Category: Media

A DISMAL TIME FOR POLITICS

 

THE RESHUFFLE.

I would have backed Preston North MP and Security Minister Ben Wallace to be the new Defence Secretary. He was in impressive form at a terrorism seminar I attended during the Tory Party conference in Manchester. He probably lost out to Gavin Williamson because he was a staunch supporter of Boris Johnson in last year’s Tory leadership election.

But at least we have seen the promotion of another North West MP. Esther McVey was reflecting recently at a Downtown event about the fluctuating fortunes of a political life. Defeated in Wirral West in 2015, she was back representing Tatton after this year’s General Election. Now she is promoted to Deputy Chief Whip, a key post in a hung parliament where the government is trying to drive through our exit from the European Union.

THE SCANDAL.

The reshuffle was made necessary by the resignation of Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon as the crisis over MPs sexual behaviour began to unravel.

The reputation of our MPs has never recovered from the 2009 expenses scandal. The disillusionment, which partly explains the Brexit vote, was still with us as the latest revelations about sexual misbehaviour and misogyny broke. It affects all political parties so hopefully we can be spared party point scoring. The solution will require MPs to loosen further their adherence to the view that, as independent legislators, they must be free of outside regulation.

But the damage is done. It remains true that most MPs enter public life to make society a better place, but the cynics who have always claimed that they are in it for what they can get out of it feel vindicated. The critics who say MPs adopt a high moral tone in debates which is not matched by their private behaviour, have been proved right in some cases.

BEYOND PARODY.

The toxic chemistry of people with power being near young employees desperate for jobs is also present in the media.

So, it jarred with me that Radio Five Live’s Pienaar’s Politics recently had the presenter discussing MPs inappropriate behaviour one minute and following it immediately with a feature where a female MP was invited to say whether she would “snog, marry or avoid “a series of male politicians.

While I’m at it here’s another “beyond parody” moment from my week’s radio listening. Footballer Joey Barton, banned from football after betting on games he was playing in, was giving expert analysis on a talkSPORT commentary of Leicester v Everton where his fellow commentator was giving frequent plugs for betfair.

THE ROSCOE LECTURES.

Sticking to the media theme, I attended a lecture by the BBC Director General Tony Hall this week in Liverpool. He was the latest speaker in the Roscoe Lecture series promoted by Liverpool John Moores University. All credit to them for the events they mount in the impressive St George’s Hall.

The DG was worrying about the growing spending power of Netflix and Amazon. The bigger danger to the BBC comes from the constant sniping of the Murdoch press trying to bring down one of our few remaining assets that is the envy of a world where trash programmes peppered with advertising are the norm.

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FLAGS: A LEGACY OF THE BNP

FLAGS.

Emily Thornbury has increased the impression that Labour is tightly run by a middle class bunch from North London out of touch with working people and immune to advice from all but a tight circle of inexperienced advisers. 

She had to go. That said, the now almost non existent British National Party, is a factor in this row. I remember when houses in Burnley were draped in Union Jacks or English flags as a definite statement of support for the BNP. They appropriated the symbols of our patriotism. The very sad result is that there can be doubts about why flags are being displayed and ordinary patriots can be misunderstood.

On the by election itself, it wasn’t the landslide UKIP hoped for. Let’s hope that ,”I make it up as I go along” Farage, continues to be questioned on all the policies a party needs to be convincing on, if it wants to hold the balance of power

 

 

KEEP PUNISHING THE BANKERS.

 

 

That household name Niilo Jaaskinen has spoken for the millions of people across Europe and the UK still suffering the consequences of the reckless banking practices that nearly wrecked western economies six years ago.

 

The Advocate General of the EU Court of Justice has rejected Britain’s challenge to its cap on bankers’ bonuses. Not that it was very draconian. These bankers get paid a fortune in salaries in the first place. The cap is only to restrict bonuses to 100% of banker’s pay or 200% with shareholder approval.

 

Yet George Osborne indulges in the old shroud waving about bankers taking their business away from Britain. They won’t do that George. They love the London lifestyle, the overheated property market that they can speculate in and a British government that still has some way to go in curbing the reckless behaviour that still continues. As this week’s fines indicate these people have learnt very little.

 

The indictment list is long and disgraceful. Reckless lending followed by unjustified refusals to lend to small business, mis-selling of payment protection, currency and lending rate manipulation and at a local level the closure of branches, attempts to scrap the cheque and force people into on line banking.

 

 

BBC LICENCE FEE.

 

I chaired a good debate on the future of the BBC licence fee this week at the Nations and Regions Media conference in Salford. It is going to become a hot topic right after the election when the BBC’s charter is up for renewal.

 

I think we would be crazy to put in jeopardy one of our finest institutions, admired the world over. We export British culture and values all over the world via BBC programmes, and earn a lot of revenue. The creative flow is dependent on a well resourced BBC in this country and that is what is under threat.

 

The BBC has many media enemies who envy the £3.7bn of public money. They see the BBC as a threat to their commercial interests and take every opportunity to pour bile on the BBC. £3.7bn is a lot of money and the corporation has given its opponents plenty of opportunities to criticise in recent years.

 

Massive pay-offs to executives and the Savile scandal have tarnished the brand but set against that are excellent programmes like Sherlock, The Fall, Strictly Come Dancing, Radio 4 comedy and any British State occasion. All this for 40p a day. Compare that to your sky high Sky package cost.

 

The licence fee negotiations will be fraught, particularly if the Conservatives are the majority party. Some Tory backbenchers still regard it as the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation and are backing a bill to decriminalise non payment of the fee which lands people with a criminal record. Then there is the issue of technology. You can now access recorded BBC programmes on I Player without a licence. Will decriminalisation and the growth in new media access undermine the principal of paying to watch the BBC?

