Country Studies / Television

Television |

Regulation of TV in Britain is very different from regulation of the press. Whereas newspapers are mostly about news, the TV is mostly entertainment and so is subject to more rules on sex, violence and bad language. As watchdogs, there are the Broadcasting Standards Council and the Broadcasting Complaints Commission. They make sure, for example, that there is very little pornography on TV; and they police the 9 p.m. watershed: the time before which all programmes must be suitable for children. Strangely, more complaints are received from the public about bad language - swearing — than anything else; the British seem to be particularly sensitive to this rather superficial issue.

Tony Blair in the hot seat on BBC's Question Time.

It is on the question of politics that TV rules differ most from those which apply to newspapers. While newspapers can express any political views, or support any political party they wish to, TV channels are not permitted such freedom; they are obliged to maintain a strict balance between the political parties, to be impartial. One programme which shows the Conservatives in a good light must be followed soon after by one which favours Labour. The system seems quite heavy-handed, but it is easy to see why it has come into being.

Although newspaper readership is high, people actually tend to get most of their news from television: a recent survey showed that 62 per cent rely on TV and only 17 per cent on newspapers as their main source of national news. At the same time, there are only five terrestrial TV channels — s without regulation, one rich political party could completely dominate the news on the cormiic .. channels. The government of the clay, of whicheve party, could manipulate the state-owned company, the BBC.

The BBC is not an organ of the government: it is run by governors, some of whom are appointed \y the government, but there is little political control. All political parties complain sometimes about the BBC's treatment of them, and that includes the p. in power: the last Conservative Government often said that the BBC was against it. The BBC is funded by a TV licence fee; everyone with a TV has to bin-one each year for just over ±100. The system mean? that the BBC can put on educational material which would not be commercially viable; it fulfils the role of a public-service broadcaster. And many feel that it is worth £2 per week to be able to watch films whicl are not interrupted by advertisements!

Viewers trust TV news partly because they know-that it is not in the hands of one political party, and partly because it is much harder to tell lies with live interviews and filmed reports of events than or, the pages of newspapers. Still photos are easy to manipulate on a computer, but video is far more difficult. Seeing the faces of politicians as they speak, and hearing their voices, helps the viewer to identify the truth. However, the truth is not really quite so easy to obtain. In reality, politicians still manage to manipulate their TV messages in all sons of ways. Each interview is planned in advance; the TV presenter and the politician agree on rules of engagement: questions will be asked on the economy but not on Northern Ireland, for example.

The overall political agenda is created by politicians, not by TV or the press. An interesting case is that of green issues and Mrs Thatcher. She had not been at all interested in climate change, until one day she decided it might be a vote winner, so she started talking about it. The media picked this up and suddenly employed environment correspondents to cover the green stories.