A fit and proper person

Most of us have had the experience of getting up in the morning, looking in the mirror and deciding that we’re not fit and something needs to be done. It’s just difficult knowing where to start.  Rupert Murdoch knows that feeling.  On Wednesday morning the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee pronounced him unfit.  Rather unhelpfully, they didn’t indicate what he needed to do to become fit again. 

Strictly speaking the CMS Select Committee isn’t charged with deciding who is fit to run anything. But the inclusion of the “fit person” phrase in their report wasn’t a mistake.  The Lib Dem and Labour members who voted for it clearly intended that it should ring a bell.  They knew that OFCOM, the broadcasting regulator, is charged with deciding whether a person is “fit and proper” to hold a broadcasting license. They were well aware that in that quasi-legal context “person” means a company or organisation. And they knew that OFCOM would soon have to make that judgement in relation to BSkyB, a company in which Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp currently owns a 40% stake.  Some members of the DCMS Select Committee, notably the campaigning Labour MP Tom Watson, clearly wanted to use their report to drop a big hint to OFCOM, who have the power to hit News Corp where it hurts most – their shareholders’ pockets.

But what really makes a person “fit and proper” to own a newspaper or hold a broadcasting license? Is it their competence to lead a hugely powerful and profitable business?  Is it their track record of compliance with the law and the various broadcasting codes? Or is it a question of character? 

The discussions at the Select Committee focussed on the competence of James and Rupert Murdoch rather than the morality of their activities.  The committee’s chief complaint was that the Murdochs ought to have known what was going on at their papers.  James Murdoch failed to read his emails.  Rupert Murdoch was guilty of overseeing “failings of corporate governance” and displayed “wilful blindness” towards the weaknesses of his senior staff.  There’s clearly no love lost between the Labour members of the committee and the Murdochs.  But all they are substantively accused of is incompetent management.

When it’s their turn to rule on the fitness of News Corp, OFCOM will not be concerned with their competence but their compliance.  The regulator only withdraws broadcasting licenses if a company fails to meet the legal requirements of the Broadcasting Code. The one recent occasion when OFCOM has invoked the “fit and proper person” clause to debar a company was in the case of a porn channel.  The offence that lost them their licence wasn’t the salaciousness of their content but their repeated failure to comply with OFCOM’s adjudications.

But what about character?  Is no-one going to assess whether James and Rupert Murdoch and their employees are good enough people to own newspapers or TV stations?  Thankfully not.  Much as we might like to dream of a media where power and virtue were correlated, we need to resist any attempt to enforce that correlation by statute.  I despise Rupert Murdoch’s Sun for publishing pictures of vulnerable young women with their breasts exposed. I pity the grubby individuals who run “soft” porn channels. But within reason they must be allowed to do so.

This isn’t a counsel of despair.  It’s just that regulation is not the route to improved standards.  On Wednesday the Murdochs were censured by a Select Committee – one of the strongest, most personally damning parliamentary criticisms I can remember.  It must have stung, but it was hardly a Damascene moment.  On Thursday The Sun carried a picture of a semi-naked woman on page 3 and mocked the new England football manager (who speaks five languages) for his speech impediment. If our understanding of “fitness” relates to quality, then neither compliance with the law nor capability as a business leader will necessarily deliver it.  What is needed is character.  Jesus said that “A good person brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil person brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”   Every newspaper is an expression of the character of its proprietors, editors, journalists and readers. You can’t legislate or regulate for that. It has to come from within. 

Most of us understand “a fit person” as one who has made good use of their gym membership.  Aristotle understood fitness in moral terms.  And he knew that moral character, like physical fitness, can only be developed by practice.  You don’t lose weight overnight and you don’t learn goodness that way either.  You develop it by reflection, and that reflection takes place in community.  I have no way of knowing, but I suspect that for years the Murdoch family and their senior staff have operated in a culture of isolation and deference, whilst their journalists have worked in an atmosphere of insecurity and fear.  That’s certainly true of many newsrooms and media companies I know.  A new edition of the Staff Handbook probably isn’t going to change that much. If, stung by the allegations of the Select Committee, the Murdochs really want to become fit, a good start would be to attend to their company culture. 

. 

This piece first appeared as a guest blog for Theos   www.theosthinktank.co.uk

The Politics of Food

Who would have thought that this week’s agenda would be so dominated by the politics of food? It started with the news that people who have so much money that they will never experience hunger have been invited to use some of it to buy dinner in the Prime Minister’s private flat – and with it the implication of access to political influence. By the end of the week the politics of food had descended from the heights of Samantha Cameron’s cuisine to the relative heat of a Greggs pasty. Cabinet ministers were teased about whether they could tell the difference between a Cornish pasty and a boeuf en croute! The political implication is clear. The food you eat is a crude but graphic indicator of your status in society, and with it your power or powerlessness.

