An Analysis of the Reportage of the Fox Hunting Issue in the UK | Media
The media coverage pertaining to the proposed bill to ban fox hunting in the UK at the start of the twenty first century was one of the more perplexing and curious incidents of recent times in British political debates. The sheer level of exposure that the bill attained as well as the depth of emotion concerning both supporters and opponents of fox hunting made the debate stand out as a discernibly ‘British' affair, fought along the familiar historical battle ground of class and town versus country.
Yet the fox hunting debate, though appearing somewhat simple at the surface level, contained deeper political issues that took many analysts by surprise. Fox hunting, and the fierce debate fought in its name, has serious implications for media portrayal in the UK, with many supporters of the sport feeling that there was something akin to a media witch hunt in the build up to the bill and over the previous two years, which turned previously sceptical middle ground members of the public against hunting and against the countryside per se. The passing of the bill likewise contained undertones regarding the composition and purpose of the House of Lords as well as the issue of pressure group politics upon the passing of domestic legislation. Once again (as well as the media frenzy surrounding Britain's decision to join America's ‘coalition of the willing' with the invasion of Iraq) it is apparent that the BBC is a central actor in the debate surrounding the fox hunting bill and the Corporation will feature heavily within the examination of the topic.
A broad analysis of separate reactions to the fox hunting bill is necessary, looking, intermittently, at all forms of media in the UK; print, broadcast and new media. The role of the modern media in British society will likewise be discussed so as to comprehend the framework within which the dissertation will operate. Only by looking at the background and context of the fox hunting bill can it be understood why it generated such polar opposite emotional reactions in both the press and within the general public. It is likewise pertinent to look at imagery and language to see how the media manages to pursue an agenda without resorting to overtly bias reporting or propaganda.
Throughout the study it is important to remember the organic connection between politics and media in modern society, particularly in relation to a topic such as fox hunting, which has been one of the more hotly contested political debates of recent times in Britain. As James Curran and Jean Seaton (1994:315) explain, the deep seated, historical nature of reporting and western style democracy is vital to the comprehension of coverage of any major national political topic.
“To inform, to discuss to mirror, to bind, to campaign, to challenge, to entertain, and to judge - these are the important functions of the media in any free country. The purpose of public policy should be to enable the media to perform them more effectively. Yet, historically, very different traditions of promoting these ideals or indeed pursuing no ideals at all have developed in public policy towards the press and broadcasting.”
The dissertation is therefore as much about contemporary politics as it is about media analysis; the two go hand in glove. Indeed, politics, and the political background to the 2004 bill against fox hunting is the ideal place to begin the investigation.
The history of the debate for and against fox hunting goes back much further than New Labour and is a deep seated issue originating from a basic argument for the culling of foxes in the countryside and against cruelty to animals, the premise upon which the contemporary bill takes place.
In 1949 there were two private members' bills recorded which called for attempts to be made to restrict the practice of fox hunting in the UK, though neither made it as far as the statute books. Likewise, in 1970 the House of Commons voted for legislation to ban hare coursing yet the bill was scrapped due to an impending General Election. The debate appeared to take a back seat for the remainder of the 1970's and the duration of the 1980's, perhaps symptomatic of the demographical shift towards Tory party and free market ideals in Britain or, more likely, the greater sociological issues concerning trade unions, the loss of heavy industry and the widespread disorder that accompanied these enormous historical upheavals. Only when the towns and cities had got their own houses in order were they able to cast a judgemental eye upon the dwellers of the countryside.
Regardless, the first recent instance in the Commons of the re emergence of the hunting debate occurred in 1992 when a private member's bill to make hunting with dogs illegal was rejected by the Commons. In the same year the Wild Mammals (Protection) Bill, proposed by Labour MP Kevin McNamara, was defeated on its second reading, though the general shift in political attitude concerning blood sports was by now apparent for all to see. A growing feeling of siege mentality enveloped pro hunt supporters, a sensation that has been very evident in the recent spats between hunting lobbyists, animal rights activists and the media.
The changing climate regarding fox hunting was secured on 28 November 1997 with the vote concerning the bill of Michael Foster MP, relating to Wild Mammals (hunting with dogs). Acting as a precursor to the September 2004 debate, the bill was heavily supported by the House, those against hunting with dogs numbering four hundred and eleven, while those wishing to maintain the status quo garnered only one hundred and fifty one votes. At the time the Foster Bill set a record for any private bill ever recorded in the Commons.
Thus, it becomes clear that, throughout the 1990's, at the behest predominantly of Labour backbenchers, the issue surrounding hunting with foxes and cruelty to animals has moved from a footnote in Commons debate time to a major national issue. Media interest in the issue has grown in tandem with the popularity of the debate in the house. Gradually, inexorably, fox hunting became part of the staple media diet in the UK.
Parliament passed the bill to officially ban fox hunting on 15 September 2004 though the enforcement was not to come into effect until February 2005. Three hundred and ninety nine votes were cast against one hundred and fifty five in the House of Commons, sending the bill through to the Lords to a backdrop of civil disturbance, organised demonstrations and a kind of media circus.
It is no coincidence that the political rumblings in favour of opening up the debate on hunting for the purposes of passing legislation coincided with the arrival of New Labour at Number Ten Downing Street. Indeed, the 1997 election manifesto contained the following excerpt: “We will ensure greater protection for wildlife. We have advocated new measures to promote animal welfare, including a free vote in Parliament on whether hunting with hounds should be banned.”
It has taken almost a decade but New Labour, towards the end of 2004, finally began to see results in its drive to ban fox hunting. Yet the broader sociological issues that fox hunting disguises should not be brushed aside, namely the middle class post Thatcher backlash against the traditional British status quo, as characterised in history by the landed classes. The Blair Government represents an irreversible break with the past; a permanent shift from Conservatism and the first serious challenge to the traditional social hierarchy since the advent of David Lloyd George's Liberal Government at the time of the Great War. Class and class privilege has been a source of great antagonism in the eyes of New Labour, manifested in the ongoing argument which raged pertaining to fox hunting, as the following excerpt from Blair's appearance on BBC's Question Time (8 July 1999:8) highlights.
