What is journalism for? The short answer: truth theguardian com

What is journalism for? The short answer: truth


theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/11/journalism-truth-strong-regulation-us-media-uk


Clive Myrie


Who, what, where, when and why? Five questions that are at the heart of our trade.
Answer those questions in relation to any news story, and we’re doing our jobs as
journalists. They underpin everything we do, what we write in a newspaper or online,
what we say on TV or on the radio.


It feels to me, however, that we sometimes need to ask one of those questions of
ourselves: why? It doesn’t have to be every day or all the time, but given the power we
have, it’s important. What is the point of the media in a democracy? What are we here
for? We can influence massive societal changes. Indirectly we even wield political power,
able to influence policy, perhaps even able to help change governments. And with power
as we’re all well aware, comes great responsibility. Former Sunday Times editor Harold
Evans understood this down to the marrow in his bones, and he chose throughout his
storied career to leverage that power for the greater good of society.


But who should police this? Is it enough to let the industry itself be the gatekeeper of how
far a broadcaster or newspaper should go in trying to make a profit or build an audience?
Or are independent regulators the only way to ensure media companies use the power
they have wisely?


Contrast the situation here in the UK, where there is a robust and for some choking
regulatory framework with the US, where oversight in one crucial respect is nonexistent:
the requirement to fairly represent the views of opposing sides in news and current affairs
broadcasts. Could that lack of a check on how America does news actually imperil
democracy itself?


In 2009, James Murdoch, son of Fox News’s founder, Rupert, gave a speech at the
Edinburgh International Television Festival. His MacTaggart lecture made it clear what
he believed the role of the media was in a democracy. Making money was the starting
point from which everything else flowed: all the good, benign stuff – creativity, public
trust and news coverage that was truly independent and challenged the consensus. His
exact words were: “The only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is
profit.”


It follows, then, and James Murdoch agreed that the only regulator should be the market.
If the public doesn’t like your product, it will go someplace else. It’s the public that will
keep you on the straight and narrow. There is no need for a regulator invested with
powers by statute.


Harry Evans didn’t agree with statutory regulation, in his case for newspapers. As he told
a BBC interview: “When you start writing the law … between the sentences, between the
commas, a whole scandal may escape because of a well-meaning intent to protect
somebody, or someone’s interest.”


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But Evans did firmly believe in powerful independent regulation with teeth, even though
it wasn’t backed by statute, because maintaining public trust in the press was vital. He
called for press regulation that was tough and that went beyond what many in Fleet Street
wanted. After the Leveson inquiry into press standards, he supported proposals for a
regulator which would be wholly independent of commercial interests and the publishers
of newspapers. “It must be committed only to enhancing the standards of the British
press,” he said, “and restoring public confidence. It is a necessary condition of the
freedom of the press to act in the public interest.”


Broadcasters in the UK are forced to be fair and impartial in their news coverage, in order
to hold a licence. The rules come under section 5 of the regulator Ofcom’s codes covering
due impartiality, accuracy and opinions. Similar rules did exist in America, but they were
thrown out more than 30 years ago, when Ronald Reagan was president, and attempts
since to revive the legislation have always stalled on the altar of the first amendment, the
right to free speech.


So in the US you can say what you like within the law – your opinion is protected and you
can use all your power and might to beam that opinion right across the land, without
giving any counter-arguments, without reporting the opposing point of view. Opinion can
be dressed up as news.


The storming of the US Capitol on 6 January this year shamed America, but was partly
the logical conclusion of a toxic media environment with no rules, promoting public
distrust. It was one consequence of a media free-for-all and was years in the making. And
where there is a void of fact and truth and public trust, conspiracy theories can live and
breed.


I travelled round this country during the 2019 election campaign – from County Durham
to Southampton, Enniskillen to Pembrokeshire, and I came across people on the right
who’d be very happy to get their news from a UK equivalent of Fox News, and some on the
left who’d be very happy to watch a British equivalent of MSNBC.


It’s in this atmosphere that two new TV channels are coming onstream. GB News, under
the leadership of the brilliant Andrew Neil, and a new venture backed by Rupert
Murdoch. The New York Times quotes Neil as saying British news broadcasting is pretty
much a one-party state. “They all come at stories from various shades of left,” he says. “GB
News would come from the centre, perhaps the centre right, not the hard-right approach
of Fox. GB News will offer diverse voices and stick to the facts,” he says.


He is too good a journalist, with a reputation to protect, to want to be associated with a
news channel that peddles conspiracy theories and propaganda. And in any case, Ofcom,
the regulator, is watching. Impartiality rules and strong regulation are the bulwark
against the disaster of the American media jungle being replicated here, with its attendant
detrimental effects on democracy. But with the perception of impartiality often being in
the eyes and ears of the beholder, one Conservative MP, Steve Baker, influential in the
Brexit vote and frequently interviewed about his views on the subject, believes Ofcom
itself needs reform.


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When James Murdoch posed the “why” question in 2009, as chairman of BSkyB, he
stressed the importance of a media company making money, untrammelled by regulation
– that a better-informed society would flow from the market.


But more than a decade later, when asked the same question, he’s come to a very different
conclusion.


He’s now attacking the US media for the current “toxic politics” threatening American
democracy, and said in an interview with the Financial Times that proprietors are as
culpable as politicians, who “know the truth but choose instead to propagate lies”.


Harold Evans would probably never have thought there would be a day when a senior
member of the Murdoch family would sound as if he agreed with him, not just about the
purpose of the media but how it should be achieved. That there might actually be a point
to independent regulators, because a clear and transparent set of rules and guidelines that
everyone can follow and everyone can see increases public trust.


I’ll leave you with the words contained within the fairness doctrine, now consigned to
history in America, but alive and well for many years to come, we all hope, in the
regulations of Ofcom. Evans would no doubt agree.


Licensees must not use their stations “for the private interest, whims or caprices of
licensees, but in a manner which will serve the community generally as a whole.
Broadcasters must provide adequate coverage of public issues, and ensure that coverage
fairly represents opposing views.”


The maintenance of democracy and a just and fair society. That is why we do what we do.


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