My church is very big on food. Every Sunday after the service someone – usually several people – will have brought buns, cakes or fruit to share. It is always abundant and it is always free. At the same time every Sunday a handful of local people slip discretely into the church’s back office and emerge with carrier bags full of tinned goods from our food bank. Occasionally the incongruity of the two events catches me off guard. But I’m aware that both are celebrations of God’s grace, and together they represent the reality of life in our South Manchester community.

In the meantime, on Thursday the House of Lords economic affairs committee proposed that the UK government should abandon its commitment to pass a law saying that the UK will spend 0.7% of our Gross National Income on aid. This figure, which was adopted by donor countries around the world over 40 years ago, has been honoured as a target by every government since Margaret Thatcher’s (though none has so far reached it in practice.) It was the only fiscal policy that all three major parties signed up to at the 2010 General Election. The Lords committee argues that enshrining the 0.7% target in law might actually be a distraction from the vital questions of how effectively our aid contributions are spent. Christian Aid and Tear Fund have pointed out that once no-one has to argue about how much money we spend on aid it might be easier to focus on how it is put to best use. I am a simple soul when it comes to food and to politics. For me it is impossible to imagine that rowing back on an election pledge about the aid budget will mean anything other than more children dying unnecessarily of hunger.

The correlation between food and power is a very direct one. That’s why the cry of the market trader in Isaiah 55:1 is so extraordinary. "Ho, everyone who is thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy food and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price!” The stall holder stands in the crowded market place and shouts out “Come on you lot, help yourselves!” It is impossible to conceive to of a more open-handed approach to trading. It’s not that the food is free. Obviously you can’t buy anything without money. If you don’t believe me, try it in your local branch of Tescos! No, this food is zero-rated because the price has been paid by someone else. It’s a new economics that transforms the politics of food. But of course it is also a new economics of hospitality, of community and of love itself.

Next week we will remember a night when friends gathered for a meal in an upper room not in Downing Street but in Jerusalem. No money was exchanged for the invitation. Instead Jesus took bread and wine, gave thanks to God the provider, and gave it away saying “this is me.” The 19th century Bible commentator Albert Barnes wrote “If the poor are willing to accept of it as a gift, they are welcome; and if the rich will not accept of it as a gift, they cannot obtain it. What a debt of gratitude we owe to God, who has thus placed it within the reach of all.”

This blog is reproduced from Friday Night Theology, the weekly blog of the Evangelical Alliance

100 000 people in the UK will receive free food this year through foodbanks organised by the Trussell Trust.  For more information visit www.trusselltrust.org. 

Reporting the Lambeth walk

From a journalist’s point of view, a resignation is a dead cat story. Once you have reported the fact, it’s hard to know where to go. There are in fact only two obvious pieces to write the day after Rowan Williams’ resignation. One is a retrospective: how will the Archbishop be remembered? (The consensus is a mixture of respect and pity.) The other is a “runners and riders” piece: who’s going to get the big job? The weekend's papers were full of both.

“Now he’s gone…” said the usually-reliable Ruth Gledhill on the Today programme. That rather neglects the fact that Rowan Williams will still be in post until the end of the year, meaning that he will be Archbishop through all the church’s major festivals, not to mention the Diamond Jubilee celebrations and the London Olympics. Her interviewer John Humphrys was similarly lax in his turn of phrase, saying that the Archbishop had been “at the helm” of the Church of England for almost ten years. If you were searching for a metaphor to describe the nature of an Archbishop’s role in the church it’s hard to think of a less apt one than “at the helm.”

The way the story is being covered illustrates the central difficulty in the coverage of religious stories in the mainstream media. Essentially, most journalists don’t have a frame of reference for the way that religion works. So they treat religion with the same categories that they use to treat politics. That means two things: first, faith communities must be divided into oppositional factions of which only one can ultimately prevail. Second, the story is played out between individual characters who are iconised to provide a short-hand for opposing ideas.

Much of today’s coverage tells us that there are senior Bishops “jockeying for position.” Ruth Gledhill told us that “phone calls were being made” (though as an employee of News International she might want to be careful about claiming to know the contents of other people’s phone calls.) Reporters are identifying “factions” within the church that are lobbying to get their man (sic) into Lambeth. Newsnight’s Stephanie Flanders (who must struggle to make sense of the economics of the church) spoke of “deep disagreements”, implying that the choice of a new Archbishop would be framed by the tussle over two or three neuralgic issues such as women bishops and gay priests. The frame of reference is immediately recognisable as that used to cover the choice of a political party leader. There’s been much made of the odds on offer for various possible successors at William Hill. The Sun has even come out in support of its own candidate – sometime columnist and avid Sun reader Archbishop John Sentamu.

