Free Press 206

FREENo 206 Spring 2016£1 Journal Press of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom

LEVESON THEY’RE AFTER CHANNEL 4 Privatisation … AS IF 3 giveaway in IT DIDN’T photo grab HAPPEN IT WAS THIRTY years almost to the day since Rupert REVENGE Murdoch triggered the traumatic dispute at Wapping OF LOCAL that his son James made his own big move in London. READERS The former chairman of BSkyB and chief executive of News International returned to head Sky TV, the cable They want network now rebranded as his father’s domain. the papers The former BSkyB satellite network is even bigger 4 that Big and richer than it was when James was whisked to New York for fear of arrest in the wake of the phone- Media hacking scandal that had exploded in July 2011. don’t Sky TV was first launched using the enhanced BACK: James Murdoch BACK: Rebekah Brooks profits that Murdoch’s News Corporation had generated as a result of Wapping, when on January 25 1986 he In these ways did the UK authorities give the green sacked 5,500 workers and moved production to a the light for the resumption of business as usual for the new plant there, with a ready-trained non-union strike- Murdochs. They might think it’s all over, which would breaking workforce. be another scandal in itself. But it shouldn’t be. James Murdoch’s return followed that last There are three ways in which the seemingly September of Rebekah Brooks, former editor of the relentless progress of the Murdoch media can Sun and News of the World, who indeed was arrested be checked: and charged over phone-hacking and the bribing of 1. The Leveson Inquiry must be resumed. Its spec- EUROPE’S public officials, to be sensationally acquitted after tacular hearings in 2012 were intended only as MEDIA a ten-month trial at the Old Bailey. She the first part of Lord Justice Leveson’s work. MUDDLE resumed her role as head of News UK, With the trials then due, it was decreed as the newspaper group was likewise What that he could not investigate who Questions on regulation in rebranded as part of the corporate Wapping did what over phone-hacking and 8 scheme to erase the scandal. considered instead the associated EU vote Their rehabilitation has been ethical questions raised about enabled by a series of strokes of meant for the press and their relations legal good fortune. The trials of with politicians. lower-level scapegoats from News media Stage Two, the inquiry into International (NI) papers have all Pages 6–7 “unlawful activities” at NI and its finished; prosecutors have announced dealings with police, was supposed there will be no more cases and the to start when the trials finish. The Metropolitan Police, who took a bashing from government would have to activate it. Well, the right-wing press, have wound up the various the trials ended last year, but no word as yet on operations investigating the cases. Leveson. In fact there has been so much specula- More importantly for the company and its bosses, tion that it will never take place that even Tory culture For all campaign news go to prosecutors have also said there will be no corporate secretary John Whittingdale has said it would be “very cpbf.org.uk prosecution. That was the big worry for the Murdochs: strange that actually the most important questions Email: it might have led to a similar process in the US, which [email protected] would have been serious. ,,continued page 6 Mirror boss’s pay rises as sales and profits fall

