British broadcasting has been buffeted recently by the exposure of fakery and deceit in various programmes. But in the background a more fundamental issue looms. The doctrine of impartiality—long lauded as one of the great achievements of our communications culture—is coming under threat.
Impartiality in broadcasting is a product of accident rather than design. In the medium's infancy, the airwaves were a scarce resource, so monopoly was inevitable. Control was entrusted to a privileged few. Abuse of power was feared, and a safeguard was sought. The requirement that broadcasters should stay detached from both interests and opinions emerged to meet this need.
The BBC, stumbling into existence in the 1920s, voluntarily embraced the idea as a means of legitimising its status as the sole national broadcaster. By 1927, the concept had surfaced in the US, in the "fairness doctrine" imposed by the fledgling Federal Radio Commission on all broadcasters. Versions of it were eventually adopted in most of the English-speaking world, Europe and Japan. New broadcasters, such as the Arab network Al-Jazeera, continue to sign up to the principle. In Britain, it is credited with rescuing public discourse from the frenzied grip of the country's partisan press.
The obligation of impartiality has recently been reasserted both in the BBC's new charter and in legislation covering other British broadcasters. All of the country's news programmes are formally required to comply with it, and other output from state-owned or state-licensed broadcasters is expected to. Surveys show consistent public support for this arrangement.
This is not, perhaps, surprising, since the concept of impartiality is both appealing and readily understood. It is to be distinguished from balance (the allocation of equal space to opposing views) and objectivity (by which journalists usually mean an effort to exclude subjective judgement). Impartiality involves no more than the attempt to regard different ideas, opinions, interests or individuals with detachment. As the legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin says, everyone need not receive equal treatment, but everyone should be treated as an equal.
Clearly, those supposed to be exercising impartiality may nonetheless show bias. Sympathy or inducement may lead them astray, so may ineptitude. However, a more fundamental problem arises. Between which entities is impartiality to be observed? In a courtroom, the relevant parties are identified in advance. In broadcasting, on the other hand, numerous possibilities jostle for attention. To accord equal weight to good and evil, flat-earthers and Copernicans, would be impracticably tedious. Somehow, judgement must be made, however unconsciously, about which ideas and opinions are worth acknowledging. In a democracy, this can be achieved only through appeal to some supposed consensus within society. The extent and nature of any such consensus, if not its existence, can never be beyond dispute. This deficiency leaves any system aspiring to impartiality permanently vulnerable to attack.
The problem was apparent right from the outset. After the general strike of 1926, the BBC's first director, John Reith, told staff that "since the government in this crisis was acting for the people… the BBC was for the government." Understandably, some remained unconvinced, and during successive decades broadcasters continued to be criticised from all sides for their choice of the terrain over which to be even-handed. Nonetheless, the principle of impartiality survived intact through the 20th century.
Now, however, things have changed. The spectrum scarcity that brought broadcasting impartiality into being has disappeared. Now we can all watch hundreds of television channels, listen to scores of radio stations and access almost any opinion at the click of a mouse. A device to prevent gatekeepers from suppressing unwelcome ideas has therefore become unnecessary. At the same time, the practice of impartiality has grown both more difficult and less cherished.
As society has fragmented, it has become harder to set the parameters within which impartiality is to be exercised. Individualism and multiculturalism have made people less willing to accept any kind of consensus or dominant culture. The political landscape has altered too, as lobbyists and single-issue groups have transformed the once easily mediated world of Westminster party conflict. All of this threatens the legitimacy of the supposedly neutral broadcaster. Meanwhile, relativism has encouraged people to believe there is no such thing as objective truth, but only competing narratives. Why, then, try to contrive an agreed version of reality? Why should people defer to broadcasters' assessments, when anyone's truth is as good as anyone else's?
In this new world, journalists themselves question the need for impartiality. Some, like the former BBC correspondent Martin Bell, want to identify with their subjects through "engaged reporting." Others want to campaign, or to oppose authority. As the commitment of the moderators falters, those dissatisfied with their adjudications become more vociferous. Minorities object to the airing of views that they find offensive. At the same time, some ask why a liberal democracy should treat even-handedly those intent on its own destruction.
So why not simply abandon the striving for impartiality? A free-for-all, it is argued, would extend freedom of expression. It would liberate broadcast debate from control by a privileged few. It would relieve the alienation of those who now feel marginalised. It might even help arrest the growing public disengagement from politics that so worries opinion-formers. As the dreary detachment of professional arbiters gave way to the impassioned advocacy of the committed, people would take notice. Thus inspired, they might sift through the many opinions on offer and form considered conclusions.
