1 The relationship between government and the media seems to be calm and peaceful.
2 Britain is the most secretive of all parliamentary democracies
3 Newspaper editors have no problems in publishing confidential documents.
4 The Official Secret Act empowered journalists’ freedom.
5 Journalist do care about national security and safety of the realm.
6 The BBC broadcasts the views of the British government.
7 The Lobby system is beneficial for politicians and for journalists.
8 The media in Britain has to defend its independence in the face of pressure from the government.
Writing in 1741, the philosopher David Hume praised press freedom in Britain with the words: 'Nothing is more apt to surprise a foreigner, than the extreme liberty which we enjoy in this country, of communicating whatever we please to the public, and of openly censuring every measure entered into by the King or his ministers.' Is such a boast still justified? The relationship between government and the media is bound to be an uneasy one in any democracy. Governments are concerned with maintaining their own authority. The media must watch the exercise of that authority, and criticise when they feel it is wrongly used.
The British obsession with secrecy has already been discussed in Chapter 10. For over 50 years the government has had an arrangement for the protection of national security in the media. Its Defence, Press and Broadcasting Committee has agreed that in some circumstances the publication of certain information might endanger national security. In such cases a 'D (Defence) Notice' is issued. A D Notice does not quite have the force of law, but no newspaper editor would ignore a D Notice without incurring major penalties. Over the past 25 years there has been increasing criticism of the apparent abuse of the D Notice system in order to conceal not matters of national security but potentially embarrassing facts.
During the 1980s the government frequently tried to prevent discussion of sensitive issues. In 1989 the new Official Secrets Act greatly strengthened the government's ability to prevent disclosure of sensitive information. Any revelation of material obtained in any unauthorised way from a government source would make a journalist liable to prosecution. Not surprisingly, this provoked strong criticism from journalists. As the Deputy Director General of the BBC wrote in 1989:
Only a threat to vital interests should prevent disclosure by journalists. Those interests include the safety of the realm: they do not include the sensitivities of foreign leaders or the avoidance of embarrassment to the United Kingdom government. A journalist who discovers - say from a confidential Foreign Office document - that a foreign government is using torture faces a dilemma. He or she will wish to publish. The journalist is aware that the regime concerned may respond by refusing contracts to British firms. The story would 'jeopardise' UK interests abroad; and the journalist would face criminal sanction. But at a trial he or she would not be able to argue that the benefit that may result from the revelation of torture outweighs the loss of business.
(John Birt, The Independent)
Nowhere is the issue of journalistic freedom more sensitive than in the case of the BBC, for it occupies a curious position. It is generally regarded as admirably independent of government. But is this really true? It is controlled by a board of 12 governors appointed by the government. They are answerable to the government for all aspects of BBC broadcasting, and in the end the Home Secretary has the authority to replace them. In 1986 the governors came under intense pressure from the government on account of certain programmes which angered the government. One senior Cabinet minister publicly referred to the BBC as the 'Bashing Britain Corporation'. The BBC's Director General was sacked on account of two programmes that angered the government, an act which suggested that the BBC had less independence than many thought.
Nevertheless, the BBC is freer today than in the 1950s when its sense of national loyalty was defined in terms of loyalty to the state rather than the people. There has been a subtle change in vocabulary. Forty years ago, people would have asked of a controversial programme, 'Was it in the national interest?' Today, people are more likely to ask whether it is 'in the public interest'.
There was another way in which the government exercised a hold on the media in order to reduce its true independence. This was through the 'Lobby', a system whereby government ministers and MPs made disclosures to certain accredited journalists on the understanding that it was 'off the record'. The Lobby system began in 1884. The advantage to journalists was that they learnt many things officially not admitted. The advantage to politicians was that they could make things public in an anonymous or deniable way. Officially such meetings between journalists and politicians 'never took place'. Typical newspaper reports begin, 'Senior government sources are saying...' or, 'Sources close to the Prime Minister... '. Politicians used this method for various purposes, often to attack a colleague in a way they could not possibly do publicly. Prime Ministers, for example, used this technique to undermine a minister's public standing before sacking him or her. Or it was a way of manipulating information to mislead, possibly to attract attention to one issue in order to avoid press attention on something else.
Journalists found it useful, but as a result of the increased use of the Lobby system in the 1980s for the disclosure of sensitive or damaging material, two newspapers, The Guardian and The Independent refused to accept anything from government ministers which they were not prepared to state 'on the record', and withdrew from the Lobby. After it came to power, Labour announced the appointment of an official spokesperson, and the end of the Lobby system.