FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT and government resistance

For now ... Nov 2020 Guardian article on how the UK government seeks to undermine the functioning of this key freedom of the press law.

UK LIBEL TOURISM global boom as EU drafts law

Guardian

There has been reform of UK libel law to stop the rich + corporations abroad abusing it to muzzle reporting with the threat of expensive litigation they can't afford to properly defend.

But with the UK accounting for more libel cases than the EU and USA combined, the London courts continue to act as a handy global gag for the rich and powerful. Many of whom are avoiding taxes by using British tax havens.

MURDOCH TWITTER New York Post Biden laptop row

Quite an extraordinary story.

The USA press makes claims to be neutral and objective. Generally. And then...there's the Murdoch press, specifically the gutter tabloid New York Post - subject of a Public Enemy song decrying it as 'bullshit'.

Like The S*n, the Post is avowedly the voice of its owner - again, something the US press generally claims to outlaw. Murdoch did of course sign a legal document agreeing to NOT influence the editorial direction of The Times when he was dubiously allowed to buy it (the supportive role of Thatcher has recently been revealed after the decades-long Official Secrets Act block was lifted on government papers from the time). Some chance.

Jeff Bezos, Washington Post owner (having a great covid crisis as Amazon owner, unlike his factory workers) is a favourite Trump target for his perceived liberal bias and impact on that august paper, part of the trio of local-but-national brands that dominate the US quality press with the Christian Science Monitor and New York Times.

Back to the Post. Their Twitter account was suspended for publishing what Twitter deemed fake news using hacked materials: the tale of Joe Biden's son. A favourite Trump trope - for which he faced impeachment for having misused his office.

Then Twitter owner Jack Dorsey faced a spittle-flying Senate Committee hearing, the Republicans on which were brandishing rhetorical pitchforks as they, tongue not in cheek, accused him of undermining American democracy. Presumably stopping the Post from reporting on the dubious Supreme Court confirmation, the attempts to weaken the US Postal Service to undermine postal voting, the POTUS posturing that he wouldn't accept an election defeat as legitimate or leave peacefully, the constant attacks on journalists....etc...

And lo, the Post was free once more, just before the election, to spread it's Fox News style objective reportage.

At least these things are somewhat out in the open in the USA. Unlike the UK - where PM Cameron blocked the Leveson Inquiry from its planned second stage investigation into the links between press and police plus politicians. Twitter arguably remains a much more powerful and influential press regulator than IPSO. And press (concentration of/billionaire) ownership remains a matter ignored by the supposed UK press 'regulator'.

Guardian article Oct 2020

Sidenote: The Public Enemy song I mentioned really doesn't hold up well to today's values. Singer and main lyricist Chuck D continues to be an active, activist voice on Twitter - and sacked Flavor Flav, singer and inspiration for that song, in March 2020 after a row about Chuck D appearing at a Bernie Sanders rally. See NY Times report.

This article is also useful context: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/30/is-america-a-democracy-us-election-fight-to-vote

MURDOCH CONCENTRATION OF OWNERSHIP AND FLAK

NOV 2020 MURDOCH GRIP ON AUSTRALIA TIGHTENS

Guardian.

I've read a lot of books on Rupert Murdoch - and would suggest anyone interested in business would enjoy doing the same. Some might argue against calling him a business genius (I think he is) but at minimum he's a seriously smart, successful businessman.

He took shareholdings in two Australian newspapers left by his father and built that up into one of the biggest global media empires. He has now sold off big chunks of that but has kept the news side of it: Fox News and 100s of newspapers (plus book publishers) across the globe. 

This gives him considerable political power and influence, though there is much doubt if any of his sons or daughter will quite follow in his footsteps - with James Murdoch shockingly quitting the Murdoch media empire over what he described as the misinformation spread by his father's media outlets.

I'll gather here some resources on this specific topic, the Murdoch empire and the more general point about concentration of ownership - which of course is one the five filters in Chomsky's propaganda model. The fact that the UKs voluntary self-regulator for the press, IPSO (and its various predecessors), doesn't consider that part of its remit is a good example of Murdoch power.

In the aftermath of the phone hacking scandal, and the advertiser boycott fuelled by furious public opinion in the UK (these online campaigns are a great example of web 2.0 as an alternative source of regulation, and the failure of existing regulation - the PCC actually CONDEMNED The Guardian for reporting the story!!!), the Conservative government was forced to set up the Leveson Inquiry. A senior judge would investigate the story of phone hacking and wider malpractice within the press industry, and present his recommendations to Parliament.