GIANT REGIONAL and national daily paper New Day in an attempt phone-hacking at its national titles. for 50p, though the first edition newspaper publisher Trinity Mirror to find new ways of generating A charge of £12 million had been was given away free. 2 million gave chief executive Simon Fox a 45 income from print. made in 2014. were printed. per cent pay rise for a year in which During 2015 revenue from Even though prosecutors It has a staff of only 25 people operating profit fell by 25 per cent. print fell from £521.6 million to have announced there will be no and is expected to break even if Last year’s profit was £82.2 £458.9 million. more charges, the company still regular paid-for sales reach 200,000. million but Fox’s pay was up from They showed also that TM made faces civil claims over the long- TM is hoping to emulate the £1.68 million to £2.35 million. a provision of £29 million for the denied intrusions. success of the upmarket tabloid i, The accounts were published the cost of dealing with civil claims New Day, a middle-market, which the Independent group that day TM launched its new cut-price arising from the widespread use of middle-of-the-road tabloid, will sell launched it in 2010 has just sold off. ‘It’s worth buying it up just for the ads’ THE INDEPENDENT’S cut-price spin-off the i The paper’s circulation is around 268,000 – has been sold for £24 million to a big regional while the Independent’s was 56,000 and The publisher that wants its advertising reach. Ashley Independent on Sunday’s 93,000. ■ Highfield, chief executive of Johnston Press, told ■ Staff at the Independent have condemned the business paper City AM: “This is a scale game the closure of the daily and Sunday print titles and we wanted to go after more national adver- and cast doubt on managers’ promise to improve tising revenue and have a bigger train set across the quality of the website as the company which to offer our digital services.” transfers to a digital-only format. They said the The i’s in-house editorial team is to expand move was likely to cost about 100 jobs while from 17 to 51. There will be an £850,000-a- staff in a statement said they were “deeply year deal to buy content from the Independent sceptical about the company’s ability to generate website and the Evening Standard, still owned by confidence in the new Independent website Yevgeny Lebedev. Content will also come from while downgrading existing terms and conditions Johnston Press regional titles. for new roles”. BUT WAS IT EVER? IT HAD long since ceased to be least regarded as feasible. manage to stick to them outgoing Conservative-Liberal independent, but the demise They were independence for long, but even the coalition – which wasn’t even of the paper that managed to from political parties, big compromised version could standing! A little bit of social carry the name for 30 years is a business, advertisers, sponsors not survive the competition of conscience to mask the malign tiny milestone on the triumphal and public relations, and corporate media power. Tory neo-liberalism, eh? procession of Big Media. conservative media values At last year’s UK general The Independent was so It might have become the such as unthinking nationalism election under Yevgeny eviscerated that its pale plaything of a vain and rich and deference to the royal Lebedev’s uninformed cut-price imitation, the i, Russian social climber but family. They are unthinkable direction the paper that became a bigger success. So there was a time when the for commercial publishers now. pledged never to be partisan he sold it. notions it stood for were at The Independent didn’t called for support for the Tim Gopsill

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2 Free Press Spring 2016 Channel 4 STEVE BACK sell-off: the picture told the story

THE GOVERNMENT was caught Steve Back, who has captured a lying when it denied planning to number of such embarrassing privatise Channel 4 television but a exclusives over the years. It showed photographer caught an image of a an unidentified aide carrying document showing it was consid- the incriminating document to ering the move. a meeting. The revelation came at a After the photo was published meeting held in Parliament by the the Prime Minister had to confirm National Union of Journalists in that the sale was on the agenda, Incriminating document snapped in Downing Street February. Scottish National Party John Nicholson said. “The cat was media frontbencher John Nicholson out of the bag.” wanted to sell it off then but he standards. So I thought, why do it? said that Culture Secretary John He said that recently retired had used his powers to block it. But now they are trying again.” Whittingdale had come to the chairman of Channel 4 Lord Burns “I felt strongly about this,” he Dorothy Byrne, head of news DCMS select committee and said had been trying to work up a plan said. “Channel 4 has public service and current affairs programming there were no plans to privatise C4. to “mutualise” the channel by obligations that could not be at C4, warned the meeting of “So we were surprised when an selling it to a non-profit trust but maintained. what had happened when ITV was aide was photographed going into the government was not interested “The government said the sale bought up by outside investors in no 10 carrying a file called ‘Plans to and Lord Burns’s tenure was would raise £1 billion. This was the 1990s. “I was there and that’s Privatise Channel 4’”. not renewed. based on the sale of Channel 5 by why I went to 4,” she said, “I know The document was shown to “My view quite clearly is that Richard Desmond for £500 million. what would happen if C4 was say: “…work should proceed to any substantial change in the I thought that was questionable, privatised.” She said that at the examine the options for extracting ownership of Channel 4 towards an because with the obligations that Royal Television Society awards last greater public value from the equity-based ownership would be would be too expensive. year Channel 4 had won in every Channel 4 Corporation (C4C), very damaging.” “Buyers would expect industry current affairs category. focusing on privatisations options in Former Business Secretary in the average shareholder return of “We are about making the best particular …” The picture was taken coalition government Vince Cable 20 per cent which you could not programmes possible not the best in Downing Street by freelance revealed that the Conservatives had make if you stuck to public service return to shareholders.”

