Posted on 27-4-2003
BBC
Director General Strikes Out At US Media
by Matt Wells, The Guardian, Friday 25 April 2003
The BBC director general, Greg Dyke, yesterday laid out the
case for the impartiality of broadcast news in Britain as against
the "unquestioning" attitude of US networks, and warned
the government not to allow the "Americanisation"
of the British media.
In characteristically blunt fashion, Mr Dyke said he was surprised
at the "committed political position" of Rupert Murdoch's
Fox News Channel, and "shocked" to discover that the
biggest radio group in the US was using its stations to organise
pro-war rallies.
He urged the government to think carefully about its proposals
to liberalise media ownership laws in Britain. "We must
ensure that we don't become Americanised," he said in a
speech at Goldsmith's College in London yesterday. Mr Dyke directed
much of his ammunition against the global media giant Clear
Channel, which owns 1,225 radio stations in the US, many of
which took a staunchly pro-war line. "We are genuinely
shocked when we discover that the largest radio group in the
United States was using its airwaves to organise pro-war rallies,"
said Mr Dyke, who is also the BBC's editor-in-chief. "We
are even more shocked to discover that the same group wants
to become a big radio player in the UK."
In the communications bill currently going through the House
of Lords, the government plans to deregulate ownership laws,
allowing foreign companies like Clear Channel to own commercial
radio licences in Britain. Clear Channel is known for syndicating
much of its output between its stations, and concerns have been
raised about the threat to diversity.
Mr Dyke warned that deregulation also raised questions about
impartiality: since the September 11 attacks, a gap had opened
up between the definitions of impartiality on either side of
the Atlantic. "Maybe it was always like this and the requirements
of impartiality in the UK were always different to those in
the USA, but that's not how I remember it," he said. "Personally,
I was shocked while in the United States by how unquestioning
the broadcast news media was during this war." He criticised
Fox News for its pro-Bush stance, which has helped it overtake
CNN as the most popular news network in the US. "Commercial
pressures may tempt others to follow the Fox News formula of
gung-ho patriotism, but for the BBC this would be a terrible
mistake. If, over time, we lost the trust of our audiences,
there is no point in the BBC," said Mr Dyke. He speculated
that the patriotism of the US networks had been driven by the
fragmentation of the US media. "Many of the large television
news organisations in the States are no longer profitable or
confident of their future. The effect of this fragmentation
is to make government - the White House and the Pentagon - all-powerful,
with no news operation strong enough or brave enough to stand
up against it.
Mr Dyke rejected accusations that the BBC, which has spent between
£7m and £8m on the war, had been soft on Saddam Hussein, insisting
the corporation's commitment to "independence and impartiality"
was "absolute." He said it was "absurd"
to suggest journalists in Baghdad were "Saddam's stooges",
and singled out correspondents Andrew Gilligan, Rageh Omaar
and John Simpson for having brought home the "reality"
of war. "Governments have as much right as anyone else
to put pressure on the BBC," he said. "It's only a
problem if the BBC caves in."
Turner Calls Rival Media Mogul Murdoch 'Warmonger'
By Duncan Martell, Reuters, Friday 25 April 2003
SAN FRANCISCO - Ted Turner said on Thursday too few people owned
too many media organizations and called rival media baron Rupert
Murdoch a warmonger for what he said was Murdoch's promotion
of the U.S. war in Iraq. "He's a warmonger," Turner
said in an evening speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco
of Murdoch, whose News Corp. Ltd. owns the fast-growing Fox
News Channel. "He promoted it."
Fox News Channel has been the most popular U.S. cable news network
during the conflict, trumping AOL Time Warner Inc.'s CNN, which
Turner started more than two decades ago and came to prominence
with its blanket coverage of the 1991 Gulf War. Asked by an
audience member for his thoughts on Fox's larger ratings share
than CNN's, Turner said, "Just because your ratings are
bigger doesn't mean you're better." "It's not how
big you are, it's how good you are that really counts,"
Turner said, drawing hoots from the audience.
Turner, who has pledged to give $1 billion to the United Nations
and is a vocal proponent of population control and nuclear-arms
elimination, criticized the concentration of ownership of the
vast majority of U.S. television networks, radio and TV stations
and newspapers in a few corporations. "The media is too
concentrated, too few people own too much," Turner said.
Asked whether he would again try to launch a new network, Turner,
who is the vice chairman of AOL Time Warner and has been critical
of the merger of AOL and TimeWarner, said: "No. I think
the space is filled with the people already there. "There's
really five companies that control 90 percent of what we read,
see and hear. It's not healthy."
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