Britain

Abstract

In Britain the broadcasters have come to think of the elected representatives of the people as a collective entity, ‘the politicians’, whose commonalty of outlook towards the business of broadcasting is assumed almost as a fact of nature. Parliament stands enviously glowering at the easy power which comes to those in command of microphones and cameras, distrustful of their casual usurpations, slightly incredulous that so much influence can come with such little responsibility. But unlike their counterparts in some other countries of Europe, the British Broadcasting Corporation and its younger rather more brazen commercial sister, the Independent Broadcasting Authority, do not live in serious fear of being dismantled and reorganised; the relationship between them and ‘the politicians’ is a settled question and though it is reopened and investigated from time to time, the former conduct their affairs in the knowledge that within a territory variously labelled ‘impartiality’, ‘objectivity’, ‘independence’, there shines an eternal summer of institutional continuity. The most recent investigation into the structures of British broadcasting, the Annan Committee,¹ concluded that the existing organisations had justified the underlying concept of the ‘broadcasting authority’ — that is, the placing of total editorial power in the hands of a statutory body whose members are appointed by politicians but who acquire a loyalty to the historic continuity of their respective organisations, within a sense of responsibility towards the public.²