The British Broadcasting Corporation’s
long-standing reputation for impartiality
has recently taken some hard
knocks. The chairman resigned in 2004
after a BBC reporter falsely accused the
British government of “sexing up” intelligence
reports before the Iraq War. During
the war, at least among conservatives,
the BBC was widely dubbed the “Baghdad
Broadcasting Corporation” because
of its perceived bias against the U.S.-led
coalition.
Now an independent report has told
the BBC it must make its coverage of the
European Union “more demonstrably
impartial” and better informed. “The
problem of ignorance among BBC journalists
on the EU issue must be
addressed as a matter of urgency,” according
to the report, published in January
2005. The panel conducting the
survey, at the BBC’s request, found ignorance
about the European Union “at
every stage of the reporting process.” It
warned the BBC to spruce up its coverage
before the British referendum on the
European constitution, expected some
time in 2006.
Ignorance of the European Union,
however, is by no means unique to the
BBC. The same charge could be leveled
at many other media organizations covering
Europe’s tortuous path toward
closer unity, not least those based in the
United States. The not-so-surprising verdict
on the BBC should motivate other
international news organizations to examine
their EU coverage for signs of ignorance
or bias.
Nobody has ever claimed that it is
easy to report accurately on the European
Union, even for Brussels-based
journalists who follow its activities every
day. As most of what happens in Brussels
consists of meetings of officials in closed
rooms, there are few opportunities for
dramatic TV pictures. And although
many important issues are decided in
Brussels, concerning both the domestic
laws and policies of the member states
and the Union’s role in world affairs,
most dossiers under discussion are complex
and technical. In fact, it is often
hard for reporters to make them interesting
without “sexing them up.”
Following the affairs of the European
Union “requires an intense, permanent
intellectual effort,” according to one
veteran European journalist. Most
American reporters have never even
tried to make such an effort, dismissing
all the workings of Union as “economic,”
and thus anathema to the traditional
foreign correspondent, who would
rather be riding a tank wearing combat
fatigues. A succinct Aristotelian summary
of the attitude of many journalists
might read as follows: All economic
news is boring; no boring stories ever
make the front page; therefore economic
stories are not worth pursuing. They are
even a kind of insult to a reporter’s dignity.
And it is true that the EU institutions
do not make it easy for reporters.
In the half-century of the Union’s existence,
neither the Commission, nor the
Council nor the European Parliament
has ever shown any real sense of public
relations. Even their names and functions
are still obscure to many Europeans
- let alone non-Europeans. How
many people, for instance, could instantly
tell the difference between the
European Council, the Council of Europe
and the Council of Ministers?
Even the European Parliament lacks
the drama and news-worthiness of most
national parliaments - not least because
the proceedings are slowed down by
translation into 20 official languages -
and there are few quick-fire exchanges
between political opponents, as take
place, for example, in the British House
of Commons. Then there is the European
Court of Justice, the European
Union’s supreme court, which deliberates
in secret and draws little attention
except when it makes official pronouncements.
Nevertheless, the European Union
has attracted one of the world’s largest
press corps to its Brussels headquarters.
More than 1,200 reporters are officially
accredited to the Commission, meaning
that they are either based in Brussels or
spend a lot of time there. They are regularly
supplemented by scores of visiting
editors and journalists - usually specializing
in national rather than EU issues -
who descend on Brussels for major
events such as summit meetings. These
visiting journalists normally report only
their own country’s viewpoint, and interpret
whether their governments have
“won” or “lost” in the Ministerial fray,
whereas the local Brussels journalists try
to glean information from sources of
many different nationalities.
Representatives of the larger countries,
particularly those with a major
stake in the deliberations, will naturally
try to brief their reporters in a way that
favors their own positions. That is particularly
true of France and Britain,
which both have traditions of government
control over information. So the
savvy journalist seeks out officials from
smaller countries, those with no interest
at stake, or neutral EU observers, to
piece together a relatively objective account.
But with 25 member governments
now represented in Brussels,
against only six from the 1950s until
1973, comprehensive reporting has become
exponentially more difficult. As
the Union has grown in numbers and in
subjects covered, so also has specialist,
technical reporting on the many diverse
ramifications of its policies.
All this means that Brussels-based
reporters are no longer the authoritative
sources of all EU news they once were. In
the 1960s and 1970s Brussels was considered
a highly desirable posting, eagerly
sought by European correspondents,
many of whom were firm believers in the
European idea. The first wave of reporters
covered the establishment of the
Union’s institutional building blocks and
basic policies (such as the customs union
and the common agricultural policy),
while their successors have to cover contentious
policy outcomes and complex
institutional interrelationships. Generational
change in the press corps, intractable
policy dilemmas and public
unease over EU enlargement and immigration
have helped produce a different
mood among reporters. The visionary
enthusiasm of earlier years has generally
yielded to greater realism.
Coverage by the media of all the EU
member states follows some fairly common
patterns. Council and Commission
decisions receive most attention, although
coverage of the Parliament and
its members has grown steadily. Three
topics have absorbed most recent reporting,
namely economic, financial and
budgetary issues, foreign and security
policies and the growth of EU influence
at the expense of national governments.