LESS BBC NEWS ‘British press ‘most THE BBC is to chop £80 million a of annual savings … BBC News is right wing in year from spending on news over committed to £5 million as part of the next five years. this effort. northern Europe’ Head of news James Harding, “And by the spring we have to a former editor of The Times, told present a plan of how we propose THE BRITISH press is regarded as the most “right-wing” and “biased” in Europe, according to staff in a blog post in February: to meet BBC News’ share of the polling by YouGov. Then survey of people from “BBC News must contribute its £550 million annual savings seven European nations found that 26 per cent share to achieve the £150 million required by 2021/22.” of Britons viewed their newspapers, TV and radio as “too right-wing”, more than people in France, People ask me: ‘Is the BBC biased?’ and my answer is that the fundamental Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark or Finland. corporate bias is pro-government, regardless of party. It’s the licence fee By contrast, only 17 per cent of British – stupid. Of course not every story will be pro-government respondents felt their media were too left-wing. but the overwhelming narrative will be. Respondents were asked whether they Meirion Jones, former long-serving researcher on BBC Newsnight, forced out as part of the felt about their media reporting on five policy post-Savile purge of staff who had tried to get the child sex abuse story on air. areas: immigration, housing, health, economics and crime. Between a quarter and a third of Britons felt that coverage struck a reasonable balance. But in FAKE SHEIKH FACES TRIAL every area they were more likely to describe it as ‘FAKE SHEIKH’ Mazher Mahmood denied conspiring to pervert the course “too right-wing” than “too left-wing”. of justice in a court hearing in London in February. The former News of Only Finnish people saw their own press as the World investigative reporter and driver Alan Smith are charged with similarly skewed to the right; everywhere else conspiring to change a statement to police regarding the drugs trial of was more likely to assess media as tending pop singer Tulisa Contostavlos in 2014. They were remanded on bail to towards the left. Only 19 per cent of French stand trial at the Old Bailey on September 19. people, for example, perceived their press as biased towards the left. Spring 2016 Free Press 3 MICROLOCALS Commercial papers, who needs them?

