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PLATFORM: COMMERCIAL PRESSURES ON ITN
135/Bruce Whitehead
Bruce Whitehead is a freelance journalist and a member of the CPBF
In 1997, ITV won the contract to cover Formula One motor racing with a bid of Ł70m - ten times what the BBC had been paying. I worked as a journalist on ITN bulletins at the time and noticed a sharp increase in the number of news stories we carried about motor racing. Even on practice day, usually a Saturday, we would faithfully compile a report about how some German or Brazilian had been fastest. Once, when England won a test match, we still led the sports section of the news with a report about Michael Schumacher winning a grand prix! If the two developments were linked, that would clearly be an unacceptable blurring of the lines between commercial interests and news impartiality. The impression might have been given that Formula One advertisers were now getting their brands all over the news as well.
The news agenda should clearly not be determined in this way. Yet this was not the first time I noticed such a blurring of the lines. When I joined ITN in 1994, I wrote a script for a story about Nigerian human rights abuses being carried out on behalf of Shell, a big oil producer there. I obtained pictures from an impeccable source, a Channel Four documentary maker, who even let me use them BEFORE they had been broadcast on the acclaimed Critical Eye strand. But ITN said no. The exact words of my editor were: “We couldn’t possibly run that story. Shell might sue us.”
It was only later that I dioscovered, in an investigation by George Monbiot, that Shell was a client of CTN, the commercial offshoot of ITN which makes videos.
Posing as an arms dealer, he asked CTN about getting some videos made to smarten up his company’s image. Monbiot says he was offered access to ITN journalists, briefings and help with getting his message across. After the story appeared in The Journalist, ITN rapidly hived off CTN to keep a more respectable distance from the temptation of commercial interests.
However, the relentless hyping of showbiz, crime and sports news continued apace during the nineties, as the ITN flagship News at Ten gave way to movies and lost its top place in British households as the most credible and trustworthy of news broadcasts. The goal of highly-paid management was to deliver ratings - commercial interests, not journalism, had won the day. There were bonuses and huge salaries all round.
During all of these developments, Richard Tait was in a senior position at ITN, finally retiring as Editor-in-Chief last year.
He recently addressed a London seminar about bias in news, insisting that the importance of separating news from commercial interests was paramount. When I put the above points to him, instead of answering my questions, he began to hint to the audience of media professionals that I somehow held a grudge, and had left ITN in, as he put it, ‘unhappy circumstances.’ In fact ITN had paid me a substantial ‘golden parachute’ as I accepted a valued promotion at CNN.
The fact that Richard was so reluctant to address any of these issues is very worrying. Could it be that ITN’s recent management had something to hide? If that is the case, one must hope that the new guard will try to restore the reputation for quality news journalism that the broadcaster has lost.
In particular they must resist any move by the government in redrafting communications legislation to allow ITV to have any further control over its news provider, as demanded by Lord Bragg. Whatever assurances ITV chiefs might give about keeping their hands off the news, the temptation to let the commercial interests of an ad-funded channel interfere with an independent news agenda is too strong. ITN must remain independent, and ITV should be obliged to pay sufficiently for it to maintain effective competition and diversity in the face of the BBC’s formidable news machine.Last modified: Sunday, August 3, 2003
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Nick Davies, Bad News: Benn Journalism Lecture 2009
DATELINE: 1/12/09Commercial imperatives are elbowing out truth in the UK media, says Nick Davies who reviewed media lies and the state of journalism in Britain today in the fourth Benn Lecture at Bristol Arnolfini Arts Centre on 26 November.
Bad News, 2009 Benn Lecture - mp3 12M
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