A PLEA FOR MORAL GRAVITY
The media: Paul Johnson
surveys a decade of change and hope in journalism
IT IS NOW over ten years since I began this column analysing and criticising the media from a position within it. During that period, media power and influence have continued to grow, so that the term I have coined for the typical modern West- ern state, Media Democracy, has acquired growing validity and my further term for the arrogance with which some of its practitioners wield this power, Media Triumphalism, is, alas, more valid than ever. In some ways the Western media now has more impact on events than Western governments. Mikhail Gorbachev in cap- tivity was able to receive vital information, which stiffened his resolve, from the BBC World Service at a time when George Bush and John Major tried and failed to make contact with him. Boris Yeltsin, through- out the coup, brilliantly exploited the Western media to encourage his followers and demoralise his opponents. I notice that increasing use is made by oppressed peo- ple, whether in the Baltic States or Croatia, Asia or Africa, of the chance to air their grievances in the Western media. The placards carrying their demands and slogans are now written in English. They address themselves directly to us, via news- paper photographs and television screens. All this growing authority should make Western media bosses, editors, producers, not least reporters, awesomely conscious of the enormous responsibilities they now carry, to the truth, to justice and to civilisation. They are technically more competent than ever before, even if their English lacks elegance and often grammar and syntax; and they have a broader knowledge of the world than earlier gen- erations of communicators. What makes me tremble is the evident lack of moral training, their semi-detachment from the Judaeo-Christian system of ethics which, more than ever before, is now the only sheet-anchor for a world adrift on an ocean of doubt and fear. Too many people in the media find it difficult to make principled and systematic distinctions between right and wrong because they have simply never been taught how to do so.
Over this decade I have tried to convince people in the media that the task of communicating accurate information to the public is a profoundly moral occupation, demanding the highest standards, as well as a commercial business. There are cer- tain practical points to which I have de- voted much attention. The first was the need for newspapers and television stations to work in a climate of political and economic freedom. That has now largely been accomplished, at any rate in Britain. Union monopoly power, and with it union censorship, was decisively broken at Wap- ping and the events which followed. News- papers can now manage themselves. New ones can be launched successfully, often by people of modest means. Broadcasting has been thrown open, the duopoly broken, and during the 1990s we are going to see much more variety and (in my judgment) higher quality. (One of the myths I have tried to expose is the ridiculous notion that the duopoly gave Britain 'the best televi- sion in the world'.) I feel that I have helped to win a number of key battles here, and I believe the 1990s will be a magnificant decade for the British media.
On the other hand, on two critical issues my campaigns have so far failed. The operating arms of the BBC and ITV are still mainly controlled by a left-liberal establishment, whose devotion to accuracy is not always beyond doubt — to put it mildly — and who do not understand what political objectivity means. Rather like Gorbachev, they have been brought up (especially since the 1960s) in a certain closed politico-moral climate and remain the prisoners of it. My consolation is that during the 1990s these people will gradual- ly disappear. Equally, I have failed to persuade newspapers that invasion of privacy is now the cardinal sin of British journalism and must cease or be punished in the courts. They are demonstrably in- capable of self-reform, the latest quasi- voluntary quango system is already failing, and I am more convinced than ever that parliament will be forced to legislate, to make privacy invasion a tort and, in really serious cases, a criminal offence. This will come in the next two or three years.
In one area I have been delighted by the progress made. I used to complain, long and often, at the absence of women in the higher reaches of journalism, and in par- ticular at the failure of proprietors to appoint women editors. My pleas went unheeded but suddenly, almost overnight it seemed, women broke through this barrier, and are now increasingly in posi- tions of power throughout the media though I am still waiting for one to be appointed editor of a quality national. What is equally welcome is the prominent role of women reporters, often in positions of great stress and danger, in bringing us the latest news. They are doing it, too, with enviable professional skill and sometimes with real distinction. During the terrific events of last week, honours for the best reporting and analysis from Russia were shared equally by BBC Radio's Bridget Kendall and the Times's Mary Dejevsky. I repeat my contention that by the earlier years of the next century, the media will be increasingly run by women: they are just better at it than men. The rise of women in the media, and of course I mean normal women, not ideologues, feminists, libbers, lesbians etc, is an important part of the way in which the media is being democratised under the pressure of market forces. Mar- ket democracy is the most reliable guaran- tee of every other form of democracy including the right to vote — and that is why the media should be gradually strip- ped of its monopolies and duopolies, its subsidies and any special legal privileges, and be thrown open to the maximum competition, the paying public being the only arbiter, and the ordinary law of the land — not the diktats of quangos like the ITC — the only judge. Those who defend the expiring system, the vested interests, are people who think they know better than you and me, reader. Like Boris Yeltsin, I believe in People Power. Having said that, I now relinquish this position as self-appointed scourge of the media. From next week I will be ranging more widely and, I hope, in more relaxed mood.
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