Of course there are factions within the church, and of course the issues that have come to the fore in this generation are deeply painful. But there’s a laziness in the coverage that becomes self-fulfilling. If you set up your studio discussion with a pro- and anti-gay lobbyist you are likely to come to the conclusion that attitude to homosexuals is the defining factor in the case.

To understand the appointment of a new Archbishop solely in those terms is to make a category error. Leadership in the church doesn’t work in the same way as leadership in politics. Conscientious journalists will want to understand and reflect that. The poor soul who becomes the next Archbishop will equally need to come to terms with the fact that the vast majority of secular journalists will treat him and his work in categories that fundamentally misunderstand it. Archbishop Rowan knows this, and for that reason he is consistent in his refusal to compromise with the culture and timing imposed by the press. It’s a strategy that his successor may need to reconsider.

Why did Rowan Williams resign? Possibly because he’d had enough of the pain that goes with the post. That would be understandable. Perhaps because he wanted to have more time with his family while his children are still at home. That would be admirable. But above all and combining all we can be confident that he decided to step down because he felt that was the call of God on his life for this moment. And although the mechanism by which Archbishops are appointed may seem Byzantine and compromised, we can still hope and pray that the call of God will be the determining factor in the choice of his successor. Strange and unfamiliar as this may seem in most newsrooms, the best journalists will seek to understand it.

....in defence of Jeremy Clarkson

It must be Christmas. I’ve come out in sympathy with Jeremy Clarkson.

You will recall that Clarkson suggested that striking public sector workers should be executed in front of their families, and that people who commit suicide under trains are “selfish.” OFCOM has received 763 complaints about the show, to add to the 32 000 received by the BBC itself. Now an OFCOM inquiry will have to decide whether the remarks were “justified by the context.” I’ve no doubt that Clarkson will argue that the context was an attempt at humour – in this case poking fun at the BBC’s need to balance every view with an equal and opposite one. I doubt if he will mention that a significant part of the context was his wish to generate publicity for his Christmas DVD. Why else was he appearing on The One Show? Why else does anyone appear on The One Show?

BBC Director-General Mark Thompson and BBC Trust Chair Lord Patten were asked about the incident when they appeared before the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee last week. They argued that Clarkson shouldn’t be sacked because a) he is very popular and b) the Clarkson “brand” is commercially successful. That argument , coming from the BBC, is worrying in itself. The BBC’s licence funding is justified at least in part by the fact that it frees the corporation to make editorial decisions without direct reference to the popularity or bank-ability of its programmes and stars. If the BBC can’t or won’t use its independence to make decisions based on values rather than popularity or profit, why should it be publicly funded at all? The truth is that the Top Gear brand is so commercially successful for BBC Worldwide (and incidentally for Clarkson, who gets a share of profits) that to lose it would knock a serious hole in the BBC’s funding. They could afford to tinker with many well-loved brands (such as Blue Peter or Songs of Praise) because they don’t have revenue streams attached. But they need to soft-soap the producers of Top Gear and Doctor Who because they are cash-cows.

All of this might seem like very good news for Jeremy Clarkson. Even though I find his every utterance odious, he seems to be safely lodged in a role that will provide him with a nice pension just for turning up.

But it’s not that simple. Being a massive bankable star doesn’t come cheap. To fulfil his commitments to Top Gear, his newspaper column, his DVDs and his stream of books turns him into a factory. Clarkson is a brand. Except he isn’t – he’s a human being.

In the past few months, his first wife has threatened to publish a book suggesting that she and Clarkson had an affair over several years whilst he was married to his second wife. Ours is not to speculate about how that went down over breakfast in his Chipping Norton home. Word is that he has been spending a lot of time in a bachelor flat in London. It's all made more awkward by the fact that his current wife Francie is also his agent. So the very person who you might have expected to say “reign it in a bit Jeremy, there are kids watching” was not in the best position to do so. Putting it simply, Jeremy Clarkson’s life is in a mess. For someone who is so overworked, so compromised in his family life and so apparently untouchable by editors from the Director-General down it’s not altogether surprising that he said some stupid things on live TV. The man needs help. Dare I say it, he’s a car crash waiting to happen.

One of the features that worries me most about contemporary media culture is the transformation of individuals into brands. To be a face that sells books, DVDs, music or movies might seem like a dream ticket. But those faces are human…and that means needy, fallible and vulnerable. At the same time those faces become so stratospherically commercial that their humanity is beyond reach. Who can Clarkson turn to for support, secure in the knowledge that what he discloses won’t end up in a tabloid paper? I hope to God there is someone. I don’t mean to turn amateur psychologist, but when he talked about people being shot in front of their families and people being so selfish that they throw themselves under trains, might he have been expressing thoughts that had crossed his own mind in the darkest hours in his London flat?

