stimulus at the receiving end, permitti ng better consideration of issues and information among the public to fructify in action, will be facilitated by the growing coherence of social organization at the regional and local level. The reform of the social services is the
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most obvious change in this direction especially as it will bring the provision of education, welfare, cultural and recreational amenity closer together. It is also to be expected that educational bodies will increasingly see the importance of peripatetic personnel whose job is to put those with control over educational resources into contact with those whose needs or interests are amenable to service by education. At present the WEA has one experimental 'unattached' tutor, and only a few local authorities employ roving development officers, but it will become obvious that the new community ambitions of adult education cannot be achieved by a handful of organizers, many of them part-time, and all of them prepossessed with, at best, running centres, or at worst, administering programmes of classes. As a result, in the wake of the Russell Committee (the Committee of Inquiry set up by the Secretary of State for Education to report on this field), there should be an enlargement of the liaison field force necessary to relate broadcasting with other agencies. The burden will not rest unilaterally on the limited numbers of field staff employed by the broadcasting bodies. Approaches for collaboration may stem from a variety of sources. These changes, in the national organization of educational technology, in the coherence of local government, and in the orientation of adult education towards participation and conscious community growth, will also predispose important agencies to look to broadcasting for new forms of cooperation and support. Physicists use the concept of critical mass to indicate the minimum quantitative levels that must be achieved before. any qualitative change in an object or process occurs. For adult education to make any socially significant mark in any specific direction, it needs to mobilize enough people in particular situations for their influence to be felt on the political or cultural fabric. To achieve critical mass in areas of informed, participatory social change, it is necessary to employ mass media. The field agencies will increasingly recognize this. Consequently, any. one of the interested parties could take the initiative in setting up a Metroplex partnership of media and agencies. 3· Far more significant in the longer run will be the increasing numbers of people in the population who are better educated;
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who actually enjoyed and were not humiliated by their experience of school, so that they do not regard education as a kind of aversion therapy; and who are more and more sophisticated about the media themselves. As well as benefiting quite disproportionately from the petty perks of our privilege-ridden society, the better educated will also continue to press for the humanizing of it. And more and more of them will have attended that growing number of universities, colleges of education and colleges of further education which use closed-circuit television as a teaching resource. A growing number of these establishments are allowing students to produce television equivalents to student newspapers and magazines. This is even beginning in schools. Anyone who has seen primary-school children (like those at Oxhey Wood Primary School near Watford) or secondary-school children (like those at the Community College in Ilfracombe) making programmes -learning about cameras and microphones, designing graphics, manipulating video-tape recorders and simple telecine systems, will become aware that pioneers in the educational system are beginning to produce a generation for whom television (not just watching it, but making it as well) has become healthily demythologized. A capacity to communicate on and through the box will not be limited to a handful of performing talents. At the same time as society becomes increasingly participatory, there will be a new population of younger people capable of making the maximum use of the media, both the centralized ones and the local, more spontane~us media mentioned in the preceding review of resources. This use will comprise both participatory programming and participation in programmes, in increasingly sophisticated forms. Meanwhile, and in the short term, the transition has to be made from conventional television to the new use for television explored in this book. In ordinary television, programmes are an end in themselves, or they vaguely serve a vague objective : the diffusion of awareness in the population of what is going on among them and beyond their boundaries, a population which often could not care less. In participatory television, as I have tried to show, programmes are addressed to people more or less already made aware of what information, concepts and ideas
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about alternatives they need; able to deepen their knowledge through access to complementary information in other media with other strengths; able to develop their sensitivity to other viewpoints and their grasp on their own value systems through face-to-face discussion and dialogue; able to articulate their wishes and press their views through social machinery with some purchase on the levers of power. Participatory programmes are intended to promote social participation. That is their chief objective and raison d'etre. They work by addressing people in terms which they understand, on issues which they really care about and which they have in some way shared in selecting. The programmes are supported by specially contrived arrangements at the reception end for ensuring that a representative core of the audience may assimilate and evaluate the information received; and they are related in some way to political and social instruments through which citizen viewers may press the conclusions at which they have arrived. By taking part in participatory programming, television simultaneously advances democracy and promotes its own development: it advances democracy by acting as a communications resource for public dialogue, and by providing a stimulus for social action; it promotes its own development by learning how to convert itself, at least in one of its modalities, from a medium of multiple diffusion which haphazardly succeeds in communicating, into a means of communication to which recipients of its messages actively attend, to which they respond and through which they may reply. The question facing television is : will it continue to alienate us from the world and from the possibility of effective action, by transforming an environment we are powerless to affect either into an object out there about which we are continuously but patchily informed, or into a spectacle to divert, titillate and uselessly appal us? Or will it help us create a society in which effective action is possible? It is not an anaemic, theoretical question. In advanced industrial nations the best endeavours of responsible men are leading to irresponsible societies; the rationality of the parts adds up to a dangerously irrational whole; the air is full of messages but
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there is little communication. In the confusion, there are ugly portents - wild behaviour by disaffected individuals and groups matched by disciplinarian governments. Representative democracy could be wrecked in the near future (here and abroad) by a dangerous conflict between populist anarchy and oligarchic reaction. The second half of the 196os rumbled with the premonitory tremors of this incipient struggle. Democracy must become more democratic if it is not to succumb to chaos, or to tyranny, or, as already seems possible in the United States, to a sordid mixture of the two. The issue is as urgent as any our society faces. Television can work for dialogue and against disintegration; for freedom and against a technological barbarism, not just by reporting the events to passive people, but by collaborating with an active people in making the news, the continuing story of the remaking of democracy.
Chapter 12 I. 'Liverpool8', Listener, 22 July 197I. 2. Marghanita Laski, Listener, 18 March 1971, 3· 'The Liverpool story', Where?, February 1971. 4· K. Jones, 'Community television', Adult Education, March 1965.
5· G. Woodside, Community Interests in Video Technology, National Educational Closed Circuit Television Bulletin no. 5· 6. Challenge for Change is more than the name of a publication. It is a remarkable programme of community development projects, using film and VTR as stimili, in which the National Film Board cooperates with departments and agencies of the Government of Canada. See George C. Stoney, 'The mirror machine', Sight and Sound, January 1972.
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[26] Democratization of Communication
The flaws and obstacles which hamper the process of communication, and which were described in the last chapter, are proof of a lack of democratic relationships-. It is the broad public, by definition, that has an interest in more, qualitatively better, and freer communication; and to ensure that the public makes its voice heard and gets its wishes satisfied means bringing the spirit of democracy into the world of communication. Because popular needs and desires are changed and enlarged as time passes, and because communication itself is going through an era of rapid change, any democratic relationship must be dynamic and evolutionary, not static. Democratization can be defined as the process whereby: (a) the individual becomes an active partner and not a mere object of communication; (b) the variety of messages exchanged increases; and (c) the extent and quality of social representation or participation in communication are augmented.
I. Barriers to Democratization The nations of the world live under a variety of political systems, of which some are totally or predominantly undemocratic, while others are essentially democraticalthough a state of ideal democracy is nowhere to be found. Ours is nevertheless a democratic age in the sense that virtually all political regimes claim to base their titledeeds on an implementation of the popular will; the idea that this is the sole legitimization of authority is thus accepted in principle. Similarly, the legitimization of communication is that it serves the people and is responsive to their needs. In moving toward democratization, this is what we have to build on. It hardly needs saying that democratization faces many difficulties, obstacles and resistances. Some have already been discussed. Communication, necessarily, reflects the nature of the society in which it operates - a society that may well be inegalitarian and undemocratic. Thus, inequalities in wealth distribution inevitably create disparities between those who are well-served and those who are deprived in communication; a gap between a cultural elite and illiterate or semi-literate masses is a gap between the information-rich and the information-poor; and an undemocratic political system cannot fail to have adverse effects on communication. Yet, despite the logical connection between democracy in communication and democracy in society as a whole, the former is sometimes in the vanguard. There have been cases of a relatively free press - secured by popular agitation and the initiative of determined individuals - in countries that did have a democratic political system, as well as in countries with marked extremes of wealth and poverty. An important political factor, which can co-exist with formally democratic 166
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institutions, is a rigid, centralised and bureaucratic system of adlpinistration. This tends to shape a communication system with the same defects. It is weighed down by inertia, resistant to innovation, hierarchical in its outlook, and unresponsive to the needs of the audience. The style of communication, and the use of the language also show signs of the dead hand of bureaucracy. In such a system, professionals develop a mandarin, self-enclosed set of standards. They imagine, because they adhere zealously to these standards, that their work is "highly professional". But genuine professionalism in communication is a skill in making information and ideas meaningful and interesting, using imagination and creativity, and taking full account of the quality of reception. These bureaucratic habits in communication are found in both developed and developing countries. In the latter, they are generally an effect of the gap between the cultural elite and the population at large, or of a structure in which bureaucratised communication is one branch of a generally bureaucratic administration. Also, representation of the public in management and policy-making is often nonexistent, inadequate or reduced to a formal mechanism which yields no effective results. In developing countries, this representation is not always achieved even if the will exists; the capacity to absorb popular resources is limited by a communication system still taking shape, and some central direction of communication is necessary to protect a- perhaps fragile or endangered- national identity. However, this is a problem that cannot be indefinitely ignored. The modernisation of. communication technologies makes popular control more vital, but also more difficult. The development oflarge scale information systems and data banks leads to amassing huge amounts of data of essential importance in social, scientific, economic and political spheres. Access to these information sources can obviously be restricted by those in control or it can be broadened to a wide audience of potential users. Pressure from the public must be exerted for democratic participation in decisions about diffusion of contents or information distribution and against concentration of control over communication.(!) Conversely, the public must be ever-watchful of official or private unwarranted accumulation and distribution of personal data about individuals. Other technological developments capable of limiting democratization are the various new information services made possible by systems linking computerized data banks with television terminals. In short, technological advances may become obstacles or threats to the democratization of communication; at the same time these new services can also lead to decentralized, more democratic structures. . There are other barriers to the democratization of communication which oblige us to place a renewed stress on the various freedoms - of information, expression, thought and belief- for it is limitations upon these that make it so difficult to advance the progress of democratization within communication systems. But one barrier that exists almost everywhere is the structure of vertical communication,(ll where the flow (I) "It would seem to be a fundamental principle of public policy in a free society to strive to maximize participation and diversity and strongly oppose anything which could foster concentration of control. For it seems obvious that such control of the electronic media, whether by the state or by private interests, would represent a serious threat to the freedom of expression that is the lifeblood of a democratic community." (D. F. ParkhiU, Communication Technologies in the 1980's (1): The Future of Computer Communications, CIC document No. 81.) (2) Comment by M a. B. Zlmmerman: "Insofar as broadcasting is concerned, it is true that radio and television studios cannot be open to everyone at aU times. Moreover, the public demands at least a minimum of quality in programmes and this necessitates a certain standard of talent and
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runs from top to bottom, where the few talk to the many about the needs and problems of the many from the standpoint of the few. For hundreds of millions of people, democratic communication can scarcely be a reality because of the inadequacy of communication channels, means and vehicles. From the individual's point of view, the non-existence of basic facilities for communication is a powerful constraint, since for many people the problem is not so much that the press is not free as that there is no press at all. The opportunities for communication are thus limited by the lack of infrastructures. lack of communications systems, and lack of production facilities (particularly the case in developing countries, but also true for social and cultural minorities in both industrialized and developing countries). Diversity and choice in the content of communication are an obvious requirement in any democratic system, even though this is not the only requirement and even though it does not automatically ensure democratization. Every individual should be . able to form his judgments on the basis of a full range of information and the presentation of a variety of opinions. For the communicator- whether professional or not- this pluralism is equally a necessary condition of democratic opportunities. As we have pointed out earlier, pluralism suffers through the concentration of power over communication, whether in the hands of State authority or of private interests. Since democracy implies the voicing of divergent opinions, even an inventive model of democratic control over a system speaking with a single voice can have nothing in common with real democratization. The exclusion of disadvantaged groups from normal communication channels is a major issue. Their composition and size may vary from country to country, their problems may be more or less crucial, but they exist everywhere in the world: the poor, the handicapped, the geographically isolated; those subject to social, cultural or economic discrimination; national, ethnic, language and religious minorities; women, children ·and youth. Some of these groups in some places are denied such rudimentary rights to communicate as that of assembly or expression of opinion. Others, more numerous, are disfavoured by tradition or dominant social attitudes; this is particularly true for women, half of the human race. Another barrier is erected between those who send and those who receive the messages in the communication process when people lack the knowledge for decoding or understanding messages. Among them are not only illiterates proper, who are unable to understand written language, or even those (still more numerous) who are unable to decode audiovisual messages or who decode them only imperfectly, but also all those individuals who do not feel at ease in the universe of symbols and who can be considered as semi-literate when it comes to understanding and interpreting these signs or appreciating their significance and being able to use them effectively. There is actually a new language of communications which must be learned and understood. All these points have to be taken into account when considering the concept of democratization of communication. 2. Breaks in the Barriers In recent years an increasing number of initiatives have been launched to break professional experience on the part of those who perform behind and in front of the microphones and cameras. Although radio and television have in most countries been set up in vertical organizations for purposes of economy and administration, the remedy is decentralization of the means and an increase in the number oflocal stations. Efforts in this direction are in progress in many countries."
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down, or at least reduce, these barriers. Generally speaking, four approache~ h~ve emerged: (a) broader popular access to the media and the overall commurucation system, through assertion of the right to reply and criticise, various ~orms of feedback, and regular contact between communicators ~nd the publicUl; ~b) participation of non-professionals in producing and broadcasting programmes, which enables them to make active use of information sources, and is also an outlet for individual skill and sometimes for artistic creativity; (c) the development of "alternative" channels of communication, usually but not always on a local scale; (d) participation of the community and media users iii management and decisi~n making (this is usually limited to local media). Self-management is the most radical form of participation since it presupposes an active role for many indivil:luals, not only in the programmes and news flow, but also in the decision-making process on general issues. Connected to active participation schemes and often running parallel to them, is a tendency observed in several industrialized countries to decentralize the mass media. This includes setting up regional or local radio stations, increasing the number of centres for programme production, introducing cable television and so on. A few examples are indicative of this growing trend. In France, a chain of film workshops has been established to provide an open communication channel for local people who wish to make short films on neighbourhood issues. "Mediatheques" have been established in Belgium for the distribution of video tapes and playback equipment. In the Federal Republic of Germany, a television station encourages the formation of community groups of persons with similar social concerns and problems by assisting them to make films about themselves which are then broadcast to stimulate formation of like groups in other communities. A different type of example is seen in Yugoslavia where, at the community and regional level, information centres are producing newspapers and radio programmes devoted mainly to local events ~d self-management issues. Radio and television centres publish the programmmg proposals, so that the broad public may discuss them and feed their reactions to the programming councils. It should also be mentioned that in several countries national minorities have at their disposal newspapers and radio and TV studios broadcasting in their own language. A flourishing example of minority group media is found in Australia where some sixty ethnic newspapers are published in 20 languages. Usually published monthly, they tend to contain little Australian news, but strive to maintain the cultural identities of the different groups and keep them informed with news from their countries of origin. In Saskatchewan, Canada, the provincial government decided to make cable television hardware a public utility and established guidelines for establishing a cable company and receiving access to the hardware. The guidelines stipulate, inter alia, that a cable company must be incorporated on a nonprofit basis, provide for subscriber participation in corporate affairs, and indicate arrangements for participation of membership-based community organizations. Such illustrations could be duplicated from many other countries; they highlight the variety and vitality of group media in today's societies and show a trend that will (1) Radio is usually considered as a typical means of message distribution of one-way communication. However, Bertold Brecht, almost fifty years ago, envisaged a different future: "Radio must be changed from a means of distribution to a means of communication. Radio would be the most wonderful means of communication imaginable in public life, a huge linked system- that is to say, it would be such if it were capable not only of transmitting but of receiving, of allowing the ljstener not only to hear but to speak, and did not isolate him but brought him into contact." (Bertold Brecht, Theory ofRadio {1932), Gesammelte Werke, Band VIII, p. 129).
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undoubtedly expand in the future. In as much as decentralization allows the expression of local, regional and community interests and realities, it can be regarded as a means of furthering democratization. But decentralized media have often a tendency to imitate the workings of the centralized system, creating situations of local corporatism or mirroring the social hierarchy predominating in the area. When this happens, decentralization is not part of democratization and does not even lead towards it. The past decade or two has seen the emergence of what has been called alternative communications< 1l and counter-information. These terms, which began to be used in the 1960s, denote a widely varied set of undertakings whose common feature is opposition to institutionalized and official communication. One can find under this label local groups bent on breaking the monopoly of centralized and vertical communications systems, political parties or groups engaging in various forms of appositional communication, dissidents, opponents to establishments, minorities expanding their communication capabilites, and groups engaged in new ecological experiments. The driving-force was not an absence of communications, but a reassessment and expansion of communiqations in the light of a new consciousness of their importance in society. This phenomenon is particularly noticeable in industrialized countries, but is also present in some developing countries, especially m Latin America. Although much alternative media practice is concerned with expressing political opposition, it has also been used to express the views of a wide variety of social and cultural minorities, of groups previously living in a communications ghetto. The tolerance shown by the authorities to such activities is usually inversely proportional to the sophistication of means used. Posters, flyers and loudspeakers are permitted more readily than the use of electronic mass media. The stress on content as opposed to form and the urge to establish "horizontal communication" channels have led to experiments with an endless variety of means. Thus the traditional methods (flyers, pamphlets, posters, newspapers, news-sheets, meetings and festivals) have been supplemented, but not replaced, by more modern means ·and technologies (small gauge film, video, comics, telephone news). lit industrialized countries, there is an increasing use of electronic mass media (FM radio, "pirate" or "green" radio stations, and even television) by various groups as "alternative tools". Groups engaged in "alternative" communication belong to different categories. First there are those representing radical opposition, of varying political or philo'sophical origin. Starting from the view that institutionalized communication is a mirror of a hierarchical society, counter-information sets out to challenge the influence of dominant information; it also seeks to establish channels which reflect and respond to the needs of those subjec.ted to the flow of do~ant. inforn;ta?on. Second, one finds community or local med1a movements, usually m the mdustnalized countries and particularly North America, which aim to decentralize communications so as to give an active role to information consumers. Third, trade (I) Alternative communication is a process of social origin, whose content and sigoificance are shaped by the dimensions acquired by the social praxis of the sectors under domination. No form of alternative communication is ever conducted on the basis of the one-way, individualistic, nonparticipatory flows which are a feature of institutionalized communication. An alternative communication process may originate in minority or individual initiatives; however, if it continues to be conducted on this scale- being stimulated and fuelled by broader social praxis- it will remain simply a marginal form of communication, corresponding to the "mini-praxis" of the community of the "initiates". (Alternative experiences (If): Communication practices in Latin America, Fernando Reyes Matta, CIC Docum·ent No. 68).