THE GREAT gaps in local media left by the says. “Trinity Mirror’s features are produced in obsessive cost-cutting of the Big Media corpo- Liverpool and its news journalists are in Oldham. Bristol: the rations are being filled by the staff they have I think you have to have a base in the town you booted out. report on.” Macclesfield Today has a print-run community Since the millennium half of the journalists of 12,000 delivered to affluent homes and employed by the four (now three) big provincial more than 500 paid-for copies (priced at 50p) in chains have been thrown out of work. At the local newsagents. fights back same time whole areas of the country are ■ losing their news service; fewer than half of ■ IN SOUTH London the success of hyperlocal MIKE JEMPSON reports newspaper the Peckham Peculiar has led to sister Britain’s communities now have a regional daily on a local enterprise for paper, and 85 per cent have only one weekly in title the Dulwich Diverter, to be launched in May. their area. Co-founders Kate White, a freelance journalist, quality journalism in a But the demand for news doesn’t go away, and Mark McGinlay, a social media manager and and a great surge of new micro-local publications publicist, say that the Peculiar, launched two years city where commercial has taken off around the country. No-one knows ago, breaks even. It employs eight freelances. media owners have all how many there are, but many of the people McGinlay said: “We love local newspapers and we producing them are journalists sacked by the passionately believe that hyperlocal news isn’t but destroyed it companies, and proving them wrong. just for the internet. While social media is a great They’re proving a lot of people wrong, in way of engaging with the local community, not addition, by publishing in print. For 20 years it everyone is online. ” IN LITTLE over 18 months more has been received wisdom that printed papers than 800 people have joined ■ will sink into the swamp like the dinosaur as the ■ TWO LOCAL news websites in Wales are the media co-operative that is internet takes over, and while most of the micros diversifying into print to fill the hole in regional The Bristol Cable – an innovative are primarily websites, their producers report that coverage caused by editorial job cuts. The attempt to restore serious inves- readers and advertisers alike want to see print. Caerphilly Observer is producing a fortnightly, tigative journalism to the city. 16-page tabloid newspaper that founder Richard It is a multi-media production ■ ■ In a big city like Bristol, where the Gurner also hopes will attract more advertisers. which extends its print and online pioneering media co-operative the Cable has He says: “The response to the website from journalism with open training firmly established itself (story right) there is readers and businesses alike has been over- sessions, public debates, film nights room for plenty of micros. The Voice series whelmingly positive, but the question they kept and social events. hand-distributes 90,000 copies of a free asking us is, when are we going into print?” “We want to give voice to those magazine a month and has just launched its Launched in 2009, the Observer claims to have left out by the mainstream,” says tenth edition. It was launched four years ago overtaken the website traffic of Newsquest’s one of the three co-founders, Alon by former Bristol Evening Post assistant editor local newspaper Campaign, where Gurner began Aviram. “Inevitably young graduates Richard Coulter and advertising manager his career. The website claims to attract an Emma Cooper. Coulter said: “It is a shame average of 50,000 page views and 20,000 unique there is so much emphasis on digital all the visitors a month. “I am head-to-head with my time when it comes to ultra-local publishers former newspaper,” he says. The Port Talbot when print is what is working. We never get Magnet is following the same path, launching Brixton: asked about online advertising. But in the mad a monthly printed edition. The town has been rush to work out the digital conundrum, print without a local paper since the closure of the news on a remains profitable.” Port Talbot Guardian in 2009 by Trinity Mirror. shoestring ■ ■ ■ IN THE north west of England journalists ■ THE DORSET magazine Seeker News is set to relaunch as a fortnightly newspaper. are launching titles in the new independent ALAN SLINGSBY charts Cheshire Today Group, which publishes online The free 40-page paper will print an initial and in print. Websites cover news in Chester, 10,000 print-run distributed in Poole and the travails of providing Bournemouth. Started as a website three Warrington, Crewe, Wilmslow and Macclesfield, news for a dynamic area and there are the newspapers Macclesfield years ago, editor Steve Cook launched the print Today and Wilmslow Today. Media entrepreneur magazine in 2012. He said: “Too many people without the resources Martin Regan launched Cheshire Today last April are too keen to write newspapers off, but we’re after selling his 48 per cent stake in business not done yet. publishing group Excel Publishing. He believes THE SOUTH London district of ■ that the future of local news remains predomi- ■ A NEW PAPER has been started in west Brixton has the politics, crime, nately in print: “There is no money to be made Norfolk to compete with Big Media papers that are features, arts, food, entertain- in online general news websites, while local cutting back on coverage. Your Local Paper has a ment and personalities to fuel a newspapers are still quite profitable, they are just staff of five and a circulation of 20,000. Managing daily paper, radio stations and a not as profitable as they used to be and most of director Alan Taylor and editor Donna Semmens couple of TV channels besides. the big newspaper groups are stacked up with both worked for the Eastern Daily Press owned Brixton used to be covered in debt.” There is a team of eight journalists, with by Archant and the Johnston Press-owned Lynn detail by the twice-weekly South Regan himself as editor, and a readership of News. She said: “We are completely independent London Press, now a victim of collapsed classified advertising. 190,000 web browsers a month. so don’t have to dance to anyone else’s tune. We Brixton Blog co-founder Tim Dickens giving out copies of the Bugle in Brixton’s Today there are several blogs, its “Most regional newspapers have retreated will produce a local paper serving our community iconic street market from the towns they purport to report on,” he and creating a viable platform for our advertisers.” own monthly newspaper, the 4 Free Press Spring 2016 MICROLOCALS Commercial papers, who needs them?

