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THE GUARDIAN
Tuesday, 8 October 1990
The voice of reason
Georgina Henry
Media Editor
LORD WYATT is a satisfied man. "Yes, we've got quite a lot of what we wanted from the Government," he agrees.
Together with Lord Orr-Ewing, the Freedom Association, 113 backbench MPs (mainly Tory), the Media Monitoring Unit and Lord Chalfont, founder of the MMU and now, strangely, deputy chairman of the Independent Broadcasting Authority, he has fought an assiduous campaign against the "left-wing bias" he sees in broadcasting. This group is on the brink of victory with a Government amendment to the Broadcasting Bill waiting only for the votes of loyal peers and MPs to make it law.
Lord Wyatt has been fighting "biased broadcasting" for years, in recent times from his thoroughly biased platform in the News of the World and the Times. He was co-founder of Panorama during which time, of course, it was unbiased. "In those days we didn't mind people knowing what our political affiliations were. I had been a Labour MP, after all. I don't understand why presenters are so shy now. (Lord Wyatt asked the BBC and was rebuffed.)
"We're not trying to protect people from themselves but from people pretending to be impartial when they're not. If, for example, every morning when Brian Redhead starts his programme [Today] he began it by saying 'I'm Brian Redhead and I'm a life-long Labour supporter, but I'm going to try and be as impartial as I can, then you would know where you were.' But it's not what's said. People think he's being impartial."
Where is the evidence of deep public disquiet about bias? "The reason that there's no continuing public uproar is that people expect the box to be impartial. It doesn't occur to them that it's not being impartial because it has to be by law. If you have a programme dished out to you and you don't know half the facts are missing then you think it's impartial. And people don't complain because they are not that well informed. You might notice bias but the ordinary chap is not that interested in politics and he just assumes he is being told the truth when he's not." How, then, have the Conservatives managed to win three general elections? Lord Wyatt argues that the Tory vote might have been higher had it not been for the "brainwashing".
Lord Wyatt is now 72 and rather frail, but still wily. And coy on the subject of his closeness to the Prime Minister, whose support for the amendment has guaranteed its progress this far. Lord Wyatt is said to have seen her at intervals to stiffen her resolve to force a reluctant Home Office to act. "Well, the Home Office is rather ambivalent about everything. I talk to her about fairly frivolous things when we happen to meet."
Lord Wyatt has a personal hit-list. Channel 4 is at the top with Harold Pinter's Opinions on American policy in Central America, and Battle of Trafalgar, about police tactics in the poll-tax demonstrations in Trafalgar Square. Just behind is Granada. "I mean, World in Action is appalling, but quite a lot of Granada is just as bad." His favourite is Sky News. "If anyone thinks my view of Sky is influenced by writing for Rupert Murdoch's papers they have to be nuts," he says.
The BBC probably ranks third, which is why Lord Wyatt and Lord Orr-Ewing are bringing forward an amendment this week to make sure it can't escape. At the moment the clause only refers to commercial television, although the BBC will be expected to show "due cognisance" of it. "I can't see why the BBC shouldn't be covered," Lord Wyatt says. "It's covered by the Broadcasting Standards Council after all. They say we have to wait till the review of the BBC Charter in six years' time in which case I may be dead and I don't want to wait that long. They've never shown due cognisance of their own ruddy code so why should they of this one?"
He sees no contradiction in the fact that the bill was supposed to move broadcasting into a less regulated world more applicable to a multi-channel future. "For at least 20 years the big broadcasters will have at least 85 per cent of the audience. When there are lots of stations it won't matter what the rules are." This is the reverse argument, incidentally, to the defence of News International's ownership of Sky and five national newspapers.
Lord Wyatt thinks that the flurry of leaders from papers like the Times, the Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday - all attacking the proposals - are because journalists don't understand him. He says the change wouldn't mean that if you had a personal view programme on, say, how Rottweilers were dangerous and should be specially registered you would have to then give equal time to a defender of Rottweilers. Lawyers fear otherwise. "Well, lawyers say all kinds of things. But you're asking hypothetical questions. I think you have to behave with a degree of common sense, it's a matter of judgment." Which is exactly why broadcasters say it has to be left to the discretion of the regulators and not written in tablets of stone.
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