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unions or other social groups with their particular communication networks. There are differences between these three categories but all are opposed to socially, culturally and politically hegemonic forms of communication. Also, most put the accent on content as opposed to form and on socially useful information as opposed to entertainment. While these group activities are developing fast, there is also an increasing popularity for individualised communication making use of modern technology: twoway cable television, satellite reception antennae, 'ham' and 'citizens' band' radio, small gauge film, home video recorders and video tapes and discs, portable video cameras for home-made productions, electronic data transmission to the home and pay-TV. All these techniques open up new avenues of information and entertainment and permit those who were only recipients to now become participants or sometimes to have the illusion of being participants, in the communication process. Certain problems, nevertheless, have emerged. Non-professional individuals and groups are confronted with technical and professional standards which they cannot match. In an effort to do so, they sometimes tend to copy the dominant models in communication rather than to tread fresh paths. Meanwhile, an opposite criticism has been heard: that individual ventures may lead to opting out from social life, or to a fragmentation of shared experience. On these questions, it is far too early to draw any firm conclusions. Alternative communication has its greatest strength in interpersonal relationships, and thus has a capacity to· defy or evade constraints by authority. As a social force, its importance is probably exaggerated by its more enthusiastic partisans. Measured quantitatively- by the content and regularity of transmission, or by the audience reached - it cannot compare with the mass media, and, indeed, that is not its purpose. Yet the radical departure from the dominant assumptions of vertical flow and the capacity it provides to develop horizontal networks, the achievement in· strengthening the self-awareness of coherent groups, give it a significance out of all proportion to its · quantitative scale.
Thus, in multifarious forms, individuals and groups are more and more participating directly in communication processes - with existing media, through official or institutionalized media, via alternative media- and.finding new, effective outlets for creative expression. Democratization is a process rather than a static concept. Its further development is vital for the future, as failure to keep pace with social needs and technological advances can only mean that man will be subjected to increasingly dehumanized and alienating experiences.
3. Critical Awareness Moves toward the democratization of communication do not come only from professionals willing to forge links with the audience, or even from outside groups setting up alternative channels. Another factor is the development of critical attitudes on the part of the audience toward what is offered to them, whether these are expressed through organized pressure groups or simply though spontaneous rejection of the fare provided by the mass media. Action taken by numerous grass-roots groups - of citizens, workers, peasants, young people, women - has had a significant effect. In many instances these groups have been able to give strong expression to demands for access to and participation in the communications system. In many areas, citizens' groups have been formed to voice their concern to local and national authorities and to the broadcasters
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themselves. Tacit criticism is conveyed through the decline in viewing time registered in some countries, and by opinion surveys registering dissatisfaction with television programmes.Ul A striking example occurred in the Federal Republic of Germany where the Chancellor appealed for a six-day television week, an idea which a subsequent opinion poll showed was approved by a large majority of citizens. To stimulate critical awareness and discernment is a major responsibility which the educator and communicator must shoulder together. The individual must learn to distinguish truth from falsehood, to separate opinion from fact, to take account of the subjectivity of the journalist, and to dissociate what is ephemeral, trivial, or specious from what is lasting, sound and valuable. Upon this also depends the ability of readers, listeners and viewers to maintain an attitude of constructive doubt by endeavouring to elicit from the mass of data and information reaching them that which merits consideration, withstands scrutiny and matches their own individual experience. People need not only news which encourages and reassures them in their desires and expectations or confirms their set ideas, but also iriformation which can validly lead them to alter, moderate or balance their judgements and opinions. The awakening and moulding of critical _awareness constitutes a crucial aspect of democratization in the communication process.
4. The Right to Communicate Communication, nowadays, is a matter of human rights. But it is increasingly interpreted as the right to. communicate, going beyond the right to receive communication or to be given information. Communication is thus seen as a two way process, in which the partners -individual and collective- carry on a democratic and balanced dialogue. The idea of dialogue, in contrast to monologue, is at the heart of much contemporary thinking, which is leading towards a process of developing a new area of social r-ights. The right to communicate12l is an extension of the continuing advance towards liberty and democracy. In every age, man has fought to be free from dominating powers-political, economic, social, religious-that tried to curtail communication. Only through fervent, unflagging efforts did peoples achieve freedom of speech, of the press, of information. Today, the struggle still goes on for extending human rights in order to make the world of communications more democratic than it is today. But the present stage of the struggle introduces new aspects of the basic concept of freedom. The demands for a two-way flow, for free exchange, for access and participation, make a qualitatively new addition to the freedom successively attained in the past. <31 (I) Recent figures of viewing time in France indicate a decline of 12 per cent. A March 1979 poU in the United States reported 53 per cent of the people watching less television than five years earlier. British satisfaction with BBC programmes dropped 27 points from 1960 to 1978 in a rating chart; 54 per cent of French viewers expressed their dissatisfaction in a 1979 poU. (2) Comment by Mr. S. Losev: "The right to communicate is not an internationally 11ccepted right on either national or international level. Therefore it should not be discussed at such length and in such a way in our report." (3) One of the originators of the "right to communicate" idea, Jean d'Arcy, briefly described the successive stages which would lead to its recognition: "In the age of the agora and the forum, when communication was direct and interpersonal, there first emerged- a concept at the root of aU human advancement and aU civilization - freedom of opinion ••• The advent of printing, the first of the mass media, gave rise, through its very expansion and in defiance of royal or religious prerogatives to exercise control, to the corollary concept of freedom of expression ••• The nineteenth
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Indeed, the idea of the right to communicate lifts the whole debate on "free flow" to a higher level, and gives promise to bringing it out of the deadlock to which it was confined for the last thirty years. The concept of the "right to communicate" has yet to receive its final form and its full content. Far from being, as some apparently maintain, an already wellestablished principle from which logical consequences might, here and now,. be drawn, it is still at the stage of being thought through in all its implications and gradually enri~hed. Once its potential applications have been explored, both in Unesco and m the numerous non-governmental organizations concerned, the international community will have to decide what intrinsic value such a concept possesses. It will be required to recognize - or not - the existence of a possible new human right, one to be added to, not substituted for, those that have already been declared. We quote, therefore, a formulation of this right, which shows the variety of its elements and the vision of its intentions: "Everyone has the right to communicate: the components of this comprehensive Human Right include but are not limited to the following specific communication rights: (a) a right to assemble, a right to d!scuss, a ~ght to parti~ipate ~d related association rights; (b) a right to inquire, a nght to be informed, a nght to inform, and related information rights; and (c) a right t? culture, a right t? choose, a right .to privacy, and related human development nghts . . . The achievement of a nght to communicate would require that communication resources be available for the satisfaction of human communication needs".
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without more opportunity for each individual to reach decisions based on a broad awareness of divergent facts and viewpoints, without increased participation by readers, viewers and listeners in the decision-making and programming activities of the media- true democratization will not become a reality.
The idea of public service must be detached from the idea of public monopoly, yet remain public service in the true sense. The only way of achieving this is to create new kinds of institution. Raymond Williams, 1962
Two profound weaknesses on the side of the critics of 'deregulation' have so far been emphasized in this essay: their neglect of the self-contradictory and selfparalysing tendencies of market-based communications media, and the insufficient attention they pay to the growth of state censorship. The case against market liberalism in favour of public service communications is weakened further by a third, related blindspot: its unconvincing attempt to justify. publicly the public service model against its enemies. It is obvious that if communications media are defensible as a public service then· their role and significance must be clearly and plausibly stated. Unfortunately, the contemporary case for public service media is trapped in a profound legitimation problem. Like trade unions, political parties and legislatures, public service media have become deeply uncertain about the scope and nature of their contemporary role in representing their constituents in the state and civil society. Public service media are caught up in a broader malaise, in which older forms of representation are weakened and Balkanized. 106 Symptomatic of this malaise is the manner in which 106
See Pierre Rosanvallon, 'Malaise clans la representation', in Fran<;ois Furet et al., La Republique du Centre (Paris, 1988).
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public service devotees rest their case upon a selfparalysing tautology: public service media are viewed as a synonym for institutions like RAI, the BBC, and the Uinder broadcasters in Germany, whose reputation, size, diversity and privileged position enable them to attract talent, to innovate and to produce balanced, quality programming. Public service is 'the broad commitment to provide and to protect mixed and complementary programming schedules. It includes a commitment to certain minority programes and to covering, as far as possible, different genres of programme making. Within each genre - whether within drama, current affairs, comedy, children's programmes or continuing education - there is a full range of programming, a demonstrably broad church. Public service broadcasting is driven by higher aspirations than solely to provide entertainment. Public service broadcasting is the attempt to make quality popular programmes. It does justice to human experience. It deals in more than stereotypes. It adds to the quality of people's lives. Its programme genres reflect the complexity of human beings. ' 107 The important practical achievements of quality broadcasting in this sense should not be 108 underestimated. The twentieth-century attempt to provide a service of mixed programmes on national Interv1ew . . h Jonath an Powell, Programme Controller, wit BBC1, London (2 November 1989). 108 The inost sophisticated defences of the public service broadcasting model are: Paddy Scannell, 'Public Service Broadcasting: History of a Concept', in A. Goodwin and G. Whannel (eds), Understanding Television (London, 1989); Paddy Scannell, 'Public Service Broadcasting and Modern Public Life', Media, Culture and Society, 11 (1989), pp. 135-66; and Paddy Scannell and David Cardiff, A Social History of British Broadcasting, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1990). 107
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radio and television channels available to all, often in the face of technical problems and pressing commercial considerations, has arguably widened the horizons of public awareness of soe::iallife. For a time, the 'provision of basic services [Grundversorgung]' (as the German Federal Constitutional Court puts it) helped to decommodify the media. It diminished the role of accounting, corporate chutzpah and general greed as the principal qualities necessary to media management. It has enforced specific national rules covering such matters as the amount and type of advertising, political access, balanced news coverage, and quotas of foreign programming. It succeeded for a time in protecting employment levels in the national broadcasting industries of countries such as Canada, Australia, Britain and the Federal Republic of Germany. The public service model has legitimized the presence of ordinary citizens in programmes dealing with controversial issues and problems; it has helped to make idiomatic, conversational styles respectable; and, significantly, it has publicized the pleasures of ordinariness, creating entertainment out of citizens playing games, talking about their experiences or taking delight in events as disparate as football and tennis matches, religious ceremonies and dancing to the current top ten. There are nevertheless problems with the argument that existing public service media are a bulwark of freedom against the confusions and limitations of commercial media. To treat existing public service media reactively, as the paragon of 'quality', 'balance' and 'universal accessibility', is myopic. It bears a. striking parallel to the first defensive responses to the early market liberal attacks on the welfare state. The early campaigns, using slogans such as 'Save the Welfare State!' and 'Stop the Cuts!', implied support for institu-
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tions unworthy of full support and, for that reason among others, they have failed to outmanoeuvre the market liberals' subsequent restructuring and (partial) dismantling of the welfare state. 109 By analogy, con:servative defences of public service media - lifting eyes towards the statue of Lord Reith - are inadequate, and are likely to fail for reasons to do with the internal weaknesses of the public service model. The prevailing definition of this model underestimates the ways in . which technological change - the advent of cable, satellite, television, community radio has slowly but surely destroyed the traditional argument that the scarcity of available spectrum frequencies blesses public service broadcasting with the status of a 'natural monopoly' within the boundaries of a given nation-state. This argument is no longer true. The reigning definition of public service media also makes the strategic mistake of justifying itself publicly in the rhetoric of' quality'. Public service advocates frequently talk about 'preserving quality .programmes' - which normally are defined loosely (according to a media friend of mine) as polished, stylish and challenging prod4ctions. Alas, loose talk of quality is vulnerable to the retort that the concept of quality is riddled with semantic ambiguity. 110 The late eighteenth-century disl09 Pierre Rosanvallon, 'The Decline of Social Visibility', in Keane, Civil Society and the State. New European Perspectives, p~. 199-220; and my Democracy and Civil Society. 10 The best recent discussion of the semantic ambiguity of the term quality is Geoff Mulgan, 'Television's Holy Grail: Seven Types of Quality', in Geoff Mulgan (ed.), The Question of Quality (London, 1990}, pp. 4-32. On the slow 'democratization' of the eighteenth-century meaning of quality as an attribute of civilized life, see Kenneth Cmiel, Democratic Eloquence. The Fight over Popular Speech in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1990).
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tinction between 'persons and things of quality' and 'the vulgar' has broken down. What constitutes 'good' or 'quality' media is now deeply controversial, even though everybody is generally in favour of it. The word 'quality' has no objective basis, only a plurality of ultimately clashing, contradictory meanings amenable to public manipulation. Some defenders of the public service model, for example, view quality in terms of the ability of the media to bind together disparate and fragmented audiences into a classless community of individuals who feel others to be their equals, with whom they can share news of events, television characters and fictional narratives, and of whom they can freely ask such questions as 'Did you read this?' or 'Did you see that?' 111 From a quite different angle, the quality of public service media is sometimes justified in terms of its ability t<;> best express certain producer-defined technical qualities, such as superior camerawork and lighting, intelligently written scripts, professional direction, superb acting, effective narratives and clear and comprehensible ideas. Other commentators consider media products to be of high quality insofar as they stand the test of time; high quality books or films or television programmes Bonanza and the Bill Cos by Show, for example - are those which outlive their moment of birth, escape the limits of their context and establish a strong reputation among subsequent audiences or even generations. By contrast, post-modernists and others think of quality in diametrically opposed terms: television in particular is praised for being at the cutting edge of the deliberately superficial 'three minute culture' and its dizzying swirl of disjointed and entertaining images. Post-modernism 111
SeeJames Carey, Communication as Culture: Essays otl Media and Society (London, 1989).
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celebrates the relacement of narrative with flow, sequence with randomness, connection with disconnection. It welcomes the arrival of quick-cut pop videos, short sound bites, split-second photo opportunities and situation comedies - the most popular television form which so rapidly serve up· so many 'situations' that audiences cannot remember what they are laughing at. Pro-marketeers propose yet another view of quality. Seizing upon- and reinforcing- the semantic ambiguity of the term, they criticize the public service model as confused and patronizing. They attack public service devotees as snobs who arrogantly assume their freedom of expression to be the guarantee of quality, and who thereby deny publics what they often like best: a wide choice of fruit that is ripe and juicy. Market liberals assume that audiences are sovereign consumers, and that the only workable index of quality is their pattern of choices, that is, the degree of popularity of newspapers, radio and television programmes; effective demand, the willingness of individuals to purchase a product, is the criterion of its quality. The pro-market rhetoric about quality contains a definite libertarian ring. Murdoch claims, for instance, that 'quality is in the eye of the beholder, or in the current debate ... , the propagandist.' This leads him to a cunningly unconventional - market-orientated - definition of the public service model: 'anybody who, within the law of the land, provides a service which the public wants at a price it can afford is providing a public service.' 112 112
Ibid., p. 4; cf. the virtually identical remarks of Roberto Giovalli, Head of Programme Planning for Fininvest: 'My concern is to give people what they want, not what improves them. Television does not make the times. It follows them. Or at least it mirrors them' (cited in the Guardian (20 March 1989), p. 25).
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Those who ignore the public appeal of this kind of rhetoric are naive. They overlook the ways in which the alleged 'balance', 'quality' standards and universalism of existing public service media are routinely perceived by certain audiences as 'unrepresentative'. The totality of output of mixed programmes in nationally networked channels cannot add up to a complete world. Their repertoire cannot exhaust the multitude of opinions in a complex (if less than fully pluralist) society in motion. The public service claim to representativeness is a defence of virtual representation of a fictive whole, a resort to programming which simulates the actual opinions and tastes of some of those to whom it is directed. That is why the public service claim to 'inform all of the people all of the time' triggers a constant stream of complaints: public service media normally fail to satisfy enthusiasts of particular types of programmes. Music is a pertinent example. Although, for obvious reasons, music has always occupied the bulk of radio time, it has proved impossible in the long term to provide programming with general appeal on public service radio because a common musical culture has never existed. Different music appeals to different publics, whose dislikes are often as strong as their likes, and that is why the twentieth-century history of radio has resulted in a gradual fragmentation of mass audiences into different taste publics. 113 Public service media corset audiences and violate their own principle of 113
Paddy Scannell, 'Music for the Multitude? The Dilemmas of the BBC's Music Policy, 1923-1946', Media, Culture and Society, 3 (1982), pp. 243-60. The decline of the paternalist tradition in British radio is also well examined in Richard Barbrook, 'Melodies or Rhythms?: The Competition for the Greater London FM Radio Licence', Popular Music, vol. 9, no. 2 (1990), pp. 203-19.