in precarious employment are attracted to the Cable, but so are older people who remember better days in journalism.” Bristol had lacked independent investigative journalism in print since the local alternative magazine Venue magazine was bought up Bristol United Press, publisher of the city’s dailies and part of the Daily Mail-owned Northcliffe Newspapers group, in 2000. The Evening Post is now, after changing hands twice in the last four years, part of the all-conquering Trinity Mirror Big Media chain. So many staff have left that its coverage has fallen back on the safe and sorry. Some of those who left now are now working for at A Bristol Cable directors’ meeting: no doubt rather different from Trinity Mirror’s half a dozen hyperlocal monthly news sheets – which secure corner shop advertising and are popular in violence against women, the As often with co-ops the Cable The members pay an average of their communities. politics of Bristol’s music scene has a cumbersome structure. Most £2.50 per month and grants have The Cable’s main focus is on and the privatisation of public decisions are taken by contributing been received from various foun- investigations. It has dug into spaces. It carries articles by and members who are newcomers to dations, allowing the Cable to pay wages and conditions for the about the local Kurdish, Somali and community journalism. More expe- key contributors. city’s catering workers, Bristol Spanish communities. rienced hacks are available to assist The founding triumvirate plan University’s investment portfolio, In January volunteers helped with sub-editing and professional to step back once the co-op has the city council’s links with offshore to distribute 10,000 copies of the advice. A Board of Directors ensures achieved financial viability. ■ companies and the distribution sixth quarterly free issue in print. compliance with the Co-op’s ■ Mike Jempson, co-founder of the of public funds during Bristol’s Meanwhile the Cable promotes its constitution and editorial stance East End News Co-op backed by the year as European Green Capital. investigations via social media and and acts as a sounding board for CPBF in the 1980s, is a director of It has also looked at gang culture, on its website thebristolcable.org. strategic decisions. The Bristol Cable

Brixton Bugle with its associated using its assets and profits for the Brixton Blog, and social media public good. feeds too numerous to count. The Blog is billed as an “online The Urban 75 forum has been community newspaper”. We running for more than 20 years try to avoid the temptations and spun off the Brixton Buzz of churnalism. blog in 2012. You have only to encounter The same year the Brixton the friends and families of people Blog, launched by two young campaigning for justice for events journalists, Zoe Jewell and Tim in Brixton many years ago to Dickens, hived off the Bugle, know that only proper, resource- whose ad sales bring in the lion’s demanding reporting will do. share of the income. One source of reporters is Last year the founders stood the local NCTJ short course. down to go and earn a living and Students need cuttings, bylines have a life. and evidence of online reporting. The new editor is Linda Quinn, We need reporters. The synergy is a former director of marketing impossible to resist. and communications for the Big But as Rupert Murdoch, the Lottery Fund. Scott Trust and many others The long-term aim is to secure – including the Blog & Bugle – the future of both Blog and Bugle have discovered, the synergy of by transforming or replacing the publishing online and in print and current limited company, Brixton not losing money is rather harder Media, with a “community to attain. Brixton Blog co-founder Tim Dickens giving out copies of the Bugle in Brixton’s interest company” (CIC) – a social ■■ Alan Slingsby is production iconic street market enterprise recognised in law as editor of the Brixton Bugle

