The Philosophical Underpinnings

1 The Need for a Moral Language

This chapter sets the scene for later discussion of how people in our study talked about moral issues and the requirement of regulation. Although it is argued later that there is an absence of a moral language by which to judge cultural issues, following the focus group stage of the research two traditions of thought were identified that appeared to position how issues were framed. These two traditions were neo-Aristotelian and liberal.

Briefly, liberals, going back to the Enlightenment, tend to place primary emphasis on autonomy. The function of legislation and regulation is to enable us to lead our lives as we choose. Importantly this includes the freedom to make our own mistakes. Two basic constraints follow. Firstly, our freedom of choice should be enshrined and promoted to the greatest extent possible consistent with not infringing the basic rights of others. Thus, for a liberal, regulation is likely to concern issues such as harm or privacy intrusion but, importantly, matters of offence are as such considered irrelevant. Secondly, legislative and regulator y steps may be required in order to ensure meaningful choice. The communitarian critique of liberalism claims that it fails to recognize the role traditions and social practices play in constituting our lives as meaningful. The liberal attempt to maintain neutrality over different conceptions of the good life, it is argued, is impossible. Liberals either remain blind to the importance of identity and tradition or they must effectively privilege their own in favouring autonomy above all else. This critique lends itself to the neo-Aristotelian conception of our relation to the state. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle held that the good of the individual is intimately bound up with the good of the state and society as a whole. The point of legislation and regulation on this view is the cultivation of our well-being. Its aim is to promote the moral and social character of us all. Hence, in principle at least, nothing is an essentially private matter nor outside the remit of state regulation. We need governance to help us develop the virtues required for fulfilment and happiness. Neo-Aristotelians will tend to be more deferential with respect to 'moral authority', be more worried about issues of offence and consider regulation more easily justifiable and wide-ranging. Liberals, by contrast, are unconcerned with these things – except in so far as they intrude on our capacity to choose freely how to go about our lives. What we will be considering in this section is exactly what the nature of these differences comes to, their underlying rationale and how they are likely to impact on attitudes to broadcasting regulation.

Introduction

There is a generally shared agreement that the mass media can and do have the potential, at least, to have impact and influence at the social and individual levels. On this basis, regulatory structures have been created to control media content, especially broadcasting content. To produce and enact such legislation and set up necessary authorities, there has to be an underlying value-based structure and an associated set of beliefs about media content's potential impact and, equally important, media audiences' potential to be influenced in one or other ways. It is crucial, therefore, that we think about the values implicit in broadcasting regulation and the ends towards which it is directed. (See Philo 1990; McQuail 2000; Scannell 1989; and Seymore-Ure 1991.) Different assumptions about the underlying rationale of broadcasting clearly will entail substantive differences over the nature and scope of regulation. This is further underwritten by different presumptions concerning the purposes of broadcasting. It might be presumed that the primary function of the broadcasting media is to service people's proclaimed needs, providing news and information required to make decisions qua political citizen, and actual preferences, providing programmes that people desire to watch. Such a view is underwritten by the liberal presumption that the function of the state is to protect people's autonomy so they are free to pursue both their private and public lives as they choose provided no significant harm to others is involved. Conversely, the concept developed by John Reith, the first director of the BBC, held that the function of broadcasting should be to shape, influence and guide the culture of a society and the individuals constitutive of it in terms of cultivating the appropriate moral and social attitudes. For, the kind of public culture into which individuals are inducted, in part constituted and shaped by broadcasting, determines the kind of public and private commitments that are meaningful rather than nominal options for individuals within society. Thus, it is crucial to clarify what our actual evaluative commitments regarding broadcasting are, what they ought to be and what such considerations entail in terms of broadcasting practice and policy. Only in the light of some critical understanding of which values in broadcasting we should respect, or seek to cultivate, can we properly assess how good broadcasting in Britain really is and how it ought to be regulated.

Liberal Regulation

Standardly, liberals hold that the only point of the state is to honour and protect the autonomy of its citizens by ensuring certain basic freedoms, such as freedom from harm, and thus maintaining the minimum conditions of stability and tolerance required for people to be free to lead their lives as they choose. Laws and state regulation should be such that they are justifiable to all citizens who are subject to them. Society is conceived of as an association of self-determining individuals who contract together in order to enable each citizen to pursue autonomously their own particular ends or goals. (See Hobbes 1996 and Locke 1988.) In being treated as autonomous and rational creatures, individuals become citizens since they are the final arbiters of whether there is good reason to adhere to the State, its forms of regulation and the kind of justice it respects. (See Kant 1970.) Equally, this position...