REVIEW OF THE ARTS
Elevating the media
Clive Gammon
The question of the liftman at Transport House (the place Anthony Wedgwood Benn actually mentioned in his famous aside on the media at the Labour Party Conference) or Thomson House (the place everyone thought he mentioned) or Broadcasting House (the place he claims to have had in mind) exercised greatly the participants in Weekend World (ITV) last Sunday morning, and a prestigious bunch they were from Enoch Powell in the No. 7 jersey right across the line to the left-wing pair, Nicholas Garnham (of the Free Communications Group) and Richard Neville.
But more significant a figure than any of them, on last weekend's programme at least, was Mr Donal O'Morain who could be forgiven his slightly preoccupied look: he'd have a right to it, wouldn't he, so soon after being cast out from his high office as Chairman of Radio-Telefis Eireann by the Government of the Irish Republic under Section 31 of the Act which forbade RTE to put out material that could be construed as furthering violent causes. And even more significant was the unavoidable absence of Mr Kevin O'Kelly, at the time in chokey for contempt for refusing to identify the voice of Sean MacStiofain on the tape of the nowfamous RTE interview. (Or for just about managing to refuse. O'Kelly had either to face the anger of tine law or that of thc Provisionals and who wouldn't prefer three months' gentle simmering in the frying pan to a swift incineration?) Mr O'Morain didn't have much to say cxcept to plead that he had been given only "a vague direction" and that his attempts to get the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs to clarify Section 31 had evoked only silence. But his presence on the programme did serve to put much portentous comment from the others into perspective. Mr Briginshaw's complaint, for instance, that British television made bogeymen of Trade Union leaders took on a whinnying tone when alongside him was a man whose bogeyman had actually come to life and grabbed him in the middle of the night.
The whole ninety minutes of this programme was devoted to what one is seemingly compelled to call the media — " a very valuable and scarce public asset," Mr Phillip Whitehead MP called television in particular. What power is in whose hands? Is it abused? Or is it. possibly overly restricted?
A, powerful and important subject, clearly, especially with the example of Mr O'Morain in front of us. But what emerged was a chorus of unharmonised and individual outcries. Only Mr Powell was benign to the point of blandness. " Deliberate distortion is rare," he said. Only " certain preconceptions " distort, if not innocently then not maliciously either. Did it worry him? " No captain," he declared, " can ccmplain of a rcugh sea,"
But there were complaints enough from the others. The Official Secrets Act. The laws of libel and contempt. Section 3 of the Television Act which is for 'good taste and decency ' and against incitement to crime. The Industrial courts could have an Inhibiting effect on the reporting of labour relations, said someone.
That was from the journalists' side, Mr Alcxander Lyon MP, Eternly inhinding them that Freedom is Power (he's been reading some book or other) and that the Law is the regulator of the use of power (as Mr O'Morain could confirm).
Then, naturally, it had to be the turn of Mr Wedgwood Benn's now legendary liftman. How far is it possible to go in workers' control of the media? All the way, said Nicholas Garnham, though the editor of Time Out had sadly to confess that his journal, after a short experiment with democracy, needed an editor to "pull it together." More tellingly, Phillip Whitehead spoke of television as an assemblage of stereotypes — plastic popup trade union militants, students, bosses — which underlined the contempt of the professional broadcaster for the liftman, the little guy, as they used to say in 1944.
Unhappily, for all the time that \vas available, for all the star-studded cast, very little could, be concluded (which may, as far as British television goes anyway, be a healthy symptom). Peter Jay did his urbane and efficient best to bring some sort of cohesion into the melee but he couldn't manage it. "Couldn't you be a little more concrete?" he wearily asked Richard Neville who as usual was flicking out tiny commercials for Oz, and that was the basic trouble. Too many people and too many abstractions. And for heavens sake, with O'Morain sitting amongst them there was surely no call for any abstractions at all. The whole governing body. of a national television service had been swept away by government decree that week. And yet not a single voice was raised amongst the host of participants to comment on this. The liftman's power of veto was their preoccupation.
From deep in the tulgey wood came Wedgwood Benn's ideas of participation. There should be time set aside for the TUC to use, he said, adding generously that the Confederation of British Industry could have a chunk, too. He didn't mention the Women's Institute and the Salvation Army but I'm sure the omission wasn't deliberate. Compulsive viewing, eh?
Perhaps not fortuituausly, there was a Dutchman present who told us that this was what almost happens on Netherlands telly where therc's a rip:at-wing channel, a left wing channel, a Catholic channel and a Protestant channel. He said it was very boring.
couldn't help feeling, sadly, that Mr C'Morain must have wished he'd kept RTE boring toe.
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