JONATHAN CHAIT JULY 22, 2011
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I've never thought of it this way before, but Dan Balz pithily explains that the culture of newspapers versus television news in the U.K. is essentially the reverse of the American arrangement:
Unlike in the United States, newspapers in Britain still wield enormous power. Television networks are constrained by law in what they can do and say. The BBC is required by charter to ensure balance. There is no cable television culture, as there is here, that sorts out viewers by ideology and feeds red meat daily to the participants in the political dialogue.
Instead, that role is left to newspapers. British papers are national in scope and therefore central in setting the political agenda. Papers there, especially tabloids, are, as one British journalist put it gently, less “fastidious” in their ethics and reporting standards than are the best of the U.S. papers.
They are also noisily partisan, and news coverage follows a paper’s editorial slant in ways it does not here. The Labor Party has its backers, the tabloid Mirror and broadsheet Guardian among them. But many more British papers lean toward the Conservative Party, with Murdoch’s Sun the most powerful of them.
In other words, in Britain, the New York Times is a television station, and Fox News is a newspaper. I find that a little odd, because print is a medium much better adapted to high levels of discourse, and video is a medium better adapted to salaciousness and propaganda.
3 comments
It is odd but it is a reality. The BBC is the Fairness Doctrine personified.
- liberalref
July 22, 2011 at 12:33pm
Which is why in America the Tea-Party and neo-Cons are routinely fed their daily dose of propaganda from Fox News video. You're right -- it's much more effective than having to READ something. Which is why the Fairness Doctrine is much more important in the Television world. If something is "better adapted to salaciousness and propaganda", then that's where you want to focus your efforts, in order to prevent propagation of salaciousness and propaganda.
- AllanL5
July 22, 2011 at 1:10pm
It's even more extreme. The TV in England is controlled by the Beeb, which can be condescending and smug. Same with the radio - controlled by the BBC. Imagine if public television or NPR controlled every TV channel and all the radio in the states. I don't know if it is still the case, but not that long ago the TV channels used to go off late at night in England. No reruns or rote programming. It was rather telling; Nanny thought everyone should be asleep by then. On the plus side, throw in an egregious class system and a bunch of art schools (for the smarter kids in the lower orders to learn some skills) on top of that stifling, smug state-controlled media and the result was an amazing youth culture: Beatles, Stones, the Who, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Bowie, Sex Pistols, Clash, glam, punk, etc. You can see, too, why Sky TV is so incredibly popular and such a big deal (commercially and otherwise.) But, yeah, all the vulgarity and pandering in the service of commercial interests (making money by appealing to base instincts, resentments and/or the desire to see topless pics of cheesy women) found an outlet in the tabloid culture. There was nowhere else to go. The TV (pre-Sky) and radio were off limits. State controlled.
- mtinora@me.com
July 22, 2011 at 1:40pm