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equality of access for all to entertainment, current affairs and cultural resources in a common public domain. For reasons of a commitment to 'balance', government pressures and threatened litigation, the public service representation of such topics as sexuality, politics and violence also tends to be timid. Certain things cannot be transmitted, or not in a particular way. When they are transmitted, their disturbing, troublesome or outrageous implications are often closed off. And public service media - here they are no different from their commercial competitors - distribute entitlements to speak and to be heard and seen unevenly. They too develop a cast of regulars - reporters, presenters, commentators, academic experts, businesspeople, politicians, trade unionists, cultural authorities - who appear as accredited representatives of public experience and taste by virtue of their regular appearance on the media. All this is grist for the mill of the marketeers, and that is why defenders of the public sevice model who talk only about preserving the 'quality' and 'balance' of the existing system make a crucial strategic mistake. They allow the market liberals to elope with the old vocabulary of 'liberty of the press'. 'Save the public service model' is a self-defeating position in the fight against market liberalism. It concedes too much. The rich, if histrionic vocabulary of market liberalism (freedom from state control, freedom of individual choice, quality through diversity) should be neither haughtily neglected nor accepted uncritically. The pseudo-libertarian appeals of market liberalism are central to its overall goal of controlling the present and the future - of commercializing the media of communication and subjecting them to new forms of state control - by redefining and monopolizing the dominant, collectively
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shared sense of the historical past. Market liberals are attempting to rewrite history. They aim to brand public regulation as paternalistic, as timocratic, as an assault on the old American and European heritage of liberty from state control. This fight to rewrite history from above serves as an important reminder that traditions do not grow on trees, but are made, unmade and remade constantly. It reminds us that those who control the production of traditions, who dominate the present ap.d manipulate the past, are likely also to control the future. And it reminds us that the debate over who shall inherit the old European and American vocabulary of 'liberty of the press' is long overdue, and that gaining the upper hand in these controversies is imperative for the survival and development of a public service communications system which resolves the flaws of market liberalism, and which, consequently, is more genuinely open and pluralistic, and therefore accessible to citizens of all persuasions. But what would a redefined, broadened and more accessible and accountable public service model look like in practice? What would be its guiding principles? How could a revised public service model deal with the self-paralysing tendencies of market-based communications and the new forms of politicial censorship in democratic regimes? How could a re.vised public service model legitimate itself more convincingly than at present? In short, what could 'liberty of the press' come to mean at the end of the twentieth century? It is obvious that a renewed public service system of communications would need to be clear from the outset about its guiding principles and strategies. It should attempt to counter head-on the market liberal strategy of the free market guided by the tough state. For the
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reasons explained earlier in this essay, public service communications should not be treated as a synonym for market competition. Murdoch's view that 'anybody who, within the law of the land, provides a service which the publ~c wants at a price it can afford is providing a public service' must be rejected, since it cannot deal with the problem of market censorship. For that reason as well, public service communications should not be treated (as they are in the United States, for example) as a poor mimicry of the market - as a second-rate attempt to replicate artificially the production methods and programming schedules that would be provided by a genuine market in communications, were it given half a chance. The American system of non-commetcial broadcasting combines instructional radio and television, which originated in the 1950s, with the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) established by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. Denied adequate funding since its inception, the public service model has suffered a permanent identity crisis. How can its funding base be rendered secure? Given that it is partly supported by tax dollars, should it seek to adopt an expansive programming strategy aimed at the broadest possible audiences? Should it avoid controversial programmes so as to escape 'punishment' by an incumbent administration? How 'commercial' should the system be? How should it be managed? How representative are the boards of local public broadcasting stations? And, fundamentally, should public broadcasting exist at all? Public service media cannot rise above these primitive budgetary and administrative questions if they are viewed as mere ancillaries of market competition. Public service media also cannot operate effectively if they are treated (like public parks or ancient monuments) as a
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'merit good', that is, as providers of worthy programmes for minorities which involve 'knowledge, culture, criticism and experiment' (Lord Quinton), and which can find no outlet in the mainstream. Public service media should certainly serve minorities and circulate knowledge and culture, and stimuiate criticism and experimentation, even slapping the face of public taste as often as possible. But they must do more than that. Public service media should build on the decommodifying achievements of the original public service model, all the while acknowledging that it has now slipped into a profound and irreversible crisis. A fundamentally revised public service model should aim to facilitate a genuine commonwealth of forms of life, tastes and opinions, to empower a plurality of citizens who are governed neither by despotic states nor by market forces. It should circulate to them a wide variety of opinions. It should enable them to live democratically within the framework of multilayered constitutional states which are held accountable to their citizens, who work and consume, live and love, quarrel and compromise within independent, self-organizing civil societies which underpin and transcend the narrow boundaries of state institutions. 114 The public service principle proposed here has old roots traceable to the English and American Revolutions. A glimmer of it was expressed in the events surrounding Erskine's 114
Compare the sketches provided in Graham Murdock and Peter Golding, 'Information Poverty and Political Inequality: Citizenship in the Age of Privatized Communications', Journal of Communication, vol. 39, no. 3 (Summer 1989), pp. 180-95; and Jeffrey B. Ab rams on et al., The Electronic Commonwealth. The Impact of New Media Technologies on Democratic Politics (New York, 1988).
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defence of Tom Paine: communications media should be for the public use and enjoyment of all citizens and not for the private gain or profit of political rulers or businesses.
Government in the sunshine A state is bound to be more dangerous if it is not governed openly by the people, but secretly by political forces that are not widely known or understood Andrei Sakharov, 1987
But the question remains: what would a public service communications system look like in practice? How would it be funded? Through which political and legal strategies could it be developed? One priority is the exposure and repeal of the censorial methods of contemporary state power. In view of the growth of lawless and invisible government, the onus must be placed on governments everywhere to justify publicly any interference with any part of the circulation of opinions. Government must not be considered the legitimate trustee of information. Erskine, in Tom Paine's defence, said it all: 'Other liberties are held under government, but the liberty of opinion keeps governments themselves in due subjection to their duties.' This principle, when brought to bear upon the forms of political censorship outlined above, points to the need for a new constitutional settlement in all Western democracies (and in the regimes of central and eastern Europe, presently preoccupied with the difficult business of constitution-making and dismantling totalitarian
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structures). Freedom and equality of communication requires legal protection and, where necessary, a written constitution. A great variety of legal means can help to promote freedom of expression and access to information among transacting citizens. Where a country has a written constitution, freedom of expression and of the media should be protected within it as well as within other national legislation. The principle that freedom is the rule and limitation the exception should be adhered to. The American First Amendment ('Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech or of the press') still serves as the prototype of such legislation. It certainly contains several troubling conceptual flaws, which . have become the subject of intense controversy. 115 Two centuries of constitutional adjudication have clouded an Amendment whose wording appeared to be shiningly clear. As Alexander Hamilton and others predicted,. it has become buried under piles of antecedent case law which confronts each new justice with the awkward task of tip-toeing through fme distinctions and picayune details, and of accounting for prior decisions, rather than interpreting and applying the Amendment directly. Many examples leap to mind. One continuing source of debate has been whether 'freedom of the press' and 'freedom of speech', both of which are protected by the Amendment, imply separate systems of differing constitutional protection or are simply reiterations of one indivisible freedom. Another 115
See William W. van Alstyne, Interpretations of tlze First Ameudment (Durham, NC, 1984); and Ronald K. L. Collins and David M. Skover (eds), 'The First Amendment in an Age of Paratroopers', Texas Law Review, 68 (May 1990), pp. 1087-193.
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dispute revolves around the issue of whethc;:r and to what extent the Amendme nt covers not only. the press deriving from Gutenberg , but also radio, television, computers and other twentieth- century electronic communications. There have been additional disputes about federalism, including whether the latitudes of federal and state rulings on the scope of freedom of expression are identical and, if not, whether and to what extent the former should prevail. The kind of speech referred to within the Amendme nt - obscene or religious, commercial or political, private or public - has been hotly debated. On this question, a literal interpreta tion of the Amendme nt has never command ed a majority of the Supreme Court. The relatively straightfo rward case of a person knowingl y shouting 'Fire!' in a crowded theatre, for the perverse pleasure of causing a panic and watching others being trampled in a frenzied crowd, has been interprete d through the formula proposed by Justice Holmes: 'The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantiv e evils that Congress has a right to prevent. ' 116 The formula subsequen tly proposed by Judge Learned Hand represents a sharpening of the same principle: 'In each case [courts] must ask whether the gravity of the "evil", discounted by its improbabi lity, justifies such invasion of fr(!e speech as is necessary to avoid the danger.' 117 Notwithst anding such efforts to define prohibited speech, Mappleth orpe photograp hs of male nudes, burning Old Glory and 116 117
Schenk v. United States, 249 US 47, 52 (1919). Dennis v. United States, 341 US 494, 510 (1951).
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draft registratio n cards, and 'inciting or producing imminent lawless action' by marching through Jewish neighbour hoods shouting Nazi slogans continue to provoke red-hot controversies. The adoption of a corporate view of press freedom, applying the press clause of the First Amendme nt to justify special privileges for the 'institutio n' of the media, has been resisted on the grounds that freedom of the press arose historically as an individual liberty, and that freedom of speech and of the press remain 'fundamental personal rights' (ChiefJust ice Hughes). Further arguments have been sparked by the problem of compulso ry disclosures, for example, whether journalists can be threatened with fines or prison terms and made to disclose informatio n which was entrusted to them in confidence in their professional capacity as journalists . And there has been continuing controvers y about whether the First Amendme nt was intended as a defence against governme nt, that is, as a shield to defend citizens and the media against prior restraints on their power of expression, or whe~her the clause can also be invoked as a weapon for ensuring 'freedom of information', that is, as a means of attacking state censorship. The pathbreak ing case of Richmond, Inc v. Virginia (448 US 555 [1980]) settled this last controver sy in favour of the view that the principle of freedom of communic ation can be used as a sword against state power. It pointed to the vital need, in any democracy , for legislation enforcing a citizens' right of reply in the media against their governme nts. Suing governme nts for damages is prohibitiv ely expensive for the majority of citizens. Legal backing is required which allows anyone injured by offensive or inaccurate statements the right of reply in the same communic ations outlet in
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which such statements have been made. 118 There are traps here, admittedly. In France, for example, state officials have a right to insist that published information concerning them be rectified. This has led to an abuse of the right of reply by imposing on the media an obligation to publish extensive government reports and even propaganda in response to alleged misrepresentation. Individual citizens nevertheless have a right of reply against government. Any citizen can insist on being given space to answer coverage which refers to her or him. Publishers' failure to print the reply within three days is subject to penalties of fines and imprisonment. The right of reply of citizens is considered absolute: it is not necessary that a citizen should have been defamed or that the statement actually be untrue. Freedom of expression among citizens supposes not only the power to impart points of view against government. In addition it requires the power to seek points of view. This 'right to know' requires solid institutional support. Of special importance would be the abolition of 'lobby systems', various forms of which presently function to limit publicity surrounding potentially controversial events in favour of selected journalists and current government policies. The (further) development of independently minded and publicly accessible standing committees - of the legislative, investigatory or advisory kind anticipated in the Bundestag and the American Congress - could ensure more effective scrutiny and control of both the executive and the invisible branches of the democratic Leviathan. 118
See Jerome A. Barron, Public Rights and the Private Press (Toronto, 1981) and Freedom of the Press for Whom? The Right of Access to Mass Media (New York, 1973).
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The 'right to know' also requires firm leg·al recognition and protection, since it is fundamental to ensuring open and publicly accountable government. Among the pathbreaking efforts to do this is the hard look doctrine, first articulated in the United States in the case of Greater Bostott Television Co. v. FCC (1970), and later moulded into the 1977 Government in the Sunshine Act. 119 The doctrine grew out of widespread complaints that parts of the state were not compelled to speak openly to the relationship between their own and wider interests. Hard look doctrine is suspicious of closed bargaining and ex parte negotiations. It aims to make state institutions accountable to their citizens without producing adininistrative overload. The doctrine seeks a path between so-called 'substantial evidence' rules, which require policymakers to explain and justify their every move, and more lenient 'kid glove' standards, which oblige decision makers to explain only the logic underpinning the decisions they reach. Hard look doctrine circumscribes what can be dealt with collectively when citizens cannot be present at hearings, and provides that all other meetings of an agenGy be open to public observation unless the matter is statutorily exempted. It specifies the procedures for closing meetings, and requires that records of such meetings be kept. The doctrine lays down procedures for guaranteeing public access to these records, and specifies the ground rules 119
Greater Boston Television Co. v. FCC, .444 F. 2d. 841 (DC Cir. 1970) 403 US 923 (1971), p. 851; D. Welborn et al., Implementation atzd Effects of the Government in the Sutzshine Act, Draft Report for the Administrative Conference of the United States (Washington, DC, 1984); and lan Harden and Norman Lewis, The Noble Lie. The British Constitution and the Rule of Law (London, 1986), especially chapters 8-10.
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for judicial review of alleged violations of the doctrine itself. The various Freedom ofinformation Acts already in existence (for example, those in the United States, Canada and Australia) are guided by similar aims. They seek to empower citizens against their political representatives by facilitating citizens' access to information held in the files of state (and civil) authorities and, thus, by increasing the quantity and quality of the flow of information between government and citizens, and among citizens themselves. In practice, things are often different because the scope of the legislation is too narrow. The Access to Information Act in Canada is a case in point. Many categories of information are unavailable for public scrutiny: information obtained originally from a foreign government or another provincial government; the bulk of sensitive commercial data; records of the operation of the federal Cabinet; and information that is capable ofharming trade, defence or diplomatic interests or pertains to the enforcement of the law. There are difficulties, too, surrounding the implementation of freedom of information legislation, which requires the development of a public recordkeeping system that can balance the competing requirements of effective administration (minimizing what the Canadians call 'paperburden'), public access and the safe-keeping of archival records. 120 Legislation covering data protection is also an impor120 See James Cornford, 'Official Secrecy and Freedom of Information',· in Richard Holme and Michael Elliott (eds), 1688-1988. Time for a New Cot1stitution (Basingstoke and London, 1988), pp. 143-66; and the fine study by Patrick Birkinshaw, Freedom of Information. The Law, the Practice and the Ideal (London, 1988).
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tant means of preventing political censorship. The principle of data protection was first enshrined in West German and Scandinavian legislation in the early 1970s. It developed out of concerns over the growing power of computer systems to manipulate information without individuals and groups knowing what data is filed and the purposes for which it is used. The European Convention on Data Protection, which came into force in October 1985, provides an international legal framework for individual countries to adopt. Most national data protection legislation deals only with information stored in computers - in some countries the law extends to records kept manually - and it often excludes rights of access to the records of government departments dealing with such matters as social security, taxation, police and immigration. The point underpinning data protection legislation is nevertheless serious and important, if paradoxical: individual citizens require guaranteed access to their personal files held by state (and civil) 'data users' in order to ensure the privacy of that information. Such legislation aims to prevent unauthorized access to personal information as well as to enable individuals to certify that their personal data is accurate, up to date and actually relevant for the purpose for which it is filed. These points are well summarized in Article 1 of the French Law on Informatics and Liberty (1978): 'Computer science must be at the service of each citizen; its development has to operate within the framework of international co-operation; it should not damage human identity, human rights, private life or individual and public liberties.'
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Rethinking Sovereignty There can be no human society without government, no government without sovereignty, no sovereignty without infallibility. ]oseph de Maistre, 1821
There remains the vexed question of how to deal with the unaccountability of supra-national political institutions. Their expanding power could be rendered more accountable by subjecting them to various forms of parliamentary supervision. These could include strengthe?ed standing committees, closer cooperation among national legislatures and, in turn, their coordination wit~ supra-national legislatures - such as the European Parliament - whose strengthening, contrary to some expressed doubts, might well contribute to the reviviscence of their national counterparts. Another potentially fruitful option is suggested by proposals for developing an inten1ational civil society. 121 The fullest possible implementation of high 121
Compare the constitutionalist (neo-Kantian) interpretation of Ralf Dahrendorf, 'Citizenship and the Modern Social Conflict', in Holme and Elliott, 1688-1988. Time for a New Constitution, pp. 112-25, and my interview, 'Decade of the Citizen', the Guardian (1 August 1990); my Democracy and Civil Society; and Morten Ougaard, 'The Internationalisation of Civil Society', Center for Udviklingsforskning (Copenhagen, June 1990). !here ~re also stimulating remarks on the possibility of an mternatwnal public sphere in Nicholas Garnham, 'The Media and the Public Sphere. Part 2', paper presented to the conference 'Habermas and the Public Sphere', the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (8-10 September 1989); and
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international standards governing citizens' rights of communication is clearly important. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is an example: 'Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.' Declarations of this kind are fuelled by the ideal of a new global information and communication order - a concept mentioned for the first time in a UN General Assembly resolution in 1978 and formulated in documents such as the MacBride Commission's Many Voices, One World (1980). It also tends to be supported by the development, since the 1960s, of electronic and satellite technologies, which feed upon the economies of scale inherent in broadcasting, where the marginal cost of an extra viewer is zero. Satellite communications enable users to fly over and around the walls of the nation-state. These technologies are able to transfer voices, data, texts and images swiftly over long distances and to large geographic areas. The relayed information can take the form of television or radio broadcasts, telefax messages and telephone conversations, or it can be specific data, related to financial markets, professional conferences, sporting events or weather information, often collected by computer databases at both ends of the link. Such developments in global communications media, Daniel C. Hallin and Paulo Mancini, 'Summits and the Constitution of an International Public Sphere: The ReaganGorbachev Meetings as Televised Media Events', unpublished paper, University of California, San Diego and Universita degli Studi di Perugia (September 1990).
