Jean Seaton

Power without responsibility : the press and broadcasting in Britain

Part 1 Press History 1. Whig press history as political mythology 2. The struggle for a free press 3. The ugly face of reform 4. The industrialization of the press 5. The era of the press barons 6. The press under public regulation 7. The press in the age of conglomerates Part 2 Broadcasting History 8. Reith and the denial of politics 9. Broadcasting and the blitz 10. Social revolution? 11. The fall of the BBC 12. Class, taste and profit 13. How the audience is made 14. Video, cable and the satellite 15. To be or not to be in the BBC: broadcasting in the 1980s and 1990s Part 3 Theories of the media 16. Global futures, the information society, and broadcasting 17. The sociology of the mass media 18. The liberal theory of press freedom 19. Broadcasting and the theory of public service Part 4 Politics of the media 20. Contradictions in media policy 21. Palette of policies 21. Media reform

Power without responsibility : the press, broadcasting, and new media in Britain

Part 1 Press History: 1 Whig press history as political mythology 2 The struggle for a free press 3 The ugly face of reform 4 The industrialisation of the press 5 the era of the press barons 6 The press under public regulation 7 The press in the age of globalisation Part 2 Broadcasting History: 8 Reith and the denial of politics 9 Broadcasting and the blitz 10 Social revolution? 11 The fall of the BBC 12 Class, taste and profit 13 How the audience is made 14 Video, cable and satellite 15 To be or not to be the BBC: broadcasting in the 1980s and 1990s Part 3 Rise of New Media: 16 Scientists, capitalist and cyberchartists 17 Sociology of the internet 18 New media in Britain Part 4 Theories of the Media: 19 Global futures, the information society and broadcasting 20 The sociology of the mass media 21 The liberal theory of press freedom 22 Broadcasting and the theory of public service Part 5 Politics of the Media: 23 Contradictions in media policy 24 Central debates in media policy

The BBC and the Holocaust

Contemporaries and historians have often argued that the Allies did not do more to save Jews from extermination during the Second World War either because little was known about what was happening to them, or because the evidence was not believed. This article demonstrates that at least within the BBC detailed information about the Holocaust was received, believed and broadcast. It argues that despite problems of style and discrimination, the most important reason for the lack of emphasis given to this news was that, in a period when defeat seemed probable, there was no political will to do more about what appeared to be remote events. The key to political action was will, not information.

Is saving the world journalism's job?

News is necessarily amoral: that is how it keeps us all decent. Moral news tells us what has happened – that is all it does and that is everything it does. This is why the BBC’s decision to reject the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) appeal for Gaza in January 2009 was hard to get right but was – in the end – correct. The essence of impartiality is that one cannot pick and choose. And protecting impartial reporting is more important than permitting the BBC to be involved in what was inevitably a campaign. It is not the journalist’s job to save the world and the outcome of impartiality may sometimes mean that journalists appear inhumane. The BBC has, perhaps, been lured into campaigning in recent years and has to make sure that it exercises fastidious judgment. Carefully-constructed policies about dealing with appeals and fundraising have come under strain. There was criticism over the Make Poverty History/Live 8 concerts and the BBC pulled out of broadcasting high-profile climate change events as a result of these concerns. No matter how worthy the cause, there are dangers for independent journalism. Michael Buerk, whose reporting once went on to inspire a memorable humanitarian appeal, is emphatic about the role of the journalist. “It is not our purpose to solve the world’s problems but to so inform a working democracy that those people will come to their own conclusions about what is right and wrong... If that line is crossed, even if the goal is as benign as raising money for aid, then people will detect that agenda and not believe you in the same way as they would beforehand.” If the output is tainted by Is saving the world journalism’s job?

