Mr Chairman I support the motion that "new media is killing journalism" because I fear that the explosion in the use of the internet for broadcasting -- and especially the way newspaper websites are moving into television news and programming -- could threaten the great British tradition of the impartial reporting of politics on radio and television. What is happening is that the media proprietors are determined to maintain the political patronage and influence which their newspapers have always deployed in the past. And I am convinced that their heavy investment in the audio-visual content of newspaper websites will help ensure that future governments will continue to remain in awe of the Rupert Murdochs of this world.
The threat to our journalistic standards is that if political programming on newspaper websites continues to be unregulated -- which is precisely what the government has agreed to -- then this will be a Trojan Horse. Murdoch & Co will get a politically partisan television channel like Fox News into the United Kingdom by the back door, by the internet. And believe me this is already happening: Telegraph TV is currently streaming twelve programmes on the Daily Telegraph’s website. Here’s the advertisement for Right On, the television programme “that’s politically right, not politically correct” chaired alternatively by the Conservative MP Anne Widdecombe and Simon Heffer, featuring Andrew Pierce, Jeff Randall and other journalists on the right.
The Telegraph’s editor, Will Lewis -- all honour to him -- says Britain’s “light touch regulation” is helping the UK newspapers to lead the world in the audio-visual development of their websites. But this will only weaken mainstream broadcasters with their duty to be politically impartial and to give balanced coverage during elections to the main political parties. And already the regulated mainstream television is having to dance to the tune of newspaper websites. Take last weekend: the Mail on Sunday signed up Lord Levy with his agenda- setting demolition of Gordon Brown. All the main television channels used footage of exclusive Levy interview on the Mail website -- with the Mail logo in the corner of the shot.
What we are about to lose is that tradition of balanced political broadcasting, one of the great strengths of British journalism. Remember the Sun’s front page “Freddie Starr ate My Hamster” (Sun, 13.3.1986). That gave the green light to a generation of journalists who are happy to concoct stories based on nothing more than the quotes of what “An Onlooker said”. Now un-attributed quotes from legions of un-named sources are a cancer eating away of the probity of our journalism.
Once we get political journalism on television and radio via the internet -- a style of broadcasting that no longer has any intention of being balanced -- we are on a terrible slippery slope. Can you see the Liberal Democrats or the Greens getting a fair shout Telegraph TV’s Right On? There’s not much chance of that.
I am all for the freedom and opportunities which have opened up on the internet and which will help all journalists. But believe me with convergence on the way we must think carefully before we allow the Murdochs, the Harmsworths, the Barclays and their ilk to demolish that long-standing British democratic safeguard that while our newspapers have total political freedom, we require radio and television to be balanced politically, especially at election time. That is why I support this motion.
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