He was also meant to go on to investigate the links between the press and police, and press and politicians - but PM David Cameron blocked this, despite Labour, Lib Dems, SNP all being in favour of this. He also rejected most of Leveson's recommendations, especially creating a semi-statutory new regulator run through the Privy Council, not a law passed by Parliament.

At the Leveson Inquiry the likes of ex-PM Gordon Brown would give extraordinary testimony, under oath, of how he'd been bullied and threatened by the Murdoch press - while press owners like Richard Desmond would give quite shocking testimony themselves - the famous "ethics, what are ethics" response.

Here's a start then, a report on the attempt of former Australian Labor Party PM Kevin Rudd (a fairly Blairite figure who sought to make friends with the Murdoch press just as Blair did in 1996) to force a legal inquiry into Murdoch's press monopoly (70% of Aussie newspaper circulation!) down under. The source is of course biased, as most press reports are, being from the centre-left Guardian.

. “Any Labor leader is mindful of the fact that the Murdochs will be out to take you down. Your job as leader is to try and maximise something approaching balanced coverage. That’s a really difficult thing to do … to work to ensure that our narrative is covered rather than simply ridiculed as a matter of ideological politics.” 

 Guardian, Oct 2020.

OFCOM to ban China news station CGTN?

The quango has teeth... 

So, Iran's PressTV was banned, the Kremlin's Russia Today has had warnings but OfCom resisted government and right-wing pressure to ban it; is China's CGTN next?

Al Jazeera (funded by Qatar) has faced pressure too, but was cleared by OfCom over complaints about its investigation into Israel's funding of lobbyists seeking influence on UK politics. (Carter-Ruck)

Don't forget that Fox News is ruled legal - the principle being that it's clearly targeted at a non-domestic audience; a British version would be banned.

UK-based Chinese news network CGTN faces possible ban.


July 2020 update: China’s TV channel faces UK ban as complaints mount.

CUMMINGS CASE BBC neutrality v press opinion

I'll post links for newspaper front pages later...

(Guardian, May 2020) BBC swamped with complaints about Newsnight intro on Cummings.

OFCOM fine China-funded station

a rare example of broadcast news bias being declared by the TV/radio super-regulator OfCom (the quango!). They've previously banned Press TV (funded by Iran) + warned RT (previously known as Russia Today, obvious funding!) though the Tory government + right-wing press wanted them banned too. 

Chinese state TV broke Ofcom rules with biased Hong Kong coverage.

SOCIAL MEDIA Facebook international free speech panel

The very name may suggest an in-built bias reflective of the no-tax, no-boundaries, no-statutory regulation stance of Zuckerberg and his fellow digital oligarchs? A very mild touch of 'independent' self-regulation comes to Facebook.

Journalists, politicians and judges to sit on Facebook's free speech panel.

A detailed analysis of how Facebook thrives despite the appearance of crisis with the #stopfundinghate campaign - pointing out that many companies that would have paused advertising for pandemic reasons can now virtue pose, others are buying up reduced-rate slots, and its global rise continues with a major purchase in India. Which, like the Phillipines, now has an authoritarian leader because of successful exploitation of Facebook and it's laissez fairs refusal to regulate political speech.

Too big to fail': why even a historic ad boycott won’t change Facebook.

PRESS GENDER AGENDA John Terry v Wayne Bridge case

UPDATE: I'm going to throw this example of 'family values' grandstanding by the pro-Tory press, conveniently condemning a scientist (as Michael Gove famously said, "we've had enough of experts", and Johnson, like Trump, is finding them damnably inconvenient) while failing to do what newspapers across the rest of the world are doing: exposing the shambles of the government response to the pandemic.

At the heart of the reportage are details and images of the 'mistress' the errant scientist had over. The French press would marvel at the idea of this as a story, but the right-wing Johnson cheerleaders cheerfully dip into the 1950s when it suits them. The extra-marital record of Johnson has clearly slipped their mind - but the 'public is interested' distortion of the public interest defence for breaching privacy is okay - she's both a lefty climate change campaigner AND lives in a £1.9m house. Champagne socialist bingo!

The prurient headlines about Neil Ferguson are a huge distraction.

A huge scandal about an affair. Look at the post title again - what's missing?

...

Read this feature article, + the answer is in the 1st paragraph...

Betrayal and bombast: the surreal story of the Terry v Bridge scandal.

