I will be posting here in the next few days detailed comments concerning the commentary some of you did on a speech by Tony Benn. Everyone should look carefully at this, even if they did not do the commentary, because questions of method will be front and centre. Here is that document again.
Speech to Constituents on the Role of Broadcasting (18
October 1968)
(…) I want to talk
about the role of the BBC as the prime national instrument in broadcasting. I
am not proposing direct Government control of the mass media, to which I
would be wholly opposed. Nor am I making, for the purpose of this argument, any
complaint of political bias. Arguments about political balance are quite
separate and ought to be conducted quite separately from any debate on the
future of mass communications.
Broadcasting should
be used, to the full, to help individual men and women to live useful and full
lives. That is to say that, in its broadest sense, communications should serve
the people and not become their master. But if it is to do so, it has to make
available the sort of information and programmes which are really relevant to
human needs. These needs include the need to be entertained, the need to be
informed and the need to be educated. The original BBC charter recognized this.
Now, a new dimension
has to be added to this basic requirement. This is the need for helping us to
adjust to the enormous changes which are occurring in society, and which are
far greater for this generation than for any generation that has ever gone
before it. We therefore have to add a new criterion relating to the method. If
the broadcasting organisations are to perform their task, they must allow us to
meet our objectives by talking to each other. Availability of access to the
mass media becomes an integral part of the operational requirement.
Looking back over the
history of the BBC, the general level of information, education and culture has
risen sharply. It has also given pleasure to millions of people by bringing
them entertainment, sporting events, drama and music. Criticisms must be set in
the balance against these formidable achievements and a record of service to
the public which is widely recognised and appreciated.
However, in recent
years, this objectivity has been replaced by a growing tendency to personalise
news presentation. The news reader has almost become a commentator; the gap
between news and comment has greatly narrowed. This tendency to
personalisation, carrying with it editorial powers exercised by individual
commentators, has even more serious implications for other types of programmes.
The BBC retains,
either on the staff or on contract, a whole host of commentators who, being
quite free to comment, carry with them some inevitable suggestion of BBC
authority. True, the BBC, through its board of Governors, has no collective
view on public matters and very rarely issues a statement of any kind. But
listeners and viewers have come to expect from certain well-known broadcasters
a particular line of thought which is peculiar to them, but which, though the
power of the medium, inevitably shapes public thinking.
Nobody wants to go
back to the earlier tradition. Quite the reverse. What is wrong is that
availability of access is still too restricted in that it is almost limited to
a few hundred broadcasters, chosen by the BBC.
First, in respect of
the choice of subjects: Britain has thousands of problems which would merit the
attention of the broadcasting authorities. Certain ones are regularly picked
out for treatment. They include the most important, but do not by any means
cover all those that are important. The choice is supposedly influenced by the
interests of the mass audience and it is here that the influence of the
programme ratings begins to be felt. It would be surprising if the sort of
subjects that are guaranteed to get a large audience in the popular newspapers
were not effective on the radio or TV. This is exactly what is happening.
Second, in respect of
the presentation of the subject. Here too, the influence of the ratings is very
strong and so is the pressure of time. Important subjects are skimped,
important discussions are telescoped and conflicts are artificially sharpened.
The result is inevitably to make for triviality and superficiality,
over-simplifying what is immensely complicated and sensationalizing almost
everything that is touched on.
Third, by choice of
people. Any BBC producer soon learns that a certain sort of person will give
him just what he wants (…)
Tony Benn, 18 October 1968 in: Benn, Tony, Office Without
Power: Diaries 1968-72, Arrow Books, London, 1989 (1988), pp. 107-109.
