The trouble started earlier this year when the British government published a bill to relax cross-media ownership laws and abolish protections on foreign ownership of British media. All well and good, perhaps, given current trends towards globalisation and freer markets. Of course, media isn’t just another industry, and the bill has predictably come under intense fire from across the political spectrum. In the cross hairs are arguably the two most influential people in Britain Tony Blair and Rupert Murdoch.
Yes, that’s right, Rupert Murdoch. But he’s not even British! Right again, and that’s the point. He’s American, actually, having famously traded in his Australian passport to launch Fox Television in the United States without falling foul of US foreign media ownership regulations. Nationality aside, however, one would be hard-pressed to find anyone with more influence over British public opinion than Murdoch, given that he owns the lion’s share of the British newspaper industry, with titles including The Times, The Sun and the Sunday Times, not to mention the pay TV company, BSkyB.
The one thing Murdoch doesn’t have, however, is a stake in the budding free-to-air television channel, Channel 5, despite frequent tantrums in the face of regulators who think he’s got quite enough toys already. Current regulations state that anyone with over 20% of the newspaper market (Murdoch has 35%) can’t have a terrestrial TV channel, and moreover, that non-EU companies can’t own free-to-air TV licences. But if the new bill becomes law, both restrictions will fall away and Rupert may just get his way after all.
More than a few people, among them several Labour peers and highly respected members of the British media elite, are up in arms. They’re accusing the government of flogging the family silver and to the Yanks, no less. Lifting restrictions on foreign ownership, they say, will place the nation’s very identity in jeopardy, flooding the airwaves with Jerry Springer and WWE Wrestling, drowning the last vestiges of ‘Britishness’ in a rampant tide of Americanisation. Indeed, resistance has been so fierce that many are expecting the bill to be blackballed in the House of Lords. So why would Blair gamble with alienating so many influential people and risk the humiliation of having the bill thrown out of parliament? What could he possibly have to gain?
Here’s where things get interesting. A theory that’s winning increasing credibility is that Blair is motivated not by the promise of foreign investment, nor even by a long-running obsession with The Simpsons, but rather by the Euro, and his belief that Britain should be using it. By holding out a Channel 5-shaped carrot, the theory goes, the PM has given Murdoch the incentive he needs to soften his newspapers’ anti-Euro stance ahead of next year’s proposed referendum on Britain joining the single currency.
Naturally, the government has flatly denied any suggestions of collusion with Murdoch, with Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell stating that she has never met the man. Blair can hardly make the same claim it’s rumoured that Murdoch was the first person he called after taking power, presumably to thank him for the press support that had for so long evaded his Old Labour predecessors.
Collusion or no collusion, the whole affair raises some issues that are bound to become increasingly relevant for the South African media industry, particularly as Icasa Chairman Mandla Langa has suggested that a major overhaul of the local regulatory framework is overdue.
Langa’s comments to this effect were made earlier this year, after the regulator stymied a proposed Nail/Kagiso merger by enforcing legislation that prevents any entity from owning more than two FM radio licences. Langa was almost apologetic in his ruling on Nail and Kagiso, stating that he did not wish to place obstacles in the way of necessary consolidation, especially when such consolidation would further black empowerment objectives. Nevertheless, to the regulator’s credit, Icasa refused to make an exception that would have flown in the face of existing legislation. It is this legislation that now stands to be reviewed by the government, and the process and results of this review will be test case for media independence in South Africa.
While Icasa’s track record suggests that we can expect the regulator to act with integrity (albeit, alas, not rapidity), the lingering aftertaste of several past episodes casts some doubt as to whether the same can be expected from government and the corporate sector.
One example, which cannot but come up in any discussion of media independence, is the famous spat between 702’s John Robbie and Health Minister “Don’t call me Manto” Tshabalala-Msimang, during which the Minister repeatedly evaded the question of whether she believed HIV to be the cause of Aids until an exasperated Robbie put the phone down on her.
Aside from the issue at the heart of that impassioned debate two years ago, what was most shocking about the affair was how quickly 702’s parent company Primedia caved into government pressure to issue an apology this despite 702’s and Robbie’s commendable refusal to do so. The ANC’s then-spokesperson, Smuts Ngonyama, hinted that racism was behind Robbie’s behaviour, and stated outright that until the broadcaster apologised it would be “difficult for us to have anything more to do with the institution”.
Reading between the lines, one might detect a threat that should no apology have been forthcoming, the episode would not be forgotten the next time media ownership and licensing issues came under review.
Two years have now past, and the Broadcasting Complaints Commission has cleared 702 of any wrongdoing (incidentally, it was two private individuals who brought the matter before the BCC, not the Minister), but the episode should not be forgotten; not by the ANC, the media industry or anyone with an interest in press autonomy. On the contrary, it should serve as a stark reminder, as should the current debate in the UK, that the line between government, media owners and journalists is too easily crossed. As we enter into a review of broadcasting regulations, it is a lesson South Africa will do well to bear in mind.