Coverage of these issues is often in-
15 Winter/Spring - Volume 6, Numbers 1 & 2 - EUROPEAN AFFAIRS
European Perspectives
fluenced by the political stance of the
news organization concerned, or by a reporter’s
instinctive affinity with the position
of his or her own country. As in
journalism generally, conflict is much
more newsworthy than agreement - for
example over Iraq or the provisions of
the new European constitution. But behind
most Brussels coverage there still
lies a tacit assumption that closer European
unity is basically a good thing. Except
in Britain, Denmark and Sweden,
the views of Euroskeptics are not given
much space.
Nevertheless, the media in most
member states focus less on the broad
future of Europe than on the doings of
their national representatives in the
Council, the Commission and the European
Parliament. The activities of Members
of the European Parliament are
attracting increasing attention in regional
and local media in their home
states. As a result, voters and regional authorities
may increasingly look less to
national parliaments and politicians and
more to EU institutions. Even so, reporting
still tends to focus on national, regional
or local interactions with the
European Union, rather than with EUwide
news.
This may reflect similarities to the
evolution of the United States as a single
political entity. Speaking of racial intolerance
in the South, Adlai Stevenson
once said his country should be thought
of as “the Uniting States.” If a Europewide
political consciousness and community
is to emerge, it will take time.
Against this background, questions
of bias, of Europhilia or Europhobia,
may seem largely irrelevant to many reporters.
Most Brussels correspondents
do not question the desirability of European
integration in general – after all,
their job is to cover it in a context of
generally supportive national newsrooms
and governments. Critics might
argue that journalists have in a sense become
co-opted into the process. The report
on the BBC, for example, said there
seemed to be “overwhelmingly” more
complaints about biased coverage from
critics of the European Union than from
EU supporters.
Interestingly, the report said it found
no evidence of “deliberate bias” one way
or the other. It added, however, “there is
a widespread perception that the BBC
suffers from certain forms of cultural
and unintentional bias,” and that there
was evidence of “distaste of conservative
ideas.” Clearly, even journalists who
think they are being objective may display
an unwitting preference through
their choice of topics and the way they
treat them.
The experience of the British press
corps as a whole is illuminating. In the
1980s, then Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher accused British journalists in
Brussels of “going native.” She meant
that Brussels-based reporters had come
to adopt similar attitudes to those of the
European enthusiasts whose activities
they were covering, and failed to grasp
the possibly negative political and economic
consequences of European integration
for Britain. Mrs. Thatcher
believed that some British journalists
welcomed UK membership in the European
Union as “socialism by the back
door,” while others, regardless of politics,
saw the European Union as increasingly
crucial to the advancement of British interests.
Many of the British tabloids, on
the other hand, were more interested in
trivializing or distorting events in Brussels
in the interests of sensationalism.
British coverage continues to be
somewhat schizophrenic. For some reporters,
the European Union is a “cor-
16 EUROPEAN AFFAIRS - Winter/Spring - Volume 6, Numbers 1 & 2
European Perspectives
rupt, Franco-German racket,” while for
others it is a serious effort to ensure
peace and prosperity in a hitherto violent
collection of nation states. These
tensions are not exclusive to the UK.
Voters in other member states have difficulty
understanding what the new constitution
means when it is described so
differently by national leaders and news
organizations. While the German government
has hailed the constitution as
“the birth certificate of the United States
of Europe,” the British government has
said it means “thus far and no farther for
European integration.” In fact it is probably
easier for journalists who are biased
one way or the other to take a coherent
line on the complex provisions of the
constitution than it is for those struggling
for objectivity.
Over the years the European Union
has sought to organize information programs
to generate popular support, especially
as it has begun to seem
increasingly detached from the general
public and accusations have mounted
that it suffers from a “democratic
deficit.” In the 1990s, the Union commissioned
two expensive inquiries into
its news release policies. Both produced
very critical reports on all aspects. The
secrecy of the Council of Ministers and
internal divisions in the Commission
and Parliament created a blurred image
for EU voters – a “joke” as one Commissioner
put it. On his retirement in 1995,
Commission President Jacques Delors
lamented the failure to establish a persuasive
image among voters, a complaint
that amused critics who believed he had
himself increased the secretiveness of
Council and Commission policy making.
José Manuel Barroso, the new Commission
President, has made public relations
a central plank in his administration
and has appointed Vice President
Margot Wallström as Commissioner
for Institutional Relations and
Communication. She wants to create a
youth wing to bring young Europeans
together to sell “European citizenship,”
not only before referendums on the constitution,
but as a permanent fixture. She
has also launched a trendy “my blog”
feature on her website. But it will take
more than gimmicks for the Commission
to connect with Europe’s citizens
and educate the media.
In an open letter to Ms. Wallström
in 2004, a group of European activists
called on her to keep the message simple,
establish better contacts with national
and regional media and react more
quickly to events by setting up an EU
newsroom to supply up-to-date footage
on EU developments. She was also urged
to create “Reporting the EU” scholarships
to bring young journalists to Brussels
for intensive training on the Union’s
political machinery and major EU issues.
It might help to send a large stack
of invitations to the BBC.
David Morgan is an author and broadcaster,
and emeritus professor at Liverpool University,
where he was formerly Dean of Social Sciences.
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