James Painter has just produced a study called Counter-Hegemonic News [download pdf] — looking at Qatar’s Al Jazeera English and Venezuela’s Telesur.
I have to say, in the case of AJE, I think both the personnel and the traditions they draw on are simply those of conventional foreign news. Continue reading
In 2007, Mark Thompson Peter Horrocks apparently walked into a meeting of top BBC talent and declared — not untruthfully — “There is no market for newsreaders.”
Unfortunately “even a dead cat bounces” (as finance types say) and the market promptly leapt back into action and Natasha Kaplinsky and Dermot Murnaghan both left the BBC for Sky. Still, probably saved Peter a few bob.
So what will be making the news about TV news in 2008?
At the Beeb, 2008 will be a year of redundancies, budget cuts, and salami slicing in TV news. How do you like your budget cuts? Chunky chorizo or saucisson sec? Among those having their milano sausage shaved, BBC Newsnight, where Jeremy Paxman will take early retirement after being required to work four nights a week.
In a controversial move the programme will be outsourced to a different think tank each month, with Dean Godson of Policy Exchange as launch editor and Charles Moore replacing Gavin Esler. Their motto? Bigger stories, less evidence.
News 24 launches a new +1 digital service. A press release promises: “The news — as it happened”.
BBC News will appoint a floods correspondent, specially equipped with a glass-bottomed, satellite linked mini-submarine. Summer 2008 will be the hottest and driest on record.
Alan Yentob announces he’s leaving the BBC to become the new face of Churchill Car Insurance.
On ITV, viewers will be able to buy their own share in the company for less than the price of a text. News At Ten will return, win awards but no viewers, and by December Michael Grade’s successor will be declaring it a critical success but a commercial failure, and asking to run one early evening news programme – preferably at 4.30pm.
To counter the ITV move, the BBC 10 will be re-titled The One To Watch For News – At Ten (with Kate Silverton). In another innovative move, Silverton won’t actually present the programme, or be told about any of the stories in it, but will stand outside on a different street every night to introduce and close it with a new tag line that viewers’ll have the chance to vote on:
The continuing importance of current affairs on BBC1 will be highlighted as Panorama goes five nights a week. Confusingly, in the schedules this will appear as Tonight with Jonathan Ross. Ross’s increased role, and public service remit, will go some way to meeting criticism of his salary.
And just to show there are no hard feelings, redundant BBC journalists will find their “packages” include invitations to feature as members of Ross’s studio audience.
Current Affairs across ITV will be consolidated. Tonight with Trevor MacDonald will be replaced by I’m An Economist, Get Me Out Of Here on ITV4, with leading members of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee forced to live like celebrities whilst the public are asked to set interest rates by text vote.
And finally, after hearing that editors no longer want bulletins read by alcoholics who have been kicked out by their long-suffering partners, 24-hour TV newsdesks have to call round presenters to persuade them to turn up for work regardless.
Here is what Rupert Murdoch told the House of Lords Communications committee regarding Sky News. Personally (not that I would necessarily want to) I think you could Fox up Sky, but what you lack in the UK is the Talk Radio base from which to recruit your talent. But don’t listen to me yacking on — here is the man himself [my italics]:
46. Mr Murdoch stated that the BBC had set the mould for TV in the UK. The BBC was responsible for the training of most people in the UK television industry. This meant that many people working in commercial television in the UK were not trained to make commercial decisions. He stated that “the BBC has a unique place in British life”. People were very hostile to any challenge to the BBC. News Corp was the first organisation to bring proper football coverage to the UK. Their investment led to better football grounds and other benefits. However it had been a real struggle.
47. He believed that Sky News would be more popular if it were more like the Fox News Channel. Then it would be “a proper alternative to the BBC”. One of the reasons that it is not a proper alternative to the BBC is that no broadcaster or journalist in the UK knows any different. Mr Murdoch stated that Sky News could become more like Fox without a change to the impartiality rules in the UK. For example Sky had not yet made the presentational progress that Fox News had. He stated that the only reason that Sky News was not more like Fox News was that “nobody at Sky listens to me”.
48. Mr Murdoch believed that the role of the media is “to inform”. Reporters are there to find out what is going on and editors are there to invest in those investigations if they uncover something.
Andrew Marr should think before he criticises Sky News on the “never wrong for long” front. Here is what he told the Lords:
“I do think (the BBC is) different and we have to stay different,” he told the House of Lords communication committee.
“This is most acute in the age of 24-hour news because the desperate journalistic desire to be first is felt so intensely.
“Our main competitor, Sky News, always trumpets that it is first with this, first with that.
“Well, we are the BBC and we have to be sure that we are right. We must not, therefore, get into the culture of first with this, first with everything — first and frequently right.”
Lest Marr forget, on July 7, 2005 it was Sky News, with their refusal to slavishly accept the official line, who told Londoners what was really going on in the capital, whilst the Corporation steadfastly regurgitated what it was told.
That is why we need plurality of news supply. Not merely “plurality within the BBC” as the Corporation sometimes likes to argue it provides. It is plurality of news provision that is most at threat right now (£40m ITV regional news cuts anyone?), and not the BBC.(Disclosure: I worked for Sky News)