Celebrities usually have some choice over the way they live their lives. But when a celebrity becomes a brand, the line between being a famous or talented person and being a commercial property is horribly blurred. Nobody should be bought and sold. That’s true for trafficked children, and its true for Simon Cowell, Jeremy Clarkson, Justin Beiber and God-knows who else we have allowed this to happen to. You can sell a story; you can sell an idea; you can sell a design concept – but you should never, ever sell a person. You should never buy one either. That’s why I’m going to stop watching Top Gear. Not because I don’t like Jeremy Clarkson…but because I care about him.

The Journalism We Deserve

All this week we have listened to a succession of witnesses giving evidence to the Leveson Inquiry. Hugh Grant, Bob and Sally Dowler, Steve Coogan and Kate and Gerry McCann are amongst those who have felt that they were victims of press intrusion. The stories of rifled bins, hacked phones and a letter from a journalist delivered to JK Rowling via her five year-old daughter’s lunchbox – have all given me pause for thought.

In my work on the fringes of journalism I haven’t done any of those things. But I did once “door-step” a disgraced public figure to persuade him to tell his story on camera. And I’ve learnt enough research wrinkles that I reckon I can find a home address for any celebrity in the country. I’ve done more subtle things too – things that would be familiar to most journalists and programme-makers. I’ve bought drinks to loosen the tongues of potential contributors; I’ve feigned rather more interest in people’s personal lives than I really felt; I’ve dropped personal stories and anecdotes into the conversation to make them feel relaxed and comfortable - in the hope that they will be more forthcoming in an interview. And once the film was in the can (as we used to say in t'old days) I have moved swiftly on to the next story, the next project, the next potential contributor. I hope you’re not too shocked. I’m not proud of everything I have done – but I’m not massively ashamed either. I’ve always tried to think carefully and “Christianly” about the techniques I’ve employed. If I’ve got it wrong, I’m sorry.

The Leveson Inquiry is uncovering the culture of the journalistic media at its worst. Some members of the public haven’t thought much about how journalism works, and they are understandably shocked by the excesses. Some of that shock is being whipped up by rival newspapers – who may turn out not to have too much grounds for their self-righteous anger. But many of the shameful practices that are emerging through the Leveson Inquiry have continuity with good investigative journalism – just extended to a point where they become abusive and in some cases highly destructive.

There’s no doubt that we need a thorough review of the culture of journalism. There’s no doubt that we need a new method of regulation and recourse for those who feel they have been victims of abuse by journalists. The self-regulation of the Press Complaints Commission is laughably slow and impossibly partisan.

But we also need to recognise that cultures emerge from the collective beliefs of a community. No amount of regulation or training will effect deep change unless individuals make better personal choices. These are spiritual issues. What I mean by that is that our practices as journalists or programme-makers…or whatever else we do come to that…emerge from our fundamental beliefs about what it is to be human and therefore what rights and dignities we should afford to other people. In this way journalism is simply reflecting and amplifying the culture of the West at this time – a culture that has decided that the nature of human beings is continuous with that of animals, that the old deserve less dignity than the young, that financial and career success matter more than character and that love is a sub-category of sex.

The journalists who hacked Milly Dowler’s phone – or who commissioned the hacking…it makes no difference – had forgotten the humanity of the family they were dealing with, or else they had chosen to relegate that thought below the needs of their own careers, reputations incomes or whatever. In all of my journalistic work I don’t think I’ve ever done that.

Bob the Builder has moved in with Barbie. Why you should care

This has been a highly significant week in the world of commercial TV. Granada TV has signed a deal with Nationwide Building Society that means that a branded cash machine will appear in Dev’s corner shop in Coronation Street. This is made possible by the relaxation of the government’s product placement rules. For the first time since broadcasting began commercial broadcasters will be allowed to take money to show products in dramas, soaps, entertainment and sports programmes. Some programmes remain protected – including children’s programmes and religion. And some products are still banned – tobacco, alcohol and baby milk for instance. But we will start to see Coca Cola on the X Factor judges’ table and Ant and Dec offering branded fly spray to jungle-bound celebrities.

The arrival of product placement changes TV. It matters to viewers, because it represents a further blurring of the line between advertising and editorial; between reality and entertainment. A small letter P will appear on screen to indicate when a product has been sponsored – but that probably won’t help some viewers to discriminate between fact and fiction. (If Ken Barlow recommends Nationwide, it must be good, mustn’t it?) It matters to programme-makers too. In an industry starved for cash by the collapse in TV advertising no programme will be commissioned without the guarantee of significant product placement.