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in theory at least, make the world smaller and more open. These media operate to an extent as a global Fourth Estate- as during the recent 'velvet revolutions' in central-eastern Europe. 122 Telephones, fax machines, photocopiers, electronic bulletin boards and video and audio recordings, especially when linked to global telecommunications networks, are now used worldwide to subvert repressive governments. Some states are being forced to relinquish some of their powers, as the growth of an unusual crop of political leaders practising the art of dismantling despotic regimes indicates. lZ3 Developments in global communications theoretically ensure that events anywhere can be reported anywhere else on radio within minutes; on television within hours. But theory and practice are often far apart. Government regulation, combined with the high costs of installing telecommunications equipment and providing publicly accessible terminals, prevents citizens of most countries from accessing such global telecommunications networks as teleconferencing and electronic mail systems. ·Meanwhile, private broadcast news has become a global business, like the music industry, with its own 'Top 10' and an inevitable streamlining of opinions and tastes. A few major organizations control the newsflow. Syndicators such as Visnews and WTN guarantee that wider and wider audiences get to read, see or hear the same stories. 124 122
Timothy Garton Ash, 'The Revolution of the Magic Lantern', New York Review ofBooks, 18January 1990, pp. 44-5. 123 John Keane, 'The Politics of Retreat', The Political Quarterz~24vol. 61, no. 3 Ouly-September 1990), pp. 340-52. Stanley Baran and Roger Wallis, The Known World of Broadcast News. International News and the Electronic Media (London, 1990).
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Other problems concerning the ownership and operation of global communications media are emerging. A few wealthy countries monopolize the ownership, launching and control of satellites, due to the high costs incurred in purchasing and maintaining the technology. There is an absence of common technical standards which would ensure the easy exchange of information between different satellite communication channels. Problems also arise from the limited number of satellites that can be launched into a geostationary orbit, from which they operate as transmitters for certain geographic areas; at present, satellite orbit slots and frequencies are the subject of intense international dispute between those who consider that space belongs to the earth in common and those governments which assume that their more powerful number should decide. And there are emerging controversies about whether satellites should be used for secret intelligence gathering, military photography and telephone tapping. For these reasons, the development of an international civil society cannot be left to legislators or technologies alone. It also requires militant efforts to enrich from below the flows of information among communicating citizens, regardless of the nation-states within which they live. To some degree, this requirement can be· satisfied by i.ntelligent, public-spirited forms ofjournalism, which have emerged in recent years as a separate and specialized branch of the media. So-called quality investigative journalism came to the f-ore during the Watergate scandal, but it has long been a feature of the type of cosmopolitan journalism exemplified by Der Spiegel and the New Statesman and Society. Quality journalism rejects tabloid newspaper tactics, whose golden rules are: please the news desk; get front page
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coverage and stay in front of everyone else; reflect the prejudices of readers; defend nationalist hype and page three pin-ups; fight for 'the scandal of gay vicar' and other sensational exclusives with as little legal comeback as possible; remain emotionally uninvolved in any and every story; if necessary, invade privacy on a scale that would impress a burglar, all the while explaining to the interviewees that their willingness to cooperate will help others in a similar plight. High quality investigative journalism lives by different rules. 125 It seeks to counteract the secretive and noisy arrogance of the democratic Leviathan. It involves the patient investigation and exposure of political corruption, misconduct and mismanagement. It clings to the old maxim of American muckrakers - 'the news is what someone, somewhere, doesn}t want to see printed.' It aims to sting political power, to tame its arrogance by extending the limits of public controversy and widening citizens' informed involvement in the public spheres of civil society. An international civil society of freely communicating citizens can develop if public encouragement and material support are also given to a wide variety of n<;m-governmental associations working to combat political censorship. In recent years, such organizations have become a feature of the 'globalization' of power. Most of them are little known and struggle for survival u~1dc~ harsh financial and political pressures. Such orgamzattons are of two types: those nationally based, such 125
A fine example is Neal Ascherson, Games with Shadows
(Londo~, 1988); see also Duncan Campbell, 'Paradoxes of
Secrecy, Index on Censorship, vol. 17, no. 8 (September 1988), 16-19; an~ my s~~tch _of the twentieth-century decline of tellow-travelhng pohttcal Journalism' in 'Sovjctska svoboda?' Vestuik, vol8, no. 2 (1987), pp. 7-8. .'
PP·
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as Index on Censorship, Wolnosc i Pok6j and the Alliance for Justice, which strive to monitor and to document the performance of governments and to· mobilize public opinion in support of their findings; and those with affiliated bodies or memberships in several countries, such as International PEN, · Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Ecoropa, the Helsinki Citizens' Assembly, the International Federation of Actors and the International Commission ofJurists. Ultimately, this bundle of proposals can be plausible only if the thorny old problematique of the sovereignty of the state is confronted head on, and displaced. Defenders. of political censorship react sharply to such proposals. They are adamant that the state must always be empowered to eliminate the 'Worms within the Entrails' of the body politic (Hobbes). Under emergency conditions, citizens must confront the state in awe and fear. The presumption in resistance must always be against them: 'When the final and absolute authority of the state executive is threatened, and when push comes to shove', a defender of nation-state sovereignty might insist, 'freedom of communication is a dispensable luxury. Erskine was wrong. Freedom of expression can produce disorder and even Civil war. All liberties, including the "liberty of the press", ·must therefore be held rmder government. Blackstone was right: the liberty of the media consists in "laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from seizure for criminal matter when published".' Here the argument traps itself within the chain of reasoning ofJoseph de Maistre's Du Pape (1821): 'There can be no human society without government, no government without sovereignty, no sovereignty without infallibility.' Those who still assert such views need
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to be answered in the toughest terms. The defence of state censorship by market liberals and others is a nonsense, because it rests upon the obsolete principle of executive sovereignty. The 'sover~ign state' is today under siege from two sides. At home it is subject to important centrifugal tendencies, bearing especially on the shifting boundaries between the state and civil society, itself subject to centrifugal and internationalizing trends. 126 In foreign affairs, states are ever more intermeshed in transnational frameworks. of macrodecision making. 127 Ever more executive decisions are limited or foreclosed by the membership of states in military arrangements and intergovernmental organizations such as the IMF, the UN and the EEC, as well as by the investment decisions of transnational corporations. Both trends are in a real sense synthesized by the invention and deployment of nuclear weapons. Their capacity to annihilate both attacker and defender under battle conditions arguably puts an end to the independence abroad and exclusive jurisdiction at home of all nation-states. See Da~id Beetham, 'The Future of the Nation State', in Gregor McLennan, David Held and Stuart Hall (eds), The Idea of tile Modern State (Milton Keynes, 1984); my Democracy and Civil Society; and the introductory remarks to John Keane (ed.), 126
Civil Society and the State. New European Perspectives. 127
See K. Kaiser, 'Transnational Relations as a Threat to the Democratic Process', in R. 0. Keohane and J. S. Nye (eds), Tratzsnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1972); David Held, 'Sovereignty, National Politics and the Global System', in Political Theory and the Modem State (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 214-42; and Margaret Blunden, 'Collaboration and Competition in European Weapons Procurement: The Issue of Democratic Accountability', Difense Atzalysis, vol. 5, no. 4 (1990), pp. 291-304.
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'But' - interrupts the critic - 'these forces working against unlimited and indivisible executive state power should not be exaggerated. The end of the modern nation-state is not nigh. The so-called "globalization" process is highly uneven.' There is real force in this objection. The extent to which the 'sovereignty' of a particular nation-state is presently eroding depends not only on its past history (for example, whether and to what extent it ever enjoyed 'sovereign status'). It also depends on such contemporary factors as its position in the force-fields of global power politics, its place in the world economy, its implication in international agencies and legal systems, and the strength and effervescence of the domestic and· international civil societies on which its power structures are based. And there are circumstances, as in the newly emerging republics in the Soviet Union, where the regaining of national sovereignty, paradoxically, is a basic condition of citizens participating more equally and effectively in the current supranational trends. Nevertheless - the critic needs to be told - the argument that sovereignty does not and cannot reside in the hands of state executives must now be taken seriously. The modern idea of the centralized, sovereign nation-state, a 'national community of sentiments secured by military strength and economic interests' (Weber) which is bothindependentofanyexternalauthority and capable of governing the territory and population it monopolizes, is in deep trouble. The governmental bodies of nation-state communities no longer (if they ever fully did) exclusively determine the lives of their citizens. Our globe is beginning to resemble the form of the medieval world, in which the political powers of the monarch or prince were forced to share authority with a
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variety of subordinate and higher powers. 'Sovereignty' is becoming a decadent fiction - if still a most useful fiction in the hands of undemocratic forces, who insist that there are times when the state be granted the plenitude of power, and who cry, with Dante, that the maxime unum is the maxime bonum. The 'decline of sovereignty' has profound implications for a revised theory of freedom of communication. It forces a fundamental rethinking o( the classical theory of 'liberty of the press', which. viewed communications systems only within the framework of the system of single nation-states. It highlights the distance between the· early modem period and today's world. It forces consideration of the rise of globally organized media companies, whose operations routinely break the straitjacket of the nation-state and its domestic markets. And it reminds us of the importance of the growing impact of supra-national legal and political arrangements, and of the slow and delicate growth of an international civil society. The decline of sovereignty also has profound implications for radical strategies of enhancing 'liberty of the press' at the end of the twentieth century. The traditional twentieth-century view of radical opposition - the revolutionary strategy of seizing state power, if need be through the use of violence - was cast in terms of 'capturing' the General Post Office, 'seizing' radio and television stations and other 'centres' of state power and influence. The aim was to prevent counter-revolution and to plant the seeds of the future society. This thought informed the Soviet Government decree of midNovember 1917, curtailing freedom of the press. 'The state is only a transitional institution which we are obliged to use in the revolutionary struggle in order to crush our opponents forcibly.' Couching its argument
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in these terms, the fledgling Bolshevik Government proceeded to silence its 'bourgeois' opponents (many of whom were in fact socialists and social democrats) with the following explanation: 'The suppre~sion of the bourgeois papers was caused not only by purely fighting requirements in the period of counterrevolutionary attempts, but likewise as a necessary temporary measure for the establishment of a new regime in the sph~re of the press, under which the capitalist proprietors of printing plants and newsprint would not be able to become autocratic beguilers of public opinion ... The re-establishment of the so-called freedom of the Press; viz. the simple return of printing offices and paper to capitalists, poisoners of the people's conscience, would be an unpardonable surrender to the will of capital, that is to say, a counter-revolutionary measure.' 128 The decline of state sovereignty renders implausible this strategy of 'capturing' the 'centres' of power and communication which- as the labyrinthine structures of political censorship discussed above indicate- are in fact tending to become more dispersed. The highly differentiated character of democratic regimes provides the reminder that there is simply no single centre of state power which could be 'occupied' and used to transform radically civil society with the help of the means of communication. Not only that, but insofar as 'thestate' is insufficiently in one place to be 'seized', the strategy of monopolizing the means of communication for radical purposes is rendered unnecessary. The often uncoor128
'The Central Executive Committee Discusses the· Decree on the Press', Delo Naroda, 200 (18 November 1917), p. 2, cited in James Bunyan and H. H. Fisher, The Bolshevik Revolutiotz, 1917-1918. Documents and Materials (Stanford, 1934), p. 221.
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dinated and dispersed character of state power makes it more susceptible to the initiatives of social movements and citizens' groups, backed by countervailing networks of communication, which challenge prevailing codes and practise the art of 'divide and rule' from below. 129 Dispersed networks of communication can more easily penetrate the pores of civil society and build networks of meaning among various groups of citizens. These networks are important because they explicitly recognize the urgent need to deal with the various forms of political censorship, which have grown enormously in recent decades. They are important for another reason: they indicate ways in which, especially among the less powerful citizenry, new forms of 'solidarity among the shaken' (Patocka) can be developed against the atomizing effects of modern life. Communicative networks can help to otTset the tendency of the mass media to pile discontinuity onto us, to was.Q. away memories, to dissolve and fast-cut, to throw away yesterday's papers. 130 De129
See my Democracy and Civil Society, essay 2; and Alberto Melucci, Nomads of the Present Social Movements and Individual · Needs, eds John Keane and Paul Mier (London, 1989). On the remarkable successes of independent citizens' media elsewhere in Europe, see H. Gordon Skilling, Samizdat atJd.an Independent Society itl Central and Eastern Europe (Oxford, 1989). 13 Cf. Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Harmondsworth, 1983): 'The bloody massacre in Bangladesh quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the assassination of Allende drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the war in the Sinai Desert made people forget Allende . . . and so on and so forth until ultimately everyone lets everything be forgotten. In times when history still moved slowly, events were few and far between and easily committed to memory .... Nowadays, history moves at a brisk clip (pp. 7-8).
°
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centralized networks of communication address the dangers of 'uprootedness', and the· felt need of many citizens to put down roots within civil society through forms of association which preserve particular memories of the past, a measure of stability in the present, and particular expectations for the future. 131 Finally, communications networks developed 'underneath' and 'beyond' the structures of state power- so-called bush telegraphs - have important potential for empowering citizens. They weaken the tendency (as Virginia Woolf put it) for a dozen censors to rush in, whenever we express our opinions, telling us what to say or not to say. They enable citizens to squeeze the slave out of themselves, drop by drop. They help them to cultivate the virtues of democratic citizenship: prudence, judgement, eloquence, resourcefulness, courage, selfreliance, sensitivity to power, common sense. Communications networks r~new the old insight that the decentralization of power is sometimes the most effective cure for an undue parochialism; that through involvement in local organizations, citizens overcome their localism. And these networks stimulate awareness of an important new insight about power. They recognize that large-scale organizations, such as state bureaucracies and capitalist corporations, rest upon complex, molecular networks of everyday power relations - and that the strengthening and transformation of these molecular powers necessarily induces effects in these large-scale organizations. These considerations on the decline of sovereignty lead some observers to the conclusion that the principle
131
Simone Well, The Need for Roots. Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind (London, 1952).
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of seditious libel- the principle brought to bear on Paine at the end of the eighteenth century - must now be rejected as dangerous and obsolete. 132 It is argued that public discussion must never be made dependent upon government sufferance. Political freedom ends when government can use its various discretionary powers to silence its critics. The point is not the tepidly conventional liberal view that there should be room for public criticism of the government. It is rather that defamation of government is a contradiction in terms in a democracy. The right publicly to burn the national flag should be absolute, and therefore unchallengeable. This species of libertarianism correctly spots the dangers inherent in restrictions on communications media in the name of preserving 'sovereignty'. As the leading Germanjournalist August Ludwig von Schlozer noted prior to the French Revolution, enlightened rulers might permit wide ranging press freedom, but where freedom of the press depended on a sovereign power, it could be taken away just as easily as it was granted. 133 The deployment of the state's executive powers against dissenters in the name of 'preserving the integrity of the state' usually magnifies the attraction of anti-democratic 132
See the remarks of Leonard Levy, Emergence of a Free Press (New York and Oxford, 1987), pp. viii-xix, and the conclusion of Zechariah Chafee Jr (Free Speech in the United States [Cambridge, Mass., 1942], p. 21) that the central minimum intention of the drafters and ratifiers of the First Amendment was 'tp wipe out the common law of sedition, and make further prosecutions for criticism of the government, without any incitement to law-breaking, forever impossible in the United States of America'. 133 August Ludwig von Schlozer, Stats-Anzeigen, vol. 8, no. 31 (1785), p. 292, cited in Franz Schneider, Pressefreiheit rmd politische Offentlichkeit (Neuwied, 1966), p. 156.
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propaganda and of authoritarian movements and parties railing against the existing order, which is itself portrayed (plausibly) as authoritarian. Besides, temporary clampdowns on the flow of opinion have a nasty habit of becoming permanent. The silencing of public criticism of political power, to borrow a phrase from Bismarck, is often the 'early fruit' ( Vorfrucht) or precursor of more prolonged dampdowns on communication. It greatly strengthens the military and police bases of state power. It accustoms citizens to dictatorial conditions, encouraging them to turn a blind eye to disinformation and demagogy, and to act in self-serving and toadyish ways. Libertarianism is right about all this. Yet it contains a serious blindsp.ot. This is its failure to deal with the problem, raised in Milton's Areopagitica, that in matters of 'liberty of the press' the toleration of the intolerant is often a self-defeating position. The troubling fact is that freedom of communication is never a self-stabilizing process. Erskine's belief that liberty of the press guarantees civility and heals the wounds of the body politic is too sanguine. A pluralistic civil society marked by a multitude of opinions will never resemble one big · happy family. It will always tend to paralyse itsel£ 'Visionaries and crackpots, maniacs and saints, monks and libertines, capitalists and communists and participatory democrats' (Nozick) cannot build their visions and set alluring examples without crossing each other's paths. Precisely because of its pluralism, and its lack of a guiding centre, a tongue-wagging and sign-:-waving, fully democratic civil society could never reach a condition of homeostasis. It would be dogged permanently by poor coordination, disagreement, niggardliness and open conflict among its constituents. Its self-critical,
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self-destabilizing tendencies would also make it prey to morbid attempts to put a stop to pluralism and to enforce Order. It is often true that 'conflict is a form of socialisation' (Simmel). But freedom of communication can be used to destroy freedom of communication: 'liberty of the press' gives freedom to despots and libertarians alike. The sound and fury over Islamic blasphemy and apostasy generated by Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses reminds us, if the point needed accentuation, that an open and tolerant civil society can degenerate into a battlefield, in which, thanks to the existence of certain civil liberties such as 'liberty of the press', lions can roar and foxes can come to enjoy the freedom to hunt down chickens. Under extreme conditions, a quarrelling civil society can even bludgeon itself to death. 134 That is why freedom of communication among citizens within civil society requires a vigorous political and constitutional defence. As I have argued elsewhere, 135 democratically elected and internationally coordinated parliaments are an indispensable means of aggregating, coordinating and representing diverse social interests and opinions. There is of course no guarantee that they will succeed in this. The strongest legislature cannot rise above a deeply hostile society or state. But there is no other democratic alternative. Since there is no 'natural' harmony either among social opinions or between civil society and the state, democratic parliaments are an indispensable mechanism for anticipating and alleviating the constant pressure exerted by opinionated social 134
Elias, 'Violence and Civilization', in Keane, Civil Society aud tile State, pp. 177-98. 135 See the critical remarks on Carl Schmitt's theory of sovereignty in my Democracy and Civil Society, essay 5.
