Page 66 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 45

THE POLITICAL MEDIA
still very much on the agenda in Britain. The Labour government elected in
1997 adopted European human rights legislation, as well as, for the first time
in Britain, freedom of information legislation.

THE BROADCASTING ENVIRONMENT

While the press has from the beginning functioned essentially as a set of
capitalist businesses, broadcasting has taken a variety of organisational
forms. In the US, radio and later television – like the press – were developed
commercially, funded by advertising revenue. In Soviet Russia and the fascist
states of the 1930s and 1940s, broadcasting was co-opted as a propaganda
tool of authoritarian government. In Britain, however, broadcasting was
conceived and born as a ‘utility to be developed as a national service in the
public interest’ (Scannell and Cardiff, 1991, p. 8).
Development in this form was preferred for one main reason: the per-
ception, among politicians, social scientists and intellectuals, that broad-
casting was a uniquely powerful medium. Too powerful, in fact, to be placed
in the hands of untrammelled commercial interests. Too powerful, also, to
be left vulnerable to political abuse. None of the parties in Britain’s multi-
party democracy wished to permit the possibility of any of its rivals gaining
control of broadcasting for the pursuit of its own interests. Thus, the British
Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) came into being as a publicly-funded (from
taxation, in the form of a licence fee) but politically independent institution,
protected from interference in its activities by the government of the day.
Even when commercial principles were allowed to enter the British
broadcasting arena with the establishment of the Independent Television
network in 1954, legislation was passed to prohibit its output from being
subjected to undue political or economic pressure.
The public service duopoly, comprising by 1982 four channels (BBC1,
BBC2, ITV and Channel 4) lasted until the late 1980s, when the flowering
of cable and satellite technologies, reinforced by the Conservative govern-
ment’s policy of broadcasting deregulation, began to erode it. By 2003
British viewers had access to dozens of television channels, most of them
financed by subscription revenues and advertising. With the introduction of
digital TV in 1998 and the BBC’s takeover of digital terrestrial TV from ITV
in 2002, Britain was well on the way to becoming what America had already
been for many years: a multi-channel broadcasting environment.
Unlike the press, British broadcasting has always been subject to close
regulation, both by legal means and through regulatory bodies such as the
Independent Television Commission and the Broadcasting Standards
Commission. These monitor the performance of the broadcasters to ensure
that it is consistent with public service criteria such as good taste, diversity
and, of particular relevance to the present discussion, political impartiality.

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