A while ago I met an executive for a big company that produces breakfast cereals. She told me that the company had recently made a significant shift in its budgeting processes. The add-on products that are included in the cereal packets – toys, competitions, children’s books and the like –were no longer to be accounted for in the company’s marketing budget. Instead they would appear as core product costs. What used to be an incentive was now regarded as part of the product. In other words, the company had decided that it was no longer selling breakfast cereal. Instead is sells breakfast cereal AND toys, books etc.

Meanwhile Hit Entertainment, the TV production company that is home to children's TV favourites Thomas the Tank Engine and Bob the Builder, has been acquired by US toymaker Mattel for £426m. Mattel already owns assets major children’s brands including Barbie and Hot Wheels. The takeover means that it has added Barney, Fireman Sam and Angelina Ballerina to its toy-box. That’s a very significant move, because it means that key children’s programmes will exist as promotional extensions of children’s merchandise, instead of the other way round.

When the Independent Television Authority was launched in 1954, marking the start of commercial TV in the UK, the first Director-General of the BBC John Reith voiced his criticism in the House of Lords in very colourful terms:

Somebody introduced Christianity into England and somebody introduced smallpox, bubonic plague and the Black Death. Somebody is minded now to introduce sponsored broadcasting.”

That may be a bit over the top. Or it may not.

Forgive us our press passes

 An inquiry under Lord Leveson is currently looking at press standards. More precisely, it is two consecutive inquiries. The first, currently underway, looks at journalistic standards and the relationships between police, politicians and journalists. The second stage of the inquiry will look into the specific allegations of phone-hacking at News International. It will begin after the police investigations have finished.

Earlier this month I was talking to a Lobby Correspondent. We met for breakfast on the run at the Conservative Party conference. They asked me what the church was saying about all of this. This was a very high-profile journalist looking to the Christian community for some sort of understanding – some sort of reference point. I had to admit that so far I’m not aware of any really substantial input from the Christian community into this whole business. If someone has heard an Archbishop or even a lobby group speaking out – or if anyone is planning a submission to Lord Leveson – please let me know. For me it was a challenge to ask what a Christian perspective might be on this…and I wonder whether we could think about that together. It may be that some parts of the Christian community – perhaps Christians who are involved in journalism or public affairs - might even want to make a submission to the Leveson Inquiry. If so, now’s the time.

If we were going to speak, what might we say?

It’s difficult for the Christian community to start pontificating about openness. Our own press operations aren’t famous for transparency. And we’re on a sticky wicket if we make what sound like party political statements or if we try to take too much of a moral high ground.

So what have we got to say? I think that to make a constructive contribution we have to understand some of the culture of the newsroom that has produced these events. There’s no such thing as a benign newspaper proprietor. Even The Independent has shareholders to please. And The Guardian, which is guaranteed a degree of commercial neutrality because it is owned by the Scott Trust, is losing money faster than the Bank of England is printing it. The bottom has fallen out of local papers, commercially speaking. Cross-media ownership means that the fate of papers like The Sun and The Express is intimately linked to the commercial prospects of Sky TV and Channel 5. The Times loses money too. In other words commercial pressures in the newspaper industry are intense.

These pressures are passed very swiftly down the line to the journalist in the newsroom. We know from our colleagues in theMediaNet just how intense the pressure is on journalists to deliver more, bigger stories, more quickly, cutting corners if necessary. Journalists have to make impact if they are to keep their jobs at all. And if the editor says jump…

We can’t solve that. We’re not going to change the economic climate by preaching about it. It may be that we could constructively enter into the debate on press regulation. Is self-regulation still tenable? Surely the point of press regulation is to protect the vulnerable from the powerful. There must be something we can say about that from a distinctive Christian perspective.

One of the incidents of the Summer for me came from The Independent columnist Johan Hari. You might know that he was caught out inventing and plagiarising quotes and passing them off as material he had collected for his own original journalism. To make matters worse he used someone else’s name to alter several Wikipedia entries – saying nice things about himself and nasty things about his enemies. Hari has been suspended from The Independent for six months. Then presumably he’s going back to work. He is one of the Indy’s two star columnists. Lies or no lies they really can’t afford to lose him. He said in his public apology that part of his problem was that he’d been so good so young that he’d gone straight into journalism from university without any formal training. So he’s going to take a course in journalistic ethics.

I’m sorry? Which bit of journalistic training tells you not to make stuff up and pass it off as your own? I think it’s the bit I did in primary school. This isn’t a matter of training – it’s a matter of character. It is character, not training, that stops you hacking a murder victim’s mobile phone.

As I talked to my journalist friend before he rushed off to the conference hall we agreed that here was an area that the church might offer to the debate – not from a position of strength or challenge, but as concerned and critical friends. It’s about character, he said. We journalists really need to be reminded of what journalistic values can be when we are at our best. That doesn’t mean everything will change suddenly and there will be no more press scandals. It won’t take the pressure away, and it won’t stop the bad guys being bad. But we could at least acknowledge what it is that we aspire to….journalists and readers alike.