“It [fox hunting] will be banned… I mean, we'll get a vote to ban it as soon as we possibly can… people like myself voted in favour of banning hunting.”
It becomes clear, then, that New Labour was in favour of banning fox hunting from the outset and was more than likely frustrated at the drawn out democratic measures required to see a ban come into law. The government also knew that the Lords would present a challenge to the passing of any hunting legislation, themselves the target of reform by the Blair government, at least according to the 1997 Labour Manifesto, though no action has yet been witnessed with regards to dissolution of the House of Lords.
Clearly, and in addition, the issue of fox hunting is linked to a greater social concern for animal welfare worldwide, where the UK enjoys a favourable reputation as a nation that represents a stand against cruelty to animals, characterised with Britain's vocal push for the whaling ban and the fact that the UK was the most prominent supporter of the EU ban on the import of products garnered from seal pups. For blood sports such as hunting with dogs to be legal in Britain at the dawn of the twenty first century was extremely bad for the country in terms of publicity and reputation. Much as the USA is consistently vilified as hypocritical for its international stance whereby it claims to support globalisation yet will not sign the Kyoto Agreement, so the UK has been seen as endorsing hypocrisy with its perpetuation of blood sport in its own back yard while at the same time advocating animal rights abroad.
But it is difficult to separate the notion of class and fox hunting and this seems to have been a driving force in both the political and media attacks on the supporters of the blood sport. There is little doubt that New Labour saw in hunting an opportunity to strike one of many intended blows against the outmoded Victorian hierarchical state system. Furthermore, there can be little doubt that the media played a key role in increasing agitation in the general public, which helped the bill move faster through the Commons, if only via the incessant coverage that fox hunting generated.
Moreover, pressure politics or non governmental organisations (NGO's) have had a major influence on the portrayal in the media of the debate relating to fox hunting. The 1990's witnessed a phenomenal growth of the significance of NGO's in Britain, with their influence seen in issues as far ranging as health, education and foreign policy. Animal rights activists, in particular, have had a major impact on the form of domestic legislation manifested in relation to hunting with dogs.
Grant (1999:66) explains how NGO's in the UK use the media to work in tandem with ‘insider' Westminster groups, or operate outside of the normal channels, as many animal rights activists have been culpable of in the recent past, to achieve the aim of ensuring publicity for the anti hunting lobby as well as influencing key backbenchers.
“Alternative channels are available to groups lacking insider status, through using the media to establish their concerns on the policy agenda, through the courts, or through the passage of private members' bills in Parliament.”
Therefore, embracing the notion of a truly liberal democracy, pressure groups have exerted a substantial, lasting influence on the current Labour government as a means of ensuring that the legislation which they envisaged would eventually be passed. It likewise becomes apparent that the issue of fox hunting, in hindsight, was politically cornered from all sides, mirroring the hunt itself: at the same time, a government determined to re construct Britain along more middle class, egalitarian lines (a government that was also influenced heavily by a range of outsider organisations) and a society that was on the whole adverse to blood sports, all converged on one issue at the same time. Clearly, the media, the traditional barometer of public opinion in the UK, sensed the changing political tides and gradually began to influence proceedings with its reportage, though it must be stressed that, under no circumstances, can the media be said to have started this chain of events.
At this point it is necessary to pause to look at the nature of the modern media in British society, using examples from recent times to highlight the way in which it is able to influence society and how a singular agenda can be pursued while still operating within the broader confines of unbiased journalism. Only by understanding the framework within which the modern British media operates can any level of hypocrisy concerning its reporting of the fox hunting debate be gauged.
Karl Marx (1968:64 5) was the first theorist to place the western European media in its rightful modern context and his views remain highly pertinent in any discussion of today's mass media society.
“The ideas of the ruling classes are in every age, the ruling ideas: i.e. the class, which is the dominant material force in society, is at the same time its dominant intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production… in so far as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of each epoch, they do this in its whole range, hence, among other things, they regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age; thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch.”
Fitting in with his broader theory of socialism, Marx saw in the media the ideal vehicle through which governments could keep an ideological check on the population. Democratic government in the West was established with the deliberate aim of keeping radicalism at bay and curtailing incendiary public opinion and the media was initially seen as merely an extension of state control - control of the mind, rather than of the physical self. The opinions of editorials in Fleet Street are, therefore, very often the views of the law makers in Westminster, or at least that is how Marx saw it when he was writing and his views retain considerable influence and contain immeasurable logic today.
Marx deduced his media theory via nineteenth century print press alone - his theory would have to be revised in light of the growth of the modern media, in tandem with the explosion in new broadcasting technologies that we have seen with increasing frequency over the past twenty years. As well as the staple media diet of television and newspapers, the contemporary media now transmits through fibre optic cables and via satellite dishes that are able to transport news from one hemisphere to the other in an instant. W. James Potter (2004:44) attempts to define the modern media era, highlighting the essential difference between today's media and that of only a generation ago.
“Mass has to do with the motives of the ‘sender'. In a mass medium the sender's main intention is to condition audiences into a ritualistic mode of exposure; that is, senders are much less interested in coaxing people into one exposure than they are in trying to get people into a position where they will regularly be exposed to their messages.”
Thus, although the advent of commercialisation and globalisation might have increased the size and distribution of the media to swell in 2005 to a size that Marx could only have imagined, the content and level of saturation may in fact only serve to lessen the interest of the audience and diminish the influence of the broadcaster. The role of the media in the twenty first century should not therefore be over-emphasised without first analysing the effect of ‘mass': size and output does not necessarily equate to longevity and influence. Indeed, perhaps the very growth of the modern mass media may also have contributed to a lessening of its cultural worth. As is the case regarding any subject that is saturated, a situation may well emerge where apathy replaces intrigue; where the intended target audience becomes too politicised, as the eminent media political analyst C. Wright Mills (1957:314 5) explains.
