A hand that feeds

Like much of the world, Britain is in high season for government intervention. The past two years have witnessed a number of banks, strained beyond their usual limits by a fierce economic crisis, urgently seek public assistance. Having waded in to shoulder much of the brunt of the crisis so far, the government is now contemplating ways in which to protect the banks and, more significantly, the country’s finances, from future upheavals, by involving itself more robustly than before in the financial system and the course of its post-recession reincarnation.

As an example of government intervention in national affairs, the case of the banks stands alone, but only in terms of magnitude. Intervention, in addition to the usual wrangling of laws and deployment of certain services, is customary, if not always obvious, and at that a necessary function of government in times of need. During a recession, need is rife, with more to protect than vulnerable banks. In the private sector, small companies, their larger relatives and even whole industries must be propped up or even saved from collapse outright, while the public sector will likely be painfully cut to reduce public deficit created by a slew of economic rescue efforts. If, as many expect, the reins of government do change hands at the next ballot in 2010, intervention could be even more widespread, as new leaders attempt to reshape things in their ideological image.

Yet intervention can be unwelcome, even within the government’s traditional jurisdiction of law and policy. Fresh news this week on the progress of the controversial ID cards scheme pioneered by Labour follows years of resistance to what was, and is, heavily opposed by many as an affront to civil liberties. Similarly, the government attracted stinging controversy recently over its reassessment of drug policy when it clashed with an adviser over the classification of certain narcotics, with the altercation leading to his dismissal. And following this summer’s explosive MP’s expenses scandal , the ongoing process of recriminating offenders and navigating systemic reforms, arguably a vital step towards rehabilitating the reputation of British democracy and its politicians amongst the public, has faced intense criticism from disgruntled MP’s.

Government intervention can be arduous, time-consuming and unpopular, but also necessary and worth a struggle. Bailing out banks may cause pain financially, but the alternatives could be catastrophic. And politicians may resent their colleagues being cast into the darkness as their privileges are dismantled, but a parliament lacking credibility, something these measures hope to restore, could prove impotent. Not all intervention, however, is wise or for the greater good. Some is superfluous, overly politicised or simply ill-conceived. Distinguishing good from bad here is useful, but tricky.

In the midst of its own crisis, one candidate that David Cameron, potentially the leader of the next government, has marked for reform is the British media. This industry, sabotaged by tumbling newspaper sales and a slump in advertising revenue, an important form of subsidisation for publishers and broadcasters, is in dire need of intervention, be it from public or private bodies. Though initially in the form of miscellaneous proposals, Cameron’s party, the Conservatives, have presented a wide ranging portfolio for British media reform over the past few months. This in itself is encouraging, but the deployment and wisdom of some of these ideas may deserve scrutiny.

A number of the measures proposed appear bold but not impractical. The call for restructuring of the British media landscape, expected in Shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt’s (pictured) speech tomorrow at the Manchester Media Festival sets a promising tone; as Hunt correctly argues, current rules preventing any single media group owning newspapers, radio stations and television channels in the same geographical area are counter productive in the internet age; media groups need to consolidate their resources and produce multimedia output in order to attract a more technocratic audience and stay competitive. As Hunt notes, media operators need greater flexibility to survive. Granting this flexibility would be sensible and justified.

Other suggestions for reform, at least broadly speaking, seem somewhat level-headed, if also divisive. Cameron may be right in both attacking communications regulator Ofcom’s role as a policy-maker and calling for big change at the “bloated” BBC, including a rolling back of unnecessary commercial expansion, something the BBC Trust appeared to favour just this week. His critique of the top tier salaries paid by these two bodies is sound, at least on first inspection. In principal, these reforms would be wise.

Yet any media intervention by an admittedly hypothetical Conservative government would require greater thought, as a number of flaws lurk in the current strategy. Stars and top earners at the BBC, some of whom, as a handful of newspapers were keen to point out, in fact manage to dwarf the prime minister’s salary with their own, do serve as evidence that the corporation’s inflated pay system could be in need of downsizing. Nevertheless, without establishing a better perspective of the situation by first analysing top pay levels at other broadcasters and media groups, who influence existing salary norms as much as their public-funded rival, preemptively neutering the BBC’s salary power would be misguided. Similarly Ofcom is not chosen by an electorate and may have too much influence on policy in view of this fact, but many argue that it is otherwise an effective replacement of a former regulatory system consisting of five different bodies, and furthermore costs the taxpayer little directly, making Cameron’s plans to slash it down a few sizes seem almost unfounded. Though none of the arguments surrounding such reforms are definitive or indisputable, they do highlight the care that must be taken when planning major reform, and that reform is by no means a perfected art.

The most worrying kind of reform, and one that a Conservative government would be wise to avoid, is one based purely on political maneuvering. Some already point suspiciously to the correspondence between Conservative proposals regarding Ofcom and BBC, and James Murdoch’s less than favourable, even hostile, views on the two, claiming the existence of some pact between Cameron and James’ father Rupert, the media mogul. This argument, though supported in the eyes of some by Murdoch-owned, News International newspaper The Sun’s recent disavowal of Labour after 12 years of (at times unenthusiastic) loyalty, is riddled with discrepancies, such as Cameron’s apparent failure to convincingly woo the older Murdoch on his own. Though if real, reforms led by political strategy could be a danger.

General political tinkering seems a more tangible concern, however, following Jeremy Hunt’s claim that the left-leaning bias of the BBC, a phenomenon partly verified by reports and journalists’ anecdotal evidence, should be remedied by actively hunting Conservatives to join the corporation’s news team. This is both ill-advised and worrying; the innate political bias of the BBC, though detrimental to objectivity, seems predominantly, as Andrew Marr commented, “cultural and not party political.”, and seemingly so pervasive as to render political balancing acts useless. More importantly, were Hunt to place Conservatives at the BBC for the sake of party politics, such a political coup in the media could set a dangerous precedent.

For a struggling industry, intervention is a pressing issue, but not one to be rushed. Any intervention must be measured, considered, and unpolitical, be it by a government or the media itself.