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Veline

Today' s FT has a piece about "Italy, the land that feminism forgot". It's deservedly critical of the role of women on Italian television:

If you are home before the 8pm news on Rai Uno, Italy’s main television station, you will discover it is preceded by a quiz show called L’Eredita (“The Inheritance”). In the middle of the programme, four ritzy women interrupt the competition to dance. “My jewels!” the male host exclaims. The dancing has no connection to the rest of the show; Rai Uno explains on its website that the “girls… with their presence and beauty, cheer up everyone watching, particularly men”.

Try squaring that with this laughably correct-but-wildly-implausible ambition from Rai's ethical code:

"Rai recognises the value of the human being, and entrusts itself with the task of not only guaranteeing but also developing our inviolable rights. Given this, the image of women should not correspond to reductive or instrumentalising stereotypes"

Unfortunately, the role of these wome - the veline - is well rooted in Italian television. Whilst the idea is pretty depressing, the derivation of the term is rather illuminating. During the fascist period, veline were flimsy carbon-copy instructions given to journalists, telling them which news items to puff up or ignore, the predecessors of today' s temniki. Sixty years later, the girls who brought news items to the Striscia's presenters became known by the same term. Sexism and fascism united in one red-white-and-green thread.

How much information is complete information?

The Italian communications watch-dog Agcom has told Rai and commercial broadcasters to give more coverage of the campaign to call a referendum on the current electoral law. The instruction is binding, though any penalty could easily be evaded; but what possible (non-normative) justification can Agcom give for this? Let's say Agcom finds out that 5% of time of news bulletins has covered the referendum campaign. Is that a lot or a little? It presumably depends on how important one thinks the referendum campaign is. That seems to me to be a journalistic decision, not a regulatory one. Agcom should stop giving judgements of this type.

We want more of the evidence we don't understand

Quomedia reports that politicians in the parliamentary committee that supervises Rai are asking for equal-time limits on political appearances even outside of election periods. I'm not sure why politicians need to have these limits. The most obvious interpretation is that they' re worried that Rai will be captured by an interfering government. But, as I' ve shown in a recent paper, existing data on politicians' screen-time demonstrates that even the (rapacious, invasive, bullying) Berlusconi government wasn't able to upset fairly stable patterns in the amount of screen-time the parties are featured in the news. Perhaps politicians will only take this finding seriously is sanctions kick in when it' s not observed. And then perhaps they should concentrate on more pressing problems.

Things I would like to find out

For any country,

1. what's the average wage for a journalist?
2. what's the average wage for a journalist working in the public service broadcaster?
3. is there a trade magazine in journalism or communications?
4. is there some magazine or annual agenda which shows the editors of the various television news desks? (Like Benn's Media in the UK, except better; more like Agenda del Giornalista in Italy)
5. have there been any surveys of journalists?
6. are the names of television news editors ever mentioned in the non-specialist press? Would someone interested in politics know them?
7. are the names of television executives followed by party labels in brackets? Would someone interested in politics know these affiliations?
8. How does one become a journalist for the public service broadcaster?
9. Where did the first PSB journalists come from?
10. Were the first PSB news broadcasts produced in-house, or did they rely on wire-services (AP, Reuters, TT, etc.,)?

Boring to you, life-blood for me.

The Consequence of Sarko

Quick link to this thoughtful piece on the possibility and desirability of an independent media in Sarkozy's France - thoughtful primarily for recognising that the desirable level of media independence is not always the maximum level.

CBC President parody video taken down by House of Commons

[Via Boing-Boing] The Canadian House of Commons asked YouTube to take down a parody video of Robert Rabinovitch's testimony to the House. Questions:

• why can't Canadian citizens get the rights to the video of their own representatives?
• what on earth did Rabinovitch say that might have been worth parodying?

[Update: the answer to the second question is: nothing.]

Description of SVT's governance

Establishment of public broadcasters by charters has its upsides and its downsides.

Upsides: it maintains the independence of the broadcaster.

Downsides: I have to read through Sweden's 1996 Television and Radio Law, the 2007 Licence Agreement, and the Supplement to the Licence Agreement, before finding that none of them contain anything on the governance of SVT.

Thankfully, this document contains information on SVT's governance, including: how the independent foundation members are appointed; how they further appoint the executive board members, and their tenure.

Polls on CBC's independence

No sooner do I complete my June paper (a 15,000 word research design for the thesis), than I find a new data point on perceptions of political independence by the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting.

The first poll is by Ipsos-Reid, and asks

Thinking specifically about the CBC...which of the following two statements is closer to your own opinion?

