6 JULY 1962, Page 9

The Philosophy of Pilkington

By HENRY FAIRLIE

F it had not, by caricaturing its own argu- Iments and conclusions, already ruled itself out of serious consideration, the Pilkington Report would be disastrous. In the event, it is only stupid, and a sad waste of time.

Since everyone is declaring their interests in this matter, I should perhaps say that I am no particular friend of ITV. Indeed, when I last wrote on the subject, I concluded: `by the size of their profits, the great networking companies have made themselves grotesque; by the use of their power, they have made themselves intoler- able to a free country.' I stand by those words.

But the Pilkington Report does two. things which make a significant and practicable reform of ITV more difficult:

I. It has put the clock back eight years. It in- vites us to return to the sterile argument between the virtues of a public service and a commercial service. In doing this, it has, in the spirit if not in the letter,, defied its terms of reference.

2. By making a wholly unpracticable proposal for the reform of ITV—that it should remain a commercial enterprise, but be run without true commercial incentives—it has made it easy for the defenders of the present establishMent in ITV to oppose it and ridicule it, and by that much, therefore, easier for them to oppose any sensible and workable reform.

Where did the Report go wrong? The short answer is: from the beginning.

The Language of the Report

Mr. Richard Hoggart's influence on the Report has been widely noticed; and the language of the Report reveal how this influence has worked. It is less by Mr. Hoggart alone than by Mr. Hog- Bart out of Miss Joyce Grenfell: it is the ideas (f Mr. Hoggart (never very clear at the best of times) transmuted by people unused to deal- jag in ideag. The result is this kind of unthink- ing stuff :

. . broadcasting must be in a constant and sensitive relationship with the moral condition of society. [Para. 42.] . . . a constant and living engagement with

the ,moral condition of society. [Para. 83.]

. . . a constant and living relationship with the moral condition of scciety [Para. 89.] . . . a responsible engagement with the moral condition of society. [Para. 122.]

'these phrases are repeated, I suspect, because they cannot be defined. They hold no meaning for me. Possibly they hold some meaning for

Mr. Hoggart, since he trades in them. But I am certain that they hold no meaning for the

majority of the Pilkington Committee, and have been used simply because they sound lofty, and give a comfortable feeling of moral superiority. Or, take another passage, obviously inspired by Mr. Hoggart:

If viewers—'the public'—are thought of as `the mass audience,' or 'the majority,' they will be offered only the average of common ex- perience and awareness; the 'ordinary'; the commonplace—for what all know and do is, by definition, commonplace. [Para. 46.]

The whole of this sentence is composed of barely perceptible mergings of meanings, so that 'average' becomes 'ordinary,' then 'common- place,' and then 'commonplace' suitably defined. By this sleight-of-hand, three separate words, with valuably distinct meanings, are given the meaning, not only of 'trite,' but of 'inevitably trite.'

Of course, it is not only Mr. Hoggart's in- fluence that is obvious. There is one honestly trite sentence: [A] programme may be gay and frivolous— light as a souff16--and yet not be trivial. [Para. 98.]

There is the authentic voice—and who would wish it, in its proper place, silenced?—of Miss Joyce Grenfell.

The Assumptions of the Report

The language of the Report is, of course, directly related to its assumptions, and it is these which are of the most importance. From. them, opaquely stated, the rest follows.

1. Television is one of the main factors in- fluencing the values and moral attitudes of our society., The Committee has to assume this: otherwise, it would not be able to take itself so

solemnly, and would be able to offer no justifica- tion of the restrictive, regulatory, proposals which it makes. At one point it revealingly, comically, admits this:

. . . it has been held that . . . it is not of great relevance to criticise television at all. We found this last a deflating thought. [Para. 43.1 A little deflation would, indeed, have helped.

It is worth noticing that this assumption is admitted to be an assumption only, and not a proved fact :

So far there is little evidence on the effects of television on values and moral attitudes. . . . [But], unless and until there is unmistak- able proof to the contrary, the presumption must be that television is and will be a main factor in influencing the values and moral standards of our society. [Para. 42.]

Inexorably, the dominating theme of the Report follows: not for the first time, the belief that something (which other- people enjoy) may (pos- sibly) influence their tastes, values or morals (for the worse) becomes the excuse for fussing, but still real, restrictions of freedom.

