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RADIOCRACY: MEDIACRACY BUT NOT MEDIOCRITY THE RADIOCRACY CONFERENCE AT CARDIFF UNIVERSITY, 26-28 NOVEMBER 1999 K. J. Donnelly Attending a conference on a subject that is only of tangential interest is definitely to be recommended. Although you may not be aware of all the existing debates, you are introduced to so much new material that you feel positively educated one way or another. Isn't that precisely what universities are all about? There was a distinctly 'educational' tone to many of the papers, showcasing diverse radio practices across the world as well as exhibiting information about different radio practices in Britain. I found this one of the most rewarding currents of the conference, leaving a panel that included subjects such as Bush Radio (South Africa) and Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Indigenous Broadcasting with a solid sense of having been enlightened, as well as realising the positive potential for radio as a medium. It is astonishing that until recently there was no organization involved in the study of radio in the UK. The Radio Studies Network has met on a number of occasions and this conference was partially under their auspices. It unified people working in this particular area and provided an opportunity for the network to meet en masse. Although perhaps as a result of this, the title for the conference, Radiocracy, was rarely invoked. Interestingly, the Radio Studies Network is dominated by the impoverished 'new universities', who are under an increasing squeeze for research money from the richer, established universities. This is probably due to older established British universities avoiding media studies courses. The Network is also interested primarily in British radio, and aim to unify scholars and industrial practitioners. Many already know one another, and this established grouping formed the backbone of the conference, although there were a significant number of radio practitioners from overseas, especially the Antipodes, in evidence. Radiocracy is an interesting and resonant term. It seems to imply the democratic capabilities of radio. Yet this neologism removes the demos, the 'of the people' aspect. The -ocracy equally might refer to bureaucracy, meritocracy, aristocracy, autocracy, or perhaps even media-ocracy. While Radiocracy implies that radio has the ability to be the most democratic of media, I was surprised that the overwhelming discussion of this point came from overseas delegates and it was almost as if radio in Britain was so beyond reproach that it had far less need to address such questions, apart from having services for certain minority groups and communities. The 'democratic' connotation of Radiocracy inspired the opening of the conference, which ran simultaneously two 'devolved' panels, on Scotland and Wales. I chose the Welsh one although I was disappointed that delegates were forced to choose between them. The Welsh panel was most informative, including speakers from Radio Cymru (the Welsh BBC) and Radio Ceredigion (an independent station). I was surprised, however, that this strand about Welsh radio was almost solely interested in Welsh language radio, and I wondered how English-speaking Welsh people were served by radio. The Welsh panel certainly started the conference with a punch, conference-goers being welcomed in Welsh, announcing the perennial battle with English-language domination. This was the opening example of the evangelical zeal in pursuit of radio that was on show. Many papers had a very practical agenda, discussing the possibility for radio expanding, for radio informing populations and doing political good, and also for legitimizing and developing the study of radio in universities. Some of the papers were in effect 'mission statements' from spokespersons for radio stations, and at times I wondered if the conference wasn't simply a forum for publicity and PR. Consequently, there was less in the way of discussion in the apres-paper opening to the floor. There were a fair amount of observations and statements. Discussion was actually happening elsewhere, with coffee and lunch breaks providing ample scope for more intimate talk. This is perhaps symptomatic of most academic conferences, where the forum after papers becomes an arena for gladiatorial combat, with audience members staking out a claim and asserting their presence within the particular research area. Thankfully, this was mostly absent from this conference, although as I've suggested, in depth debate was to be found elsewhere. The opening night's supper at the Angel Hotel was precisely one such space. The supper itself and the bar afterwards provided an opportunity to meet up with old friends and make new ones. The culmination of the evening was the honouring of inventor Trevor Baylis, famed for producing the clockwork radio and now working on a wind-up laptop computer. His speech was far from banal. He is exceedingly bitter about the lack of support he has received from 'Britain', and saw his antecedent in Frank Whittle who, he asserted, could have averted the Second World War through his development of the jet engine, had he received support earlier from the British establishment. There was a