Protecting plurality

In all the coverage of the fallout from James Murdoch's appearance at the Leveson Inquiry last week, I spotted the P-word - plurality - only once.   While the word itself has become rather stuffy terminology to describe the existence of multiple sources of news and media, the concept it represents goes to the heart of the story about News Corporation's aborted bid for full control of BSkyB.   Amidst the political ramifications of recent days, it is easy to forget that it was the simple notion of plurality that necessitated government (sorry, "quasi-judicial") approval of the Murdoch takeover in the first place.  

The test of whether an organisation or individual controls too great a share of the country's media is one which has radically changed in line with - and maybe even precipitated - a rapidly evolving media landscape.   For instance, it wasn't until the early 1990s that the same company was allowed to own more than one ITV regional licence - just a decade later and one merged company was given the green light to control every single region in England and Wales.   Similarly, it is only in recent years that there has been any attempt to relax strict cross-media ownership rules governing local radio and newspapers.

The BSkyB case is clearly the most extreme example of a potential restriction in choice of media provider - the country's most influential press baron (or not, apparently) seeking to acquire the country's largest paid-for TV service.   Concerns about plurality often centre on the need for multiple 'voices' in news and media provision, but consideration of this rather nebulous concept should, theoretically, be negated in the world of broadcast by rules governing impartiality.   However, speculation that Murdoch was hoping to get such regulations overturned and his subsequent offer to spin-off Sky News as a separate entity, reflected a general reluctance to allow the tentacles of News Corp to spread any further without the necessary safeguards.

Yet, as this blog has noted on several occasions, a less high profile, but longstanding threat to broadcast news plurality is that posed by the uncertain future of regional news on ITV.   That might not be as compelling a subject as attempts at world media domination by an octogenarian overlord - but it has been exercising those of us with an interest in these things for many years.   Of course, things are not as bad as they could have been.  In the mid-2000s, it was widely predicted that anybody writing about ITV regional news in 2012 would be doing so in the past tense.   To its credit, ITV continues to provide a regional service, albeit in a much slimmer form.

Coincidentally, in the same week that the Murdochs were on the stand at Leveson, two stories relating to Jeremy Hunt's beloved local TV project slipped under the radar.   The Minister's big idea to bring television journalism to a sub-regional level (no matter what ITV may decide to do in the future) has failed to persuade many, but the most damning verdict came when Manchester's Channel M  finally faded to black last month.   The city's local station - operating long before Hunt's grand scheme - was mothballed two years ago.   This was a worrying enough development for a man committed to a network of at least twenty similar stations, but Channel M was kept alive on the basis that it could be born again under the government's plans.   When the station's owners, GMG, finally pulled the plug, they did so because they were unconvinced that Hunt's vision for local TV could provide a sustainable future for the station.

Meanwhile, the government has just got its hands on the unused licence-fee cash which was intended to enable the BBC to prepare the country for digital switchover.   With that job done, there is now 305 million pounds worth of funding heading back to the Treasury, part of which is earmarked to buttress the embryonic local TV stations.   The government is clearly not too squeamish about subsidising these unproven ventures - but a more effective way of guaranteeing plurality in the regions might be to partly subsidise the established service on ITV.

That might sound like top-slicing of the licence fee, but, crucially, the switchover cash was a ring-fenced addition to the 2006 settlement.   The downside to that is that the money is consequently finite - but it provides a timely opportunity to experiment with ways of encouraging long-term commercial public service competition to the BBC, both in regional programming and wider PSB content.

All of which is reminiscent of OFCOM's long-forgotten idea for a Public Service Publisher - a contestable pool of money from which commercial broadcasters could bid to fund programming deemed unprofitable to produce.   The regulator bizarrely scrapped the plan in 2008 after years of talking it up.   The arrival of the switchover surplus provides a perfect juncture to resurrect it on a much smaller scale than the 300 million pound scheme first envisaged - thereby leaving plenty of money for Hunt's other (admittedly more eye-catching) plans for super-fast broadband.

Of course, the last thing any such fund should be designed to do is encourage the commercial PSBs to abandon their commitments and rely solely on subsidy.   So, for instance, any deal on regional news on ITV should only fund part of the cost and could perhaps be tied to a de-merging of the super-regions created in 2009 and an agreement to a modest increase in non-news regional output.   Other PSB genres could be similarly part-funded across the commercial networks, with conditions attached perhaps in terms of scheduling subsidised content in peak.   

The question that would inevitably be asked of such a plan (as it was in its first incarnation) is why should scarce resources be spent on subsidising commercial productions when the BBC exists to cater for all our PSB needs?   Because plurality matters.   It generates competition, engenders quality and is healthy for both the BBC and its competitors.   Viewers and listeners benefit immeasurably as a result.   

It is all too easy to theorise about plurality while it still exists and make it sound desperately dull and eminently expendable.   It's only if we lose it that we will realise its worth.  