A decade old story (2010) whose value is in showing how utterly the public knowledge of this is defined by the inaccurate, intrusive reportage of the tabs/mids especially. There's a nice paragraph on this point, making an explicit link to Leveson (2012):

For the big tabloid beasts, a different sort of reckoning was coming. The News of the World was mothballed in the midst of the 2011 phone-hacking scandal; elsewhere, declining sales have slowly eroded the once-frightening influence of the printed press. The Leveson report in 2012 exposed some of the industry’s more scurrilous practices, as well as the culture of shaming and invasion that defined them for decades. “There is ample evidence,” Leveson wrote, “that parts of the press have taken the view that … anyone in whom the public might take an interest are fair game, public property, with little if any entitlement to any sort of private life or respect for dignity. Where there is a genuine public interest in what they are doing, that is one thing; too often, there is not.”

FLUSHING THE FILTERS. CONVERGENCE enables counter-hegemonic media

Such a good example (there's multiple in the article) of how convergence enables alternative media by creating low-cost distribution especially (don't over-focus on the production factor!) AND enabling flexible subscription models instead of reliance on corporate advertising ... one of Chomsky's five filters of course...

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/apr/14/means-tv-streaming-service-leftist-worker-owned

IPSO does not cover taste, decency. Lightshade lover ruling

An odd case, but certainly illuminating on the limited purview of IPSO. An interesting contrast with BBFC here, which quite explicitly does judge taste (annual reviews of public opinion on swear words etc) and decency (it refuses an 18 if it judges a film work to be without artistic merit and obscene, thus breaching the archaic, shamefully undemocratic Obscene Publications Act, as it did with Human Centipede II).

The complaints panel at the press regulator sided with the newspaper, saying that they acknowledged that the article was considered to be “offensive and upsetting” by Liberty but that Ipso do not cover issues of taste and decency.

Woman's attraction to chandeliers not a sexual orientation, ruling says.

OFCOM smashes nuts ignores mountains. unregulated social media

Brilliant stat to exemplify the grotesque imbalance between the tight regulation of broadcast media and the laissez fairs, minimal often secretive self-regulation of online content ... which often attracts a much bigger audience!

OfCom has warned broadcasters against giving coverage (seen as publicity) to the 5G telephone mast conspiracy theory. That's interesting enough as the likes of the BBC have given climate change denial extremists and corporate mouthpieces huge amounts of airtime, and built the career of far-right figurehead Nigel Garage with his frequent BBC appearances. Their interpretation of 'balancing points of view'.

Here's the killer quote from https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/apr/09/london-live-sparks-inquiry-david-icke-coronavirus-conspiracy-theories

The juxtaposition between regulation of online and broadcast media is stark. According to figures provided by overnights.tv, a peak audience of about 80,000 people watched Wednesday night’s edited David Icke interview on London Live, which has attracted comment from cabinet ministers and potential regulatory intervention.

By comparison, 5.2m viewers watched the original unedited interview on YouTube without any government intervention or media questions.

OFCOM swearing and representations values changing

For flips sake...

The BBFC undertake regular research into social attitudes on issues like swearing and use of sexual and violent material - and the broadcast/web/telephony super-regulator OfCom has just published the results of their own latest polling.

There could be significant implications for the still comparatively minimal regulation of social media and the blurred lines over much of the converged media content.

YouTube especially emerged as a key concern for the British public - they were relaxed about explicit content on subscription services like Netflix, rationalising that clear, conscious choices are made, but concerned that this can be unexpectedly encountered on YouTube and that it isn't effectively regulated.

It also seems Britain's social attitudes are, ironically, moving closer to more liberal European standards, with declining concerns over a range of terms - 'shit' is given as an example which no longer causes upset when heard on daytime broadcasts. 

The British are also much less easily shocked or concerned with explicit sexual and violent content than in the past.

Will this very clear research outcome, and it's evidence of much more liberal attitudes lead to specific changes in how the watershed for example is policed by OfCom?

My own view is - for the most part, no.

The intertwined pressures of the Daily Mail-led right-wing press, always vigilant for a potential moral panic, and (very) right-wing Tory government (with its barely concealed anti-BBC/anti-PSB agenda) will raise an almighty stink if OfCom loosen the watershed regulations. It's also not so long ago that OfCom wrote to all broadcasters to remind them of their responsibilities to maintain watershed policies.

