RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

of the BBC . The Government sent the Secret Police to raid BBC offices over a program about spy satellites . A debate at the ruling party's conference cheered to the echo the description of the BBC as the 'Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation'. Senior ministers have attacked the broadcasters over alleged 4eft-wing bias' in their news programs , particularly over their coverage of the US air-raid on Libya . Drama productions regularly provoke howls of outrage from the governing party . in Мау 1988 the government announced the establišhment of a new body , the ‘Broadcasting Standards Authority', allegedly to censor 'sex and violence'. The man they appointed to head it, however , was not a saintly bishop of prominent moral philosopher but one Sir William Rees-Mogg. This product of the most privilegeđ parts of the British education system was twice a faileđ Parliamentary candidate in the Conservative interest. He was Editor of ТНБ TIM Б S , during which periođ he distinguished himself by welcoming the Pinochet coup in Chile and arguing f orcefully for a reduction in spending on health, education and social security . He was a leading member of the Board of Governors of the BBC during the scanđals mentioned above and took a prominent role in attempting to police the political output of the Corporation . He was , as Chairman of the Arts Council, instrumental in cutting the subsidies to community anđ activist theatre groups and encouraging commercial sponsorship . Hardly a neutral political figure , but one with no known expertise in 'зех and violence' . While the exact remit of his 'Broadcasting Standards Authority' is not yet clear , it seems to this writer that, given the track recorđ of the first head , it is unlikely to restrict itself to a narrow definition of its role . It will have an extensive scope , taking in all programs broadcast in the UK , whether by the BBC , the commercial terrestrial broadcasters or the new satellite channels . It is a unigue and substantial step in the direction of the direct censorship of programs , 1 ) The reason for the collapse of this relatively relaxed form of social control over broadcasting does not, I think , lie in the special malice of the current government . Rather , the conditions for such a 'mediated' form of control are beginning to be eroded. Very broadly, the old organization of broadcasting rested on two assumptions. First, that there was general agreement between the sorts of people who ran governments and the state machine on the one hand , and those who directed broađcasting organizations and made program decisions on the other , as to the sorts of things that could and ought to be said , as to the nature of public taste , and as to the political priorities of the nation, anđ so forth . The internal mechanisms of the broađcasting orgamzations , particularly the BBC principle of 'referring up' апу controversial item to the management , was usually enough to

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