Statement	May. 04	Aug. 02
The Prime Minister’s power to appoint the CBC President and Board of Directors gives the government too much influence over the nature and content of programs broadcast on the CBC	45	46
The CBC is independent and it doesn’t matter who appoints the Board of Directors and President	52	50
Don't know/no opinion	3	5

The poll is poorly worded, since the options are not mutually exhaustive. One might think CBC is independent, but it still matters who appoints the Board of Directors. (It reminds me of the get-out-the-vote campaign in West Wing, Season 4, where will changes one kid's sign from "It doesn't matter who you vote for, make sure you vote", to "No matter who you vote for, make sure you vote").

A similar question was asked in 1999 by a different polling group (Compass); at 35%, the percentage replying "independent" was much lower.

Greek PSB governance

I've been hunting for an English language description of the governance of the Greek PSB for a while now. I've found part of it:

The government introduced the broadcasting Law 230/1975 which abolished EIRT and, in its place, created Hellenic Radio and Television (ERT). ERT was a limited company whose only shareholder was the Greek state. It is characteristic that when the Bill was discussed in Parliament no party questioned either the state monopoly or the dominating role of the state over ERT (Alivisatos, 1986). The Law ensured tight governmental control of ERT and concentrated most effective power in the hands of the Director-General. The Director-General and the two assistant Directors-Generals were directly appointed (and dismissed) by the government. The Board of Governors, which had no real powers, was to be appointed following the decision of the Council of Ministers. The Director-General, who has autocratic power over ERT, is himself/herself at the absolute mercy of the government since his/her appointment (and dismissal) is a matter of 'political will' of the government. Clearly television was to be used neither as a 'public watchdog' nor for the development of a pluralist dialogue. It was, on the contrary, to be used to support the government of the day and its policies.

and

The Directors-General and directors of ERT were appointed and dismissed with great frequency, mainly because they ‘failed’ to cover adequately government’s policies. Between 1981 and 1989, for instance, there were thirteen chairmen and Directors-General and sixteen news-directors with an average term in office of about eight months.

This is from Georgia Chondroleou, "Policy networks in comparative perspective: media policy networks in Britain and Greece", presented at the ECPR 2001 conference.

Bibliography on broadcasting in Slovakia

• Godarsky, Ivan, "Slovakia: Facing Reality", Transitions Online, 9th January 2006
• Milton, A.K, "Bound But Not Gagged: Media Reform in Democratic Transitions", Comparative Political Studies, Vo. 34, No. 5, pp. 493-526
• Pavlik, Petr, and Shields, Peter, "Toward an Explanation of Television Broadcast Restructuring in the Czech Republic", European Journal of Communication, Vol. 14, No. 4 (criticises the theory of limited change, noting purges of nomenklatura in broadcasting before the split; and international help in drafting of media legislation (p. 497))
• Metykova, Monika, Regulating Public Service Broadcasting: the cases of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Ireland, PhD thesis, Masaryk University Brno; especially Ch. 4
  

Bibliography on broadcasting in Slovenia

These are, in large part, publicly available. God bless George Soros-funded organisations...

• Gaube, Ales, "Slovenia: a Government Mouthpiece?", Transitions Online, 26th September 2005; deals with a reform of RTV Slovenia following a 2005 referendum; the referendum substitute a German-style corporatist board for a parliamentary appointed board.
  
• Gaubes, Ales, "Slovenian Media: the Politics of Ownership", Transitions Online, 20th March 2006
• Goegole, Hannes, "A Question of Transparency - Public Broadcasting in Transition - Editorial Independence in Romanian and Slovenian Public Channels", DeScripto, no. 2 (2004), pp. 16 - 17
• Hrvatin, Sandra, Serving the State or the Public: The Outlook for Public Service Broadcasting in Slovenia (Peace Institute, Ljubljana, 2002) ; excellent summary, including relevant information on the appointment of other European PSBs. Tells the tale of how the Parliament came to indirectly appoint the Director-General, contrary to the law.
  
• Hrvatin, Sandra, Media Policy in Slovenia in the 1990s (Peace Institute, Ljubljana, 2001)
• Matkovic, Damir and Brajovic, Sasa et al, Public service broadcasting in transition - Croatia, Montenegro, Slovenia (Peace Institute, Ljubljana, 2002); notes that the journalistic Code and ombudsman promised in 2000 (and described by Hrvatin) still hasn't been appointed.
  
• Volcic, Zala, "'The Machine That Creates Slovenians': The Role of Slovenian Public Broadcasting in Re-Affirming and Re-inventing the Slovenian National Identity", National Identities, Vol. 7, No. 3, 287 - 308 (DOI, gated); contains a choice quote from a senior anchor admitting that politicians influence editorial choices.
  