Journeys to truth: the BBC as a pragmatic ethical engineer at home and abroad

‘Plain, bitter, ugly, foul, unchristian, immoral truth’, as Friedrich Nietzsche observed, is what really matters. The BBC has been a pragmatic ethical engineer adjusting the pressures in the British and World political system since 1927. Set up as a ‘pubic service’, the discovery at any historical moment of what this might mean has been the bedrock of its value to our personal and collective lives, and at the same time an elegantly simple mechanism of being held accountable to its citizen-audience. The BBC is a moral regulator, not because that is its purpose but because that is the effect of its conversations with British and international public life, if it gets it right. It is ethical because it has principles that keep public life decent. They have to be continually re-learnt, re-applied and re-assessed, but the aim is to report to the many constituencies it relates to accounts of events that are accurate, and more demandingly, truthful. It is pragmatic because to do this it is buffeted by many pressures, it is assailed by many conflicting interests and it at times accommodates one or the other of the interests that seek to influence it: up to a point. It is pragmatic because the value of the exercise, in a very empirical British way is not in the claims that it makes but in the quotidian output over the years. It is an engineer because adjustments and occasionally great corrections have to be made: the machine re-calibrated according to changing sensibilities, changing circumstances, mutating values, political realities and fundamental shifts in audience’s desires. The interaction with the social and political environment constantly evolves. The BBC and the BBC World Service (BBCWS) are ‘pragmatic, ethical engineers’ not because the BBC

Yesterday's men

During the 1970 general election campaign a Labour party poster describing the Conservatives as ‘Yesterdays Men’ was withdrawn after one day. As an addendum to the Yesterdays Men witness seminar published in Vol.10, No.3, the following chronology was prepared by Jean Seaton for the seminar.

The new Architecture of Communications

The new architecture of communications has two symbiotic features: an overwhelming abundance of information and communications and the emergence of narrow, ‘silos’ of information and opinion that have developed partly in response to the copious complexity available, partly because of the enhanced tools developed to navigate the variety. The weak ‘bridging’ links to many opinions that the media used to produce can be replaced by ‘strong’ personalised links to narrow views. In addition the democratic space of negotiated, re-distributive communicative space is dis-appearing. The article examines the practical working out of these tendencies in institutions by examining the new British Army doctrine which puts communications at the centre of action, and considers the ways in which silos emerge. It argues that we need new kinds of oversight. It argues that the UK tradition of extending the range of voices given platforms is a better response to the contemporary architecture of communications than the classic focus on individual freedoms of speech. It argues that the BBC, international and domestic, concerned with tone and feelings, is one of the few institutions we have constituted and built (albeit accidentally) to perfectly match this contemporary shape of communications.

Asa and the Epochs: The BBC, the Historian, the Institution and the Archive

Asa Briggs has met every Director-General of the BBC (with one recent fleeting exception) and many of the Chairmen of the Governors since the British Broadcasting Corporation was founded in 1927.1 Briggs may be the last person to bear this rich bloodline of personal understanding back into the foundations of an institution that has come to define Britishness. Many of the director-generals and chairmen he knew well. Briggs has also marked all of them out of ten for posterity: the criteria being strategic intelligence, the capacity to push BBC values out into new areas, ‘grip’ and creativity — an assessment that for the moment remains private. He has a reservation about director-generals whose dominating experience is of news and current affairs, ‘[t]heir perspectives are too short term. News colours how they see events’.2 Yet most leaders of the Corporation come from this background as it is the boiler room of BBC interaction with political forces. Those at the top of the Corporation have to be able to enable imaginative programmes to be made, to lead the organisation and give it a ‘face’ — but they all need the ability to second guess and navigate whatever the politics of the moment are — Briggs has also worked with these BBC leaders in the pressurised back office of Corporation life where historical precedent is a resource for people making difficult decisions about an institution that has to evolve and yet remain true to itself.

Watching the World: Seeing, Feeling—Understanding?

Books reviewed in this article: Luc Boltanski, Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics Department for International Development, Viewing the World: A Study of British Television Coverage of Developing Countries