“The media provide much information and news about what is happening in the world, but they do not often enable the listener or the viewer truly to connect his daily life with these larger realities. On the contrary, they distract him and obscure his chance to understand himself or his world by fastening his attention upon artificial frenzies that are resolved within the programme framework… there is almost always the general tone of animated distraction, or suspended agitation, but it is going nowhere and has nowhere to go.”
The effect and ultimate influence of the media today clearly depends largely upon demographics, education and individual political persuasion but it is clear that, mirroring the polarisation of opinion concerning fox hunting, there is a divergence of belief concerning the effects of the mass media - whether it can or cannot, in fact, influence opinion to a large degree. But, in the final analysis, the lessons of history cannot be ignored and the concept of an unwritten agreement between mass media and the state remains valid in contemporary times, as Gurevitch and Blumler (1977:263) underscore.
“In the end the central issue in the relationship between the media and political institutions revolves around the media's relative degree of autonomy and to what extent and by what means this is allowed to be constrained.” The question of the organic relationship between politics and the media, especially in a country such as the UK where both institutions have grown up and evolved together, is central to the dissertation. The reportage of the fox hunting debate cannot be divorced from the wider concerns of maintaining the ideas of the ruling classes and the accord between Westminster and the media that necessitates a cordial, harmonious public stance. Though it is not presumed that Britain is not a country which embraces freedom of speech (a fact that is perpetually underlined with the explosion of independent periodicals and magazines available in newsagents and on satellite television channels the length and breadth of the country) the fact remains that the mass media, institutions with considerable influence, functions along similar lines to Parliament. Furthermore, the economic interest of the two are formulated along broadly similar lines, which, again, means that there is far more of a united front present between politics and media than many people would care to admit.
Certainly, in the UK, there exists one organisation in particular that is able to heavily influence public opinion, a unique institution that is at once married to the state and autonomous from its policy making - the British Broadcasting Corporation, one of the major players in the modern fox hunting debate.
The BBC, in particular, bears considerable responsibility for producing fair journalism, its influence as a bastion of quality reporting is widespread and its reputation international; indeed, the very purpose of the BBC is to report for the British people, hence the marriage between state taxation and the Corporation. Its genesis, under the Director General John Reith during the politically and economically turbulent decade of the 1930's set the pattern that the BBC continues to follow in 2005. Peter J. Humphreys (1996:122) describes the Corporation as “a kind of domestic diplomatic service, representing the British or what he [Reith] saw as the best of British to be British.”
The BBC plays a part in forming national identity and acting as the glue that binds together the increasingly disparate nature of British culture in the twenty first century. Creeber (2004:28 9) shows how the cultural significance of the BBC makes it stand apart from other UK broadcasters, both terrestrial and satellite, also highlighting how the Corporation has no equivalent across the globe.
“It could be argued that the BBC produces a product that is as internationally persuasive and pervasive as any other global corporation. It has certainly been responsible for producing a form of cultural hegemony that has helped to dictate and form British public opinion and social attitudes for nearly a century. In particular, the BBC has played a crucial role in conceiving and cementing notions of ‘British ness', intent on constructing a deep sense of national consciousness and consensus.”
The BBC plays an important role as a medium within the media, and has historically refrained from underlining the collective management's ideological predispositions. In times of national crisis the BBC traditionally supports the government and re emphasises existing views promulgated by the state. Two recent cases, however, have highlighted the fact that the BBC does occasionally lend its considerable weight to or for an independent political initiative.
The issue of the Middle East has seen the BBC at its most controversial. Clearly broadcasting liberal views that are inherently opposed to the US led western policies of aggression in the region, the BBC has had to be dictated to by the government in an attempt to portray a harmonious relationship between the state and the state's voice. But New Labour has had to tell the BBC how to report matters in the Middle East, as Frisk (4 August 2001:9) points out.
“The BBC has been using the phrase ‘targeted attacks' for the policy of murder. The Palestinian killing of Israelis, however, is regularly referred to accurately as ‘murder' or ‘assassination'.”
Citing a more high profile case, the government's battle with the Corporation in the summer of 2003 with regards to the leaked defence reports over the invasion of Iraq showed again the intrinsic nature of the relationship between Westminster and the nation's chief dispenser of news information. In a public show of force, the Blair government brought the BBC to heel over the reportage of the Iraq Question, the Director General Greg Dyke losing his job in the process.
The issue of the BBC and Iraq is a highly important one in the context of this discussion pertaining to fox hunting because, and keeping Marx's famous quote in mind regarding the perpetuation of ruling ideals, if the government saw fit to interfere in the reporting over Iraq then it is conceivable that they could put pressure on the media agencies that have been responsible for the portrayal of the fox hunting debate, in particular the BBC. Although the issue of the Middle East is of far greater geo strategic importance to the national government, domestically speaking, fox hunting has long been a thorn in the side of New Labour, an issue of great ideological significance in their eyes. Clearly, no link is likely to be discovered concerning the reporting of the hunting ban and New Labour's centre left political ideology, yet the question remains highly intriguing and highly relevant in terms of this debate. Once again, it can be seen that the media and chief political institutions cannot be separated, and, in the BBC, it is possible to see a strange hybrid of the state and independent journalism; a blurring of the lines between the public and the private sector.
But, of course, the relationship between the BBC and government is not wholly equal. As long as the Corporation relies upon license fees and government funding for its output then it cannot be said that the BBC retains the same influence as the government. Although the extension of the BBC to America and to digital satellite television has increased its chances of attaining funding through the sale of international broadcast rights, the government, at present, still holds all of the aces. It is an important point to recall when analysing the BBC's coverage of the fox hunting debate, especially bearing in mind the immense cultural importance of the BBC. Regardless, it is certainly apt that the most British of media institutions should have played such a central role in the abolition of such a peculiarly British national pastime.
Attention must now be focused upon the reportage of the fox hunting debate in the UK to analyse the nature of the coverage, how it developed an independent character almost disassociated from the remainder of the contemporary national news, and how, in the end, the media and Britain as a society might be guilty of hypocrisy.