The governance of public broadcasters

Most of the time, I look at public service broadcasters (PSBs) as exquisitely political creatures.

Most of the time, I think that's the right perspective.

Recently, however, I've been looking at PSBs as corporations, with all the associated paraphernalia of corporate governance. The results have been interesting.

PSBs can be divided into two types: dual board, or single-board.

German PSBs have dual boards: a massive, supervisory board (aufsichtsrat), composed of upwards of twenty members representing civil society, and a much smaller executive board, led by a generalintendant. Something like France Télévisions, by contrast, has a single board of five members, with a President/CEO.

Until now, I've viewed the institutional choice between single- or dual-board structures as a political one: where politicians choose a dual-board structure, they do so because they believe this structure provides a buffer against political pressure, and because they want to insulate the PSB from such pressure.

What if these choices aren't made with conscious objectives in mind? What if, instead, politicians just follow examples drawn from other fields?

In corporate governance generally, we can draw a line between three groups (Hopt, Klaus J., "The German Two-Tier Board", in Hopt, et al, Comparative Corporate Governance (Oxford, OUP):

• single board countries: UK, USA, Ireland, former British colonies, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece
• dual-board countries: Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Scandinavia;
• mixed countries: Eastern Europe, France, Belgium

If the corporate governance of PSBs reflects national practice rather than political views about the desirability of independence, then we should expect single-board countries to have single-board PSBs, dual-board countries to have dual-board PSBs, and mixed countries to plump for either. What's the evidence like? Of the twenty-nine PSBs for which I have access to the legislation, here's the breakdown:

• single board PSBs (11): USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile, Spain [post-reform], Portugal, Greece(?), France, Bulgaria
• dual-board PSBs (18): Austria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain [pre-reform], Italy, UK, Ireland,

The fit is not bad. Three dual-board countries don't fit: Italy, UK and Ireland; no single-board countries don't fit. There are some countries whose systems of corporate governance I don't know enough about to decide whether their placement is accurate (Israel, Japan, Chile).

Some tentative conclusions:

• PSB governance may be strongly influenced by more general corporate practice;
  
• those countries which could have opted for either system chose dual boards;
• the choice of governance for the BBC and RTÉ was contrary to corporate practice;
• It nevertheless seems to have been a good choice, with both broadcasters enjoying a better reputation than TVNZ, ABC, or (especially) the CPB in the USA, at least in this author's judgement;

Therefore, the dual-board model may be preferable for public broadcasters, squaring the circle of accountability and independence.

Rai round-up

On Saturday, Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, Finance Minister, writes to Rai saying that he no longer has confidence in Angelo Maria Petroni, the Finance Ministry's representative on the Rai board. Petroni was nominated by Padoa-Schioppa's right-wing predecessor. Petroni claims that the move is purely political, and has no legal foundation. Petroni is partly right: the move has no basis in the Gasparri law, which currently governs the broadcaster. However, according to Repubblica,

"il ministro dell'Economia può revocare la fiducia ad un proprio rappresentante rifacendosi al principio più generale del "contrarius actus". Ovvero, così come autonomamente il fiduciario è stato nominato, altrettanto autonomamente può essere revocato se non esiste una normativa specifica".

The decision will be referred to a shareholders' meeting in June.

Yesterday, Mediaset, along with other European partners, buys a majority stake in Dutch production company Endemol. Mediaset will, through Endemol, now supply programmes to its competitor, Rai, in prime-time. An overwhelming majority (93%) of respondents in a Repubblica insta-poll believe that Mediaset will use their control to screw Rai over.

Today, the centre-right members of the Rai board, upset about Petroni, threaten to vote no-confidence in the director-general Claudio Cappon. As far as I can see, this procedure is not found in the legislation or statuto sociale of Rai.

Conclusion? In both cases, the centre-left and centre-right are making up the law as they go along.

Public attitudes towards government intervention in the media

"People have clear views about how their health should be provided for, the economy should be managed, and the environment be protected, but attitudes towards government intervention in the communications field appear fitful and unfocused. Perhaps it is more difficult for people to have well-formulated views on the organization and control of institutions and technologies which are both remote and rapidly changing, or perhaps the role of government in this field is more obscure to the public—and thus, as the data record suggests, of less interest to social scientists"

Peter Golding and Leo van Snippenburg, in The Scope of Government

Daily Mail loses libel case

When I speak to Italian friends about the differences between Rai and the BBC, I often say that there are simply not so many newspaper articles about the BBC as there are about Rai. When newspapers do publish things on the BBC, they try (usually) to select issues of genuine public interest and (usually) try to be truthful.

