THE PRESS
Dennis Hackett
The Free Communications Group was born two years ago, an unwanted child, and oft referred to in Fleet Street boardrooms with the perjorative epithet such unfortunates are labelled with in vulgar circles. It has nonetheless shown unexpected v:gour and is now being accorded a hearing, grudging or not, in the media, which it criticises.
Since its birth, it has more than doubled its membership and now has about 500 devotees, not all necessarily entirely at ease with the group's basic belief in social ownership of the communications, but all united in the belief that there is too much manipulation of media for commercial ends by business interests and that this is likely to get worse rather than better unless something is done about it.
It covers press, television and radio and has grown provincial offshoots. Currently its council is considering a fuller statement of its aims, but while there might be some confusion over what it does want, there is no doubt about what it doesn't want. It doesn't, for instance, want the ITA to have the fourth channel, in fact, it doesn't believe that the issue is who should have it but whether there should be one. Hurrah for that. It is alarmed about the potential for commercial exploitation in Mr Christopher Chataway's Bill on commercial radio and not particularly keen on Mr Chataway either.
The group sees itself as a propaganda group, remedying the failure of journalists and broadcasters to be a sounding board for what people feel. It wants more say about what should be said for the people who do the saying. It could easily have been dismissed in its early days as a disaffected throng led by intellectual elitists but, whether that was ever so, it has grown into a loose but quite effective body; effective because it is asking questions that might otherwise not be asked and spreading words that might otherwise only be whispered.
Its open forum on the subject of the fourth channel was well and significantly attended. In its doubts about the value of a fourth channel it also has attracted allies of whom it is a bit wary itself and who, undoubtedly, are wary of it: members of the Bow Group, Mrs Mary Whitehouse, large advertisers who fear the effect of the channel on their rates.
It is run by a twenty-strong council, who meet with the absenteeism indivisible from working in the communications field, every week. This week it has held another forum, this time on the coverage of Northern Ireland.
The more it does, the more members it gets and possibly the more balanced politically will it become. It hopes to engage attention of the Orpington man — that Fleet Street commuter who lives a life almost cut off from his fellowman, bounded by his hours of work and separated by its pace from communication with people outside his own field.
The group are also prepared to embrace members of the technical sides of their industries, though I must say that I am wary about this one. I can imagine a compositor, for instance, having strong opinions about what ought or ought not to be published in our joint sounding board, but I can't imagine him letting me touch his metal in a brotherly spirit — 'likewise with studio technicians.
Still, in all, my view is that the Free Communications Group is by its very existence providing a much-needed cohesion between people who work in the media and those who are at all worried by its political orientation (which is left) can for £2 redress the balance, join and put in their twopennyworth. It is time in communications that the pawns proved that they are concerned not just about the pay scales but about the product.
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