The first point to try to convey is that the issue of fox hunting was always likely to induce a high degree of media coverage. The historical nature of the argument coupled with the depth of emotion that pertains to animal rights ensured that the reportage of the fox hunting bill was always more likely to dominate the national news headlines and was never destined to merely represent an after thought for topical dissection on late night political programmes. Straight away, then, it is important to realise the futility of vilifying the British media for attacking the story with its full reporting might. It is the purpose of the free press to report the incidents that are of the greatest interest to the general public; that is exactly what the British public saw in relation to the debate surrounding hunting with dogs.
Yet while reporting the issue as a major national topic should come as no surprise to media and political analysts, the manner in which fox hunting was portrayed made the problem immediately more complex. Too often, over the course of the first rumblings of discontent in the Commons in 1997 until today, the media has helped to forge a mythical view of the fox hunting debate while simultaneously sidestepping the real issues at stake.
For example, one of the greatest mistruths which emanated from the media over the past seven years has been the portrayal of the people who actually live in the British countryside. In effect, the media helped to form a divide between country dwellers and city residents by reporting the debate in an ‘us' against ‘them' kind of a style, opening up the issue to notions of right and wrong, as opposed to enticing feelings of empathy and understanding. Andrew Norton (2000:3) explains the damage that this inflicted upon the people who live in the countryside, the obvious ‘villains' of this journalistic piece.
“Political and media debate about hunting has over-simplified country life. Whilst there has been growing recognition that hunting has little impact on the vast majority of country dwellers and that many of those involved in hunting work or live in towns and cities, there has been insufficient recognition of the variability between participants in hunting.
Television debates and newspaper and magazine articles about hunting have accentuated the antagonism and distance between participants and those with objections to hunting.” It is an important point because all forms of media in the UK were guilty of an over simplification of the fox hunting debate, reducing the issue to a crude question of residential allegiance. Clearly not everyone who lives in the countryside is a supporter of fox hunting just as not everybody in the city is a stock broker, which is the reactionary equivalent in terms of ludicrous stereotyping. But because the venue of the hunt is the country, the analogy with the people and the blood sport has become ingrained. The reason for this negative association between people who live in the country and hunting with dogs is due to poor communication on the part of the press.
It is as much the role of the media to educate the audience as it is to report and within the fox hunting debate we see a broad failure to do so on the part of the British press. To begin with, there was a discernible lack of education as to the different forms of hunting. There is a considerable gulf between hunting with dogs to cull foxes and hare coursing, as there is between hunting with guns and clay pigeon shooting. Just because someone is a fan of one discipline of the genre of hunting does not necessarily mean that he or she has to be a supporter of every arm of the sport, just as many rugby fans do not like soccer and vice versa. Too often, the view was expressed as if to state that all hunting involved cruelty to animals in addition to all people who live in the country are supporters of barbaric blood sports.
This has served to polarise and antagonise the issue. Opinion polls are the best example of the polarisation of the debate by the media who frequently questioned ‘the public' in the run up to the various anti hunting bills, with wildly different sources quoted and often ambiguous questions being asked. The Sun newspaper, for instance ran the results of a poll that it had conducted on 11 July 1997 prior to Michael Foster's hunting with dogs bill (note also the timing of the various opinion polls - always a day or two before a vote is to take place when public opinion is inflamed, often at the behest of the media). The Sun (11 July 1997:8) editorial noted that there were 19, 723 people against fox hunting and 8, 784 “voted to keep them [the hunts].” Yet it was never disclosed who exactly was polled and what the question may have been. Instead it has merely been reported as a fact.
A similar pattern developed with regards to television and Internet opinion polls where the choices available to the interviewee are geared towards polarisation and bias. For instance, if a poll asks members of the public if they believe that fox hunting should be banned or maintained, the question immediately asks those people of an unsure disposition (those that occupy the middle ground for whatever reason - lack of education, lack of interest) to choose a side to support. And because of the general mood prevalent in newspapers and across television channels, the people that are ill advised about the issue tend to join the dominant abolitionist camp. This, in turn, is largely due to the manner in which hunt supporters are depicted in the media.
All of this ensures that the thorny problem of class, fox hunting and media portrayal is never far from the surface. More than representing a broader question of living in the countryside versus habituating the cities, the fox hunting debate was symptomatic of a wider issue of class and class hatred that has so often characterised modern British politics and media coverage. Indeed, at times, both the media and the government appeared to be following similar ideological briefs, which amounted to a backlash against the traditional landed aristocracy.
When the MP, who has since become synonymous with fox hunting legislation, Tony Banks, said that those who take part in hunts are “upper class twits”, he gave carte blanche to the media to continue along this line of reportage. Banks has been assisted by consistent displays of allegiance by Labour backbenchers; indeed, Rural Affairs Minister Alun Michael described the “tribal nature” of the hunting debate, which further polarised public opinion and tainted the nature of the argument with an altogether more aggressive undertone.
The broadcast media used equally subtle ways of transmitting the class signal, with the use of language and imagery the key to the exchange between producers and audience. For example, interviews with hunt leaders and countryside alliance patrons were almost always conducted with the interviewee on top of a horse looking down at the camera in a stereotypical ‘snooty' pose. Furthermore, there was consistently an over analysis of the dress of the participants of the hunt, where the red coats, light brown pants and black velvet hard hats were held up as an object of ridicule but, again, in a subtle fashion which exacerbated the divisive nature of the reporting. More importantly, the dress and ritual of the hunt was of no relevance to the supposed central concern of the fox hunting debate, namely cruelty to animals.
Language, likewise, has been central to the portrayal of supporters of the hunt, with repetitive use of words such as “barbaric”, “cruel” and “inhumane” having a subliminal effect on the conscious of the audience. The portrayal of the mass of the pro hunt supporters will be re visited shortly but the point here is to recognise that while certain arms of the media, specifically the BBC (and indeed most forms of television media) have a duty to report impartial news, producers can still transmit a message through other means while still adhering to the journalistic principle of free speech and unbiased reporting.