If the Committee had included one person who understood—let alone cared for—freedom,

`So the Prince and Cinderella were married, and Cinderella lived happily ever after.'

another presumption would have suggested it- self : a presumption in favour of freedom: a presumption that, as long as there is no clear evidence what the influence of television is, any

proposal for restricting or regulating it must be justified on other grounds.

There can be no justification for diminishing freedom merely on the presumption that free- dom is harmful. Yet this is what the Committee says.

2. The public interest can be equated with the attitudes, and opinions, and prejudices of publicly- appointed bodies of 'trustees.' The Report speaks of the duty of both the BBC and the ITA: to judge what the public interest is . . . [to] identify the public interest. [Para. 408.]

And again:

They must know and opinion: but in appraising they must represent the [Para. 410.]

This is dabbling in deep waters—and drowning.

I do not know—and they do not explain to me —what is the 'public conscience' which is, ap-

parently, not only different from 'public opinion,' but may even be opposed to it. I do not know where it is to be found, or how someone (even the elected representatives of the people, which the BBC and the ITA are surely not) can represent' it. I do not know how it is to be found, especially when the Report makes it clear

that one of the virtues of these public bodies is that they are subject neither to the vote of the market nor to democratic control.

But why be pretentious in stating a case? The unpretentious truth is that in Britain, in the past fifty years, we have experimented fruitfully in establishing public and semi-public bodies, which represent attitudes and interests that might other- wise not manifest themselves in a free, largely private-enterprise society. The BBC, certainly, is one of the greatest, most fruitful, of these ex- periments. No one denies this.

But, by the same reasoning, these public and semi-public bodies are tolerable only because they exist in a society which is otherwise free, in which they have no monopoly, in which other interests can express themselves, and in which other philosophies—and not only the philosophy of a problematical 'public interest' or 'public conscience'—can exist, and help to create and n.aintain the diversity and unceasing controversy which make a free society.

This is what I mean by putting the clock back eight years. The Committee presents the issue as an inevitable choice between a public and a com- mercial service, whereas the genuine triumph

of these past .eight years has been to show that the two can exist side by side, and to their

mutual advantage. The whole point of our society is that it succeeds in maintaining 'public' and 'private' conceptions of the 'public interest' in a genuinely balanced conflict.

The thing that baffles me is that Sir Harry Pilkington has inherited—and, I presume, in- creased—a fortune made out of a private-enter- prise glass-making business. I have little doubt

that he would object to it being nationalised in the name of an alleged 'public interest,' or be- cause an alleged 'public conscience' demands it. People who make—as well as live in—glass- houses should not throw stones.

care about public and interpreting it, public conscience.

3. Commercial incentives normally conflict with the 'purposes of good broadcasting.' This assumption is, of course, closely related to the one just discussed. The point here is not that the Committee is able to show that ITV, as at present constituted, does not do its job well: there one would agree with it. It is that the

Committee proceeds from the assumption that any commercially inspired service will, as of

its nature, not do its job well

There is, in short, a bias against private enter- prise, which may or may not be good in itself, but which would seem to disqualify a Com- mittee from considering the future of a service

which, according to the White Paper of 1953, was set up: first . . to introduce an element of competi- tion into television and enable private enterprise to play a fuller part in its develop- ment.

At no point does the Committee consider what is, or could be, the role of private enterprise, as such.

It especially does not consider. even to reject,

the possibility that the whole point of a com- mercially inspired service is that it should repre- sent a totally different approach, attitude and philosophy from that of the BBC: that it should be brasher, more vulgar, less concerned to pro- tect people from—more concerned to expose people to—the kind of influences which will play about them in other spheres of their lives. This is why it is justified to summarise the Committee's proposals as a plan for two BBCs.

In the end, the 'public' conception of the 'public interest' would dominate in both, and no 'pri-

vate' conception of it would have anyplace at all. This is not how freedom is maintained.