 

Harriet Harman, the Shadow Media minister spoke in Salford and said nobody had come up with a better model for funding the BBC that had convinced her. Of course there are other models including sponsorship and subscription, but how much would you be prepared to pay? Then, God forbid, there is advertising. My enjoyment of ITV drama is considerably reduced by the quarter of an hour per hour of adverts. Let that not come to the BBC.

 

 

WHAT FUTURE FOR LOCAL MEDIA?

CAN LOCAL PAPERS SURVIVE ALONGSIDE THE BBC?

 

Some years ago regional papers managed to block the BBC improving their local websites with more news and video content. They claimed their circulation figures were being hit by the publicly funded broadcaster and this would be made worse if the BBC was allowed to upgrade its local website. The net result has been impoverished BBC local websites, the dropping of plans for a BBC Radio Cheshire and a continuing steep decline in traditional newspaper sales.

 

The threat to the local press came not from the BBC but the availability of on line news and the loss of advertising to the internet. The public who want news of the North were not well served by this ridiculous spat.

 

There are now signs of a truce between the BBC and local papers. On BBC sites in Leeds and Liverpool “Local Live” is a new initiative which signposts stories from non-BBC outlets including the Huddersfield Examiner, Yorkshire Post and the hyper local Leeds site The City Talking.

 

This thaw in relations can be put down to the new BBC Director of News James Harding. He came from the editorship of The Times and as a newspaper man was well placed when it came to handing out the olive branches at a recent conference in Salford. He correctly observed that the BBC and local papers were in the same business of informing people about what was going on in the North and holding people to account.

 

WHO WILL REPORT THE NORTH?

 

Let’s hope that row is over and the BBC initiative to share stories isn’t cynically connected to charter renewal, but we are still left with an uncertain future about how the North is going to be reported. There is still a strong appetite for local news. Five million people tune in each night to look North, Look North West and the other regional BBC programmes.

 

While newspapers are seeing their readership of traditional papers haemorrhage, they claim there is a huge migration to reading stories on line. But what is the quality of the journalism available in profusion at the click of a button. There are certainly less professional journalists around to hold our councillors to account and little money for expensive in depth investigations. The internet gives everyone a chance to be a “citizen journalist” but where does fact end and opinion begin?

The newspaper publishers are in a vicious circle. They sack the journalists to maintain profits. There is less quality news, more readers are lost and the cycle begins again.

 

Who cares if the papers die? I see very few people under 30 actually reading a paper. Alison Gow used to work on the now defunct Liverpool Daily Post. She put the question starkly at the recent Salford conference, “why would you have newspapers when you have better delivery methods by computer, tablet and phone?” The key question is can the newspaper owners make the new model pay? The jury is still out on the limited experiments to make people pay to access content.

 

LOCAL TV?

 

We may be looking at a future of papers exclusively on line, social media, citizen journalists, hyper local TV and social media to report the North. Will local TV be part of this? Franchises were issued across the North over a year ago but the owners are struggling to make the economic model work. Good luck to Bay TV in Liverpool which is run by some excellent people that deserve more backing than they have been getting from local business. We wait to see if the stations in places like Manchester and Lancashire get off the ground.

THE LAST POST

The decision to close the Liverpool Post is the latest milestone on a road that could leave us with no printed newspapers at all.

 

In embarking on this subject I have to be careful not to wallow in too much nostalgia about nestling in the armchair with the rustle of the paper and ink on the fingers. I need to acknowledge that the casual swipe of the hand across tablet and smart phone is equally exciting for a new generation informing itself about current events.

 

For it is the largely free access to news at the press of a button that has done for the papers. People liked the instant access provided by the internet revolution and the advertisers have followed them. The huge loss of advertising revenue and the drying up of sales at the newsagent is seeing papers fighting a losing battle to continue in printed form.

 

Alan Rushbridger, the editor of the Guardian, has said that in fifty years people will be amazed to be told that once huge printers rolled off millions of papers at midnight that were them transported by lorry through the nights to thousands of shops. The economics stacked up in the era before 24 hour radio and TV news but not now.

 

I can easily see the total demise of printed newspapers although attempts are being made to keep them going by making them free.

 

So why am I sad to see the Liverpool Post go? Isn’t it just the latest development in communications which began with cave painting and Egyptian hieroglyphics? The monks changed all that with their portable illuminated manuscripts. Caxton disrupted the medieval world with the printing press and Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web which so many people rely on now to get their news.

 

I regret the ending of the Liverpool Post for a number of reasons. The parochial one is that the city has lost a publication that was full of great content from its business pages to its investigative journalism headed up by Marc Waddington. Some of this will continue to appear in the Liverpool Echo but that paper has sold its soul to a diet of crime and sensation which gives a very distorted image of Merseyside. That’s the price you pay when you engage in a futile chase for readers. “If it bleeds, it leads” is one of the most odious sayings I have had to live with in my journalistic career.

 

But on a wider front I wonder if there is a danger we are all going to become niche consumers of news. With the tablet and smart phone you inevitably concentrate on the particular story you are interested in. Your eyes don’t stray across the pages and notice something else you might be interested in. You don’t get the whole deal that a newspaper provides between its covers: the news, comment, features, pictures, the crossword and sport.

 

Let’s hope that, behind pay walls, some great journalism survives in the e-newspapers of the future. But they will be competing with the blogs and websites of citizen journalism. What is the truth will become a very pertinent question

 

The people are speaking and newspapers will die. There is no licence fee to protect a high quality paper from market forces. There is such a fee to protect the BBC although some papers, in their death throes, are trying to remove it.

 

A world without newspapers is going to be bad enough. Protect us from the BBC with a quarter of an hour per hour of advertising.