America's people must be collectively scratching their heads as to why so much anti-American sentiment is swirling around the globe - even in more friendly places such as Europe, Britain, Canada, Spain and Australia.

If fourth president of the United States, James Madison, were alive today - the anniversary of his birth - he could provide them with the answer. He'd look to the first amendment of the United States constitution, an article of which Madison was particularly fond, for an explanation.

Madison knew that, according to this article, the proper role for a media organization -small, medium or even outrageously large - should always be to provide a check on the government. It should not be, as is the case with the BBC, so significantly a part of government. With the public BBC, you have a media entity funded annually by 2.5 billion pounds of compulsory licence fees, collected from all owners of television sets in the United Kingdom.

Madison believed that the media should always be at odds with its government. The various platforms of the people - through their own speech, through their press, through any new media they may develop, and through their own right to peacefully assemble - should always be, first and foremost, directed against the proclivities of government and its officials. For the people to be effective in watching over government, media outlets should always be in the hands of private individuals. You would have no right, in Madison's eyes, to petition the government - other than by some ghastly pretence - when you are so significantly a part of it.

The British are not totally unaware of this desire for a separation of government and media - but unfortunately, they have not been truly prepared to give effect to it. Their compromise solution was to maintain the public BBC well and truly within the executive branch of government; but to drop the type of governance controls that are classically designed for other public departments or authorities. This has been the case since 1927, through to the recent findings of the Hutton Inquiry - and now beyond.

The dropping of these governance controls has left a largely unaccountable and politically conformist staff in control of a massively funded, highly influential platform that now, after 77 years of operation, dominates the electro-magnetic spectrum, not only in its own country, but globally. Staff and the apparatchiks of the BBC are happy to criticise the Blair Government, overjoyed to be derisive of the Conservative opposition, in some kind of euphoria when dismissing anything American, and well, God help you if you're an Israeli. In the minds of BBC people you'll find an abstract undergraduate idea of a non-oppressive, non-exploitative form of socialism - one that has not existed at any time throughout history. But never let the truth get in the way of a great and financially rewarding fantasy.





These views are solely the opinions of the writer, regardless of how close to the truth they may me.

© Copyright John Cavanagh
All rights reserved.

Article posted to this site on 16 March 2004.

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