 |
Towards a Broadcast Code By Tony Fraser |
Thursday
5th May 2005: All the major broadcast jurisdictions in the
free and democratic world are governed by regulations to guide
the operations of radio and television. Similarly, all of the major national and international broadcast institutions-the British Broadcasting Corporation, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CNN, ABC and all the others-have their own internal codes that govern basic principles of broadcasting and journalism, including ethical considerations.
One of the major arguments for regulation revolves around the reality of countries having limited spectrum space (that indefinable thing, for a non-engineering person like this columnist, through which facilitates the sending and receiving of signals) and therefore in seeking to allocate that space in the best interests of citizens, there should be regulatory guidelines for the utilisation of such a precious and limited national resource.
Allied to that contention is that radio and television beam into living rooms and the privacy of people's homes almost without hindrance (unlike the newspaper you pick up on the corner, making a deliberate choice to do so) and so there must be standards acceptable to the nation as a whole.
One counter to having a broadcast code holds that listeners and viewers should be allowed to use the switch to turn on and off or turn to alternative stations. Yet another view says if there is to be a code, it should be internal and not imposed and monitored from outside, especially by government, any government, which can use the code to achieve partisan political objectives.
This columnist is on the side of the establishment and maintenance of international standards of broadcasting to be observed by the electronic media here with each broadcasting unit having, and this would be complimentary to the broader code, its own code and set of principles to guide not only the production of news and current affairs but programming and advertising standards.
Journalists are daily investigating and reporting on institutions and individuals that do not follow acceptable principles of behaviour in their activities: why should the profession of journalism not be held similarly responsible to observe internationally accepted principles practised in those countries from which we inherited our tradition of broadcast journalism and programming?
It however does not follow that recognition of the need for standards, responsibility and accountability through the application of internationally accepted broadcasting principles translates into automatic support for the draft being circulated by the Telecommunications Authority.
This is a position I first articulated back in the early 1980s in a column in the Trinidad Review and have repeated several times in the intervening 20 years plus.
The short history of attempts in T&T to establish some form of regulation to the industry goes back to the National Alliance for Reconstruction government (1986-1991). The NAR was the government which opened the door for the expansion of the radio and television industry.
As with the NAR itself, the broadcast code was kicked out of the window with the promulgators receiving a thorough pasting for being perceived as trying to control the media.
The effort of the UNC with its Green Paper on the reform of media laws, although different to what went before and that of the present in some fundamental ways, received a similar roasting with Attorney General Ramesh Maharaj and Prime Minister Basdeo Panday being the main targets.
In the present, the TATT draft, being piloted by a couple public servants, has got a warm enough baptism and its future seems as uncertain as how WI will play tomorrow.
Before we get to an analysis of the actual draft, the observation must be made about the peculiarity of this society to wail and moan about everything that is wrong with a particular industry or form of operation but when an attempt is made to counter the negatives, there is a sudden transformation of specialist public opinion and the institution and institutional practices become acceptable, even exemplary.
For instance, elements of Indo-Trinidad have slammed the Afro-centric broadcast media in Port-of-Spain for discrimination and for practising the worst forms of racism possible.
Indo-Trinidadian culture is said to have been denied a place on the national media and the cultural and religious groups representative of Indo-Trinidad are said to have been denied a radio licence on spurious, perhaps racist, grounds. Indeed, the courts have ruled on these latter allegations and found them to have substance.
At the same time, Afro-conscious citizens highlight what they see as the daily assaults of racism against their community emanating out of the Indian radio stations and also charge that Afro-Trinidadian culture is invisible on television and silent on radio.
Also, there are those who are of neither tribe but who fear that the free-for-all clash, contention (some of it deliberately and politically encouraged) and the diminished, even absence of, professional standards in the industry could have disastrous effects on race relations and the maintenance of civil society.
However, when faced with the challenge of doing something about it, an irrational hysteria emerges. Maybe there is work here for the social psychologist who may investigate if there is some psychosis hindering progress.
But handling race relations sensitively and productively to enhance the possibility of cohesion even in the plural society is not the only known problem of broadcasting and broadcast journalism. Bias, ignorance, incompetence, the absence of journalistic standards and fairness are all challenges to be conquered.
All of this does not suggest that politicians should escape scrutiny and the draft not be subjected to searching analysis. What the column is advocating is that a draft code should be approached in an adult fashion with recognition given to the international nature of such a code.
Indeed, the broadcast industry should insist as a first position that there be extensive discussions and that the industry should be central to the finalisation and monitoring of the code when it is established.
In this respect, the first comment on the TATT attempt to develop a code is to say that organisation should not be the one to work with the industry to develop the code and to manage its implementation. That should be the responsibility of a properly constituted independent broadcast authority. TATT should be left to work out the technical and economic environment for telecommunications development.
With the broadcast authority will come a structured environment that will implement and manage the code, including the establishment of sanctions and a process for applying the sanctions. Moreover, the authority will have responsibility for other matters, again long talked about, such as local programming, including the music and entertainment industry.