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groups upon each other, and upon the state itself. And, when faced with recalcitrant or power-hungry organizations in crises, legislatures become an indispensable - but still publicly recallable - means of ordering the arrest and punishment of those individuals who cry fire, for fun, in crowded theatres, or the suppression of those groups which worship the 'divine right of the gun' (Wole Soyinka), and which therefore consider it their duty to snarl at their 'enemies', to arm themselves to the teeth, and to destroy freedom of communication in a hail of bullets and a puff of smoke.
The Market and Civil Society. The press is free when it does not depend on either the power of or tl1e power of money. Albert Camtts, 1944
.~tot,enmwzt
A second priority attends the redefinition of the public service model: the development of a plurality of nonstate media of communication which both function as permanent thorns in the side of political power (helping thereby to minimize political censorship) and serve as the primary means of communication for citizens living, working, loving, quarrelling and tolerating others within a genuinely pluralist society. We have seen how market liberals aim to redefine civil society and its media in the terms of commodity production and exchange guaranteed through the 'sovereign' nation-state. All media of communication are supposed to be subject to the whip of profit and loss, advertising revenues, consumer demand and threats of bankruptcy and of state censorship. Civil society is to be
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.g"' -E .E
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a
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dominated by corporate speech and (when push comes to shove) state sanctions. By contrast, a revised public service model of communications is cast in the terms of political democracy and the maximum feasible regulation and reduction of private corporate power over civil society. (See figure 1.) The new public service model admittedly shares certain features with the market liberal model of'deregulation'. Both embrace the distinction between civil society, the state and their intermediaries . And both share the aim of strengthening media whose roots are outside and underneath the state. But the public service model parts company with market liberalism in two fundamental ways. It rejects the obsolete doctrine of state 'soyereignty'. It also refuses to see civil society as a synonym for 'market competition'. It tries instead to adopt measures which protect civil society from the self-paralysing effects of market-based media. It implies the development of a publicly funded selforganizing and cosmopolitan civil society which is genuinely pluralist precisely because it is not dominated by commodity production and exhange. Public service media require a post-capitalist civil society guaranteed by democratic state institutions. It is unlikely, of course,_ that market mechanisms structured by anonymous monetary exchanges could ever be eliminated from the heart of a complex, pluralistic civil society. Market transactions can function as useful accessories of social life, enhancing its productiveness, flexibility and efficiency. 136 Market-influenced media can also function as important countervailing forces in the process of producing and circulating 136
Alec Nove, The Ecotlomics of Feasible Socialism (London, 1983).
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opinions; they are not only economic phenomena but sites of signification that often run counter to opinionmaking monopolies operated by churches and states. But, contrary to the claims of market liberalism, that does not mean that civil society and its media must be ruled by 'market forces'. There is nothing 'natural' or 'necessary' about profit-seeking, privately owned and controlled communications media. There are in fact many different types of market, whose actual designs despite the slogan, 'Leave it to the market' - do not crystallize spontaneously. A self-regulating market is utopian, Karl Polanyi pointed out, 137 in that it cannot exist for long without paralysing itself and annulling its social preconditions. The actual or optimal shape of a market transaction must therefore always be crafted by political and legal regulations. It never emerges spontaneously or grows without the benefits of non-market support mechanisms provided by other institutions of . civil society and through the state itself. And it always exists in a condition of political uncertainty, either recovering from a reform, wriggling against or cuddling up to existing regulations, or a:waiting the next round of regulation. It is difficult to be precise about which marketregulating and market-suspending strategies can maximize freedom of communication, since their actual shape and effectiveness will vary from context to context, and from time to time. One thing is nevertheless clear: the maximum feasible decommodification and 'reembedding' of communications media in the social life of civil society is a vital condition of freedom from state and market censorship. The recent attempts to restrict Karl Polanyi, The Origins oj011r Time (London, 1945).
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advertising aimed at children (in Italy) and to ban unsolicited faxed junk mail (in the United States), and the widening concern everywhere about sexism and racism in the commercial media, exemplify and foreshadow the general principle: communications media should not be at the whim of 'market forces', but rather placed within a political and legal framework which specifies tough minimum safeguards in matters of ownership stru<;ture, regional scheduling, funding, programme content and decision-making procedures. Such public intervention in the marketplace must avoid slipping into the reductionist demonology of the evil media baron. The obsession with media magnates has little in common with a politics of maximizing freedom and equality of communication. It understates the complexity of issues in the field of media politics and whets old-fashioned appetites for 'nationalizing' the media and placing them under centralized state control. As far as possible, censorious and bureaucratic forms of regulation should be avoided. Public intervention in the market should be open, accountable and positively enabling. It must use publicity to fight against the lack of publicity. It should seek to rely upon the techniques of 'e.yebrow raising', informal and visible pressures which encourage the media to develop programming policies in support of decommodification; When that fails, or is likely to fail, public regulation should aim to entangle capitalist media in a carefully spun spider's web of financial and legal obligations and public accountability. Public intervention in the media marketplace should always attempt to 'level up' rather than 'level down' citizens' non-market powers of communication. Dogmatic presumptions in favour of one particular type of media opinion (such as sports or current affairs
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programmes) should be avoided, and it sho~ld not be forgotten that from time to time citizens can and do legitimately withdraw from the field of tension of past-present-future by relaxing and seeking small pleasures in the 'repetition, iteration, obedience to a preestablished schema' (Eco) of the mass media. Public regulation of the market should seek the creation of a genuine variety of media which enable little people in big societies to send and receive a variety of opinions. It should aim to break down media monopolies, lift restrictions upon particular audience choices and popularize the view that the media of communication are a public good, not a privately appropriable commodity whose primary function is to produce and circulate corporate speech for profit. In practical terms, the maximization of 'liberty of the press' requries efforts to 'de-concentrate' and publicly regulate privately owned media and to restrict the scope and intensity of corporate speech. The creation of politically accountable, supra-national regulatory bodies, skilled at dealing with such matters as ownership, advertising, tariffs and network access condi- . tions, is imperative. 138 Such bodies must be backed by national initiatives which restrict the media power of private capital by forcing such large corporations as News Corporation, Axel Springer Verlag AG and Fininvest to submit to tough legislation, which specifies programme quotas and restrictions upon advertising and cross-media ownership. Large media corporations should be treated as common carriers. They should be 138
See Nicholas Garnham, 'European Communications Policy' (CCIS, London, October 1988).
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forced by law to carry various citizens' messages, if indeed they agree to carry anyone's messages (which they must do in order to survive financially). For example, legal and· financial encouragement could be given to efforts to guarantee rights. of access during certain hours on radio and television to individuals, groups and independent programme makers. Such encouragement would help to build the electronic equivalent of Speakers' Corner and add a much-needed new element of spontaneous drama, fun and intellectual vitality to the media. The absolute powers of private media corporations to construct reality for others could also be broken down by the introduction of democratic decision making procedures, including experiments (such .as those pioneered at Le Monde) 139 with worker participation and the formation of 'management teams' (equipes de direction). Freedom and equality of communication also requires the drastic. loosening of libel laws in favour of small producers of opinion, which find themselves unable to risk or to survive a libel claim against them by large corporations or professional bodies; libel laws should be understood less as a means of defending private reputations and more as a method of redressing inequalities of communication. It further presupposes the establishment of media enterprise boards to fund alternative ownership of divested media. 'Liberty of the press' requires public support for new media enterprises, particularly in areas (such as videotex, interactive television and electronic mail facilities) where entry costs and See Freibeq~, The French Press. Class, State, atzd Ideology, chapter 3. 139
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risks to potential investors are prohibitively high. It undoubtedly requires the establishment of publicly owned printing and broadcasting enterprises which utilize funds raised by an advertising revenue tax or a spectrum usage fee to facilitate· new and innovative start-ups which test the market. Greater public support is needed for small production companies which operate within a regulated market and work to distinctive programming remits (as in the Channel 4 model in Britain). And, especially in the transition towards a more democratic order, freedom from state and market censorship necessitates preferential treatment of information publishers with a pluralistic cutting edge - of iconoclastic and independent media such as El Pais (founded a few months after Franco's death), Radio Alice (Bologna's former experimental radio station, which denied the 'reality' of reality and rejected the idea of schedules), and the courageous Czechoslovak newspaper, Lidov4 Noviny, all of which have played a critical role in the struggle for democratic rights. 140 It is obvious that more detailed consideration must be given to the financial, legal and political feasibility of these kinds of decommodifying strategies. Late twentieth-century advocates of 'liberty of the press' must reflect hard and inventively on how best to regulate different kinds of cqmmunications market. The techniques are difficult but the principle is clear: governments committed to freedom of communication would probably want to institute a wide range of different regulated 140
Juan Luis Cebrian, The Press and Main Street: 'El Pais'journalism in democratic Spain (Ann Arbor, 1990); and Umberto Eco and A. J. Grieco, 'Independent Radio in Italy: Cultural and Ideological Diversification', Cultures, vol. 5, no. 1 (1978), pp. 1-12.
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markets for different audiences and services, whether in the fields of radio and television broadcasting, newspaper, magazine and book publishing, or satellite, mobile, aviation, maritime and point-to-point communications . In one market scheme, for example, publishing or broadcasting facilities might be leased out and eventually returned to public hands on a cyclical basis; in another, these same facilities might be sold outright, to be used either without legal restriction or subject to the regulations of a communications commission. In yet other markets, communications facilities might be sold or leased only to enterprises. that operate as common carriers. And in certain broadcasting markets the mutual interference of different sets of users of the same facilities might be_ prevented through schemes of financial penalties. Inevitably, stricter limits upon the production and circulation of opinions by means of market transactions would imply greater state hectoring of civil society. This is why a new constitutional settlement which ensures that political power is held permanently accountable to its citizens is so important. It is also the reason why the undermining ofboth arcane state power and market power requires the development of a dense network or 'heterarchy' of communications media which are controlled neither by the state nor by commercial markets. Publicly funded, non-profit and legally guaranteed media institutions of civil society, some of them run voluntarily and held directiy accountable to their audiences through democratic procedures, are an essential ingredient of a revised public service model. Numerous examples come to mind. The BBC model of broadcasting institutions, funded by a licence fee, could remain a leading symbol of the non-market-non -state
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sector, but only at the price of the abolition of the present system of government appointment of its management, the acknowledgement that its original (Reithian) brief is not fully attainable, and its internal democratization (perhaps along the lines of the system adopted in the Federal Republic of Germany, where representatives of 'socially relevant groups', including political parties, have exercised some measure of influence over such matters as programming schedules, personal budgets and organizational structure and where there have been tentative efforts to develop public access or open radio and television channels [Offene Kanale]). Other examples of this sector include the development of local independent cinemas and recording studios, networks of media training institutions and leased-back broadcasting facilities. Political newspapers could be publicly subsidized. A dense and user-friendly network of community libraries equipped with the latest information technologies could be strengthened. Cooperatively run publishers and distributors, community radio stations and other conventional non-profit media would continue to play an important role in strengthening the foundations of a pluralist civil society. More versatile interpersonal communication could be ensured through publicly funded and equitably distributed telefaxes, videotex systems and electronic mail facilities. The development of publicly funded teleshopping facilities, which are most useful to houS'ebound and senior citizens, would also have priority. And support could be provided for the development of new types of equipment - interactive televisions, digital copiers, camcorders and music synthesizers- capable of supporting the communication of opinions among various groups of citizens.
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Public Service Media?
As far as possible, these non-market-non-state media would feed upon the increased flexibility and power and reduced costs of information processing provided by the new microelectronic technologies. Consider the small press. The ready availability of increasingly affordable computer technology makes possible strengthened and financially viable small publishing houses. The tasks computers can perform for them are virtually endless: editing, spelling correction, typesetting, indexing, accounting and networking among authors, wholesalers, distributors, booksellers and buyers are but a few. 141 Such benefits are not confined to small book publishing. The new digital technologies, as market liberals have been quick to point out, have profound implications for a revised public service model. They are revolutionary he~rtland technologies, whose costreducing effects and ever-widening applicability throughout civil society and the state enable citizens to communicate in previously unthinkable ways. They are potentially a species of 'democratic technics' (Mumford). Improvements in their performance are not yet complete. Optical-fibre channel capacity, software quality, random access memory (RAM) capacity, chip density and processing speeds continue to undergo rapid improvement. Nevertheless, these technologies have several unique characteristics in common. They treat all kinds of information (speech, text, video, graphics) in digital form, thus facilitating the transfer of the same data between different media. The new technologies decrease the relative cost of information _processing; 141
William M. Brinton, Publishing in a Global Village: A Role for the Small Press (San Francisco, 1987).
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bulk operations that would previously have been unthinkable can now be carried out. The decreasing size of equipment and the speedier information processing and error-checking capacities also enable smaller-scale, decentralized and user-friendly operations within a framework of greater coordination and strategic control which links operations over vast distances. And - this feature is crucial - the new information technologies rupture the traditional television and radio pattern of offering a continuous sequence of programmes to mass audiences. Instead, the new electronic services strengthen the hand of 'narrowcasting' against broadcasting. They offer information on a more individualized basis: at any given moment, the 'receiver' is required to choose or to process the specific information she or he wants. 142 · At the same time, paradoxically, the microelectronic technologies tend to 'socialize' certain means of communication. 143 They reinforce the principle, lampooned by market liberals but so essential to a revised public service model, that the means of communication belong to the public at large. The new technologies strengthen the tendency whereby the element of rights to dispose of property privately becomes obsolete in the communications field. It has always been difficult to define property rights in the broadcast media. Those holding rights to occupy a plot of land or to mine the gold or uranium beneath its surface can establish precisely the dimensions of their claims. By contrast,
Public Service Media?
broadcast frequencies are intangibles ('ether') that become meaningful as property only in conjunction with the technical means of transmission and reception. A similar problem of definition is evident in the justified treatment of postal systems and telephone networks as common carriers of signals. In microelectronic technologies, producers of information are also fmding it difficult to keep their 'products' scarce and exclusive. They invoke copyright laws, frustrate attempts to copy data, scramble signals and mount other rearguard actions. But information is widely reproduced, transmitted, sampled and reconfigured without permission. In the United States, where 'theft' of satellite television signals was to be prevented by scrambling them with the allegedly foolproofVCII system, it is estimated that half of the descramblers are now used illegally, adjusted to bypass the transmitters' controls. Such practices challenge the principle of privately controlled means of communication. Communication comes to be seen as flows among publics rather than as an exchange among discrete commodities which can be owned and controlled privately as things. This trend is arguably strengthened by the high capacity digital networks (such as ISDN) currently being planned and constructed in Japan, Europe, the United States and elsewhere. These networks enable individuals and groups to transmit 'private' messages to others through a common network, subject only to covering the cost of the transmission, which in any case could be reduced by treating the networks as a public facility, rather than as a source of private profit.
142
Ian Miles, Information Technology and Information Society: Optiottsfor the Future (Brighton, 1988). 143 G. J. Mulgan, Rethinking Freedom in the Age of Digital Networks (CCIS, London, October 1988);John Chesterman and· Andy Lipman; The Electronic Pirates (London, 1988).
