Originally posted @ 10:15 pm, Mon 31st Aug 2009
“The only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit.” - James Murdoch, News Corporation, Friday night.
Some have described the words as chilling for the BBC. I just thought they were chilling.
No role for a “self-governing public corporation with a constitutional remit to serve the public interest and the citizen”.
Good to see a riposte from Will Hutton in yesterday’s Observer - http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/aug/30/bbc-murdoch-edinburgh-tv-festival
And what choice is there for the customer who wants a news service that doesn’t consistently bring right-wing commentators to highlight what the largely right-wing newspapers say? At a meeting I spoke at on climate change, in February last year, James Murdoch asserted that the editorial function is kept separate from the business. I just don’t believe it. If Sky News wasn’t on Freeview, I wouldn’t pay for it.
As Will Hutton points out, the ideas in the speech are out of date. “Profit” - as if the credit crunch never happened. The public’s assets had to be borrowed against to stop a collapse of banks that would have destroyed people’s jobs and businesses – more like interdependence than independence.
There is a challenge for the media when all sorts of people can publish on the internet, at no cost to the reader and with no guarantee of a sense of responsibility to those described. The aggression that can be found in blogs can often be appalling.
Meanwhile, journalists have developed a style that suggests that whatever the problem, they personally could have done a better job.
Could a framework be drafted that builds a sense of mission for all who want to contribute to our common development? Maybe it exists; maybe it's too hard to draft or police.
For now let me offer one rule, taken from George Orwell.
George Orwell had rules for seeking out the best in political writing, but would sooner see any of these rules broken rather than come across people writing anything “outright barbarous”.
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*** George Orwell’s six rules for writers
In "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell provides six rules for writers:
· Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
· Never use a long word where a short one will do.
· If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
· Never use the passive voice where you can use the active.
· Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
· Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
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