That's why I was pleased to see that my friend Thea Rogers has won her libel case against the Daily Mail for a story they ran on her. The claims made were of no public interest, nor more importantly were they true. The Mail has been forced to print an apology which, sadly, is not yet on-line.

Why governments don't manage public broadcasters

"I want a situation without censorship, because I do not want to be responsible for whatever they may say" - Napoleon I, letter to M. Fouché, Jun 1, 1805.

Source: Baker, D. (ed)., Political Quotations (Gale: Detroit), 70

Journalists' partisan leanings in Sweden & SVT

I'm currently waiting on the data from Journalist '05, a regular (every five years) survey of Swedish journalists, which are as I write being turned into book form by Prof. Kent Asp and colleagues. In the meantime, here are some results from the 2000 survey:

	Public	Journalists	SVT Journalists
Left	15	31	33
Social Democrats	32	27	23
Centre	4	3	2
People's Party	5	14	17
Moderates	25	10	6
Greens	6	10	14
Christian Democrats	13	5	5

Journalists in general are more left-libertarian than the general population, being twice as likely to support the Left party, and almost twice as likely to support the Green party. Journalists with public broadcaster SVT are not markedly more left-wing than journalists in general: although they are more likely to support the Left, they are less likely to support the Social Democrats. In being three-times more likely to support the Folkpartei and more than twice as likely to support the Greens as the general population, they seem to favour the kind of well-meaning, intellectual borderline left positions taken on in the UK by the Liberal Democrats.

Lieutenant Chiti

The 'Bonsai' column in Repubblica has, over the past few months, been painting a wonderful picture of Vannino Chiti - Minister in charge of relationships with Parliament - as a type of electoral Lieutenant Columbo. From Wikipedia:

Columbo's signature technique was to exit the scene of an interview, invariably stopping in the doorway or returning a moment later to ask "just one more thing" of a suspect. The "one more thing" always brought to light the key inconsistency.

In like fashion, Chiti has been interviewing representatives from all the parties represented in Parliament, ever willing to come back and ask them just one more question about their ideal electoral reform outcome.

Unlike Columbo, Chiti has not been able to come up with a particularly screen-worthy denouement. Chiti was heard yesterday by the Parliamentary Commission on Constitutional Affairs. Here's the account of the meeting, again from Repubblica:

"Chiti explains that the process starts with the proportional [system]. Without preferences. But, as sought by the referendum promoters, without multiple candidacies. The minister spoke of different hypotheses regarding the threshold, and the effort to introduce a threshold of 5% - starting in 2016. The majoritarian bonus remains in Chiti's scheme, associated with a reduction in the number of parliamentarians... elected in smaller regional constituencies or single member districts on a proportional basis. The bonus will be assigned to the coalition or list which wins over 40% of seats. It will decrease in size, permitting a maximum of 54% of seats to the winders. The bonus will be assigned only if the Senate and Camera have the same majority"

This explanation leaves so many questions unanswered as to be of very little use. Chiti claims to have a text ready to present to Parliament, should they wish it; but it must perforce be a very skeletal one.

Those interested in reading Chiti's presentation to the Committee can find it on the Chamber of Deputies website [shortly].

Public attitudes towards Rai

In my thesis, I claimed that "there is no available polling evidence on whether Italians believe Rai to be independent of the government". That's not quite right. There's no public polling data, but I've hit the jackpot through trawling through the catalogue of the Servizio Bibliotecario Nazionale: I've got Rai's own internal data.

Granted, it's from 1986. But still, it's tremendously useful. I don't know why the Fondazione Gramsci and the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi have copies, but I'm very glad they do.

They key data - on spontaneous and prompted responses to judgements on Rai - are as one might expect:

• Rai is "an instrument in the hands of the leading class" [unprompted response]: 9.3%, a marked increase over the past ten years
• Rai is "an organisation controlled by a few political parties" [prompted category]: 41.9%, five points down from ten years before;
• Rai is "an organisation of the government" [prompted category]: 24.6%, five points down from ten years before;
• Rai is "an organisation controlled by all the political parties": 20.4%, two and a half points up from 1979, or before the birth of RaiTre
• Rai is "an organisation outside of politics": 4.1%, a marginal increase over ten years previously

So, Italian citizens judged [quite correctly in my view], that Rai was a political organisation; that it was controlled by an agreement between some parties, and not per se by the government or the entire political class. Let's take "outside of politics" as being equivalent to "independent from politics". If that's the case, then the 4.1% of Italians who judge Rai to be politically independent is much less than the 22% of Britons who judge the BBC to be politically independent.