Whose story is it anyway?

Show me a broadcast journalist who has never got a story or an idea for a story from a newspaper and I'll show you a liar.    

Cross-media fertilisation might sound like a concept straight out of a digital babble bible, but it is actually as old as broadcast journalism itself.   What kind of newsroom would operate in complete isolation, blind to the output or content of other sources?   Just as press journalists will monitor television and radio news programmes, so broadcast journalists have traditionally checked the papers (and now their websites) to ensure that they are not missing out on a story which is yet to appear on their own radar.

This fact was seized upon by some critics of BBC local radio when the corporation announced a review of the service last year.   Claims abounded that local radio journalists were lifting stories from local papers in their coverage area.   Research by the BBC debunked that suggestion, but the threat of swingeing cuts to the local radio budget raised fears that local stations would be rendered incapable of sustaining the current standard of journalism.   Last week's announcement that local stations are having less money taken from them will hopefully secure their journalistic future.

The issue has, however, highlighted the oft-overlooked question of originality in broadcast journalism, at both the local and national level.    Is the primary role of the broadcast journalist to uncover stories or to bring them to life for the widest possible audience?   Every broadcast journalist with an ounce of pride will say that it should be both - but, in reality, how many times does the necessity for the latter mean the former is sacrificed?   

Original journalism is the holy grail for any journalist, but it does seem the press often takes the lead when it comes to doing the digging.    Perhaps that is because broadcast is more labour intensive and the need for recording, editing and presenting a polished product usually leaves little time for anything else.   Yet considering the pagination of newspapers nowadays, the 24-hour business of updating their websites and the fact that press newsrooms have seen some drastic cutbacks of their own, maybe that explanation is just a little too easy.   Here's a more uncomfortable proposition - are print journalists just more suited to good old-fashioned investigative journalism than their broadcast counterparts?

Fortunately for broadcasters, however, nobody owns the news.   Just because one organisation has originated a story does not preclude others from reporting it.   And here is where broadcast comes into its own.   Broadcast journalists are the profession's storytellers.   A relatively dry story on paper can be brought to life by a television or radio package or interview.   Real voices, explaining complex issues or conveying a sense of place or emotion.   The best broadcasters transport the listener or viewer to the heart of a story - and then guide them through it.

Broadcast journalists are also usually best placed to develop a story.   Original journalism is not confined to the bald notion of uncovering facts.   It can be about moving a story on, putting the facts unearthed by another organisation into perspective - and under scrutiny.   This weekend, the BBC's Sunday Politics did not originate the story of a potential £8 million bonus package for the RBS Chief Executive Steven Hester - but it was able to put the Sunday Times findings to a cabinet minister and press him as to whether such a deal would be acceptable.   That still counts as original journalism.

Similarly, as the most trusted and widely used source of news, broadcast outlets are well positioned to present stories in an accessible and engaging way for the widest audience.   Last year, ITV Anglia ran an extended feature on the planned NHS reforms, hinged on the fact that the new commissioning groups were being trialled in the region.   Anglia Television journalists were not the first to uncover the potential pitfalls and controversies of the reforms - but they did highlight and explain them to an audience which might otherwise have turned the page when seeing the issue reported in the press.   Original journalism.

Of course, broadcast journalists do still get traditional exclusives.   In the top tier of the hierarchy of news, broadcasters will often find stories come to them first.   In 2005, the preliminary findings of the inquiry into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes on the London Underground were leaked to ITV News, which handed them a powerful exclusive on one of the biggest stories of the year.   Meanwhile, broadcast journalists routinely prove just as capable of cultivating their own sources as their print counterparts.   Last year's Newsnight investigation into alleged corruption in boxing was an example of what many would regard as traditional original journalism - the direct reporting, rather than the re-reporting, of a story.   So while broadcasters must guard against the worst forms of churnalism, maybe their originating capacity is sufficient that the odd local radio or regional TV story 'sourced' from the previous day's papers can be forgiven.

Perhaps in this multi-platform world, it is not surprising that traditional news outlets are also beginning to collaborate with each other, for their mutual benefit.   Channel 4 News has worked closely with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism on several stories and ITN and the BBC have both partnered Guardian Films.   Competition is a healthy aspect of the profession, both in broadcast and print, but as traditional outlets face new challenges, co-operation might need to be more readily embraced.      

The apparent surprise in some quarters that the BBC occasionally uses private investigators (as revealed last week at the Leveson Inquiry) is perhaps indicative of a perception of the level at which broadcast journalism operates.   There seems to be a tacit assumption that it is not the role of the broadcast journalist to dig as deeply as their counterparts in the press.   Yet while broadcast outlets must fulfil their primary obligation to bring the news that matters to the masses, they should never lose sight of the scoop.   

So as well as telling a good story, broadcasters should always be trying to find one, too.