Mr Wilson's original speech attributed British Leyland's decline to private investment, management, as well as workers. News British Leyland factories could pay their way but are failing to do so because of manifestly avoidable stoppages this evening at 217. [ITN Bulletin 10pm, 24 January 1975] No-one is too surprised when the London Evening News (8 September 1976) headlines an editorial on the threatened seamen's strike: "A stab in the back'. An identical description was used by the Daily Mirror (16 May 1966) in a front page editorial at the time of the last seamen's strike. And that the Sun rises and sinks in the gutter is well appreciated.
What isn't so questioned is the bias of the television news. Television is meant to be different from the press. It is bound by its statutes to be objective, and indeed, in 1970 47 percent of its viewing audience described the BBC as 'impartial', However, Bad News by the Glasgow University Media Group puts the 'impartiality' of TV news to the test and reveals just what makes good news a news.
British Leyland said tonight they shared Mr Wilson's exasperation at the series of futile strikes within the corporation. monitored, videotaped and analysed every bulletin on all three channels. Despite differences in house-style (the lean, showbiz cats of IT and the 'fat cats' of the BBC), all three channels share an unspoken set of assumptions amounting to a consensus view of the world. This framework is reinforced not simply by the 'techniques' of television iournalism - such as the counte position of loud-mouthed pickets to management spokesmen interviewed in quiet studios - but by the dominant view of events, the news angle within which disputes are reported and interpreted.
Thus at the time of the Cowley enginetuners strike in January 1975, Harold Wilson made a speech about 'manifestly avoidable stoppages in British Leyland referring to both management and labour. The quality press at this time was estimating Wilson's speech were applied to the workTorCe OBy When Ryder réported on the problems of British Leyland, putting the major responsibility on the lack of investment, IT's News at Ten actually managed to reverse the sense of the report: 'Ryder says his team does not subscribe to the view that all the ills of British Leyland can be laid at the door of a work-shy labour force, and the Prime Minister emphasised in the Commons that unless there were fewer stoppages and higher productivity the Government would not feel obliged to keep putting money in. Strike Not 'however the Prime Minister', or but the Prime Minister', just simply and the Prime Minister.'.
eiv month narind the
RED WEEKLY 16 September 1976 9
----- pull-quotes -----
[reports interpreted it solely as an attack on workers, thus identifying strikes as the root cause of British Leyland's failure 'Good evening. For the first time in many months we have some good news. In the City the value of shares went up by about two thousand million pounds when the financial index jumped by 19.9 points to close