In some parts of the world, the requirement for impartiality in broadcasting has already been swept away. America's 60-year-old fairness doctrine was abolished in 1987, clearing the way for the radio "shock jocks" who now fill the country's airwaves with racist, sexist and homophobic views; for Fox News, Rupert Murdoch's right-wing television network; and for the "advocacy journalism" of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi's premiership saw one man effectively directing both the country's state broadcasting system and its principal commercial networks.
Those who would like to see Britain follow suit are getting noisier. Rod Liddle, a former editor of Radio 4's Today programme, recently called broadcasting impartiality "redundant" and declared its continuing advocacy "absurd." He was reviewing a new book by the journalist Richard North entitled Scrap the BBC!, which argues that impartiality is "bad for broadcasters" and "bad for us, their audience." Chris Shaw, the television network Five's controller of news, calls for "news with a slant." Now even Ofcom, the communications regulator, has proposed that some news services should be released from the obligation of impartiality.
In fact, impartiality is already fading from our airwaves. Year by year, judicious analyses of public issues grow scarcer. In their place come polemics, angled reporting, authored documentaries, loaded drama-docs and tendentious television essays like Adam Curtis's The Power of Nightmares. On occasion, supposedly impartial broadcasters throw in their lot completely with a political campaign, as in 2005 when the BBC chose to support Make Poverty History with a drama, an episode of a comedy series and live coverage of a propaganda-laced pop concert.
Does any of this matter? Certainly, a world in which only the voices of the committed could be heard would have its downside. Experience shows that, when free to choose, we tend to be drawn towards those views which reinforce our pre-existing prejudices. We also seem to prefer lurid, scary or inflammatory interpretations. Some idea of where this may lead can be glimpsed from the appetite for conspiracy theories that the internet has fostered. Apparently, nearly half of Britain's Muslims believe that 9/11 was perpetrated by the Americans or the Israelis. A great many people seem convinced that Diana was murdered. As we cleave to ever more? disparate perspectives, the scope for social cohesion diminishes and the prospect for conflict increases.
Impartial broadcasting cannot arrest this process, but it can mitigate it. The attempt to construct a shared basis of understanding may fail to win universal assent, but it can act as a background check on fancy. Parents who simply hear, amid a welter of other things, that MMR vaccination carries risks may well reject it. If, on the other hand, they are told by an institution they trust that the risks are small and the benefits great, they may participate in the programme. As a result, society may benefit. Only the creation of such an agreed basis for discussion enables us to address other pressing issues intelligently, be they GM food, immigration, European integration, military intervention abroad or climate change.
The idea that people will work things out for themselves is a tempting one—but unrealistic. It is not just that no one has time to check out a limitless panoply of opinion. Even citizens who make the effort will find their search for truth impeded by the way in which propagandists and lobbyists choose to present their arguments. By refusing to accept any part of an opponent's case, however compelling it may be, they tend to prevent any dispute from proceeding beyond first base. If you want to understand the Arab-Israeli conflict, do not ask the protagonists to explain it. They will wear you down with 5,000 years' worth of disputation. An impartial journalist or historian, by contrast, will try to cut a path through the undergrowth to what is really at issue.
Arguably, the forces threatening broadcasting impartiality make its practice all the more necessary. The more society atomises, the more important a common thread of meaning becomes. The limitations inherent in the quest for impartiality need not be decisive. Complaints about bias and perspective can be acknowledged, debated and accommodated. In the process, they can themselves help reshape, enhance and enlarge the area of potential agreement.
Some maintain that the battle is already lost, since mainstream broadcasters committed to impartiality are fated to lose ever more ground to unregulated new media. However, falling audiences need not render a programme pointless; it may leave its mark on people who never see or hear it. Already, the impact of broadcast ideas is often attributable largely to the mysterious osmosis of "secondary dissemination."
In Britain, we are better placed to salvage broadcasting impartiality than the citizens of some of the other lands that have also enjoyed its benefits. In many countries, the public broadcasting systems that have enshrined the concept are in serious decline. Here, on the other hand, public involvement in broadcasting retains widespread support. It is true that as increasing competition worsens the plight of our commercial broadcasters, they may find it harder to deliver any public service output, disinterested or otherwise. Our public broadcasters, however, remain intact. The television licence fee in particular is guaranteed for at least the next decade.
This might appear to imply that if we want to retain broadcasting impartiality, we should look to the BBC, its earliest exponent, to become its future bastion. After all, the corporation must deliver on this front if it is to secure its claim to the proceeds of the licence fee. Its trustees and management are well aware of this. Earlier this year, in a report on their own impartiality, mysteriously entitled "From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel," they declared the concept to be the corporation's "defining quality." However, they also acknowledged that their performance in this field was open to question.