Yet although the media may use imagery and language to transmit a message within an unbiased structure, less subtle forms of discrimination based upon social status and class have been seen in the mass media in Britain in relation to the fox hunting debate. On 24 November 2004, for instance, The Mirror newspaper ran with the headline of “Tally Blow” in relation to the recent bill to ban fox hunting, invoking a comical old stereotypical view of the privileged, less than hard working country dweller. Moreover, in an interview with John Humphreys, John Prescott made matters worse by declaring on the BBC Today programme (23 November 2004) that:
“I don't think it was the biggest issue in the world. I think that it's very big to those people who actually do the hunting. Fine, but that's always so with interest groups who feel very strongly about their position. But I think the majority of people in my constituency, quite frankly, just see as it one of those kind of tally ho, tally ho [issues which have] nothing to do with the modern Britain.”
The issue of class, for some arms of the media, was used as the primary form of reportage. The Guardian, for example, unsurprisingly within the context of its existence as a centre left newspaper, reported the fox hunting question as a class issue with infrequent references to cruelty to animals or how best to control the very real threat of foxes as a serious pest in the countryside, supposedly the crux of the problem in the first place. Soon after the passing of the Hunting Bill, the following excerpt (22 September 2004:16) highlights the sectarian manner in which certain sections of the media used the hunting debate as the vehicle through which to pursue a deep seated class hatred, an opinion that had little to do with the core issues at stake in relation to the argument of hunting with dogs for sport.
“The British aristocracy is… a genuine market-dominant minority; centuries of inbreeding, to keep the bloodlines pure, have created a tribe, a racially distinct sub-group of people who resemble one another, who have the same absurdly affected accents, who go in for the same few schools, who protect each other's interests and who continue to exert their control over the land through the armed forces, the Conservative party and the media, notably the Daily Telegraph ...a large proportion of this little clan are, moreover, thick, complacent, philistine, anti-Semitic, patronising, idle, snobbish, and convinced that the accident of their birth reflects terribly well on them. Many, had they not inherited houses, or estates - to which they remain tragically in thrall - would struggle to find work as a janitor. They combine a complacent affection for their own rank, and haphazardly acquired possessions, with a profound contempt for the lower classes' ambition and acquisitiveness.”
Certainly, this is explosive material. If the same would have been written from the opposite perspective, for example an aristocrat displaying stereotypically prejudiced views about the middle and lower classes, then the article would have been held up as an example of the enduring idiocy of the landed classes. Robert Kilroy Silk (another vilified public media figure of the upper class) had his contract at the BBC terminated for much smaller scale remarks pertaining to Islamic terrorism. Without wanting for a moment to defend Mr. Kilroy Silk, the analogy is significant because it shows how it is currently politically and culturally fashionable to wage class war, but only in the one direction.
In addition, the popular attack on the upper class is symptomatic of both the government and the media's tendency to marginalise minorities who no longer hold great fiscal influence. If the landed class represented anything like the economic might that they used to hold, then the fox hunting issue would have been reported much differently. Indeed, there would have been a much greater impetus on the part of both the government and the media to attempt to find a middle ground or a political compromise. But that is not the case.
When politics and the media combine to ensure that one social group is portrayed in a particular light it can be one of the most powerful phenomenon that a culture can possibly bear witness to. Indeed, at present, a parallel can be seen between the centre left attacks of the class and hunting issue with The Daily Mail's marriage of convenience with the Tory Party in relation to the ongoing media criticism pertaining to immigrants and gypsies. The dual effect of elected politicians declaring a fact, only for the established media to back up the assertions with further evidence, is often to invent a truth from the vacuum of propaganda and spin. Though many of the pro hunt lobbyists may well have been upper class landowners, it does not diminish the fact that many other supporters are from an altogether different social background and that, more importantly, the real issues have once again been completely by passed.
In Wales, one of the chief regions for the thousands of hunters in the UK, the media debate surrounding fox hunting was portrayed in a quasi nationalistic light, adding another layer to the increasingly complex tapestry of the fox hunting debate. Many of the hunt leaders spoke with cut glass English accents, hailed from east of Offa's Dyke and were in possession of double barrelled names, which is the arch typical view of the upper class Englishman in the principality. As was the case with the camera view of a formally dressed hunter sat on a horse, the effect was to incite a growing sense of Welsh nationalism to add fuel to the ideologically popular anti hunt campaign.
HTV Wales News, for instance, ran frequent cross sections of the views of the Welsh public concerning fox hunting (issued via text messaging) and many referred to the abolition of the “English blood sport” with perpetual references to the class and nationalistic sub text within the hunt debate. Wales helps to show how the fox hunting debate was capable of transcending a multitude of political and cultural genres, though with each occasion only ensuring the widespread feeling that a ban was approaching with quickening haste.
Even the perennial question of the role and purpose of the monarchy has been allied to the broader fox hunting debate in the UK, tied inexorably, again, to the class and country question. In a perhaps ill advised move, the Prince of Wales divulged his views about the fox hunting debate, which The Scotsman newspaper printed (23 December 2002) in an article by Andrew Denholm and Alison Hardie.
“Hundreds of thousands of countryside protestors yesterday gathered in London for one of the largest demonstrations seen in the UK as the Prince of Wales became embroiled in the escalating row of what will happen to rural Britain. Prince Charles reportedly wrote to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair castigating him for ‘ruining' the countryside and claiming that rural communities who supported fox hunting were being persecuted… Prince Charles is reported to have written to Mr. Blair criticising for treating the fox hunting fraternity, which he referred to as ‘a minority', in a way in which he would not persecute an ethnic minority.”
