The media
Curbing media arrogance
Paul Johnson
Iwas in New York when the third and final jury verdict in Sharon v Time Magazine was delivered. The entire case shows Time in a poor light — in its working methods, in its sense of justice and in its Judgment of how to handle an issue where the ethics and reliability of the US press were on trial. When Sharon first started libel proceedings, Time should have given him a voluntary apology for falsely pre- senting him as an accessory before the fact of mass-murder. They were eventually proved to have published untrue and de- famatory material and were saved from heavy damages only by the Supreme Court Ruling in New York Times v Sullivan, which Makes it impossible for a public official to vim a libel verdict unless he can establish that the material was published with malice in the knowledge it was false. The defence that the plaintiff is a public figure is almost bound to prevail under US law; the equiva- lent defence in England — 'fair comment on a matter of public interest' — would not have helped Time in the Sharon case. Indeed in my view Time would not have got the verdict even in America if Sharon had not asked for a multi-million-dollar settlement and had simply left the damages open. To make matters worse, the senior People at Time made some very foolish and xenophobic statements after the case, accusing Sharon of being a 'foreigner' exploiting US laws. It is not for Time, which sells all over the world and boasts of its huge overseas readership, to seek to deny 'foreigners' access to US justice, Particularly when they come from demo- cracies where a similar rule of law prevails. If Sharon had libelled Time, it could have sued him in an Israeli court, and more likely got better justice than he found in the US. When a powerful publication makes a serious mistake, it is always sensible to apologise promptly and in full, as the Washington Post demonstrated in the case of its deceitful woman reporter. Then the matter is quickly forgiven, if not soon forgotten. As it is, Time's foolish arrogance and impertinence will mean that the stench of the Sharon case will linger in the public's nostrils for a long time.
General Westmoreland's libel suit against CBS Television is an even more striking example where a full and prompt apology was desirable. As I write, the court action has not yet been determined, but it has long been apparent from CBS's. internal investigations that the offending programme was in breach of its own ethical code. By fighting the case CBS has pro- longed and intensified the scandal. It has done more than this: it has served to provoke long-suffering members of the public to take positive action to challenge the monopoly exercised by liberals over the Big Three American ' television networks.
In January a group calling itself 'Fairness in Media', led by Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission stat- ing that it intends to seek control of CBS. Its complaint is that CBS reflects a 'liberal bias in its news coverage of political events, personages and views'. Senator Helms is an eccentric figure of the far Right, and I hold no brief for him. He is frequently an embarrassment to those who subscribe to sensible conservative views. The first reac- tion to his ploy, in media circles, was sneering contempt and utter disbelief that it could ever succeed. The Big Three networks have held their franchises for generations and seem impervious to right- wing attack by virtue of their very wealth and size. In 1984, for instance, CBS, which sells records, books and 'leisure-time pro- ducts', as well as air time, had revenues of $4.5 billion and profits of $187.2 million. It has nearly 30 million common shares out- standing. But American financial experts are now taking a second look at Helms's campaign and finding it both credible and significant. As a Wall Street Journal headline put it (8 February): 'Challenge to CBS by Sen. Helms and Group May Be More Serious Than Originally Believed'. To begin with, Helms has proved his capacity to raise considerable sums of money for political purposes, as his recent hotly fought and vastly expensive re-election campaign de- monstrated. He has a great many suppor- ters, particularly in the Sunbelt, and many of them have money to invest. He has circulated a million of them, and the response has been encouraging. The orig- inal idea was not so much to take over the company as to recruit new stockholders who would pester the management with complaints about political bias. Helms had small investors in mind. But such people, once they looked into CBS's affairs, discov- ered they may stand to make a profit if there is any real possibility of a takeover and a reconstruction of the company. Last year CBS shares traded in the range of from $60 to $80. But some investment bankers believe their real value could be more than twice this in certain circum- stances. The Helms group is thus consider- ing a proposal for a partial break-up of the company, to finance its acquisition by a transaction known in Wall Street as a `leveraged buyout'. This would involve disposing of some of CBS's valuable assets.
CBS is a big, anonymous company, whose largest individual shareholder, Wil- liam S. Paley, holds only 6.5 per cent of the shares. That, in one way, has been its protection; and it also explains why its liberal establishment has held such unchal- lenged power. An awful lot of individual shareholders would have to be annoyed to combine to take over control. But of course once the rumour gets around that there is a profit to be made, as well as right-wing political satisfaction to be de- rived, by buying CBS stock, a stampede could follow. The mere fact that people are buying drives up the price of the share. Then, in turn, institutional investors would become interested. At that point the CBS management would be in real trouble and would have to take Helms and his group seriously. Not only CBS either: the other networks would invite attention from orga- nised groups of investors who see the opportunity to combine political influence with profitable disposal of assets.
In my view, the Helms campaign is likely to have a healthy effect on the bias and arrogance of the networks. They will now be under real pressure to change their ways, or even to provide formal safeguards that political neutrality will be preserved by appointing one or more board members to correct the existing liberal bias. More- over, Helms may have started a fashion, which could spread to other centres of liberal media power in the US. It could even spread to Britain. How about a dawn ' raid on such left-wing institutions as Granada and Thames Television?
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