Spring 2016 Free Press 5 MURDOCH WAPPING … as if it didn’t Murdoch: What did happen ,,from page 1 he ever do to us? surrounding the hacking scandal may never be properly looked into. Myths persist about the great dispute at Wapping 30 It must go ahead.” 2. Leveson of course proposed years ago. sets the record straight a new, fairer system for press TIM GOPSILL regulation that was properly independent of the publishers. IT WAS the greatest trauma ever to hit Britain’s cutting costs to compete, they set out actually to The publishers responded by media industry. On January 24 1986, Rupert increase them, to make it too costly for competi- ceremonially killing off their Murdoch’s UK company News International tors to enter the industry. That strategy could tame self-regulator, the Press sacked its non-journalist workforce and switched only work if one factor was firmly in place. You Complaints Commission, and, production overnight to a new non-union guessed it. The union closed shop. after a decent interval, reviving newspaper factory. More than 5,500 people Competitors had to be stopped from hiring it with a new name – the lost their jobs in the move to Wapping and a production staff, and the unions could do that, Independent Press Standards year-long strike failed to win them back. provided they were kept sweet. So it was that Organisation – and a structure This outcome was a catastrophe not just for the two big print unions SOGAT and the NGA and way of working that are the workforce but for all of us. It tilted control of blundered into a trap that led to their downfall. little changed. the press into the hands of Big Media – the mega The new Parliamentary- publishing corporations that have reduced British IT IS RARE in industrial production in Britain for ordained system has now been journalism, at least in commercial publications, to trade unions to be handed effective control over set up after a long and pains- a rump, in the interest of shareholder value. employment terms but that was Fleet Street in taking process and IPSO is not Thirty years on from Wapping, Murdoch’s the 1970s and early 1980s. They controlled the included. The law contains News Corporation still sits on top of the pile of recruitment of staff, maintaining the daily casual penalties for publishers who media conglomerates. His relationship with the system with its cash-in-hand and the potential refuse to join the system. These Tory government is once more as close as it was – not in reality as widespread, again, as myth must be rigorously applied. in the 1980s. Once again there are grudging would have it – for corruption and overpayment. 3. The return of Brooks and James admissions of cosy meetings with David They also maintained workplace discipline, Murdoch and their apparent Cameron and George Osborne. with close to “no-go” areas for management. clean bill of health is more than The print workers were blamed almost univer- The unions operated a “right to reply” policy to likely to lead to a new bid by sally for their own sackings. The story is that the stop the publication of the worst right-wing the Murdochs’ also rebranded dispute was about new printing technology that anti-union material without a reply being offered company 21st Century Fox to buy greedy unions were desperate to the victims, and did, from up the 61 per cent share of Sky to block, to preserve their vast It was a battle time to time, when this did not it does not already own. The last pay packets and their strangle- materialise, stop the papers. It bid collapsed at the last minute hold on the industry. the workers was practically the only time when the scandal broke out but It is certainly true that in our history that workers had had been delayed anyway by a the technology to produce could not win. the confidence to do that. massive public campaign. newspapers with the direct And the print unions were There must be a repeat input of copy into computers The enemy politically progressive, giving campaign the second time round, and to compose pages by great support to other unions and again it must succeed. “pasting up” paper columns was simply in their struggles, notably the rather than hot metal had miners in 1984–85. existed for 20 years. But too strong But this gloriously upside- that’s not what it was about down world was far from a – which was the protection of the owners’ triumph for socialism. For union leaders it was monopoly power. almost as difficult as for employers: they knew For them, new technology was not the what was going on and that it would end in straightforward means of sacking workers and disaster unless they could find a fair, negotiated cutting costs that you might expect. In fact way out of it. But there was no escape. ANNUAL GENERAL for them it was a headache: the possibility of The Times locked out its workforce for 10 MEETING 2016 producing newspapers at a fraction of the cost months in 1978–79 when the unions resisted meant that competitors could gatecrash the provocation from the company and refused to Saturday 2 July 10am–1pm industry and threaten their cosy cartel. go on strike. (Mythology, nevertheless, has this There were millions of readers and plenty one falsely memorialised as a “strike”.) Rupert Discussion of activities over the of lucrative advertising then; the papers made Murdoch, who took over the Times from the past year and policy priorities piles of money. They were also paying very high humiliated Thomson Corporation in 1981, set out for the next 12 months; election wages to (actually only) a minority of their staff on the same course and refused to negotiate of national council for 2016/17; but decent wages to others, who were all repre- terms for the new plant at Wapping. Instead he sented by tightly organised unions with “closed presented the unions with a series of non-nego- and more. shop” agreements: everyone was required to be tiable ultimata that included “no unions” and no At UNITE Headquarters, a member. promise of jobs. 128 Theobald’s Road, Holborn, London The publishers realised that this “union All through the long run-up the unions had WC1X 8TN. Nearest station: Holborn power”, as they publicly condemned it, could tried to get their members to take action to offer them short-term salvation. Instead of force negotiations, but they would not listen; 6 Free Press Spring 2016 ALAN RICHARDSON

NEW VENUE IN Tower Hamlets

NEWS INTERNATIONAL WAPPING DISPUTE DRAMATIC IMAGES The Exhibition AND ACCOUNTS OF 2 March - 9 April 2016 THE DISPUTE Idea Store Watney Market, 260 Commercial Road, London E1 2FB 020 7364 3804

www.ideastore.co.uk www.towerhamlets.gov.uk Library and exhibition is open Monday-Saturday Exhibition guide available Monday-Wednesday and Saturdays, 10-5pm. Group visits welcome. See websites for details.