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[28] Political Communication and Citizenship: The Media and Democracy in an Inegalitarian Social Order Peter Golding
Questions about the just and effective workings of the democratic process may sometimes seem rather remote from the mundane enquiries of much research into mass communication. Yet behind much of the empirical work of media researchers lie fundamental questions about the role of communications institutions in enabling industrial democracies to achieve their own idealized image. The critical results of such enquiries often place research at odds with the more Panglossian or optimistic of practitioners. In the more simplistic and Utopian formulations of the role of the media democracy is like a political supermarket, in which customer-voters wander from counter to counter, assessing the relative attractions and prices of the policies on offer before taking their well-informed selection to the electoral check-out. The media play the part of consumer watch-dog, providing the means for the well-informed citizen to play his or her role to the full. This conception has been at the heart of philosophy and ambition in public service broadcasting institutions. It was expressed best, if somewhat portentously, in the memoirs of Charles Curran, a distinguished Director-General of the BBC in the 1970s. As he wrote, The underlying assumption of the BBC is that of liberal democracy .... Broadcasters have a responsibility, therefore, to provide a rationally based and balanced service of news which will enable adult people to make basic judgements about public policy in their capacity as voting citizens of a democracy . . . the only practical guideline is to try and ensure that every view which is likely to have a lasting effect on public thinking is at some time reflected in the public debate on the air about any particular subject. (C. Curran, 1979: 106, 115) This is a proud and large ambition. Yet research has time and again punctured the balloon of usually decent, though occasionally insincere, political posturings of this kind. The integrity of major figures like Curran is not in doubt. But the accumulated evidence of
85
decades of research cannot all be dismissed as the pre-judged rantings of politically motivated academic dissidents, or the obscurantist negativism of an intelligentsia at odds with the more favoured world of the media professionals. The inadequacies of mediated information have been exhaustively catalogued by media research. However defensive or aggressive the response of media professionals, and however inflated the sometimes premature or even immature claims of researchers, there can be no serious doubt that such sources as news media significantly and consistently provide a partial and coherently weighted account of many areas of social and political life, whether of crime (Chibnall, 1977; Hall et al., 1978), welfare (Golding and Middleton, 1982), industrial relations (Glasgow University Media Group, 1976, 1980), terrorism (Schlesinger et al., 1983), race (Hartmann and Husband, 1973), local government (Goldsmiths' Media Research Group, 1987), or a range of other areas familiar to researchers in this field. This goes way beyond the arithmetic biases of electoral campaign coverage to cast fundamental doubt on the propositions of such major figures as Charles Curran. The problem remains, however, to explain and make sense of such debates in· a wider context. In this chapter I wish, first, to outline two approaches to this issue which I would assert to be, in different respects, fundamentally flawed. The first of these focuses on texts, and leans to an essentialism in its critique of the political character of media communications. The second leans to a technological determinism in seeing a wholesale solution to the failings of political communications in the promis~s of new technologies. Second, I wish to suggest that analysis of information institutions beyond the media, not least in government, need examination more fully to understand those failings, which in turn need to be set in the context of a more extensive analysis of in~qualities of access to information. Finally, I wish to propose the concept of citizenship as a key element in the development of a more adequate analysis of the political role of communications institutions and processes. Texts and technology: from essentialism to video-Utopia In assessing the character of political communication, research has departed along two detours, neither of which have been ultimately productive in explaining or analysing political change. One broad approach is concerned to focus on texts-visual, written or filmic in an attempt to discern the linguistic or cultural determinations exerted by artefacts on their consumers. This concern with symbolic rather than with material barriers to social and political behaviour and interaction is, of course, the distinguishing mark of cultural
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studies, and the root of much dissatisfaction with more traditional styles of structural sociology. It has been a powerful force within media studies, particularly in Britain. One forceful and provocative recent attempt to sharpen this focus on symbolic barriers is provided by Fiske (1987). Fiske argues that there are two simultaneously operating spheres within which cultural entities circulate; the cultural economy and the fiscal economy. These two work separately and in different ways. The purpose of this distinction is to proclaim and demonstrate the continuing vitality of audience resistance, people making rather than just taking meaning, constructively opposing and withstanding the apparent persuasive or informative message of mediated symbols. This theme, of the interaction of active audiences with polysemic messages, has been a leitmotif of much work in the cultural studies tradition, and where empirically applied, has provided a muchneeded corrective to the simplicities of some other traditions. Nonetheless there are problems in maintaining this view. To support his notion of twin economies Fiske has to argue that resistance also comes in two categories, 'the power to construct meanings, pleasures, and social identities, and the power to construct a socioeconomic system' (1987: 316). The former, which he terms 'semiotic power', is the power domain within which popular culture mainly works. This large claim is in turn based on the presumption that audiences as makers of meaning in the cultural economy are not disadvantaged. This is partly due to the absence of any direct sign of their (subordinate) role in tbe financial economy which liberates them from its contraints there is no exchange of money at the point of sale/consumption, and no direct relationship between the price paid and the amount consumed, people can consume as much as they wish and what they wish, without the restriction of what they are able to afford. (Fiske, 1987: 313)
Such a claim simply will not stand up to empirical scrutiny, as a brief illustration using data from Britain will demonstrate. In particular, it ignores the massive inequalities of access to cultural goods created by what Fiske rather cavalierly places on one side as the financial economy. In booming Britain there is likely to be 'a steady growth in personal disposable incomes in the 1990s. The real spending power of the employed labour force in particular will grow as wages rise faster than prices' (Hamil and· O'Neill, 1986: 313). That view from the Henley forecasting centre must be amplified by the undoubted and dramatic widening of the gap between both the employed and unemployed, and between the well-paid and those in low-income and often insecure or part-time employment. In 1984-85, the most
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recent year for which figures are available, the top 10 per cent received 26.5 per cent of net incomes, the bottom 10 per cent received 2.7 per cent of the same cake. Recent fiscal changes will have widened this gap (Economic Trends, November 1987: 94). The significance of this is its impact on access to cultural goods whose availability is increasingly determined by the market and the price mechanism. An examination of existing patterns of consumption makes this point clearly. Table 1 Average weekly household expendiwre on service as a percentage of all household expenditure Year 1953/54 1960 1980 1986
%
9.5 8.9 10.8 12.9
Source: Family Expendiwre Survey 1986, Department of Employment, 1987, Table 8
Household expenditure on services generally has been increasing steadily since the ending of post-war austerity, as shown in Table 1. This rise, however, has been disproportionately enjoyed by different groups in the population. As Table 2 shows, the value of services enjoyed by groups in the highest-income groups is several times higher than that available to lower income groups.
Table 2 Expenditure on services by income quintiles, 1986
Income group Top fifth Second fifth Third fifth Fourth fifth Bottom fifth
Household weekly expenditure (£) 54.17 27.34 19.34 11.59 7.04
Sources: Family Expenditure Survey /986, Table 6
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We can see the significance of this by looking at the amount spent by different income groups on serviCes in general and on communications resources in particular. Such analyses demonstrate the common pattern that the gradient for essentials, like food, is less steep than for services. The lower-income households consequently spend a far higher proportion of their incomes on essentials like food, housing, and clothes than do higher-income groups. In turn this leaves less disposable income for other categories of expenditure. The gradient of differential expenditure on categories like TV and video equipment, or publications, is therefore particularly steep, the highest-income groups spending very considerably more than low-income groups. The exception is in TV rental and licence fees, where the flat rate provides for a relatively equal spread of consumption. Cinema attendance is, of course, virtually irrelevant for all groups (see Table 3). Average weekly expenditure of illustrative income groups on selected goods and services, /986 Table 3
Household weekly income (£)
673
Average weekly expenditure (£)on
Services
Food
TV/video/audio equipment
Books/ nprs/mags
Cinema
TV/video lic.lrent
80--100 150-175 200-225 275-325 over 550
9.46 19.82 19.87 27.99 73.75
24.02 32.32 35.68 43.51 71.94
1.19 2.82 3.71 4.82 11.59
1.85 2.49 2.55 3.27 5.95
0.04 0.(19 0.07 0.14 0.28
1.66 2.16 2.01 2.33 2.50
All
23.89
35.64
3.37
2.79
0.10
1.98
Source: Family Expenditure Survey 1986, calculated from Table 5
The consequence of this pattern of economically differentiated access to media goods is demonstrated in Table 4. This shows ownership of basic communications resources among different income groups. Although television is almost universally available, albeit with varying degrees of technical sophistication and multiple ownership, even such a basic resource as the telephone is far from comprehensively available. As I have argued elsewhere in joint work with Graham Murdock (Golding and Murdock, 1986), those households without a telephone are disproportionately those whose alternative means of mobility and communication are most truncated. In 1986 36 per cent of low-income pensioner households lacked a telephone, as did 41 per cent of one-adult households with a single
89
Ownership of communications hardware among households in different income groups, /986
Table 4
Household weekly income (£)
Percentage owning TV
Phone
Video
Home computer
0-45 46-60 61-80 SHOO 101-125 126-150 151-175 176-200 200-225 226-250 251-275 276-325 326-375 376-450 451-550 over 550
87.9 94.0· 96.9 97.0 98.1 97.2 97.9 98.1 98.5 97.5 98.7 98.0 98.9 98.8 98.4
47.8 54.7 67.4 72.9 76.7 78.0 76.3 85.5 84.9 87.3 88.5 93.7 94.1 96.6 97.3 97.3
5.7 9.0 12.6 14.3 21.2 29.8 31.7 35.2 42.3 43.5 47.5 54.2 56.5 59.7 64.5 64.5
1.3 2.2 3.3 4.6 7.6 9.7 9.6 11.4 17.4 21.2 20.4 22.8 26.5 29.4 32.1 32.1
All
97.1
80.9
36.3
15.1
97.~
Source: Family Expendilllre Sitrvey, /986, calculated from Table 3
child (Employment Gazette, 1987). The rapid growth in video ownership has been similarly unequal, as has the ownership of home computers (see Table 4). . Future trends in this pattern of unequal access are unhkely to follow the diffusion pattern of earlier 'white' goods such as cookers, washing machines or freezers, for three reasons. First, these goods became more widely owned in a period of economic boom, not now likely to be replicated, at least for a significant proportion of the population. Second, in the nature of com_munications har?ware their ownership provides access to cumulative other goods m the communications market place, requiring additional and recurrent expenditure on software, add-ons, or the means of relating the various technologies to one another (Golding and Murdock, 1986). Third, the rapid development of new technologies or of alterna~ive storage or retrieval hardware makes purchase of such goods a highrisk act of consumption, contemplated only by those for whom the costs of a mistaken reading of the technological winds will not prove irretrievable. The Peacock Report on the financing of television in Britain
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provided a reasonably reliable estimate of the average expenditure pattern, at 1986 prices, of a 'basket' of media goods. This included newspapers, basic cable services, TV and video. Using and adapting this figure I have shown, in Table 5, the proportion of average weekly expenditure that this figure would comprise among different income ·groups. Table 5 Potential media expenditure as a proportion of household expenditure for different groups, /986 Average weekly expenditure (£)
Media expenditure as proportion
62.90 170.22 351.53
25.7 9.5 4.6
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idealism, eliding the mundane mechanics of social structures and inegalitarian patterns of human interaction. However, it is the contention of some writers such as Baudrillard that this is a reflection of the world as now constituted. The growth of information systems, he contends, has evaporated meaning, providing instea~ 'a gigantic process of simulation' (Baudrillard, 1983: 98). Exten~mg and distorting McLuhan, 'the medium and the real are now m a single nebulous state whose truth is undecipherable' (1983: 103). This logic, if such it is, claiming that 'TV is the world', is luciqly summarized by one of Baudrillard's followers thus:
Sources: Household expenditure figures calculated from advance Family Expenditure Survey figures in Employment Gazette, Dec. 1987: 594; media expenditure calculated from figures given in Peacock Report (1986: Table 6.8, p. 53)
the dominant mode of social power is no longer that of political economy (of production) but that of the operational structures of codes; within which commodity consumption is always and already 'programmed' as the spectacle. Accordingly, the functioning social logic has passed from commodity to sign, and the exploitation of social labour has been displaced by the excessive production of meaning and infor":lation. Hence the 'theoretical base' of the system of power has been transferred from Marxist political economy to structuralist semiology, information theory, and cy~ernetics. (Kuan-Hsing Chcn, 1987: 72-3)
The difference between top and bottom is stark. Entrance to the new media playground is relatively cheap for the well-to-do, a small adjustment in existing spending patterns simply accommodated. For the poor the price is a sharp calculation of opportunity cost, access to communication goods jostling uncomfortably with the mundane arithmetic of food, housing, clothing and fuel. We have moved a long way from Fiske's cavalier claim that 'people can consume as much as they wish and what they wish' since 'there is no direct relationship between the price paid and the amount consumed' (Fiske, 1987: 313). There is a great deal more to be done to develop sensitive and meaningful measures of the consumer economy for cultural and communication goods. But clearly, even on the limited evidence now available, these goods sharply differentiate between groups unequally located in the market economy. The implications for political communication are, or should be, obvious. Access to information is in a state somewhat removed from Millsian democratic ideals. To give analytical priority to the barriers of symbol and cultural exchange can be an empirical aberration in an approach such as that just described. In the work of some recently influential theorists it becomes celebrated and made axiomatic. A most notable example is in the largely impenetrable nostrums of Baudrillard. There is inherent in any paradigm wedded to the study of texts a loose
There are a number of claims, outrageous or absurd by turn, in this useful summary. The key observation in the context of this chapter is the axiomatic elevation of sign systems to the summit of cultural analysis. In part, this draws oddly on the notion of an information society, the undue translation of superficial statistics about the volume of bits of paper in the world or their electronic or photonic equivalent into grand summations of the state of the human condition. In fact, shifts in the occupational order have been, in the main, within industrial sectors rather than because of the growth of new, especially service, industries (see, for example, Gershuny, 1983: eh. 7). In part, it is a view which resonates with a faintly old-fashioned phenomenological rhetoric, and in its idealism has been, not altogether surprisingly, linked to right-wing political positions fairly readily (Kellner, 1987). A recent example of the influence of this work is in the extensive survey of disordered capitalism provided by Lash and Urry (1987). Seeking to explicate the conditions which provide for the rise and dominance of 'post-modernism' they follow Bourdieu (though perhaps not far enough) in asserting the consumption of goods for their symbolic power. One is tempted to resurrect Lockwood's famous acerbic aside in the Affluent Worker studies that 'It is in any case sociology gone mad to assume that because people want goods of this kind they always want them as status symbols. A washing machine is a washing machine is a washing machine' (Lockwood, 1960: 253). There is something faintly cheering about such gritty
Income group Lowest firth Middle three-fifths Top firth
(%)
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materialism which contrasts sharply with many who prioritize the symbolic. Lash and Urry, for example, though far from culturally deterministi c, follow Baudrillard explicitly along a number of byways, agreeing with the importance of the sphere of consumption for the constitution of individual and collective identity; with the idea of post-industrial domination through communications in the sphere of production; with the idea that in contemporary capitalism what is largely produced - in the media, a large part of the service sector, in parts of the public sector - consists of communication and information. (Lash and Urry, 1987: 289)
There are several fallacies which could be dissected here. The central thesis that consumption is of images and not of commoditie s is no more true of the modern era than of others. The thesis mistakes the form for the structure. It is the ad-man's view of society. But the world of work and-consum ption are both ever and always productive of images, symbols and contested bodies of iconography . That these are recorded and transmitted in more obvious profusion now is not an indication of a new order; this is to misread the tradition of analyses from Veblen to Bourdieu which these authors would claim as ancestry. In both traditions of work analysed, using first Fiske and then Baudrillard, the realm of the symbolic is promoted to an invalid central position in the analytical explanation of the failings of political communicat ion. This leans very much to an essentialism , eliding the more complex of social processes in which texts operate. The second area of work which I wish to examine here concedes the structural defects of present communicat ions institutions and practices, but sees their rectification as the inevitable outcome of wise usage of the new communicat ion technologies . What I term 'techno-Uto pia' is analysis based on the presumption that a new political order of a majestic and, indeed, Athenian perfection can be borne by new communicat ion technologies . Some recent American research has moved rapidly along these lines, providing an empirical gloss to the visionary rhetoric of many commentari es on the new information age. Hollander, for example, suggests that video democracy will offer the opportunity to 'dispel voter apathy; to jettison the perils of special interests; to involve the citizen to an extent never before believed possible' (1985: 2-3). This will 'merge the spirit of ancient Athens with the technologies of the twenty-first century - Pericles with digital transmission ' (1985: 3). The transformat ion of politics into direct democracy is exemplified , he argues, by the various experiments in interactive video, including the original QUBE system in Columbus (where the
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most popular request was for repeat showing of the feature film Captain Lust). Direct voting in local elections or referenda are but the first of new opportunitie s for electronic participation so that the citizen 'becomes filled with the joy of accomplishm ent and feeling of belonging' (1985: 136). Streams of technologica l doxology in this style do not pass unquestione d. Arterton (1987), for example, offers a more sober assessment of the potential and achievemen ts of 'teledemocr acy'. As he concludes, any mechanism of communication that costs money to us~ will necessarily produce inequalities of access among soc_i~l and ec~~om~c groups. Wh~n these media become conveyors of pohttcal parttctpatton, dtfferenttal access. both as to speakers and listeners, can become unduly restrictive from the viewpoint of a democracy. . . . Teledemocracy cannot be justified by rhetoric that suggests 'the people' are going to be empowered by technology. (Arterton, 1987: 203)
Despite such cautionary qualification s, however, research has too often been invited to celebrate rather than to construct a critique of the potential of new communicat ions technologies . Curiously, such optimism mirrors the stark pessimism in Gerbner's work. In both the crucial focus on the technology produces a strangely truncated view of politics. For Gerbner, Television has taken the place of the medieval church in the historic nexus of power. Today it is not church and state but television and s!ate that govern in an uneasy relationship of mutu·al dependence and tenston. Television has also replaced political parties as the chief means of communication between leaders and voters: (Gerbner, 1986: 1)
Wober and Gunter have usefully catalogued many of the empirical doubts about Gerbner's work in other fields, and, reviewing empirical work on political 'effects' come to the predi<;table though sensible conclusion that 'evidence for coherent inculcation of particular ideologies is [not very] widely supported or convincing' (1988: 87). Such debates seem to suffer from a restricted vision of the extent of the political, too often operationali zed as the vote, the legislature, the referendum . Few voting studies offer the sophisticatio n of such work as that in Himmelwei t et al. (1985), where at least the social action being studied is explicitly defined by the duration and scope of election campaigns. But in Britain voting turn-out has persistently declined throughout the post-war period (from 84 per cent in 1951 to 73 per cent in 1983), and, as Crewe ( 1987) noted in assessing the 1987 election, 'Britain's most expensive, media-satur ated campaign, appears to have had the smallest net impact on party support for decades'. In the media-satur ated 1988 presidential election in the
678
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United States voter turn-out only just crept above the 50 per cent mark. It is not clear, therefore, that this limited range of political behaviour offers the most profitable terrain for fundamental enquiry into the dynamics of political communication. The obsession with techno-Utopia suffers, then, from two ~ey deficiencies. On the one hand, the focus on technology produces a research agenda couched in the unreal terms of optimism which assert that what is possible is also probable and almost certainly desirable. On the other hand, the terrain of the political remains contained within the narrowest of boundaries, defined by political behaviour in electoral or party political terms. It becomes necessary to move beyond the radical pessimism of much research which merely defines the political contribution of communications media as deficient or corrupt, and beyond the technological optimism which is its counterpoint. The further stage of explaining this contribution in relation to wider social processes requires a return to some of the fundamental questions of social and political research. In illustrating this claim I turn first to those sources from which media derive much of their material, and then briefly consider the notion of information inequality which emerges from the kind of data provided above on access to information resources.