Whose idea was this? 

For those of us who have worked in a TV production office it won’t be a surprise that most of the bullying is male-on-female. But it may be more surprising that it is mid- to high earners who report the most bullying, and that the bullies are far more likely to be their managers than the on-screen talent. Instances of bullying have risen by at least 50% in the eight years since the survey was last undertaken. But few of those who felt bullied had taken any action, and almost two-thirds felt that the bullies had prospered in their careers because of their actions.   

 A Wake Up Call

A knock on the door from the police or a summons to the police station for questioning is pretty threatening at the best of times.  Raoul Simons was woken yesterday just before 6am. Simons is the deputy football editor of The Times. He was arrested by officers of Operation Weeting – the Met Police investigation into phone hacking at the News of the World.

Amelia Hill of the Guardian was also interviewed by the same police team earlier this week.   But the circumstances were very different – and potentially much more worrying. 

Simons was arrested on suspicion of phone hacking. Hill was questioned about the source of her recent stories about the investigation itself – stories which appear to have been leaked to her by Scotland Yard officers involved in the very same investigation.  There’s a world of difference between them. 

If Simons commissioned a PI to hack a footballer’s phone he has broken the law and should go to prison.  If Amelia Hill interviewed a police officer off the record she was doing what we want and expect a good journalist to do. She was trying to uncover the truth about what was going on.   She should have our support and admiration – and if she needs it, our protection.  If the police, politicians or anyone else for that matter puts pressure on a journalist to stop them asking difficult questions or publishing awkward facts we should be very worried indeed.  Some journalists may be corrupt, but there is nothing criminal about talking to sources off the record, overhearing conversations or receiving and publishing information from people who feel they are party to injustice.  In fact those activities need to be guarded.  When a journalist sets out to expose corruption they are acting on behalf of us all. 

The balance of power between politicians, police and journalists in this country is a very fine one.  It’s based on a fundamentally Christian understanding that all human beings are fallible, that all power (power to legislate, power to arrest and power to publish) has the potential to corrupt, but that acting together for the common good is the best way to regulate the excesses of this fallibility.  If one party – politicians, police or journalists – is stopped from doing their job properly the others will fall into patterns of abuse.  If one party uses their power excessively the others will be unable to function and the whole society will suffer.  

After the press scandals of the Summer it may be tempting to cheer when a hack gets their collar felt.  But beware.  We need journalists with integrity every bit as much as we need trustworthy coppers and self-denying politicians.  Every time a journalist is arrested or questioned by police we should take it as a wake-up call.  Amongst the many important issues we have to tackle following the Summer's phone-hacking revelations, we should ask searching questions about whether the balance of power between the three estates is still intact. 

 Dont Sack the Producer

You know that feeling you get when you’ve written an email and pushed the SEND button, and immediately regret it? Me too. And we’re not the only ones.

The Conservative commentator and talk show host Ian Dale tweeted on Monday evening, mocking the BBC journalists in Tripoli for staying in the comfort of their hotel while their colleagues from Sky News were out on the streets embedded with the rebel fighters. Almost immediately he was bombarded by outraged tweeters who knew the real story. The BBC news team were holed up in the Rixos Hotel, surrounded by Gaddafi loyalists who were taking pot shots at them. They were – if not hostages – at least prisoners of the fading regime’s most hardline fighters. Their lives were under threat. The fact that they were still broadcasting at all was an act of remarkable bravery.

Ian Dale had tweeted too soon, without checking the facts. To his credit he retracted his tweet. He didn’t delete it – which might have been a sort of cowardice. But he made it clear that he knew he was wrong, apologised, and made a donation to the Rory Peck Trust – the charity that supports the families of freelance newsgatherers killed in the course of their work. *

The following day I was walking to work and checking my Twitter stream. The sun was shining. As I read one innocuous tweet from someone I half-know a joke formed in my mind. It wasn’t all that funny, and it was mildly at the expense of someone else, but I tweeted it anyway. I think I did it largely because it passed the time on my way to a meeting.

I regretted it instantly, and deleted it. But by that time it had been retweeted by someone else…so it was out.

This never happens to me when I’m writing scripts for broadcast. And the reason it doesn’t is that there is always a producer and/or editor whose job it is to cast a “second pair of eyes” over what I’ve written. Of course that doesn’t absolve me from the responsibility to think carefully about what I am writing or saying or allowing on air. But the producer provides a check – with authority and experience. They give feedback before the event.