The Quality of the Evidence

When a Committee or ,a Royal Commission examines, say, company law, it knows from whom to seek evidence. When a Committee examines something like television, the evidence (if either everyone or no one can be held to be relevant. It is, therefore, important to see the kind of evidence on which the Committee relied. Occasionally it tells us:

. . those who work professionally in this sphere. [Para. 42.] . . . experienced social workers and others with a direct and responsible interest in the subject. [Para. 117.] . . . a wide variety of persons and organisations representative of the whole of our society, and . . . such objective evidence as is available. [Para. 157.] . . . experienced social workers and others with a direct and responsible interest in the subject. [Para. 166.] . . . organisations which spoke as viewers and have no other interest. [Para. 209.] These are grandiloquently deceitful phrases. Judging by the list at the end of the Report, those on whom the Committee relied for evidence all had peculiar and some of them direct personal interests in the subject.

1. Social-welfare bodies, like the Council for Children's Welfare: this is a sensible body, but one which, by its nature, has an exceptional in- ttrest in the exceptional influences which tele- vision may have. This applies to all welfare bodies. The evidence of such bodies should be

taken into account, but it should always be re- rrembered that one cannot legislate for excep- tions.

2. Sociologists, like Dr. Hilde Himmelweit: a. the Report again and again admits, these have produced little conclusive evidence, but many presumptions. Moreover, people like Dr. Him- melweit will always be predisposed to assume that any sccial activity needs prying into and, therefore, possibly controlling as well.

3. Bodies like the Association of Municipal Corporations: there can be no ground for taking such bodies as representative of opinion within their municipalities on subjects such as the con- tent of television programmes. Yet, it was on this that they—and other associations like them

- -gave evidence.

4. Church organisations: again, these are bodies whose opinions should be taken into account, but equally whose opinions are inevit- ably self-interested.

5. A host of women's organisations, including tne

British vv omen s Advisory Council, Burley-in- Wharidale; Catholic Women's League; Church of Scotland Young Mothers' Groups; Devon Federation of Women's Institutes; East Sussex Federation of Women's Institutes; Electrical Association for Women; Gloucestershire Federa- tion of Women's Institutes; Isle of Man Women's Organisations; Lancashire Federation of Women's institutes; National Assembly of Women; National Association of Women's Clubs; Notional Council of Women and the British Federation of University Women; National f ederation of Women's Institutes; National Union of Townswomen's Guilds; National Women Citizens' Association; Scot- tish Housewives' Association; Ulster Women's Christian Temperance Union; Women's Protes- tan Union; etc.; etc.

These are, again, no doubt worthy bodies in many ways. But their predominance in the list of those who gave evidence is alarming, although not so alarming as to find them quoted as authoritative evidence in the Report itself. They are not representative of any opinion except their normally exceptional opinions.

Moreover, it is noteworthy that many of them gave evidence specifically on the subject of violence in television: it would, I suggest, be suspect evidence, since a maiority of the same

organisations would tie found supporting prac- tical violence in the form of the retention of capital punishment.

By the evidence it took then, the Committee inevitably found support for its unrepresentative, moralistic attitudes. Even more serious, there- fore, is the fact that it appears to have taken next to no evidence from those who are genuinely, professionally, concerned in television. It simply is not true that an organisation which represents television producers represents the best amongst television producers. Yet no in- dividual producer seems to have been called.

Equally, no television critic appears to have been called, .except Mr. Peter Forster. Since the suspicion grows, as one reads the Report, that no member of the Committee actually en- joys watching television, it might have been a good idea to hear the opinions of, say, Mr. Peter Back or Mr. Philip Purser, both critics who have shown that they are capable of informed ail(' objective judgment.

Conclusions of the Report

I have not here dealt with the recommenda- tions of the Report, which anyhow have been, and will be, discussed a great deal elsewhere. On these, I will say only that ITV, as at present constituted, needs drastic reform: that reform should be directed primarily to restoring genuine competition between the companies by braking the power of the 'networking arrange- ment': and that this power can easily and practicably be broken without reducing the vital commercial incentive on which ITV is, and should be, based.

I have been concerned only to show the fallacy of the assumptions, the meagreness and pre- judice of the evidence, and the ill-considered language, which make up what is supposed to be a profound document of State. Intellectually, it bears no comparison with its predecessors, and by supplying false argument to support the real merits of the BBC, it has, almost certainly, destroyed, at one blow, all the good work which Mr. Carleton Greene has done, since he became Director-General, to humanise both it and its public image.

'Considering all that's been done to quash the image of the "mad scientist," Dr. Rogers. this is a sorry spectacle indeed!'