Responsible News

Throughout 2004 the responsibility of journalists was, somewhat ironically, a running story in the media. This began with the release of the Hutton Report in the UK, prepared by a government-appointed judge, to inquire into the circumstances surrounding the apparent suicide of the weapons inspector David Kelly. The judge chose to focus on one part of one report on the BBC, and (contestably) determined that Kelly had been misrepresented. To many observers' consternation, Hutton prioritised his condemnation of the BBC's professionalism and management structure for allowing and then defending the radio report. Commenting on the Hutton Report, Professor Noam Chomsky suggested that "the idea that the state - whether hiding itself beyond a judge's robes or not - should even have a voice in whether a journalist's report was 'unfounded' is utterly shocking... can you imagine an inquiry into whether a press report praising state or corporate power was 'unfounded'?"59 What the row over the BBC's coverage of the lead up to the invasion of Iraq did was raise a debate about media integrity and independence.

In May, the New York Times published an apology for its coverage of the issue of whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. They wrote that the "accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried." 60 The apology itself was somewhat buried on Page A10, and not as long as last year's front-page corrective on Jayson Blair, even though the implications are more significant.

The New York Times was not unusual amongst newspapers in its reporting of the run up to war, while television news was even more questionable. One academic study found that the more commercial television news people watched, the more incorrect they were likely to be about basic facts concerning the war on Iraq. In a major survey of viewers, researchers from the University of Maryland found those who watched the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News channel, in particular, were more likely to hold basic misperceptions.61

News of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners broke in the spring, and the Mirror newspaper in the UK came under fire for printing pictures of alleged abuse by British soldiers, which turned out to be probable fakes. Yet just as questionable as the Mirror's stance was the rest of the British media, including the BBC, who omitted relevant facts in order to argue that the paper and its editor had unfairly slurred soldiers, rather than having been hoaxed. For example, at the time of this row, both Amnesty International and the Red Cross released detailed reports on the abuse of prisoners and killing of civilians by the British army in Iraq.62

For its part, the BBC has been looking to address afresh its responsibilities as a broadcaster. At a seminar about the future of BBC journalism prompted by the Hutton Report, in-house Ariel magazine reported that John Simpson, the BBC's grandly titled world affair's editor, asked the corporation to appoint a news ombudsman to overview complaints, a system already in place at the Guardian, for example. Simpson argued 'It could be helpful to have an individual who was entirely objective, who looked at everything you damn well said.'63 This approach rests upon sandbanks of assumptions, particularly that objectivity is both possible and desirable, and that issues of responsibility can be addressed by focusing on the work of individual reporters.

Firstly, social scientists reveal how 'objectivity' is often really just a particular subjectivity that is widely shared - and that it might be widely shared because it is shaped by powerful systemic forces, such as capitalism, patriarchy or racism.64 Instead, claims of integrity and validity in one's reporting can be based on your efforts to be conscious of your own subjectivity, to reflect on it, question it, and be open about it.65 Therefore, one would need to consider the influences on one's own perceptions and perspective, especially if those influences act on many people, and so structure society. In addition, as this 'critical subjectivity' does not assume a single truth that can be objectively known, so one's validity and integrity also stems from one's support for pluralizing the voices and perspectives on an issue. It is a responsibility toward democratic debate. There is no pot of objectivity at the end of the rainbow, just a colourful spectrum of subjectivities, which must not be dulled by consolidation. The policy implication of this understanding is that we need plural biases in media outlets.

Some social scientists argue that we should not focus our consideration of media responsibilities on individual reporters, editors or managers, as there is a systemic problem affecting media output. Noam Chomsky has argued that despite the endeavours of committed journalists, the corporate media generally filters the news agenda in five ways. First, the business interests of the owner companies influences reporting. Second, media managers need to please (and certainly not upset) current and potential advertisers. Third, journalists often rely on press releases from organizations with a commercial interest in influencing the media. This reliance has increased as profit objectives restrict the amount of time most journalists have to research stories. Fourth, journalists that rock the boat are liable to professional criticism and sometimes litigation. A fifth filter is a blind acceptance of neoliberal economic ideology, so that many journalists are bemused at, and uninterested in, fundamental critiques of the economic system.66 These filters help to shape the media profession as a whole, and therefore the activity of non-corporate broadcasters as well.

Most media outlets in the world are run for a profit by corporations, suggesting a systemic bias that militates against a true plurality of voices - which does not just mean a quantity of voices, but qualitatively different voices. In any case, the growth in TV channels, for example, masks how the quantity of voices is in decline: it has been estimated that 40% of all media in the world are controlled by just five transnational corporations.67> Given the arguments above, these large corporations pose a social dilemma by their very existence. At the very least, lobbying to enable ever greater consolidation of media ownership, and undermining of non-commercial media, become issues of corporate irresponsibility. Yet such practices are business-as-usual for many media companies  even to the extent that they become the government.

For example, in the US, Michael Powell, whose family has major interests in AoL, chaired the Federal Communications Commission, which controversially proposed new legislation removing restrictions on media ownership.68 In May, Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi legalised a media reform bill, which facilitated further consolidation. Critics of Prime Minister Berlusconi claimed this would further increase his already gargantuan power over the means of mass communication in the country. Berlusconi, Italy's richest man, owns two newspapers and Mediaset, which includes 3 private television stations. That month the chairman of the state media TV company RAI, Lucia Annunziata, resigned in protest at excessive governmental intervention. RAI's chairwoman claimed that this involvement was intended to "completely destroy the profile of the corporation" which would lead to "the annulment of every type of autonomy and pluralism."69 With this de facto control of RAI, Berlusconi has direct or indirect influence of 9 tenths of Italy's TV out put, posing a threat to democratic discourse. Democracy requires a cacophony of birdsong, not the monotonous dirge from a powerful elite.