If OfCom did there's a decent chance they'll suffer the fate of the last two broadcast regulators to sufficiently upset a right-wing government: scrapped and replaced under new legislation with a new regulator with its rules and leaders more favourable to government ideology. The BBC are already facing yet another assault on their independence with the expected government imposition of a new chief executive hostile to their continued existence.

The BBFC would likewise face an intense backlash if they adjusted significant chunks of the 15 rating restrictions down to the 12 rating (or 18 to 15) by the 'moral guardians' of the right-wing press and their political allies.

Nonetheless, media regulation has continued to evolve to at least partially reflect changing, liberalising (plus 'politically correct') values. Just sit down to watch The Exorcist or The Last House on the Left if in doubt - films banned for decades in the UK but now awarded 18 ratings.

Of course, don't sit down to watch the Postman Pat or Paddington movies, or, whatever you, Watership Down, or you'll experience the full force of conservative, censorial Britain. If that strikes you as a bewildering statement look for my detailed post on these 3 films... Or ... sod off?!

Keeping it PG!

See: British public no longer give a fig about on-air swearing, Ofcom says.

OFCOM Russia Today fined 200k after court challenge

RT loses challenge against claims of bias in novichok reporting

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/mar/27/rt-loses-challenge-bias-novichok-reporting-russia-today-ofcom?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Gmail 

CAROLINE FLACK suicide fuels press reform calls but not from gov

The Labour leadership have picked up on the case, Keir Starmer especially - he stated he would act to improve the "diversity" of the UK press.

I'd say that's the most radical threat issued in a generation or more by a senior politician, signalling a very interventionist stance. He'd presumably subsidise new rivals? Not an easy outcome to achieve with almost all the national press being right-wing and pro-Tory.

Public disgust over the tabloid treatment of a sitcom star led directly to the Press Council being scrapped and replaced by the PCC after the Calcutt Committee report in 1989. Murdoch responded to renewed public disgust after the NoTW was revealed to be tied into phone-hacking a murdered schoolgirl's phone (Milly Fowler) by shutting down the paper to stop a highly effective advertiser boycott campaign spreading to The S*n, Times, Sky or his US interests.

It's always harder to achieve reform under a Tory government, whose electability is enhanced by the press, but this case has the potential to build huge pressure to do something about the state of press (voluntary, self-!) regulation.

Politicians condemn press intrusion after Caroline Flack's death

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/feb/16/politicians-condemn-press-intrusion-after-caroline-flacks-death?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Gmail 

UK GOV REJECT PUBLIC FUNDED JOURNALISM YEAR AFTER REPORT

There's a well-established tradition of governments ignoring reports into the media with recommendations that may antagonise their major press allies (Tories 2 year delay in responding to Calcutt's post-PCC 1993 review) or further antagonise their major press foes (Labour's similar delay on the 3rd Royal Commission on the Press, 1977). Just long enough that when they finally do respond, rejecting the carefully crafted proposals of experts, the heat has gone out of the story.

The routine abuse of the Official Secrets Act to censor reportage on government actions (such as Thatcher's meetings with Murdoch in the early 80s to strategize his purchase of the Sunday Times) until decades later may have a longer time scale but works on a similar calculation.

And so, as the police, judges and local councils around Britain begin to enjoy freedom from scrutiny as the local and regional press die a death of a 1,000 cuts with as revenue bleeding out to the tax-dodging, regulation-swerving global FANG giants, the Tory Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan has rejected an expert panel's recommendations of funding a public interest journalism pool. Because it would interfere with the free press.

But they're free to die an agonising death. And just such schemes work fine in such totalitarian regions as Scandinavia.

By happy coincidence, this returns pressure on the BBC, already slashing budgets as it faces a £800m bill to pay pensioners' license fees on the insistence of a party heavily reliant on the votes of the old, which has threatened to privatise C4 and effectively do the same to the BBC by forcing it to fund itself from subscription and ads only.

Which by happy coincidence would delight the right-wing press barons like Murdoch and Rothermere (Mail) who have long campaigned for the Beeb to be privatised. A company they'd then love to buy.

Whither the fourth estate?

Ministers snub proposals to fund public-interest reporting

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jan/27/ministers-snub-proposals-to-fund-public-interest-reporting?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Gmail 

LOBBY SYSTEM and OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT changes threaten press freedom

The Westminster lobby system is at the heart of a press freedom fight

https://www.theguardian.com/media/commentisfree/2020/jan/19/the-westminster-lobby-system-is-at-the-heart-of-a-press-freedom-fight?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Gmail