Organised by the News International Dispute Archive and supported by Unite the Union, National Union of Journalists, Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom and the Marx Memorial Library POLICE obstructed and attacked Murdoch’s trucks loaded with Further Information: 07831 676587 or [email protected] anniversary exhibition in east pickets and supporters time papers emerging from the plant. London, near where the Wapping and again throughout the One local youth was killed by a Four pickets were jailed. plant, which was demolished last Wapping dispute. speeding truck. These pictures are from the summer, once stood. For the whole year there were Time after time waves of riot News International Dispute AA The exhibition runs mass pickets every Wednesday police, on horseback and foot, Archive, a collection assembled until April 9 at the Idea Store in and Saturday evening, starting violently beat the protesters back. by former strikers and union Watney Market, 260 Commercial at 9pm, attempting to stop Dozens were injured or arrested. activists, which is showing a 30th Road, London E1 2FB unsurprisingly, the workers were scared to put curbed, propagating the myth that persists that did launch after 1986, the only one that their good fortune at risk. And by January 1986 because it is they who persistently promote it. lasted at all was the Independent, which Murdoch had secured the resources to make the There was another, associated and equally survived only on the whim of a classic mega- big break. dishonest myth with which they disguised their lomaniac proprietor, the narcissistic Russian This is why the Wapping dispute was so grab for power: that they had achieved some oligarch Yevgeny Lebedev, until he closed it down traumatic and violent. So much water had built kind of democratic revolution. The claim was that this year. up behind the dam that when it burst there was the cheaper production resulting from digital The Independent has gone online-only, and a torrential flood. technology would mean a wondrous prolifera- of course the internet is the main factor in the Murdoch had lined up the government of tion of new media as a democratising force. decline of print. At the turn of the century the Margaret Thatcher and the law: her employment Another myth. internet was in just the same way held up as acts of the 1980s that outlawed solidarity action There may have been new small publications great democratising medium – the slogan this and picketing; he had the Metropolitan Police, but in the commercial field the numbers have time being “everyone is a publisher”. Everyone fresh from their success at smashing heads fallen ever since. Of the handful of newspapers can be, but 15 years on four giant US corporations and unions in the miners’ strike; he had a new – Apple and Microsoft, Google and Facebook – non-union workforce, thanks to the collaboration dominate the world. of the right-wing electricians’ union, the EETPU, What Murdoch established at Wapping was which had recruited and trained them, in one of the untouchable power of the global corporation. the vilest acts of betrayal in labour history; he Yes, he abuses his immense media power to even had the trucks to distribute his non-union corrupt governments and drive them into devas- papers by road, to replace the railways, whose tating wars. He fills his newspapers with hateful unions would certainly not have played his game. lies that are blight on our national life. The truth of Wapping is that it was a battle But it’s worse than that. The Big Media corpo- the workers could not win. As with the miners, rations do not run according to the whims of the enemy was simply too strong and the longer megalomaniac proprietors but the requirements the stand-off went on, the weaker they became. of capital. Profit, share price and shareholder The outcome was win-win-win for the value are what matters, even in Murdoch’s giant owners. After Murdoch’s victory the others companies which are run by bunch of aggressive bravely rushed through the breach he had made right-wing American magnates, including his in the workers’ defences. Within months of the sons Lachlan and James, with little interest in the end of the dispute in 1987 every national paper troublesome London papers. had dropped hot metal production and had Rupert himself is an anachronism. The old journalists inputting their copy directly into the I once asked Rupert Murdoch why press barons, monsters that they were, did system; papers outside London had done so ten he was so opposed to the have some kind of purpose and commitment to years before. Tens of thousands of print workers European Union. ‘That’s easy’, he replied. publishing. Those around him including his sons were thrown out of work. ‘When I go into Downing Street they do do not. what I say; when I go to Before Wapping, among media folk it was a THE BOSSES also had a propaganda victory. Brussels they take no notice.’ commonplace riddle to ask whether an owner They could rub the sacked workers’ noses in Anthony Hilton, business editor of the was in it for the political clout or for the money. the dirt and crow that the market had won and London Evening Standard, February 25 No-one ever asks that now. The answer is the excessive power of trade unions had been too obvious. Spring 2016 Free Press 7 EUROPE Media with Frontiers The Europe debate ahead of the UK referendum ENZO ZUCCHI/CONSILIUM OF THE EUROPEAN UNION in June rarely extends beyond migration and questions of national independence. But the European Union’s reach goes into all areas of national life. GARY HERMAN asked the questions about its policies on the media.