degree of sympathy and empathy from the many British academics in the audience, who have been ensconced in a consistently degraded profession, and seen as of little practical use by the establishment in Britain (especially successive governments, but also, I might add, the media 'establishment'). The conference threw up lots of questions, particularly in the wake of its attempt to unify scholars and practitioners. Both of these now occupy places in the academy and their different modes are affecting each other, in some cases very obviously but in others by stealth. I was left wondering what would become of the study of media like radio in the face of pressure towards vocation that has been applied by Tony Blair's Labour government since its election in 1997. Whole swathes of this conference displayed wholly uncritical and simply descriptive approaches to radio, implying that the only responsibility of academics to students and society was to provide a 'neutral' training. So this net result of universities' approaches to radio (and the media more generally) bore the distinct hallmarks (teethmarks?) of two decades of degrading any 'oppositional' potential of the academy. Increasingly, I begin to see myself not as part of a scholarly community whose duty may be to analyse in detail the machinations of the media. I begin to see myself, one way or another, more as a support for the contemporary media industry. The conference's three 'streams' were: 'Politics, democracy and regulation', 'Communities, civil society and development' and 'Theory, technology and innovation'. Some of these were better represented than others. Theory, for example, did not seem as well represented as the community strand, although strict demarcation of speakers' concerns was not really possible. The technology strand included a number of engaging papers that focused on the possibilities for internet radio. Another strong current of the conference was the insistent interest shown by papers in the promotion of democracy overseas, including in war zones. I would like to have heard more about democratic possibilities in Britain, maybe something about pirate radio, while probably the biggest curve ball of the conference was a most interesting paper called 'UK Independent Radio: A New Model for Fascism'. For me, one of the outstanding panels was where Mark Percival talked about a Scottish alternative music programme and Lauren Goodlad talked about 'Alternative' radio in the USA. Both speakers provided a wealth of inside information as well as retaining a critical framework. These papers dovetailed to provide a perspective upon a significant area of radio programming. As a music specialist, I literally was staggered that there was so little concern with music among the papers at the conference. Had I been an alien, who had landed at Cardiff wanting to know about radio, then I would have thought that Radio Four was the main radio station in Britain, if not the world. I would also have thought that a great deal of radio time was spent with a programme called 'the Today programme', and I would have thought that radio's main feature was that it employed journalists and reported almost solely about people who live in the Houses of Parliament in London. This terribly restricted version of (British) radio that was heavily in evidence was, however, countered by the conference's insistent current dealing with small-scale and community radio, which I found altogether more informative and thought-provoking. Conference organiser, John Hartley, was rather less visible than expected, and seemed to be supported only by a few of Cardiff's Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies department members. His impressive introduction to the conference (oddly halfway through the opening day) included his characteristic verbal feints and dummies, counterpointing its serious elements, yet it seemed lost on an audience many of whom seemingly had little idea who he was or why he was addressing the ensemble. This was far from the case for veteran BBC presenter John Humphrys. The ex-TV newsreader was accorded celebrity status and took the stage for questions from Cardiff Professor Ian Hargreaves. A rather light questioning it was too, with Humphrys declaring that the political agenda for 'the Today programme' arises from nowhere in particular and just materialises magically 'in the ether'. This was light years away from the sort of session I was expecting, and confirmed some worst suspicions about journalistic complicity in political spin, stratagems and contrivances. It took an ugly turn when Humphrys decided to attack 'media studies' and blamed it for all the ills of the world. An experienced broadcast journalist later assured me that Humphrys had 'written a rather stupid book' and was now trying to demonstrate his combative ability as a 'Devil's advocate'. I suppose he was promoting his book of the same title, which hits all the familiar targets and ironically blames 'consumer populism' and the media for everything. His paroxysm of invective wasn't terribly impressive. Humphrys attempted a classic 'paper man' argument, where he constructed an image of media studies merely in order to destroy it. His picture of media studies was one where