Throughout its history, the corporation has been accused of lapses into bias in various directions. Increasingly, however, a broader charge has been levelled—that the territory marked out by the BBC over which to exercise its impartiality is far narrower than it should be. Growing irritation has developed, particularly but not exclusively on the right, with what is usually described as a left-liberal perspective. The BBC's idea of the prevailing consensus is said to be tilted against America, Israel, profit, employers, religion, the monarchy and men. The corporation used to deny this charge emphatically, but, at a seminar last year, some of its celebrity performers, such as Andrew Marr, recognised that there was some truth to it (see John Lloyd's "Self-hatred at the BBC," Prospect November 2006). A book published earlier this year, Can We Trust the BBC?, backed the indictment. Its author, Robin Aitken, based his testimony on over 25 years' experience as a BBC reporter.
"From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel" refers to "groupthink," noting that individuals "attempt to be 'correct' in their thinking" and sometimes inhabit "a comfort zone, which if unacknowledged may cause problems for impartiality." The report is less forthcoming on the causes of this problem. Some put it down to sloppy recruitment practice: the BBC places its job ads in the Guardian, and therefore ends up hiring Guardian readers. However, Guardian-reading is prevalent throughout the media world, and yet other broadcasters required to exercise impartiality, such as ITN and Sky, do not attract criticism on the scale that the BBC now faces.
It seems possible that the BBC's editorial outlook may have something to do with its institutional makeup. The corporation is necessarily a creature of the state, and it behaves as such. In its internal administration, it observes public sector conventions. For example, it promotes diversity sometimes even at the expense of merit, seeking to put more ethnic minority faces on screen and more women in positions of authority. It is perhaps only to be expected, then, that some BBC journalists should see public spending or regulation as the obvious solutions to problems. Programme-makers who favour minority groups or women claiming victimhood may merely be conforming with corporate norms. Maybe the culture they work in makes them bound to look more favourably on immigration, abortion or European integration than on patriotism, profit or Zionism. Nonetheless, any such leanings will inevitably undermine rigorous and even-handed analysis of the whole range of ideas in play.
The BBC's top brass are keen to correct this shortcoming. However, if it is rooted deep in the organisation's makeup, they may face an uphill task. Unfortunately, there is another, even more insidious, threat to the corporation's impartiality. BBC executives believe that maintaining public support for the licence fee requires them to maximise the size of their audiences. Regrettably, viewers are being lured away by rival media in ever greater numbers. People seem to prefer emotional authenticity to dispassionate analysis, so anxious BBC controllers are coming to prefer it as well. The corporation's eagerness to jump on the Make Poverty History bandwagon seems to have been fuelled by fear that a rival broadcaster might otherwise snap up a popular campaign.
The young, ethnic minorities and those in the C2DE (working-class) socioeconomic categories are deserting the BBC even faster than the rest of us. To attract such groups back, some BBC people believe they must address them on their own terms, rather than as citizens of the wider community. This could require the fragmentation of the arena within which impartiality is exercised. As the head of television news, Peter Horrocks, has put it, in future, "BBC news may need to become BBC newses."
It seems possible that a combination of the urge to maximise audience size with a public sector culture could leave the BBC shackled to emotive populism, audience balkanisation and a liberal conformist outlook. If this happens, it will itself turn into a further threat to broadcasting impartiality, rather than the saviour of the concept.
The corporation's charter expires in 2016. By then, the world of broadcasting seems likely to have changed out of all recognition. The BBC's audiences seem certain to have fallen, however much it cossets them in the meanwhile. Because of this, the arrangements that sustain it seem unlikely to be renewed in their current form. If the public interest in broadcast output is to be maintained, a new system for achieving this may need to be devised. Such a system could entrench impartiality in a new and more robust way.
State revenue for broadcasting could be opened up to all broadcasters, instead of being handed over wholesale to the BBC. These broadcasters, including the corporation, could be invited to compete for funding for different public commissions on the basis of the quality of the services they offered. One criterion against which they might be judged could be their proficiency in the exercise of impartiality. The board in charge of disbursing funds would become the concept's guardian, rather than a large and complex organisation attached to its own interests and idiosyncrasies. The board's interpretation of its mandate could be subject to transparent debate in which everyone would be free to participate.
Such a system would not dispel the forces of social and political fragmentation that are likely to confront us in the years ahead. It could, however, provide a secure repository for a practice that might moderate their impact. Broadcasting impartiality, which has served us well in the past, may do us even greater service in future, so long as we do not let it slip through our fingers.