The British public heard, read and accepted words such as “tradition” and “class”, which were, crucially, broadcast together with the dual bastions of political autocracy in the United Kingdom, namely the monarchy and the House of Lords. In political terms, the manifestation of the landed upper classes has always been the House of Lords, who maybe sensed in the debate surrounding fox hunting a mimicking of their own feeling of a growing siege mentality at the prospect of dismantlement at the hands of the Blair government. As with the pro hunt lobbyists, the House of Lords has been held up as an object of ridicule by certain sections of the British press, its role and purpose questioned time and again and with increasing voracity since the advent of New Labour to Downing Street. The media portrayed the Lords' tactics and voting over the fox hunting issue as a deliberate means of delaying the passage of a popular will as if the economic and cultural interests of the Lords were represented in the furore over fox hunting. The following article, which appeared in the Times newspaper (Greg Hurst and Tom Baldwin; 27 October 2004:26), highlights the way in which the House of Lords was reported as acting like the last bastion of traditional country and peer life.
“Hopes of a late compromise over fox hunting appeared finally to have been snuffed out yesterday as a minister told peers not to try to protect the pursuit with a revived registration scheme. Lord Whitty, the Rural Affairs Minister, told them that the Lords would be exceeding its powers as a revising chamber if it substituted a Bill banning hunting with another allowing hunting under licence. Peers ignored his warning and, as expected, voted by 322 to 72 to overturn the ban sought by MPs and replace it with a system of registered hunts authorised by tribunals similar to that first proposed in the Government's Bill.”
Despite the negativity in the media pertaining to the House of Lords, the upper chamber has since proved its worth with the rejection of the new security legislation proposed by Whitehall, which advocated suspending habeus corpus, incorporating a return to the days of imprisonment without trial in the name of the ‘war on terror'. Reportage suddenly changed tact to praise the dogmatic nature of the Lords for refusing to be bullied by the Blair government into passing legislation that it saw as unfit for the nation. Class centric reportage of the fox hunting issue ensured that the purpose or role of the Lords was never brought into question; rather its aims at reaching a compromise were instantly dismissed as self serving, anti democratic measures designed to maintain the traditional status quo in rural areas, with words such as “block”, “oppose” and “reject” repeated time and again to give the impression of the upper chamber as a hindrance rather than as a liberal democratic necessity.
As well as enticing emotions of patriotism and class allegiance, the fox hunting issue has also targeted the financial aspect of the fox hunting issue. The media were quick to question the way in which the pro hunt lobbyists were being funded; the link with the House of Lords and the aristocratic nobility clearly antagonising certain sections of the UK press, as the following article from the Sky News Website (19 September 2004) highlights.
“The fight to preserve fox-hunting is being funded by some of Britain's wealthiest people. The Sunday Times has reported that contributions to the Countryside Alliance have totalled more than £2m in the past six years. It includes donations from the Duke of Westminster and racing legend Sir Jackie Stewart… Campaigners have declared the countryside a ‘no-go' area for Labour ministers - and threatened to target them with demonstrations in towns and cities as well.”
In addition, the issue of the economic loss to those people whose livelihood depended on the hunts was dealt with scarcely by the broadcast media and negligibly by the print media. Although hunting with dogs accounted for nothing like the gross wealth of agriculture and farming, an outright ban on fox hunting represented a very serious, very real threat to certain people but, because of the dominant commercial economic interests of the media, the story was only popular in more rural areas.
The media used further socially and politically divisive tactics during each and every protest that hunt supporters staged as the Hunting Bill slowly made its way into the statute books. The BBC Politics Website (17 December 2002) is an example of the way in which pro hunt lobbyists and protesters were portrayed in the run up to official legislation.
“The government's Hunting Bill cleared its first Commons hurdle amid angry scenes outside Parliament during which eight pro hunt protestors were arrested… up to two thousand three hundred pro and anti hunt campaigners staged a demonstration, some holding flares and many blowing whistles and horns. There were reports of some scuffles as some marchers tried to break through the lines of police trying to keep them from other protestors. Mounted police were brought in to control the crowds.”
It should be remembered that, at each and every pro hunt march or demonstration, there was also a strong anti hunt contingent present. Rarely were they even mentioned. How a protest is reported is as important (if not more so) than the coverage of the legislation proposed because a protest inevitably involves law, order and social justice. The way in which supporters of the England national football team have been treated by the media in the last twenty five years ought to act as a luminous precursor in terms of the effects of over dramatisation on the part of the British media. Indeed, ‘hooligans' was a word broadcast many times by the media in the build up to the Hunting Bill, though the behaviour of some of the pro hunt protestors in the wake of legislation was both detrimental to their specified aim and ill advised in light of the media spotlight that was placed firmly upon them. Nevertheless, the fact remains that disparate pieces of a complex jigsaw have been constructed over a period of years to taint the image of the hunt in the eyes of the broader British political and media audience.
In addition, the media has been quick to pounce upon individual, localised instances of protest and transmit the message as though it were a generalised, organised form of official pro hunt lobbying, not a spontaneous, autonomous action. For example, an effigy of the Prime Minister was burnt on Bonfire's Night 2004 in Edenbridge, Kent yet it was reported by the BBC and local news as if it were a recurring theme, taking place throughout the countryside as a form of mass protest against New Labour. In actual fact, in this instance, we see that this was nothing more than local fun; previous effigies were burnt of Saddam Hussein and Edwina Currie - David Beckham was likewise in the frame during one year.
It is thus apparent that much of what was printed and what the viewing audience saw concerning the fox hunting debate was in fact illusory in its composition. Yet, mass, twenty four hour media has helped to show some pieces of news within the fox hunting debate as they truly occurred. For instance, on the day that the law banning hunting with dogs was passed on 15 September 2004, there was also a large scale gathering of supporters of the hunt outside of Parliament, as there had been on every major occasion in the run up to the bill. Yet, this time, more than a mere “scuffle” was reported between the police and protestors; indeed, live media coverage showed the fracas to be heavy handed and poorly organised on the part of the police, where the following view of Oliver Poole, Michael Kallenbach and Richard Alleyne from The Daily Telegraph (16 September 2004:4) was symptomatic of many members of the general public who felt excessive force was used on that day.
