Future of impartiality
| 10:59 UK time, Friday, 9 November 2007
There was something of the about it.
"The Future of Impartiality - is the Public Ethos Doomed?" is pretty weighty stuff on at least two fronts... existential, even, as far as the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is concerned.
But like Tristram Shandy, last night's joint ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ College of Journalism and event at the LSE never quite got to say what it was that it was talking about. Though it was no worse a debate for that.
In spite of Feedback's Roger Bolton pressing the panellists, none cared to define 'impartiality' - though that didn't prevent them discarding 'it' (, author of 'Scrap the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'), redefining 'it' in terms of 'the right of reply' in an unlimited, webbed world () or drawing a distinction between the intellectual case for 'it' - a difficult but not impossible one to make - and the instinct that it was right that 'it' is every ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ journalist's aspiration (Evan Davis).
Richard D North's case - that the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ and other terrestrial broadcasters are constrained by an unnecessary obligation to be impartial - rested on his view that the market alone can deliver news and information (not just comment) from a limitless 'variety' of viewpoints. One, monolithic, impartial view was unnecessary. The British press, he asserted, was 'a beautiful thing', taken in the round - and had never needed an obligation to be impartial to make it so. Plus, the requirement to be impartial, he argued, had two important effects on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ journalism; it encouraged the belief that its reporting was somehow 'more true' and an attitude amongst ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ journalists of 'perennial dissidence'. That it was enough to be 'equally unpleasant to everyone'.
Emily Bell's case rested on the web's ability to deliver limitless accountability, right of reply and fact checking. That overcame the need to try to define a particular standpoint or a particular way of embracing diverse standpoints. Emily even posed the idea of an editorless news organisation and deskless newsrooms - the audience deciding the order in which it uses information, the standpoint of that information, the depth and breadth of its use and, crucially, the extent to which it wants to play a role in creating and improving it.
Evan Davis's case was that impartiality was 'probably a public good' - though he acknowledged the intellectual difficulties that surround both its definition and its practice. His instincts, though, challenged his intellect; for all the difficulties in arriving at a definition and accepting that it's possible there's no market demand for it, the aspiration to be impartial, he thought, did mean that what the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ did was 'a little bit different from what the Daily Mail does' - or any other newspaper for that matter. And, he said, he always tended to go with his instincts.
In the audience, two ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ (former) luminaries tried to help. spiced things up a bit by defining impartiality as 'truth, fairness and being unbiased'. Therefore, to be against impartiality meant being for untruth, unfairness and bias. While observed that the level of trust in broadcasters - regulated and with a requirement to be impartial - was relatively high whereas the level of trust in newspapers - unregulated and with no requirement to be impartial - was low, 'at the bottom'.
So if impartiality was closely identified with the idea of the public ethos in broadcasting, did that ethos have a future? All agreed it probably did - but in different ways.
Richard D North foresaw its future embodiment as a kind of 'National Trust' of the air - relatively wealthy, educated middle class people clubbing together to preserve the kind of broadcasting they preferred, without state or taxpayers' interference.
Evan Davis likened this to the model in the US - a worthy organisation with limited appeal and influence: he believed there probably was a future for the public service ethos within any future media market ... though in an entirely free market, without subsidy of some kind, he believed the product of that ethos would be smaller and lesser than it is at present.
Emily Bell had a very different, intriguing idea. A future ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳, she said, could be a kind of 'non-commercial search engine' interpreting its public mission in terms of ensuring equality of access to the world's information.
Comments
'Truth, fairness and being unbiased' is all very well, but the last of these 3 isn't always true and, I would argue, shouldn't be. Instead of 'unbiased' I would say 'balanced'. This already happens, but I would want to make it explicit. Let me give a couple of examples: whenever there is a report on the Queen, it isn't also reported that David Icke thinks she is a lizard, because the overwhelming view is that she isn't. Similarly, reports of the moon landings by and large don't include the theory that they were staged.
Kevin,
That's a very impartial report of what was a very passionate and stimulating debate. My version of the discussion can be seen at:
cheers
Charlie Beckett
Director, Polis
PS Let's be honest - were he alive today, Tristam Shandy would be a blogger...
Those (like Richard North) who are advocating abandoning impartiality, can look at the US media/news market and see what a disaster it can bring on. (Remember early 2003 before Iraq war?!)
'Impartial' could attract a new synonym, 'spinless', perhaps?
Of course, the creative amongst The Gentlemen...etc, might find it a tad 'spineless' in making names in the business. If personal fame is not an ethical primary motivator, it must surely be a - less altruistic - close second! If 'enhanced' truth is the product on offer, then as consumers, we need to rewrite the service contract, perhaps. But are we up to it? Isn't the 'digest' the way of recently-breaking news? Ultra-tabloid sound-vision-bite-ery! News on-the-fly, 'junk food'?
Emily, the public don't generally want to work hard at extracting news items. Many do need the context-setting (me included, very often,) but it has got to be tailored to attention spans of J.Public (definitely me!)
PBS has had a rocky road in the US. Many including those in Congress felt for the longest time that it was politically biased to the left. This was not just in the imagination of those who were conservatives, objective analysis of their reporting and policies confirmed it. PBS underwent a major re-examination and is now funded by a combination of tax money, corporate contributions, and individual contributions. In my family, we jokingly refer to its solicitations for donations as its "Salute to Money."