≤∞±6 IS ALREADY an interesting year for the EU. Press freedom, a fundamental right within EU legislation, is flouted by, among others, Hungary and Poland. The refugee crisis is opening fault lines in the EU’s structure and the Union seems Günther Oettinger incapable of acting against members who ignore EU Commissioner its laws and treaties. for Digital Transnational treaties that will profoundly Economy affect its citizens are negotiated in secret while and Society the Union’s evident desire to expand eastward is both politically explosive and internally divisive. According to a White Paper launched in programmes online and cross-border access to On April 6, the Netherlands – one of the Barcelona by the 5G Public-Private Partnership content.” This is an area that has proved pretty original six members of the Common Market – (the Commission, industry and research), 5G intractable for many years, and there is no will vote on whether the country supports the will not be fully deployed until 2020. That is just evidence that the EU can come up with answers. EU’s association agreement with Ukraine; this a target; it would be difficult to overestimate It has never been able to get its member states may turn out to be a prelude to a second in-out the potential technological, political and legal to agree on a standard electric plug, let alone to referendum after the UK’s vote on leaving. It obstacles that could delay its achievement. act together to resolve an issue as urgent and looks like a failed project. Oettinger has presented a proposed a new relatively uncomplicated as the refugee crisis. While all this is going on, Brussels seems “Regulation on the cross-border portability of One of the EU instruments which could online content services” to revise the address these questions – the Audiovisual Nowhere else are national copyright rules that block users from Media Services Directive (AVMSD) – is outside accessing online services paid for Oettinger’s remit. borders such bottlenecks in their home country (for example, It belongs to directorate of Culture and movies, TV broadcasts, e-books, music Education, and it has not been revised since as in copyright or games) when travelling to others. 2007. Well before the Digital Single Market was This would allow catch-up TV a gleam in anyone’s eye, the AVMSD’s prede- blithely to pursue its Frankenstein-inspired services like the BBC iPlayer to be received across cessor programme, Television Without Frontiers, master plan to build the world’s most powerful the EU, and would as a consequence enormously considered the issue of cross-border media. But economy from the rotting stump of the disinte- increase the availability of online media in every the digital revolution proceeded too fast and the grating Union. state. These initiatives should make significant Commission failed to keep up with it. A key ingredient of this strategy is the Digital advances towards creating a single market for One consultancy organisation, Dehavilland Single Market (DSM). 2016 has been loudly media within the EU. But “should” is not “will” Europe, observed last year that a reopening of heralded as “a decisive year for the develop- and Oettinger’s “fourth industrial revolution” may the AVMS Directive has been on the cards for ment of the digital economy and society in the be indefinitely delayed. European Union” by Günther Oettinger, the The biggest problems The digital revolution European Commissioner responsible for DSM. facing European media in The buzz phrase, unveiled at the recent Mobile the age of DSM are neither proceeded too fast and the World Congress in Barcelona, is “Empowering technological nor narrowly Verticals” – increased integration and connec- legal. There are much deeper Commission failed to keep up tivity, based on the next (fifth) generation of questions relating to the mobile technology, which, it is claimed, can cultural and ethical environment that need to be some time. drive the growth of vertical markets such as the addressed, such as contending cultural values, In 2014, the EU established a European media, automotive and healthcare sectors at a the concentration of ownership, the decline of Regulators Group for Audiovisual Media Services European (not to say, global) level. public services and the growing dominance of (ERGA) to report directly to the Commission. This If the EU survives, we will see radical changes global “content aggregators” like Google, Apple group of national broadcasting regulators has to the media across the board. We are promised and Amazon. been largely preoccupied with advising on the 16 initiatives by the end of the year to update the Oettinger is looking at copyright law. revision of the AVMSD. regulatory framework supporting digital media. “Copyright reform is crucial,” he has said. It has no power to make policy in its own The deadline for all this is 2017, at the same time “Nowhere else are national borders such bottle- right and the primary allegiance of its members as mobile roaming charges are abolished within necks as in the area of copyright.... By mid-2016, is national, not European and certainly not global. the EU, but much of it hinges on the roll-out of we will consider legislative proposals including And in the age of NetFlix and YouTube, that’s the fifth generation, 5G. cross-border distribution of television and radio a problem.

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