Abstract
This book is distinctive in academic terms in that it is driven by a powerful polemic – that television journalism in the UK is in real danger – yet it remains refreshingly free from hyperbole. Barnett has written an important book that is clear, engaging, compelling and lucidly argued. At the core of the book is the argument that television journalism in the UK is under threat from the ongoing deregulation of the industry allied with an unfettered free market political culture. Set against the backdrop of the ongoing journalistic crisis in the UK print media that saw the closure of the News of the World newspaper in 2011, Barnett focuses on television journalism and provides us with an authoritative historical overview of its development in both the UK and the US. He offers an institutional historical analysis of television’s evolving relationship with journalism and the various frameworks and contexts within which journalistic traditions were established and maintained, or in the case of the US, dismantled over the years.
Barnett takes a broad political economy approach to the subject, but is particularly interested in empirically grounding his analysis by unpacking how various governmental and regulatory interventions have shaped the framework of public service broadcasting specifically in the UK. Here Barnett is well placed to offer an insider/outsider view of this process as an academic researching television for many years, but also one who has operated within the policy-shaping domain of parliamentary select committee reviews. He is more sure-footed than most in leading the reader through the often complex interplay between politics, culture and commerce that has shaped television journalism culture in the UK.
He uses two pieces of television journalism from the 1980s, the BBC’s Real Lives: At the Edge of the Union (1985) and Thames Television’s This Week: Death on the Rock (1988) to illustrate the way in which public service television (BBC) and publicly regulated commercial television (ITV) were able to survive sustained political and newspaper attacks to broadcast important pieces of journalism. Given the changes in the broadcasting industry over the last 25 years or so, whether such programmes in a similar political context would be made today is a moot point. Barnett then takes us through the watershed 1990 Broadcasting Act up to and beyond the Hutton enquiry that reshaped BBC journalism in the last decade.
Barnett addresses the changing position of news and current affairs within television in the UK, as institutions such as the BBC and ITV change and are shaped by a ‘lighter touch’ regulatory framework and a more competitive television marketplace. He documents how the relative decline of ITV investigative journalism and pressure on Channel 4 funding mean that there is a danger of the BBC becoming the sole bearer of robustly funded television journalism. He notes how the rise of 24-hour news channels such as Fox News and Al Jazeera signal a potential shift away from traditional concerns of impartiality in television journalism – even with all the caveats that come with operationalizing such a term. Barnett devotes an illuminating chapter to this debate and why impartiality should remain a touchstone of television journalism.
At the heart of the book then lies a simple, but highly charged premise. That is: ‘If governments are prepared to provide the statutory framework and the regulators are prepared to implement the rules of that framework with toughness and consistency, television journalism can indeed educate, illuminate and stimulate’ (p. 10). Barnett makes the case that the need for robust non-complicit television journalism has not been diminished in the age of the blogger or citizen journalism. He notes how particular strands of television journalism in the US have been eroded over the years and puts down a powerful marker that a similar process will become increasingly evident in the UK without vigilance and action. In that sense this book is a rational, well-argued call to arms that avoids the academic grandstanding sometimes associated with this area, and is all the more compelling for that.