“The blood dripping down well ironed check shirts was as incongruous as the polite accents voicing indignation at the behaviour of the Metropolitan Police. Cracked heads are a familiar part of political protest but they are not normally as well groomed as the heads cracked by truncheons yesterday… They were scenes more associated with the clash of police and shaven headed football hooligans or dread locked anti capitalist demonstrators rather than men in flat caps and women in quilted waistcoats.”
It is worth noting that, even in the midst of the broadcast brutality, the journalist feels the need to make fun of the social class of the victims. In addition, Sky Television monitored the progress of the entire riot and managed to identify at least one policeman whose face was contorted with rage and who appeared to attack members of the protest group without any provocation whatsoever, inducing a wave of complaints from almost everybody who saw the live pictures transmitted via BSkyB. The twenty four hour, on demand state of new reportage in the twenty first century inherently makes the media portrayal of the fox hunting debate an altogether different scenario to the miners' strikes in 1983, for example, or the poll tax riots the following year, which were reported in stills and photographs rather than live feeds. In 2005 the public can see live warfare and instant images of newsworthy events transported from all corners of the globe on a daily basis; it should therefore come as little surprise that satellite television has affected the reportage of important domestic issues. Moreover, the advent of the Internet as well as the concept of twenty four hour news channels only served to saturate the issue further. The effects of this upon the audience may have been an increased sense of apathy or even loathing for the pro hunt supporters as news of a seemingly greater cultural and national worth was left behind.
The Internet also takes much of the impetus off the media in terms of analysing the source and level of organisation of the protests that marred the passing of the Hunting Bill. As was witnessed with the anti Iraq demonstrations and the annual May Day rallies in Central London, the advent of the Internet has made organising demonstrations a much easier process, with the World Wide Web ensuring that the target audience is increased exponentially. It is a significant point in light of much of the criticism that has been levelled at the British press and broadcast media in the wake of the Hunting Bill: the media were responsible only for covering the events not for their genesis. Analysts may dissect the media's handling of the pro hunt lobbyists but not the manner in which the riots and rallies were portrayed, which were organised via new media solutions and broadcast ‘live'.
Yet, in terms of journalistic hypocrisy, the media may well be guilty concerning the debate and reportage of fox hunting, with the British public too guilty of shying away from the bigger picture of cruelty to animals and animal rights. The hypocrisy comes in the form of a paternalistic government and media appearing to dictate the humane way to conduct our lives in Britain in 2005. But both have failed to tackle the root of the problem, which, of course, induces charges of double standards. BBC economics editor Evan Davis (19 February 2005; BBC News website) suggests just such a scenario, attempting to downplay the pubic hysteria concerning blood sports and the Countryside Alliance instigated fear that the ban would lead to economic hardship and mass unemployment in the country.
“Fox hunting in England and Wales kills about 25 000 foxes a year. That might seem a lot but it is forgetting just how many other animals we kill. Add up the cows, sheep and pigs and you find that we slaughter approximately twenty five million a year. And that is not to mention the eight hundred and fifty million chickens and turkeys that are slaughtered. My point is that we might be accused of hypocrisy in focusing so much attention on saving foxes. The real point is that the countryside and its economy depend on farming far more than they ever did on hunting.”
In the final analysis the entire malaise surrounding fox hunting has not addressed what should have been the essence of the problem, namely cruelty to animals. Political manoeuvring and ideology took the place of the core sociological and humanitarian concerns. In addition, the many people who continue to live and work in the British countryside feel marginalised by the government and the media as a result of undue accusations of barbarism and cruelty to wildlife, as the Western Daily Press Website (2 April 2005) underscores in an editorial piece.
“The most dishonest claim made by Government is that the Act prevents cruelty. It does not address the issue of cruelty at all, it merely bans organised hunting. The idea that it is not cruel to hunt a rabbit with a dog but it is to hunt a hare is ridiculous. Likewise, killing a mouse will soon make you a criminal but if you kill a rat you are not. You are not alone if you can't explain this. Why are the welfare implications better for the fox if it is flushed to guns with two dogs than if it is flushed with twenty two dogs? ... It is crystal clear this Act is not and never has been about improving animal welfare.”
It is because the fox hunting issue, so simple at first glance, transcends so many political and cultural concerns that the question of animal welfare has fallen so far behind the contemporary media agenda. The media is a tool by which we measure the dominant views of society and, within the hunting debate we see how twenty first Britons like to think of themselves. Though supporters of the hunt do indeed exist, the media would prefer to think that there are more ‘normal' British people at large who despise the concept of hunting as a national pastime. An editorial in the New Statesman (19 July 1999:4) shows how the fox hunting issue betrays real concerns; and, rather than being for the wellbeing of the animals, or the natural balance and harmony of the countryside, they are instead for the purpose of image, the type of nation Britain hoped that it had become.
“Arguments about fox-hunting are rather like those about boxing. In both cases, the concern for the victim is largely spurious. Sports other than boxing, notably motor racing, have higher death rates; while footballers, according to some accounts, suffer at least as much as boxers from long-term brain injuries. Likewise, foxes will die horrible deaths, many of them from shotgun wounds, whether or not they are chased by fat men in silly clothes. It may also be reasonably argued that far greater suffering is inflicted on chickens, calves and other animals we breed and kill for food than is ever inflicted by huntsmen on foxes. On boxing as well as hunting, facts and figures are not likely to be persuasive. Your position comes down in the end to a moral, even an aesthetic, judgement about the human dignity of the participants and spectators, rather as, for many, the clinching argument against capital punishment was the likely effect on the hangman's soul. Is it right for people to enjoy a sport where the primary purpose is for one contestant to knock the other senseless? And is it right for people to enjoy a pastime where the primary purpose since the most successful hunts are thought to be those where the chase lasts longest - is to prolong an animal's terror? In other words, the issue is not the effect on the fox, but on the hunter.”
Eric Alterman (2003:262) sees the beginning of the twenty first century, with its association with new media, advanced technology and economic globalisation, as a watershed in terms of the role of the media in western society.
