Roll up for Freak TV
Those things called newspapers — are they becoming websites, TV channels or a multimedia fairground freakshow? The rules on UK media ownership are set to be scrapped, opening up a prospect of new monopolies in old hands. As NICHOLAS JONES explains, the free-for-all could shake the whole UK media
REGIONAL NEWSPAPER owners have raised a clamour for relaxation of the remaining restrictions on ownership and now the Office of Fair Trading is going to review them. The review might well end up as a smokescreen for a far more significant re-alignment of the media.
National newspapers with rapidly-growing websites — like the Sun, the Mail, News of the World, Guardian and Daily Telegraph — are carving out their share of the expanding online TV market without heed to the rules on ownership and monopolies or broadcasting content.
The likes of Sun TV and News of the World TV are outside the reach of Ofcom, which says they are not “television-like” services and is more than happy to leave the “regulation” of the sites, if that is the word, to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).
Anything goes in the unregulated world of online TV. For the tabloids, convergence has already happened. We are seeing Freak TV: 13-year-old dad Alfie filmed in hospital with his baby daughter; the American mother of octuplets; the terminally ill Jade Goody; and Prince Harry’s “racist” video that was acquired by the News of the World.
The BBC and other broadcasters have teams of editorial bureaucrats assessing and moderating user-generated videos and other content. Vast amounts of this material — such as pictures of children — never gets to air.
The tabloid videos breach regulations and editorial guidelines left, right and centre. The BBC couldn’t have filmed Alfie and baby Maisie, as the Sun did, for fear of breaching guidelines about identifying children, needing parents’ consent etc. As for Prince Harry — if the BBC had broadcast a purloined copy of his personal video the row over intrusion and breach of privacy would have put Carol Thatcher into the shade.
It’s not just the tabloids — and of course there’s good as well as bad. The Sunday Times secretly filmed the peers it exposed for appearing to accept cash for amendments. For established broadcasters to take this kind of footage would have required all sorts of approvals before a crew could even contemplate being sent out. The story was obviously in the public interest and the Sunday Times footage has been used extensively by mainstream broadcasters, though they would have been reluctant to do it themselves.
The papers bang the footage straight up on their websites, so as to be able to say that it is in the public domain, to forestall injunctions and so on. Once it’s there the broadcasters cannot afford to ignore it. Video footage from the Sun and the News of the World — with their logos burning bright in a corner of the screen — feature regularly.
THE REGULATORY bodies are asleep on the job, and so they are when it comes to safeguarding the regional press. We all know the four major groups which control the bulk of the regional and local titles have been operating to a business model which is as bust as the banks, which likewise built up their mountains of worthless money while the regulators looked the other way.
Newsquest, Northcliffe, Johnston Press and Trinity Mirror have been cutting costs and hollowing out their editorial base to sustain high levels of profit. Now that much of their advertising revenue has haemorrhaged and they are losing readers hand over fist, they are appealing to government to allow further consolidation and contraction of the industry.
They want to tear up the rules that limit cross-media ownership to allow provincial newspapers, local radio stations and regional TV stations to be rolled together in one monopoly. But these newspaper companies, that already have local print monopolies, failed to invest in websites for years, and threw away potential revenue from advertising for properties and cars. Then they kicked up enough of a fuss behind the scenes to block the BBC’s ambitious plans for local video websites.
The word from BERR — the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform — is that the ownership rules must be relaxed, and relaxed fast. They are convinced that unless there is further consolidation, these regional news outlets will face a dire future.
Why didn’t the regulators see this coming? Why didn’t they intervene to stop the previous headlong rush towards consolidation that was just a desperate attempt to maintain profit margins for shareholders?
When it comes to protecting their business interests, media companies usually get their way. The national newspaper proprietors fought a successful campaign to ensure that the British press remains self-regulated, and that this self-regulation, through the PCC, extends to the online audio-visual output of newspaper websites.
These sites will become fully-fledged online digital channels — “television-like”, in a phrase — which can be partisan and politically loaded. What then will be the point then of the “political impartiality” rules in public service broadcasting?
My bet is that come campaigning for the European Parliamentary elections on June 4, we will see the newspaper sites pushing the anti-European agenda of the Sun, Telegraph and Daily Mail. Politically partisan TV will have arrived by the backdoor. The great tradition of impartial public service media could be destroyed by an online smash and grab.