A producer is so much more than a programme manager. That’s why, if a programme is libellous or illegal it’s the producer, not the presenter, who will stand in the dock. They represent the interests of the audience – including those audience members who are most vulnerable or likely to be harmed by what’s being said or shown. The producer balances my freedom to say what I want to say on air with the welfare of the person who’s going to hear or see what I’ve written. That doesn’t mean that no audience member must ever be harmed, offended or made fun of. But it does mean there’s at least some balancing of the tremendous power of an open microphone. These are often fine judgements. Good producers can’t be made overnight. They need to be trained and mentored as I was in my earliest days in TV.

These days I’m quite long in the tooth as a broadcaster. Most of the producers I work with are younger than me and have less awards on their mantlepieces. When producers criticise a script that I’ve submitted I often think they are wrong. But I very rarely gainsay them. Getting my own way in a script meeting has to be weighed against respect for the office.

I’m worried when I hear about smaller radio stations and RSLs who are cutting budgets by dispensing with producers and investing what money they have in on-air talent. Beware – the Radio 2 Ross/Brand affair of a couple of years ago wasn’t a failure of presenters but of producers.

I’m worried too, when big-name talent insists on having Executive Producer billing on a programme. Ant and Dec, Lee Mack and Simon Cowell are all currently doing this. Sometimes it’s a vanity thing. Sometimes it’s a way of talent making sure that they can get their way on every editorial judgement call. But it’s a dangerous precedent that has led to some of the worst muddles in TV and radio over the last few years.

It’s often said that social media makes us all broadcasters. But it might be more accurate to say that social media makes us all producers. In cyberspace, instead of a college of producers who are senior figures with long experience, we have hundreds of thousands of social networkers publishing to their hearts’ content. The democratisation of the media is a wonderful thing. But it’s also risky. Without the moderating influence of the producer/editor every individual needs to take responsibility for the consequences of every tweet, status update or boo. Although I’ve been producing programmes for years I’m not sure I’m all that well equipped to be the sole editor of my own content. But the technology gives me no choice. Guarding what you say on your social network is no different to guarding what you say with your tongue – and of course the Bible has plenty to say about that.


* 97 journalists were killed in the course of their work in 2010. You can find details of the Rory Peck Trust at www.rorypecktrust.org.

Too Much Reality?  

The Silence of Lambeth

It must be true…

Could a newly-discovered collection of apparently ancient books known as the "lead codices" change our entire understanding of Christianity? The BBC’s Middle East correspondent Kevin Connolly went to see the collection and then filed a report for Monday’s Today programme on Radio 4. The answer, he concluded, was no. He couldn’t find a single expert to give any credence to the “discovery.” Indeed, he said, there is a huge market for faked antiquities in the Middle East. “There are enough fragments of the true cross to make a wooden aircraft carrier”.

It’s a strange image, and curiously precise. An aircraft carrier – not a frigate. And a wooden one – rather hard to imagine. I wondered how many fragments of the true cross it would take to make an aircraft carrier – and how the normally-meticulous Kevin Connolly had researched this fact.

He hadn’t of course. He had grabbed an old piece of folk-lore and repeated it as if it were a fact. My guess is he was reaching for a phrase from the Protestant Reformer John Calvin, who remarked sarcastically in his Treatise on Relics that if all the supposed fragments of the True Cross were put together they would fill a large ship.

Why does this matter? There are surely worse crimes alleged against reporters than using a lazy image in middle of a fairly inconsequential report. But it does matter - because it offers a groundless supposition in the guise of a fact. And that myth is not harmless. In this case it makes Christian believers look credulous.

Over the past few weeks the media has been in its perennial Summer season of self-obsession. This year’s focus has been on the invasion of privacy by phone hacking, and the collusion of journalists with police and politicians. It is a serious business. But I’m not sure which part of it we are supposed to find surprising. There have always been some wealthy people ready to use their money to buy influence. There have always been a few corrupt police. And there’s a reason why journalists are called “hacks.”

But whilst the public conversation focuses on the dubious practices of some tabloid journalists something else has been going on further up the media market. Multi-award winning writer Johann Hari has been suspended by The Independent pending an investigation. He is alleged to have spiced-up his interviews with “quotes” that were either borrowed from other sources or completely made up. And this week the veteran interviewer Lynn Barber was successfully sued for libel and malicious falsehood over a book review she wrote for The Daily Telegraph. These are two very senior broadsheet journalists who appear to have been lying. Not hacking voicemails or invading privacy or paying for stories. Just making stuff up.

Journalists throughout history have used undercover means to get at the truth. That’s their job. Yes, we need to re-examine the limits of acceptability in this. And we as consumers need to ask ourselves why we have (literally) bought into the invasion of privacy of minor celebrities and murder victims. But we mustn’t allow journalists to be hindered in exposing corruption and injustice, even if they sometimes need to break the law to do so.