students asked him about his job and then simply described it in essays, as the discipline was really only interested in facts about people like him. Why, he asked, should he waste his time answering students' questions, as that was precisely doing media studies lecturers' jobs for them. It was all most unsophisticated, and I simply could not recognize the 'media studies' under discussion. Yet Humphrys was received with some approval. I left the panel not only with little optimism for the state of political debate in Britain, but also with low morale about how the population views media studies. The denigration of 'media studies' (and its sibling cultural studies) has reached something of a fever pitch in Britain. I attended a conference last year where doyen of the British left, film maker Ken Loach, told assembled ranks of academics that 'media studies' was responsible for television being anodyne and for the lack of political engagement young people have these days. 'Media studies' and 'cultural studies' have become an easy target that is pathologically scapegoated, at times even being cited in newspapers as an index of the decline in educational standards. The upmarket British media (including the BBC) have been at the forefront of attacks. A recent broadsheet newspaper article quoted Professor Alan Smithers of Liverpool University, who asserted that media studies 'doesn't have the intellectual underpinning of an English degree.'(Hodges, 2000: 6) Yet the criticisms of media and cultural studies seem precisely to lack 'intellectual underpinning' of any sort! More recently, Radio Four's 'the Today programme' (2 March 2000) hosted Her Majesty's chief inspector of schools Chris Woodhead, who expressed an opposition to 'media studies degrees', questioning their usefulness. While Woodhead received an almost instant public e-mail berating from Professor Peter Golding, head of MECCSA ([the British] Media, Cultural, and Communication Studies Association), Today was not taken to task. Woodhead is a rather easier to blame being an unpopular figure anyway, having hit the headlines when it transpired that as a schoolteacher he had been involved with one of his pupils whom he later married. But it really does not bode well for the low morale of higher education to hear such stupidity from the top echelons of the education establishment. It seems matched only by the arrogance and self-importance of certain areas of the media industry itself. Media studies and cultural studies have been astoundingly reluctant to defend themselves, and I'd like to know why. After John Humphrys' scurrilous attack, a couple of delegates politely 'put him right' but others clamoured to agree with him. This was partly due to the conference including many media practitioners. The merest fact that this conference mixed delegates, drawing from universities and radio and news organizations made it profoundly different from other conferences I have attended. On the positive side, people were forced at least to address different points of view. Yet on the negative side, I witnessed some really banal exchanges and a degree of unwillingness to discuss in any detail. After one paper concerning radio representation of the holocaust, one delegate shouted, "I'm sick of hearing about the bloody Jews!" This was probably the most shocking moment of my academic career to date, and I hope that I never witness anything similar. As far as I could see, this was at least partially a result of forcing radio practitioners to listen to scholarly discourses. Radio studies (and media studies) has got to get two things right, I think, before it can progress. The first is rethinking and sorting out the relationship between practical application and scholarship. The second emanates from this: we have to sort out the position of media studies, and misapprehensions about it, both in the academy and in contemporary society. Until these are resolved, academics will be unable to (be excluded from) participate actively in helping to shape Radiocracy. Completing these tasks won't be easy, but it is time we applied some concerted effort to them. The conclusion of the conference was a dinner at Cardiff castle, which allowed us to appreciate its breathtaking(ly kitsch) interior design, and included a talk from Jenny Abramsky, director of BBC radio. I wanted to ask why her speech was so unconcerned about music on BBC radio. However, the conference was far from over. Few delegates took up the offer of a minibus tour of Cardiff, and oh what they missed! Having lived in Cardiff before, I was interested to see what had changed. The driver gave us an intimate and personal tour of the city, which included pointing out pubs, outhouses and buildings in the new docklands development. Most of the people on the tour were from overseas and seemed bemused by the driver shouting over his shoulder about why locals called a pub 'the Parachutist's Arms'. It was a tour I'm unlikely to forget in a hurry and a fitting end to a similar conference. Congratulations should go to organisers John Hartley, Jo Tacchi and Amanda Hopkinson. It was engaging, thought-provoking and enjoyable. Thank you. It's certainly been an education. REFERENCE K. J. Donnelly teaches at Staffordshire University. |
