Norman Boyd, Northern Ireland Unionist Party assembly member for South Antrim, wrote to the Belfast Telegraph this week moaning about media bias. "Many journalists have been far from impartial by declaring their open support for the agreement," he complained and in truth every media outlet in Northern Ireland is broadly pro-agreement. Yet unionist anti-agreement sentiment continues to grow, so why does Norman Boyd think that media bias matters?
Nowhere is belief in the media's influence stronger than in the media itself, best summed up by The Sun's bragging 1992 post-election headline 'It was The Sun wot won it', but even Rupert Murdoch's legendary influence is a myth. When he bought The Sun in 1969 it was a Labour paper and continued to be so right up until it became obvious that Margaret Thatcher would win the 1979 election – at which point The Sun switched sides. As soon as Tony Blair became Labour party leader The Sun started hedging its editorial bets and when it was clear new Labour would win the 1997 election it switched back again. It was not The Sun's wot won it, nor did it even try. Newspapers are like train drivers, responding to signals and making announcements but otherwise proceeding down a route the passengers have chosen. So how much less power have newspapers in Northern Ireland, where nobody ever changes trains at all?
At least newspapers are allowed to editorialise. Television is required by law to be impartial, a meaningless and patronising concept which has led to some absurd situations – like the DUP complaining that Gerry Adams was on screen slightly longer than Ian Paisley during the UTV Live opening credits (and to its credit, UTV told them to wise up). But what is 'impartiality'? The working definition is that both sides of an argument get equal representation, but who picks the argument and who are 'both sides'? If you're discussing the Good Friday Agreement, do you put Sinn Féin up against the DUP, the DUP up against itself, the UUP up against the SDLP, or the 32 County Sovereignty Movement up against everyone else? Just by attempting to define the centre ground television takes a political position – and the question for any intelligent adult is 'why shouldn't it?' Why can't television news programmes editorialise, just like newspapers? When Norman Boyd complains about media 'bias', he's implying that we're too stupid to spot an editorial line when we see one, although 400 years of partisan newspaper journalism doesn't seem to have done democracy any harm.
Television news could do itself a favour by not banging on endlessly about how trusted and influential it is. We're a media-literate society: we all know full well that some television stations exhibit mild political leanings – that Channel 4 news is The Guardian read aloud or that Sky News is The Sun with its shirt on and we make allowances accordingly. If these stations were free to take an open editorial line, we could make those allowances more accurately. The biggest phenomenon news broadcasting has seen for years is FOX News Live, a Murdoch-owned American channel which shamelessly pitches just to the left of Adolf Hitler. It is hugely popular with its massive moronic following, while driving America's liberal media elite completely up the wall. Yet FOX News Live misleads nobody, even by accident, because when it goes off on a right-wing rant you know it's a right-wing rant – 'bias' isn't an issue.
Closer to home there's a perception that UTV has a soft-unionist bias while the BBC has a soft-nationalist bias. I don't think that's true, but I wish it was. How much more involving the news would be and how much more we would learn about ourselves and each other, if our local television stations took openly political positions. Instead, we have the on-air equivalents of the Alliance Party, staking out a meaningless middle ground for the sake of a quiet life. Of course the BBC feels obliged to be all things to all men because it costs every household £120 a year, but television advertising costs the average household £600 a year and nobody calls that a tax.
Perhaps the requirement for Irish-language and Ulster Scots broadcasting will help things to change. If this is perceived as specifically nationalist and unionist programming in disguise – and it will be – it might become possible to cut the pretence and make specifically nationalist news, unionist discussion or republican documentary programmes. It's not like there isn't plenty of debate within those constituencies and of a kind we'd all find more interesting than today's tired green-corner-orange-corner bun-fights. Maybe Norman Boyd could start the ball rolling by commissioning a half-hour anti-agreement broadside and kicking up a stink until somebody puts it on the air. You never know – I hear TG4 will screen practically anything.