But much more important is the primacy of truth, factual accuracy, integrity – call it what you will. The great newspaper proprietor CP Scott wrote that "A [newspaper's] primary office is the gathering of news. At the peril of its soul it must see that the supply is not tainted." So please don’t tell me how Amy Winehouse died or what motivated Anders Breivik unless and until you know for sure. In fact, don’t bother to tell me how Amy Winehouse died at all. It’s none of my business. For journalists, and for Christians, facts are sacred, like fragments of the true cross on which the hope of the world lives or dies. If you pretend you have one when you know you haven’t, you are not just fooling yourself – you are devaluing the only currency that really matters.

First published in Friday Night Theology by the Evangelical Alliance.  Used by permission.

 Freaks, Geeks and Antiques?

Are Christians fairly represented on mainstream TV?

Earlier this month the BBC published the results of a consultation about diversity in its output.  2000 members of the public and 300 BBC staff answered questions about the representation of minority groups and opinions. One of the most prominent conclusions of the consultation concerned the portrayal of Christians and other religious groups. According to the report;

“there were many who perceived the BBC to be anti-Christian and as such misrepresenting Christianity.”

One respondent summed up the views of many when he said “I find that the BBC’s representation of Christianity is mainly inaccurate, portraying incorrect, often derogatory stereotypes. It is also wholly disproportionate in representation of Christians and Christianity in programming i.e. not representing Christians fairly numerically.”

I was able to ask BBC1 Controller, Danny Cohen,  about this during an interview at this week’s Church and Media Conference.  Specifically I asked whether he could point to Christians who weren’t portrayed on TV as “freaks, geeks or antiques.” He suggested Eastenders’ Dot Branning (aka Dot Cotton) who he said was "a single example of someone who lives out her faith on television in a charitable way." The audible groans around the hall suggested that the audience weren’t 100% convinced by this. Dot has been in Albert Square for almost all of its 25 years. She’s played by the wonderful June Brown MBE, who is 84. So much as we love her, she probably counts as an antique. So who else is there on TV to represent the wider Christian community? Well, Eastenders’ Pentecostal pastor-turned murderer Lucas probably counts as a freak. Lovable vicar Adam Smallbone from Rev is certainly a geek. Where do we go from there? Rev Lovejoy from The Simpsons? Geek. Fathers Ted, Dougal and Jack? Freak, geek and antique respectively – a triple whammy!

So why does this happen? Does it matter? And if so, what’s to be done about it?

Three things occur to me.

1 It’s partly true. By any external standards Christians are a strange and diverse lot. Dot Cotton wouldn’t be out of place in many congregations around the UK. And it is the nature of the Christian gospel to welcome people who are outcasts and oddballs alongside those who are stylish and slick. Many clergy are as awkward and ill-at-ease with the world as Rev Smallbone – and none the worse for that. Maybe we should celebrate the eccentric portrayal of Christians as an object lesson in the inclusivity of the church. But it remains true that Dot is just a tiny part of the contemporary Christian story. Churches are opening as fast as pubs are closing, and many of them are populated by young, trendy and completely non-geeky believers. They just don’t seem to live near Albert Square.

2 The BBC does better than most. The very fact that the BBC has asked itself these questions about diversity is to be applauded. There are other broadcasters who barely feature religious viewpoints at all, and are much less self-aware. The BBC is often unfairly knocked precisely because it tries so hard to fulfil a public service role.

3 Christians can make a difference. One of the interesting features of the BBC diversity consultation was that for the first time, as far as I can recall, staff were asked about their own religious convictions. Of the 272 self-selecting staff who responded, 37% described themselves as Christian. That may sound a lot, but it is almost exactly half the number who described themselves as Christian in the 2001 Census. By contrast 50% of the BBC staff described themselves as having “no religion.” That’s more than three times the number who had “no religion” according to the census. Broadcasting is a liberal, secular industry. There’s no doubt that journalists of quality work hard to represent views other than their own. But the under-representation of Christians and the over-representation of secularists on the BBC staff must have an impact. If nothing else, it means that there will be a disproportionately low level of understanding of what it means to have faith. It’s no wonder that Christians are presented as strange, if Christianity itself is foreign so many programme-makers.

So what is to be done? The church needs to recognise the media as a legitimate vocation. Writers write about what they know and actors act out of their experience. Producers produce programmes for the audience as they understand it. The Christian community needs to encourage its brightest and most creative members to consider working in the creative industries. We must repopulate the media with clear-thinking, talented people who know about faith from the inside. That’s what theMediaNet.org is all about.

Finally we should take up the challenge from Danny Cohen (who incidentally described his own Jewish faith as important in his day-to-day life and work) to be much less shy in telling the stories of what God and his people are doing in ways that broadcasters simply can’t avoid.