Media policy dominated by 'cosy cartel' says report

Basically, Ofcom and the government ignore the wishes of consumers in
order to favour big business.


http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcas...573695,00.html

Media policy dominated by 'cosy cartel', says report

Dominic Timms
Tuesday September 20, 2005

UK media policy is dominated by a cosy cartel of politicians, government
advisers and industry lobbyists, according to new research.
Despite government assertions that media policy is increasingly
transparent, the report argues that it is centralised, opaque and
controlled by a small number of advisers and media experts.

Based on interviews with 40 leading media policy-makers, the research,
undertaken by Dr Des Freedman of Goldsmith's College in London and
funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, argues that the
public remains "largely passive" in media policy decisions.

The research will be unveiled on Friday.

Dr Freedman contends that public participation in decisions such as BBC
charter renewal - where the Department for Culture, Media and Sport
invited licence fee payers to comment directly - hide a reality "where
the public remain a largely peripheral force when it comes to
influencing questions of media structure".

"Tony Blair's comments about the BBC over the weekend show just how the
stakes have got so high with media policy and show the level at which it
is influenced.

"The public is occasionally invited to make its voice heard in
consultations and opinion polls, but key decisions on, for example,
media ownership and concentration or digital switchover are made by
government insiders, often in concert with industry lobbyists and
sometimes against the wishes of the public.

"This seems to be a process marked less by a commitment to meaningful
forms of accountability than it is to ensuring the continuing influence
of a restricted number of powerful stakeholders."

How the Communications Act got through

Quoting the example of the 2003 Communications Act, Dr Freedman said it
was driven by a "handful" of advisers within Downing Street, "most
notably" Ed Richards, now a senior figure at Ofcom.

Despite the high-profile campaign led by Lord Puttnam in the run-up to
the legislation, quoting one regulator Dr Freedman says large parts of
the Communications Act "went through without any significant debating in
committees or on the floor of either house".

He says consultations on UK media ownership - that eventually led to the
opening of UK terrestrial broadcasters to foreign ownership - were
driven by industry lobbyists, pointing to recently released government
papers that show BSkyB representatives met with Downing Street "six
times during the short passage of the Communications bill".

"The government ignored the vast majority of the submissions that
overwhelmingly opposed the opening up of terrestrial television to
foreign companies on the basis, as one commentator put it, 'that this is
what the government wanted to do and felt was the right thing to do'."

The government's overt reliance on "hard data" such as economic
analysis, even for subjective areas such as public service television,
further restricts access for individuals who lack the means to construct
such information and thus invariably hand the debate to "experts."

"The fetishising of 'scientific data' is one means of marginalising the
public from the public policy process and safeguarding it for the
economists, lawyers and executives who are in a prime position to
furnish the sort of information that policy-makers are demanding."

Even when the public is invited to contribute to policy, such as during
the run-up to the green paper on BBC charter renewal, Dr Freedman argues
that these consultations are used merely to justify particular outcomes.

"Key decision makers operate in close ideological conformity with the
broad interests of one key constituency - that of business - in a way
that structures the parameters of the debate, dictates what forms of
participation are most effective and conditions the balance of power in
the policy process.

"Public opinion is collected to lend support to policy outcomes but
otherwise the process remains largely out of reach for members of the
public."

· Issues in the report will be debated at a forum at Goldsmith's College
on Friday September 23. Panelists include Lord Puttnam, Bill Bush
(former special adviser to Tessa Jowell), Tim Gardam (BBC charter review
panellist), and David Levy (the controller of public policy at the BBC.)



--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info

Find the cheapest Freeview, DAB & MP3 Player Prices:
http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/fr..._receivers.htm
http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/da...tal_radios.htm
http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/mp...rs_1GB-5GB.htm
http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/mp...e_capacity.htm

UK media policy is dominated by a cosy cartel of politicians, government
advisers and industry lobbyists, according to new research.
Despite government assertions that media policy is increasingly
transparent, the report argues that it is centralised, opaque and
controlled by a small number of advisers and media experts.

It would not surprise me if we can find some kind of corruption here. This
sounds like drug cartels. The cartel can control whatever it want and does
not care what the public want. When someone makes money on this, it's
clearly on the other side on the law.

DAB is not what the people want wrote:
UK media policy is dominated by a cosy cartel of politicians,
government advisers and industry lobbyists, according to new
research. Despite government assertions that media policy is
increasingly
transparent, the report argues that it is centralised, opaque and
controlled by a small number of advisers and media experts.

It would not surprise me if we can find some kind of corruption here.
This sounds like drug cartels. The cartel can control whatever it
want and does not care what the public want. When someone makes money
on this, it's clearly on the other side on the law.


I wouldn't say it's unlawful, and the Communications Bill was written in
a manner to allow this very thing to happen.

It's morally corrupt rather than lawfully corrupt.


--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info

Find the cheapest Freeview, DAB & MP3 Player Prices:
http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/fr..._receivers.htm
http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/da...tal_radios.htm
http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/mp...rs_1GB-5GB.htm
http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/mp...e_capacity.htm