From sources to audiences - the wider picture In Britain, at least over the last few years, one has learnt to live with an administration that shows signs of not trusting its public. In this context one would have to take account of such developments as increasing secrecy in government departments, statutory controls over information provision and distribution by local government, and various aspects of the new legal framework for education. The relationship between the state and the media would seem to occupy a prominent position in this unattractive tableau, but has rarely been the focus for research concerns (see Golding, 1986a). Not least among the developments in state information management is the growing tendency to the professional and positive presentation of government views via the media to the public. Sins of omission give way to a public relations industry of rapidly increasing dimensions. A major effort is now sustained by government in the provision of information. Much of this is, of course, the innocent provision of essential and pragmatic information to client or interested groups in the population. But there is more here than mere administration. Such contentious initiatives as privatization have been supported by massive promotional programmes; £71.6
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95
million has been spent on corporate advertising, offer for sale advertisements, and agency fees for the nine major privatizations since 1979 (HC Hansard 18 Jan. 1988 WA Col. 473), As Hillyard and Percy-Smith suggest, A total of 1,200 civil servants are involved in the preparation and dissemination of official information. Departmental press releases arc frequently treated uncritically as 'fact' by· journalists who do not challenge the official version of events and are therefore used as channels for state propaganda. Because the state has a large contingent of press and information officers and considerable resources at its disposal which may not be available to other groups, it is well placed to feed the media with 'news' that is heavily biased in its favour. (1988: 125)
Franklin has noted that by 1987 the total government budget for advertising and information services had toppled Unilever from first place among Britain's advertisers (Franklin, 1988). Table 6 charts the scale of this exercise in British government public relations. Table 6 Budgets and staff establishments of government departments for public relations and information work, 1987/88
Department Central Office of Information Trade and Industry Health and Social Security Energy Northern Ireland Office Environment Education and Science Agriculture and Fisheries Employment Manpower Services Commission Cabinet Office Treasury Transport Defence Foreign Office
PR and info staff 804 51 68 11 47 47 38 32 60 61.5 18 11 17 215 19.5
Budget for PR and info (£m) 104 13.34 52.8 3.01 3.37 4.6 4.11 3.11 12.5 33.4 0.5 0.63 5.47 1.771
0.55
Figures for PR and Information have been combined; in many cases one or other of these is the major part or even the whole of the total. Plus £5.55m for the Services. Sources: Collated from a series of Hansard parliamentary written answers, vols. 124-8; see also Franklin (1988)
Analytically, how do we make sense of such trends in the delivery of managed information and its consumption by a population
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Political Communication and Citizenship
increasingly divided ·by the growth of economic inequality? Two areas of research which address these issues are work on 'information gaps', and the more general study of 'agenda-setting'. Extensive reviews of both these areas exist elsewhere, occurring regularly in such publications as the annual Mass Communication Review Yearbook, for example, and it is not my purpose here to duplicate these bibliographical surveys. None the less, one or two points should be made. The notion of the information gap is inevitably simple, suggesting that the educationally and socio-economically advantaged are able to enhance their advantages via communications media, whose distribution and consumption are such as to ensure that such social division widen (Gaziano, 1983; Sauerberg, 1986). The term is variably applied to knowledge or information, but the general concept is consistent. A major industry of micro-studies has followed the original work of Tichenor et al. (1970) in charting the precise mechanics, timing and demographic niceties of this process. Inevitably veering to the positivist at times, frequently unimaginative in conceptualization, none the less this is a concept that has encapsulated a simple truth, and has focused research attention on a central dynamic of political communication processes. Weaknesses in the field tend to follow from the unduly socialpsychological conception of the mechanism by which the process occurs. Thus information gaps are seen to be due to the inability of lower socio-economic groups to absorb new material, rather than to the fabric of social institutions which make differentially available a sharply demarcated universe of symbols and interpretative frames. Equally, much of the research focuses on educational attainment as the key mediating variable, arising from an early and patronizing concern to root out the difficulties of the 'chronic know-nothings' (Hyman and Sheatsley, 1947). Not for the first time research finds itself colluding with victim-blaming (Dervin, 1980). None the less, the correlation between structures of material and cultural disadvantage which lies at the core of research into the knowledge gap deserves further elaboration and investigation; it is a mine that is far from exhausted, even if rather new veins need opening up. Agenda-setting is similarly useful as an essentially simple concept that can too easily get lost in an avalanche of micro-studies of technically fascinating detail but conceptually numbing unoriginality. That the media set limits of political vision and discourse has become a starting-point for work in a variety of analytical styles. Essentially a description of a field of audience studies, agendasetting research has suffered from an overdose ofempirical attempts to refine understanding of the mechanics - the time-Jag, degrees of
681
97
definition and so on - of the agenda-setting process. 'Agendagenerating', as Himmelweit et al. term it (1985: 228) has been less well researched, despite the work of such writers as Oscar Gandy (1982). The task remains, then, to examine in more concrete detail the processes by which those with privileged access to sources of information distribution and construction 'work' - ideologically, politically, socially. Our understanding of those elite processes is primitive and under-explored, and much more work is needed to address the issues of agenda-building in the locales of powerful message and ideology creation which prefigure mediation through the communicative apparatus. Tapping the mediation of political communication evaluative and interpretative dimensions Part of the task required is an examination of the terms by which political initiatives are constructed and conveyed. I~ lay terms. the critique of political information is about bias, persuaston or evaston. More analytically, the research process has typically described in terms of categories the content of media accounts. Always the problem is to convey the adequacy or otherwise of this· account calibrated against some 'extra-media' reality - itself the most exasperating and elusive of constructs. . The concern, implicitly if not explicitly, is to ascertam one particular vector of the content: evaluation. This is, however, but one dimension. There is another vector in the content; namely, the interpretative dimension. This distinction can be made clearer. The evaluative dimension addresses the question of whether the media account is pro or anti the policy issue or matter being des~ribed.' the normal question being asked in posing questions of parttsanshtp ~r bias. In empirical terms this question makes an early appearance m attempts to develop evaluation assertion analysis. The interpretative dimension asks what aspects of the policy are broadcast into the public domain, what is the issue seen to be about. !his ~imension can introduce indirect evaluation by linking a poltcy wtth preset responses to key issues. For example, as I have attempted to suggest in earlier work (Golding and Middleton, 1982), news and other accounts of social security work to produce a hostile response by linking descriptive and narrative chronicles of policy development to well-rooted folk myths, and to notions of work, laziness and dependence, rather than to issues of redistribution and collective responsibility. The point being illustrated is that it is the more general fram~ of reference into which this policy initiative is translated that determmes i
I
682
98
~83
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The Political Economy of the Media 11
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99
cally, Marshall (1963) suggests that citizenship, 'full me~bership of a community', evolves through three stages, cor!~spondt~g t_o _three aspects of citizenship. The civil element, compnsmg the mdtvtdualistic freedoms of speech, property rights and contract, evolv~s first, largely in the eighteenth century. Political citizens~ip, the ~tght to participate in the exercise of political power, c~uctally arnves f~r Marshall with the 1918 Act providing male umversal suffrage m Britain. Social citizenship, the product of more recent _progre~s, includes the miscellaneous range of provisions for economtc secunty and welfare which Marshall feels to have been adequately bestowed by post-war developments. . . Clearly there is much to contest m thts account. ~o~ever, at t~e core of the concept are important and p~rtinent mstghts. ~htle complacent at the arrival of what he percetved to be an essenttally socialist system of social or?anization, M_a~shall ~amously note~ th.at it 'is clear that in the twentieth century ctttzenshtp and the capttahst class system have been at war' (1963: 87). Marshall, of ~our~e, retired from the scene before that war was to be re-engaged_ wtth such renewed vigour in the 1980s. The structure of avatlable information and the inegalitarian distribution of imagery a~? dat.a are the backdrop to this war, since 'what matters to the ctttzen ts the superstructure of legitimate expectations' (19?3: 10~), a phrase calling to mind the similar observation by C. Wnght Mtlls that t~e media are in the business of supplying 'master symbols of legitimation'. · h Class structure, then, and the twin barriers to p~rticip~tton t at I have outlined, are most powerfully construed as tm~edtments to citizenship. That communicative competence ~~d actiOn: .and t~e resources required to exercise them, are reqmsttes for cltlzenshtp has been recognized by many writers (notably, of cou~se, by Habermas, for example, 1979; for an illuminating discusston see Garnham, 1986). As Roche has recently pointed out, they are
its reception, lodging it into a predetermined response set more permanently located in the political culture. For example, in news about welfare, if the issue is about regressivity and distribution., then responses are along familiar left-right lines. If the interpretation yields a translation into the criminality issue, then other chords, are struck. I do not wish here to press one or other of these analyses, merely to suggest that this approach, seeking the interpretative rather than merely the evaluative dimension of political communications can produce at the very least suggestive analyses moving beyond the descriptive. The 'so-what' question: citizenship and political communications At the heart of political communication research must be enquiry into the contribution of information flows and media institutions to the exercise of democracy. I wish to suggest that this empirical concern is best encapsulated in the concept of citizenship. To what degree and in what ways are people denied access to necessary information and imagery to allow full and equal participation in the social order? Indeed this has more general application in the wider field of media studies, and can reasonably be argued ethically to underpin the purpose of much social research. I have reviewed earlier the extensive range of media research demonstrating the systematic deficiencies of media communication s in providing an adequate account of social and political process (see Golding and Elliott, 1979: eh. 8). But such research illuminates only half the issue, exposing the failings of mediated barriers but leaving unexplored the painful and damaging effects of socio-economic barriers to political communication s as a resource for citizenship. Such a postulate requires that we reconceive audiences as citizens, confronted by two sets of barriers denying or qualifying full citizenship. The first set of barriers is largely socio-economic , erecting via demographic determinants (like race or gender) or economic determinants (employment and income) the denial of resources allowing for full participation in the social and cultural process (Golding, 1986b). The second set of barriers is mediated, and denies to all the full and adequate range of imagery and information assumed by ideal definitions of citizenship. Unlike Fiske's account, described earlier, these two are not distinct but intimately related, and compound rather than complement each other. The concept of citizenship finds its most extensive and influential expression in the seminal work of T.H. Marshall. Arguing histori-
central to any conception of the social element of citizenshi_r, particul.arly in contemporary conditions of social change towards soc!al format1o~s in which education and leisure will assume increasing Importance m social life .... Politics of and policies for such things as ~rcc. speech, access to information, access to education, mass com~umcauons c~c. can be seen as crucial practical dimensions of citizenship and of socml citizenship in particular. (1987: 380-1)
Conjoint with our understanding of citizenship is our definiti~n of the sphere of the public. The fluctuating fortun.es and uncertam future of public service broadcasting urgently reqmre from research something rather more considered than we have been thus far able
' I_
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100
References
Changing Media Processes
to provide, at least in disentangling the purposes of regulation from the bases of finance. How far public conceptions of broadcasting locate communications in an ideological field akin to education or health remains unexplored. We urgently require a philosophy of communications which locates and understands the role of communications processes and institutions in the public sphere. What is the nature of the goods produced by broadcasting and other communications services? Without the answer to that question the response to much communication research must indeed be 'So what?' Conclusion The lamentable but inevitable conclusion that must be drawn from research over the past couple of decades is that the communications media have failed democracy. If our ideal but none the less worthy intention is that citizens should be afforded an opportunity adequately to inform themselves about social and political process, then the media as currently constituted do rather less than serve this need. Why this should be so and how it arises are central to the concerns of research into political communications. In order to advance the contribution of research to these debates I have suggested that the key concept of citii:enship distils the essential questions and concerns we should address. This chapter has advanced essentially two arguments, one methodological, the other conceptual. My first argument has been to suggest that an undue emphasis on symbolic and cultural barriers or on technological opportunities will divert attention from what remain crucial barriers of access to communications and information erected by structures of social and economic inequality. We lack adequate or sensitive measures of the links between cultural opportunity and structures of socio-economic distribution, and mapping and calibrating these links remains an urgent task for research. The second point made is conceptual, a claim for the resurrection of the concept of citizenship as a critical bench-mark of enquiry in communication research. The partial and attentuated citizenship imposed by information poverty casts as large a shadow over social theory as any of the grand and ambitious questions posed by classic social science. The current failings and structured deficiencies of mass communications mean that at a local and national level our democracy puts its citizens in blinkers. Removing the mask is as much an urgent task for research as it is for political action.
Arterton, F. (1987) Teledemocracy: Can Technology Protect Democracy? Beverly Hills: Sage. Baudrillard, J. (1983) In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities. New York: Semiotext. Bourdieu, P. ( 1977) Outline of a Theory ofPractice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. ( 1986) Distinction: A Social Critique ofthe Judgement ofTaste. London: Routledge &KeganPaul. Chibnall, S. ( 1977) Law-and-order News: An Analysis ofCrime Reporting in the British Press. London: Tavistock. Crewe, I. (1987) 'A New Class of Politics', Guardian 15 June, p.9. Curran, C. (1979)A Seamless Robe: Broadcasting- Philosophy and Practice? London: Collins. Dervin, B. (1980) 'Communication Gaps and Inequalities: Moving towards a Reconceptualisation', in B. Dervin and M.J. Voigt (eds), Progress in Communication Sciences, vol II, Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Fiske, J. (1987) Television Culture. London: Methuen. Franklin, B. ( 1988) 'Central Government Information versus Local Government Propaganda', University of Leeds, mimeo. Gandy, 0. (1982) Beyond Agenda-Sening. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. · Garnham, N. (1986) 'The Media and the Public Sphere', pp. 37-53 in P. Golding, G. Murdock and P. Schlesinger (eds), Communicating Politics: Mass Communications and the Political Process. Leicester: Leicester University Press/New York: Holmes and Meier. Gaziano. C. (1983) 'The Knowledge Gap: An Analytical Review of Media Effects?' Communication Research, 10 (4): 447-86. Gerbn~r, .G. (1986) 'Television Imagery and the New Populism', paper given at iAMCR Conference, New Delhi. Gershuny, J. (1983) Social Innovation and the Division ofLabour. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Glasgow University Media Group (1976) Bad News. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Glasgow University Media Group (1980) More Bad News. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Golding, P. (1986a) 'Power in the information society', pp. 73-84 in G. Muskens and C. Hamelink (eds), Global Networks and European Communities - Applied Social and Comparative Approaches. Tilburg: IVA. Golding, P. (1986b) Excluding the Poor. London: Child Poverty Action Group. Golding, P. And Elliott, P. (1979) Making the News. Harlow, Essex: Longman. Golding, P. and Middleton, S. (1982) Images ofWelfare: Press and Public Anitudes to Poverty. Oxford: Martin Robertson. Golding, P. and Murdock, G. (1986) 'Unequal Information: Access and ~xc~usion in the N~w Communications Market Place', in M. Ferguson (ed.), New Commumcatwns Teclmologzes and the Public Interest. London: Sage. Goldsmiths' Media Research Group (1987) Media Coverage of Landon Councils: Interim Report. London: Goldsmiths' College. Habermas, J. (1979) Communication and the Evolution of Society. Boston: Beacon Press. Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. and Roberts, B. (1978) Policing the Crisis: . Mugging, the State and Law and Order. London: Macmillan. Hamil, s. and O'Neill, G. (1986) 'Structural Changes in British Society: The Implications for Future Consumer Markets', Journal of the Market Research Society, 28 (4): 313-23. Hartmann, P. and Husband, C. (1973) Racism and the Mass Media. LOndon: Davis Poynter. Hillyard, P. and Percy-Srnith, J. (1988) The Coercive State. London: Fontana/Collins. Himmelweit, H.T., Humphreys, D., Jaeger, M. and Katz, M. (1985)How Voters Decide. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Hollander R. (1985) Video Democracy. Mount Airy, MD: Lomond. Hyman, and Sheatsley, P. ( 1947) •Some Reasons Why Information Campaigns Fail', Public Opinion Quarterly, 11: 412-23.
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The Political Economy of the Media 1/ Kellner, D. (1987) 'Baudrillard, Semiurgy, and Death?' Theory, Culture and Societu 4 (1): •J• 125-46. Kuan-Hsing Chen (1987) 'The Masses and the Media: Baudrillard's Implosive Postmodemism', Theory, Culture and Society, 4 (1): 71-88. Lash, S. and Urry, J. (1987) The End of Organised Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Lockwood, D. (1960) 'The "New Working Class"', European Journal of Sociology, I (2). McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw Hill. McLuhan, M. and Fiore, Q. (1967) The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory ofEffects. New York: Bantam Books. Marshal!, T.H. (1963) Sociology at the Crossroads. London: Heinemann Peacock Report(l986) Report of the Committee on Financing the BBC. Comnd 9824, London: HMSO. Roche, M. (1987) 'Citizenship, Social Theory, and Social Change', Theory and Society 16: • 363-99. Sauerberg, S. (1986) 'Democracy and Information Gaps', paper given at IAMCR Conference, New Delhi. Schlesinger, P., Murdock, G. and Elliott, P. (1983) Televising 'Terrorism': Political Violence in Political Culture. London: Comedia. Tichenor, P., Donohue, G.A. and Olien, C.N. ( 1970) 'Mass Media Flow and Differential Growth in Knowledge', Public Opinion Quarterly, 34: 159-70. Wober, M. and Gunter, B. (1988) Television and Social Control. London: Gower.