But PBS still has many bright spots, some of them going back decades. What started out as the McNeil Lehrer News Hour is now the PBS nightly news. In its one hour format, it presents matter of fact summaries of the major stories of the day and then selects several of them for much closer examination. But rather than report on them itself, it enlists a panel of those who are most knowledgeable, respected, and articulate to present all majors sides of an issue, allowing them to confront each other with disagreements when necessary. PBS only acts as a well informed and well researched moderator. It is invariably civilized and never seems to get out of hand or rancorous even where there are strong disagreements. This is undoubtedly the best overall single general news program in the United States. It is greatly superior to ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ World's nightly report which is in a half hour format and broadcast on PBS also. I usually watch both.
All this about multiple data sources may be very well for the assorted "media dillantetes" represented here, but what about the "man in the street" who DOESN'T have all day to spend looking at half a dozen newspapers and then assimilating this into a coherent worldview? What these people - who probably represent the majority of the population outside the navel-gazing media industry - want is an impartial overview. That should be the remit of public service broadcasting.
And as to those who say the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is often biased - of course it is, but it should try not to be. Maybe it cannot be impartial, but it should always aspire to be so.
In my view, in order to solve these problems it is essential to understand how contemporary "art" (and "culture") has apparently chosen for a meaningless and nihilistic "relativism" -while "science" (and "technology") has clearly profited from an understanding of the value of "relativity" which maps different universes of experience into valuable knowledge.
I have posted a longer reply on
Charlie Beckett's site (see above link).
It seems to me that commercialism is not the answer -more the problem. We also need to define "democracy" more in terms of social problem solving mechanisms -and less in terms of a political power struggle.
A better understanding of the role of dialectic would be useful too. At present, consumerism is forcing us too much in the direction of instant fulfilment of desires -and a state of mind where any disagreement is unpleasant and cannot be dealt with psychologically. Under these conditions polarisation and mutual destruction of opposing parties (such as in the "war on terror") becomes the norm and serious social debate becomes extinct.
I feel pessimistic about the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ achieving impartiality in its news
bulletins. Many beebers refuse to even recognise a problem. Its like cycling on a windy day - if the wind is behind you you tend not to notice it.
There is always an excuse - "a mistake" or "a junior employee" or
sometimes "a contractor" or even one borrowed from the social work profession: "lessons have been learned".
The report early this year acknowledged the problem and had some examples of exactly what we are talking about: The programme maker
who thought he needed permission to run a negative report about black people. The desperate search for an east-ender who saw immigration in a positive light. Just 2 examples that spring to mind.
The report mentioned "group think" and "political correctness" several times. This diagnosis is accurate - but the report was short on any suggestions for treatment.
Maybe we need quotas of right wingers, rural people, old people,
non-Londoners. Affirmative action, anyone ?
I don't know the answer. Its going to need something big, and its unlikely that the existing staff, existing procedures, existing culture is going to improve by - what ? Trying a bit harder ? I don't think so.
Its going to need someone in the news room asking awkward and non-PC questions, such as:
+ Haven't we had enough fluffy muslim stories this week ?
+ Do we really need more taxes ?
+ Can we have some more news from Europe and less from the US ?
+ Do we really need speculation about tomorrow's speech by this politician ?
In my view, in order to solve these problems it is essential to understand how contemporary "art" (and "culture") has apparently chosen for a meaningless and nihilistic "relativism" -while "science" (and "technology") has clearly profited from an understanding of the value of "relativity" which maps different universes of experience into valuable knowledge.
I have posted a longer reply on
Charlie Beckett's site (see above link).
It seems to me that commercialism is not the answer -more the problem. We also need to define "democracy" more in terms of social problem solving mechanisms -and less in terms of a political power struggle.
A better understanding of the role of dialectic would be useful too. At present, consumerism is forcing us too much in the direction of instant fulfilment of desires -and a state of mind where any disagreement is unpleasant and cannot be dealt with psychologically. Under these conditions polarisation and mutual destruction of opposing parties (such as in the "war on terror") becomes the norm and serious social debate becomes extinct.
If people who have worked for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ can't even agree on what impartiality is, and the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is so unsure of what impartiality is that there has to be an academic debate on the matter, how can the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ claim to be impartial?
I'm fairly disillusioned with the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s take on impartiality: it's simply not applied as universally as it should be.
I complained a while back about the partiality - the near-absence of a mainstream sceptical viewpoint - in its website coverage of complementary medicine. The Complaints Unit told me this was outside their remit because the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s duty of due impartiality only applies to "matters of public policy or of political and industrial controversy".
This seemed bizarre, and I quoted back their then Producers' Guidelines: "Due impartiality lies at the heart of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳. It is a core value and no area of programming is exempt from it.".
The response was a fairly amazing piece of sophistry: that the duty of due impartiality "applies to all areas only in the sense that no area of programming is exempt from it when dealing with matters where due impartiality is required"!
Is this really ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ policy: that impartiality can go hang outside some narrow, mainly political, topic areas?
The ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is 'institutionally biased'. The inability of the vast majority of its editorial and management staff to notice, let alone acknowledge, the inherent liberal-left bias that permeates every aspect of its operation just confirms this.
All this fuss about so called 'Global warming', I recall some years ago they were on about a new ice age. We are but ants on the surface of the Earth, maybe the best thing we could do was to stop destroying the forests, which are the lungs of the world. The rest is, excuse the pun, a lot of hot air.
Far more important is this Governments failure to obey its own laws and removing existing help for the disabled. The closure of the REMPLOY factories is a scandle. This is typical of New Labour, say one thing and do the opposite.