Good and bad in draft code
"Broadcasters should not invade the privacy of members of the public to the point where this action can result in harmful consequences" (Draft National Broadcasting Code).
What if the invasion of the privacy of the member of the public, who happens to be a government minister/official, results in his/her indictment for stealing millions of dollars from the national Treasury, or for exercising bias in the distribution of benefits to the public from the country's national resources?
Of course such action will result in "harmful consequences" to the individual concerned, but what weight should be given to the "harmful consequences" to the individual compared to abuse of public resources? Clearly, the public interest and the right of the public to know must rule in such circumstances.
It does not however mean that media have the unqualified right to deprive citizens of their privacy on flimsy bases. Courts, even in the US where regulations are limited, have ruled against media for unnecessarily and maliciously violating the privacy of individuals.
In a judgment a European court ruled that "the right to the freedom of speech does not provide justification for the infringement of privacy; however the right to privacy is not absolute."
Media codes and laws in European countries differ widely on the subject, many guarantee the individual constitutional protection against invasion, especially by governments; others, even those that guarantee privacy, hold that "persons with some public renown must accept greater infringements on their privacy than private persons."
The point being that there are pros and cons to the proposal in the draft code that media should not invade the privacy of individuals; but certainly the blanket statement quoted above cannot prevail but must be adjusted through a national discussion.
Here's another element of the code:
"Broadcasters shall exercise the highest sensitivity when broadcasting material in which there is grief and bereavement and shall respect the rights of the bereaved."
Well, what's so wrong with that?
It has become commonplace on television for reporters to barge in on people in their private grief, strip away their dignity and deprive them of the right to say farewell to their dead in a manner they so chose without their grief being exposed for the base delights of the rest of society.
In fact, funeral services have become a stomping ground for politicians knowing the cameras will be there.
I can think of two examples of gross insensitivity by media, one of which I was deeply involved in as news director at the National Broadcasting Corporation.
The night of the murder of Selwyn Richardson we were early on the scene, got a few exclusive shots of him in the car, him being taken out in the body bag, etc. We not only showed the footage on the night, but used it night after night until one night I was called to the phone during the news to be told by Mrs Richardson that she did not know if she could survive, alive and emotionally in tact, another showing of the footage, footage we were obviously beating our chest at having.
Our insensitivity to her grief stunned my unconsciousness into adopting some loose policy on dead bodies. But a few years before that, TTT had footage of three or four children who had drowned, all laid out on the beach-I believe it was at Invaders Bay. They were the children of poor people who probably did not even have a telephone to call and protest. In fact they were probably socialised by years of abuse into believing that they really had no say in what television journalists chose to do with their lives, emotions and grief.
We showed that footage over and over without the slightest concern. Indeed, television reporters have really abused people at the lower income and social levels of the society in their time of grief, but are usually put in their place-literally put out of funerals, locked out of the yards of grieving families and at times at the point of the baton of a hired security guard.
I remember well such a case in Westmoorings; we resorted to fulminations about the denial of press freedom.
Reflect on another of the suggested guidelines:
"Broadcasters should use the profanity delay facility especially in relation to call-in talk shows to minimise the broadcast of offensive content in relation to ethnic origin, race, gender, mental, physical..."
The European Union law on human rights has similar provisions. US courts have protected even the most "vicious racist expression," but many journalists as individuals and bodies through internal codes avoid offending racial and minority groups and adopt "appropriately respectful language and issuing apologies for offensive language or stereotypes."
"News shall be broadcast in such a manner as to avoid panic and unnecessary alarm."
Yes, there is some merit here if it's an attempt to avoid base sensationalism, but it has to be redrafted to appreciate that the very nature of news of an approaching hurricane will cause alarm and some measure of panic. Moreover, a media broadcast cannot cater for individual threshold levels of panic.
The section of the draft code that seeks to guard children against exploitation and abuse has many very useful points for discussion. In the United Kingdom, codes to protect children from television violence are being strengthened.
Then there is the section against the glamorisation of violence. There is some value in what it seeks to prevent, but it walks too close to guarding governments in the contemporary period against the media telling the society that criminals are on the loose, dangerous and government measures have been futile in protecting them-that is not acceptable.
The large point is that there is good and bad in the draft code and as this column indicated last week, a code cannot be handed down from on high, cannot be managed by a government agency and that the broadcast industry and the national population must be central to the development of a broadcast authority to establish and monitor the code, determine sanctions and the application of same; hysterical shrieking will not assist anyone.
But the work has only just begun: what of concentration of ownership of media? Is the society sufficiently aware of how commerce influences and directs media content?
The reality is that if the 60-year-old broadcast industry in T&T had developed professional internal codes, if journalists had constructed sustainable professional associations and councils with established codes of conduct and practices, there would be no room for the Telecommunications Authority draft.
tfraser@tstt.net.tt