Name Index Abendroth, W. 165-6, 173 Ackennann, B. 177 Adams, C.F. 386 Adams, J.Q. 194, 197 Adamson, C. 573 Adenauer, K. 152 Adorno, T. 168 Allaun, F. 488 Alien, C. 560 Allende, S. 346 Almond, G. 168 Anastaplo, G. 192 Anderson, C. 359 Anderson, M. 23 Andrews, E. 578 Angell, N. 557 Anne, Queen 67 Apel, K.-0. 177 Arato, A. 185 Arendt, H. 184 Armstrong, D. 359 Arnold, M. 253 Arrowsmith, P. 485 Arterton, F. 677 Aspinall, A. 85, 87 Asquith, I. 65, 546 Averch, H. 397 Baistow, T. 478 Bakhtin, M. 157 Baldwin, S. 559 Balfour, A. 536 Barber, B. 354, 359 Bardach, E. 401-2 Baudrillard, J. 674-6 Baverstock, D. 505 Bayliss, F. 586 Beard, C. 387 Beard, M. 387 Beaverbrook, Lord 83, 134 Bell, E. 511 Belloc, H. 543 Belmont, A. 16 Benn, A.W. 476, 562-5, 568-9, 571 Bennett, J. G. 202 Berlusconi, S. 140, 335, 513, 517 Bernstein, M. 391-3
Bernstein. S. 505 Besant, A. 537, 549 Beveridge, V. 71, 81, 86 Birt, J. 510 . Blackstone, T. 645 Bloom, A. 193 Blumler, J. 576 Bobbio, N. 170 BfickenfOrde, E.W. 161-2 Boiardo, M. 456 Botein, S. 202 Bourdieu, P. 675-6 Bowles, S. 357 Bradlaugh, C. 537 Brecht, B. 358 Bright, J. 537 Brisbane, A. 29 Brittan, S. 460,492,500 Brooks, R. 510, 512 Brown, C.L. 383 Bryan, W .J. 35 Bficher, K.118 Bullitt, W. 547 Bunyan, J. 200 Burke, E. 181 Burnham, Lord 183, 544-5 Burnham, W.D. 193, 204 Bush, G. 353 Butler, R. 536 Caldicott, H. 345 Calhoun 9 Calkins 21 Callaghan, J. 95 Campbell, B. 204 Campbell, Lord 68 Camus, A. 655 Canham, E.D. 53 Capper 21, 26 Cardiff, D. 501-2 Carey, J. 201 Carmichael, S. 34 Carnegie, A. 13 Cassell, J. 85 Chamberlain, J. 537 Chaney, D. 64 Chatov, R. 402
688
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Checkland, M. 510 Chenery, W.L. 33 Chesterton, G.K. 543, 552 Chibnall, S. 669 Christie, I.R. 66 Churchill, Lord R. 536 Clark, R. 345 Clayton 395 Cleave 76 Cleveland, G. 207 Cobbett, W. 79 Cobden, R. 80 Cohen, J. 176, 185, 357 Collins, L. 302-:-3, 309-11 Collins, :f\1. 502 Collins, R. 425 Coltham, S. 84 Connnolly, J. 547 Conrad, J. 304 Conway, M. 537 Coolidge, C. 273 Corcoran, E.C. 489-9, 522 Cowdray, Lord 83 Cox 21 Crane 20 Cranfield, G. 67 Crewe, I. 677 Critchley, R.A. 86 Croly, H. 387 Crowther, Lord 87 Curran, C. 668-9 Curran, J. 73, 82, 93-4, 501, 504, 508, 511, 523 Dabney, V. 52-3 Dana, C. 4, 9 Daniels 26 Dante 648 Darrow 7 Davis, G.C. 392 Davis, H. 506, 519 Davis, S. 269 Davitt, M. 537 Day, R. 568 de Jonquieres, G. 510 de la Warr, Earl 542 de la Warr, Countess M. 84, 541, 560 de Maistre, J. 640, 645 De Smith, H. 23-4 de Young, M. 16-71 DeFina, R. 398 Dervin, B. 680 Deweese4 DeWitt, B.P. 387
Dilke, C. 537 Dill, J.B. 19 Disraeli, B. 537 Dodd 3 Douglas 192-5, 206-7, 209 Downing, J. 357 Downs, A. 398 Dowson 284 Drew 539, 541 Durr, Commissioner 55 Duverger, M. 205-6 Dworkin, R. 177 Dyson, K. 497, 514
Eastman, J.B. 388 Eco,U.660 Eisenhower, D.D. 301 Eley, G. 153-4, 160 Elliott, P. 682 Elstein, D. 511 Epstein, J.A. 71, 73, 76-7 Erskine 631-2, 645, 653 Esterhazy 333 Everett, E. 195 Fanon, F. 343 Farrar 537 ·Feather, V. 573 Fels, J. 543 Ferguson, M. 435 Feuerbach, L. 572 Fielden 73 Fiorina, M.P. 399 Fisher, M. 467 Fiske, J. 670, 674, 676, 682 Foot, M. 95 Ford, F. 309 Ford, G. 381 Ford, H. 38 Formisano, R. 198 Forsthoff, E. 165 Foster, J. 75 Foucault, M. 155, 159 Fowler, M. 335 Fox 64, 68 Fox, C. 88 Fox, P. 510 Franco 662 Frank, J. 67 Frankfurter, Justice 335 Franklin, B. 200, 679 Fraser, L. 554 Frederiksen, H.A. 359 Freer, C. 88
The Political Economy of the Media 11 French, G. 33 Friedland, C. 398 Frost, D. 571 Fyfe, H. 556 Gainford, Lord 228 Gandy, 0. 109, 681 Garnham, N. 683 Gavin, B. 498, 515-21 Gaziano, C. 680 George m 64 George, S. 499 Gerbner, G. 677 Gershuny, J. 675 Gerth, H.H. 355 Giammati, A.B. 456 Gibbs, P. 83 Gibson, M. 80, 86 Gienapp, W. 198, 206 Gintis, H. 357 Gladstone, W .E. 537 Glasgow, E. 76 Glencross, D. 508-9 Glenersk, Lord 87 Golding, P. 669, 672-3, 678, 681-2 Gorbachev, M. 128-9 Gorky, M. 30 Gorst, Sir J. 536 Gosling, R. 577-8 Gould, B. 554 Gould, G. 541· Grade, L. 505, 507 Graff, H. 201 Gray, H. 394, 396 Greeley, H. 4 Green, M. 509 Greene, C. 281 Greene, H. 505 Greene, Judge 452 Gunter, B. 677 Gutenberg, J. 634 Habermas, J. 110, 120, 131-6, 139, 195-6, 201, 683 Haigh, R.L. 67 Hale, E.E. 206 Hall, S. 169, 669 Hall, T. 16 Halleck, D. 348 Halstead 4 Hlimil, S. 670 Hamilton, A. 633 Hanillton, Sir D. 94 Hand, Judge L. 634
Hanson 67 Harben, H.D. 543-4, 560 Harben, R.D. 84 Hardie, K. 551 Harlech 582 Harmsworth, G. 82 Harris, M. 67 Harrison, B. 207 Harrison, F. 537 Hart, P. 381 Hartmann, P. 669 Hattersley, R. 82, 493 Haydn, F .J. 333 Hays, S.P. 395 Hayward, J.T. 538, 551 Haywood, B. 7 Hearst, W.R. 16, 2Q-21, 28 Hease, H. 541 Hegel, G. 160, 162, 174, 183 Henderson, A. 531, 556 Heney 9 Henry vm 86 Herd, H. 66, 83 Herron 30 Hetherington, A. 70, 75-6, 79, 81 Hickson 81 Hightower, J. 345 Hill, L. 511, 517 Hill, w. 76 Hillyard, P. 679 Hilton 84 Himmelweit, H.T. 677, 681 Hindle, W. 67, 87 Hirsch, M. 514-15 Hobart, H.W. 538 Hobbes, T. 645 Hobson, J. 76 Hofstadter, R. 204 Hohendahl, P.U. 154, 196 Holland, S. 476 Hollander, R. 676 Hollis, P. 65, 68-9, 71, 76, 79, 82 Holmes, Justice 634 Hopkins, J. 601 House, Colonel 547 Howe, F. 547 Huber, P. 449 Hughes, Chief Justice 635 Humphreys, P. 497 Hunter, N. 87 Huntington, S.P. 392 Hurd, D. 102, 473, 492-3 Husband, C. 669 Hussey, M. 480, 510
689
690 Hyde,J. 19 Hyman, H. 680 lnglehart, R. 168 lnnis, H.A. 431 Irwin, w. 31 Isaacs, J. 320, 326, 329 Jackson, A. 198 Jacobson, B. 359 Jay, P. 461 Jefferson, T. 194, 200 Jenner, P. 465 Johnson, L.L. 397 Johnson, Mayor 8 Johnson, N. 359 Jones, B. 599 Joosten, M. 498-9, 520, 522 Joskow, P. 402 Kagan, R.A. ·401-2 Kahn, A. 451 Kant, I. 179 Karp, w. 359 Keane, J. 184 Kelley, S. 207 Kellner, D. 675 Kennedy, E. 381 Kennedy, J.F. 301-2 King, J. 570-71 Kinnock, N. 477-8 Kirsch 517 Knightly' p. 93 Koenig, J. 344 Kolko, G. 394-6 Krishnamurti 549 Kuan-Hsing, C. 675 Lander, R. 511 Lange, A. 513 Lansbury, G. 84, 90 Lapham, L. 444 Larkin, J. 547 Lasch, c. 192, 206 Lash, s. 675-6 Laski, M. 597-8 Lawson 34 Lawson, W. 537 Lazarsfeld, P. 169 Lear, King 194 LeDuc, D.R. 402 Lefort, C. 182 LeMahieu, D. 501 Lemert, J. 201
The Political Economy of the Media //
The Political Economy of the Media // Leonard, H. 454 Leonard, T. 204 Levine, L. 194 Levy, c. 497, 499-501, 503-8, 510-11, 518 Lincoln, A. 192-5, 206-7, 209 Lindblom, C. 404 Lippmann, W. 387 Lloyd, E. 83 Lloyd George, D. 22, 542, 546 Lockwood, D. 675 Lorenzen, P. 177 Lorymer 76 Lottes, G. 155 Louis XIV 13 Lovett, T. 599 Lowi, T. 393 Lucas, R. 87 Luce, R. 579 Lytton, B. 81 Macaulay, T.B. 331 MacAvoy, P.W. 401 Macbeth 194 MacTaggart, J. 330 Maddox, B. 510-11, 518 Manin, B. 176 Manning 537 Mansbridge, J. 197 March 516 Markievicz, Countess 547 Marshall;T.H. 101-3, 682-3 Marx, K. 129, 161-2, 172, 183, 572 Mattelart, A. 359 Maxwell, R. 467, 478, 505, 517 Mazzoleni, G. 517, 519 McCarthy, J.R. 311 McCormick, Senator M. 26 McCraw, T.L. 385 McGerr, M. 205, 207-8 McKenzie, R. 573 McLean 21 McLuhan, M. 675 McPherson, A.S. 270 McQuail, D. 576 Meacher, M. 476-7 Medici family 333 Medill4 Meier, W.A. 515 Mellor, D. 508 Melody, W.H. 419-20, 422, ·424-5, 427-8, 432, 448 Metzenbaum, H. 450, 453 Meynell, F. 550 Meyrowitz, J. 186
Michaelangelo 333 Middleton, S. 669, 681 Midwinter, E. 599 Mill, J.S. 170 Mills, C.W. 355, 683 336, 511 Milne, Milton, J. 263, 653 Minow, N.N. 301-2 Mitchell, C. 87, 89, 91 Mitterand, F. 515 Moore, C.C. 17 Morgan, P. 19, 28 Morris 80 Morris, O.S. 36-7 Morrow, F. 346, 348 Mosco, V. 402 Mulgan, G. 465, 493 Mullin, C. 476-7 Mumford 665 Munsey 21 Murdoch, G. 672-3 Murdoch, R. 140, 328, 463, 467-8, 477, 499, 505, 517, 626, 630 Murphy, C. 16 Musson, A.E. 82
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Nader, R. 381, 389 Naylor, T.E. 537 Negrine, R. 498, 513-17, 519 Nelson 4 Newman 537 Newnes, F. 539, 551 Niblock, M. 498 Nicodemus 546 Niskanen, W. 399 Noam, E.M. 449 Noll, R.G. 399 Northcliffe, Lord 22, 82, 558 Nozick, T. 653 O'Brien 76 O'Connor, F. 72-3, 76 O'Connor, J. 404 O'Hair, M.M. 345 O'Neill, G. 670 Oettinger, A. 449 Offe, C. 183-4 Olney, R. 392 Oreskes, M. 193 Orwell, G. 484 Owen, B.M. 424 Owen, R. 155 Page, B. 468
Page, W. 26 Paine, T. 200, 632, 652 Paine, W.H. 541 Palmer, M. 513-14, 517, 519 Papathanassopoulos, S. 498, 513-17, 519 Parker 537 Parnell, C.S. 537 Pairington, V .L. 387 Parsons, T. 168 Pateman, C. 158-9 Pelham, C. 68 Peltzman, S. 399 Percy-Smith, J. 679 Pericles 676 Petersen, V.G. 514-15 Pethick, L.F. W. 90 Plowright, D. 511 Polanyi, K. 658 Pool, I. de S. 101 Porter, V. 514 Posner, R. 399 Post, C.W. 30 Pound, R. 82 Powell, J. 510 Preuss, U. 175 Price, C. 521 Price, M. 359 Price, R. 93 Purser, P. 573 Quinton, Lord 631 Rabelais, F. 157 Rai, L. 547 Rath, C.-D. 523 Rawls, J. 177 Raymond 4 Read, D. 76 Ragan, R. 353, 368, 383, 447 Rean, W .F. 538 Reece, R. 345 Reid, W. 26 Reith, Lord J. 337, 501, 624 Renaud, J.-L. 513 Reynolds, G. 88-9 Rice, S. 70 Roach, J. 65 Roberts, F .0. 557 Roche, M. 683 Rockefeller, J.D. 28 ROdel, U. 182 Rogers, J. 357 Rogers, P. 509
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The Political Economy of the Media 11
Rohatyn, F. 444-6, 455 Roosevelt, T. 387 Rostenburg, L. 67 Rousseau, J.-J. 175-6 Rushdie, S. 654 Ruskin, J. 253 Russell, G. 508, 547 Ryan 19 Ryan, W .J. 547 Sakharov, A. 632 Salisbury, W. 24 Sauerberg, S. 680 Scannell, P. 501 Schiller, D. 448 Schlesinger Jr, A. 387, 455 Schlesinger, P. 520, 669 Schmitt, C. 165 Schoyen, A.R. 79 Schumpeter, J. 181 Scramm, W. 566 Scripps, E.W. 21 Seaton, J. 501, "504, 508, 511, 523 Sennett, R. 156 Seruya, S. 542 Seymour-Ure, C. 84 Shakespeare, W. 194, 250 Shamberg, M. 359 Shapiro, A. 359 Sheatsley, P. 680 Sherover, M. 29 Short, C. 490 Siebert, F.S. 67 Siegel, H. 30 Siegelaub, S. 359 Simmel, G. 654 Sinclair, U. 30 Skapinder, M. 499 Skeffington, S. 547 Smiles, S. 79 Snoddy, R. 500, 510, 512, 517 Snow, J.W. 401 Somoza, A. 345 Spender, J.A. 93 Spock, B. 345 Spurgeon 537 Steffens, L. 13, 547 Stephens, D. 570 Stevens 467 Stevenson, A.E. 301 Stigler, G.J. 397-8 Stockwell, J. 345 Story 4 Sugar, A. 503
Taft, C.P. 21 Tawney 9 Taylor, A.J.P. 83 Taylor, P. 520, 523 Taylor, W. 583 Tebbit, N. 503 Temple 537 Thatcher, M. 101, 103-4, 480, 491-2, 499-500, 502-3, 508, 510, 513 Theodore, E.G. 547 Thomas, J .H. 557 Thomasson 83 Thompson, E.P. 65, 155 Thompson, G. 500 Thompson, R. 505 Thomson 284 Tichenor, P. 680 Tilak 547 Tillett, B. 535-6, 538-40, 542, 552-3 Tisdall, S. 485 Tocqueville, A. de 170, 202 Townsend 441 Trappel, J. 515 Trenaman, J.S.M. 576 Troy, L. 542 Tunstall, J. 73, 500, 502-4, 513-14 Urry, J. 675-6 Veblen, T. 676 Veljanovski, C. 463, 500 Verba, S. 168 Vincent, J. 91 von Bismarck, 0. 653 von Horst, Baron 542 von Schlozer, A.L. 652 von Stein, L. 161 Wald, G. 345 Walls, D. 538, 551 Walsh 24 Walsh, S. 557 · Watson 76 Watterson 4 Weber, M. 172, 181, 355, 406, 647 Wehler, H.U. 153, 161 Weidenbaum, M. 398 Weingast, B.R. 399 Weinstein, J. 395 Weldon, Sir H. 333 Willisz, S.H. 397 Westmacott, C.M. 80 Weyl, W. 387 White, L. 56
The Political Economy of the Media 11 White, W.A. 51-2, 387 Whitehouse, M. 491 Wicklein, J. 359 Wickwar, W.H. 65, 68 Wiener, J.H. 65, 68, 81 Wilensky 82 Wiles, R.M. 67 Williams, F. 66' Williams, R. 65-6, 126, 154, 542, 544, 621 Wilshire, G. 38 Wilson, W. 13, 387, 547 Winter, W. 31-2 Wober, M. 677 Wolf, Sir H.D. 536
Wolfe, A. 357 Wolfe, F.E. 35 Woodside, G. 601 Woolf, V. 651 Wright, P. 109 Yarborough, R. 345 Yentob, A. 510 Young, S. 480 Younger, Lord 546 Zaglul 547 Zelmer, A.C.L. 359 Zemsky, R. 197
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