“The current historical moment in journalism is hardly a happy one. Journalists trying to do honest work find themselves under siege from several sides simultaneously. Corporate conglomerates increasingly view journalism as ‘software', valuable only in so far as it contributes to the bottom line. In the mad pursuit for audiences and advertisers, the quality of the news itself becomes degraded, leading journalists to alternating fits of self loathing and self pity.”
One of the key threads of the contemporary era of neo liberalism and globalisation has been the manner in which commerce and market forces have taken precedence over a style of reporting that includes the necessary checks and balances to ensure an unbiased conclusion. The fox hunting issue in the UK has highlighted the manner in which prevalent, fashionable opinions have come to dominate the real concerns of the policy. This fact is underscored by the reportage of the various fox hunting bills, which was transmitted as a middle class versus landed aristocracy issue and countryside versus city dilemma as opposed to a debate relating to cruelty to animals. And herein resides the true hypocrisy of the British media coverage of fox hunting.
The simple fact of the matter is that the countryside no longer matters as a source of economic growth to the UK and, furthermore, is seen in the most influential circles as something of a cultural embarrassment. It has long been usurped by the urban monolith as the heartbeat of the nation and the view that New Labour wishes to send to the international community has no room for peers, tradition or heritage: commercialisation and the hunt sit very awkwardly next to one another. Andrew Hart (1991:92) explains how this fact might influence how a story is told in the British press in light of the economic worth of the topic and the people involved.
“The ideas expressed in particular newspapers are bound to relate to their basic economic interests… Such access means opportunities for political or commercial exploitation. It is sometimes argued that this is not a serious problem because readers are aware of such vested interests and therefore do not expect the level of impartiality which they attribute to television and radio… the relationship between media content and economic interests is complex, dynamic and constantly shifting.”
Yet despite all the evidence to suggest that the print media and the broadcast media in the UK pursued a policy of negative portrayal with regards to the fox hunting debate, new media, in particular the infinitely expansive resource of the Internet has made sure that all views are available to anybody with an inquisitive mind in contemporary Britain. At previous points in history it has been relatively easy to point out instances of media reportage (such as the Falklands War) where the traditional forms of media have been able to adhere to broadly propagandist lines without there existing a significant chance of the public clamouring for more information. In the digital media age of the network society the rules and boundaries of perception have altered significantly with the Internet serving as the link which threads all of the previous disparate, ‘outsider' groups of society together. An age of revolution in the contemporary media is thus at hand - a revolution of mind and of the imagination, as Terry Eagleton (2004:138) succinctly details.
“The flights of fancy that get in the way of seeing the situation straight are vital to imagining an alternative to it. If the romantic conforms the world to his desire, and the realist conforms his mind too the world, the revolutionary is called on to do both at once.”
What has been witnessed with the debate surrounding fox hunting in recent British media history is, first and foremost, proof of the power of a government and media that work along similar ideological lines. Furthermore, it has highlighted the perpetual nature of the class struggle in Britain, how deep seated the problem is and how the media truly is a reflection of the upper middle class ideals of the ruling elite. It can likewise be seen how a seemingly faceless, one dimensional issue can be reported in a variety of ways, each designed with the original aim as advocated by the small minority that controls political power in the UK. And it is apparent that media hypocrisy is a widespread phenomenon within the British media. Yet, as a footnote, this conclusion should come with little surprise; for it is human nature to be hypocritical and to wish to see oneself in a light that may not be entirely true to fact.
E. Alterman, What Liberal Media? : The Truth about Bias and the News (Perseus; New York, 2003)
M. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Blackwell; Oxford, 1996)
J. Curran & J. Seaton, Power without Responsibility: the Press and Broadcasting in Britain: Fourth Edition (Routledge; London, 1994)
S. Gerbner (Edtd.), Mass Media Policies in Changing Cultures (John Wiley & Sons; New York, 1977)
W. Grant, Pressure Groups and British Politics (Palgrave MacMillan; London, 1999)
A. Hart, Understanding the Media: a Practical Guide (Routledge; London & New York, 1991)
R. Hassan, Media, Politics and the Network Society (Open University Press; Maidenhead, 2004)
P.J. Humphreys, Mass Media and Media Policy in Western Europe (Manchester University Press; Manchester & New York, 1996)
W. James Potter, Theory of Media Literacy: a Cognitive Approach (SAGE; California, 2004)
K. Marx & F. Engels, Selected Works (Lawrence & Wishart; London, 1968)
J. Rifkin, The Age of Access (Penguin; London, 2000)
B. Winston, Media, Technology and Society (Routledge; London, 1998)
C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (Oxford University Press; Oxford & New York; 1957)
M. Gurevitch & J. Blumler, Mass Media and Political Institutions: the Systems Approach, in, S. Gerbner (Edtd.), Mass Media Policies in Changing Cultures (John Wiley & Sons; New York, 1977)
G. Creeber, Hideously White: British Television, Globalisation and National Identity, in, Television and New Media Journal, Vol. 5, No. 1 (February 2004)
Newspapers
A. Denholm & A.Hardie, Charles Row as London Turns Rural, in, The Scotsman (23 September 2002)
R. Frisk, BBC Staff are told not to call Israeli killings ‘assassination', in, The Independent (4 August 2001)
G. Hurst & T. Baldwin, Peers snuff out hopes of a hunt deal: the Lords vote to overturn a ban, in, The Times (27 October 2004)
O. Poole, M. Kallenbach & R. Alleyne, The Polite Protest that Descended into Bloody Confrontation, in, The Daily Telegraph (16 September 2004)
20 000 Vote to Ban it, in, The Sun, (11 September, 1997)
Editorial: Let the Focus Groups Decide, in, The New Statesman (19 July, 1999)
Editorial: Really, who cares about the toffs? , in, The Guardian: G2 Section (22 September, 2004)
We provide a professional essay writing service that thousands of our customers use as an effective way of improving their grades, improving their research and saving them lots of time.
