Page 175 - Culture Society and the Media

NEGOTIATION OF CONTROL IN THE MEDIA 165
organization, and both journalists and news organizations are able largely to have
their way with what most concerns them.
Tactical autonomy and strategic control Despite some real autonomy in
tactical detail (at the operational level), however, communicators can be
strategically controlled (at the level of policy implementation) by notions
accepted within their own occupation and more broadly within the media
organization. For example, accepted ‘professional truths’ about how an interview
should be conducted, what kinds of people are ‘names’, the appropriate budget
for a particular ‘time-slot’ and so on are all important; above all, communicators
can be constrained by the past performance of their organization in terms of
learning what is ‘acceptable’. This comes through clearly in Tom Burns’s study
of BBC professionals: ‘What is drummed into producers is that if there is any
doubt in their minds about a topic, or viewpoint, or film sequence, or contributor
they must refer up to their chief editor, or head of department’ (Burns, 1977, p.
195). At the same time, of course, it is open to the individual to push forward the
boundaries of acceptability, but this is more likely to be allowed to happen at times
of economic buoyancy or, in the case of the BBC, when the spectre of the Royal
Commission is less visible. Thus, in the middle 1960s, the BBC could pioneer
new forms of political satire in ‘That Was the Week That Was’, of drama in the
Wednesday Play slot, of comedy in ‘Monty Python’. These forms provoked an
enormous amount of public comment and protest which the BBC firmly
withstood.
By the beginning of the 1970s, with Annan appearing in the middle distance,
the mood had changed. A programme entitled ‘Yesterday’s Men’, concerned
with the Labour opposition leaders one year after their ousting in the General
Election of 1970, produced a violent political storm to which the BBC was
forced to react publicly—by setting up the Complaints Commission. Tracey
(1978) in his case study of the episode highlights the dual role of the BBC in
both controlling and protecting its employees. Despite sanctions and changes
imposed after the event, the programme-makers had, in fact, a great deal of
freedom to develop and implement their conception of what the programme should
be like. Little overt censorship was apparent at any stage. The policy of ‘referral
upwards’ appeared to work in favour of the communicators through the
invocation of ‘professionalism’ as a joint response—of both executives and
producer—to outside attack. However, there is little doubt that the ‘Yesterday’s
Men’ episode has entered into the organizational lore as an example of what is, or
is not, ‘acceptable’. As the programme’s producer said: ‘Nobody must do
“Yesterday’s Men” again. You mustn’t. Better be safe than imaginative’
(Tracey, 1978, p. 201). The Annan Committee itself subsequently related these
events to changes in the social and political climate:

Hitherto it had been assumed—apart from the occasional flurry over a
programme—that Britain had ‘solved’ the problem of the political relations
of broadcasting to Government, Parliament and the public. Now people of