CNN’s Jake Tapper drew quite a reaction with a recent tweet about a British regulatory agency investigating comments made by television personality Piers Morgan.
“This is what happens when you live in a country where there is no First Amendment,” he wrote. “Insanity.”
Krishnan Guru-Murthy, a journalist on Britain’s Channel 4 News, took exception.
“Not insanity,” he wrote. “A democratic choice to have broadcast media regulated with a duty to be fair and duly impartial. It stops TV from taking sides to support or oppose things the way you do in America and upholds a code of standards.”
Morgan’s remarks came in response to Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. Morgan said he was skeptical of Markle’s claim that she had been turned down by people in the royal “institution” when she asked for help in dealing with thoughts of suicide.
“Who did you go to?” Morgan demanded. “What did they say to you? I’m sorry, I don’t believe a word she said, Meghan Markle. I wouldn’t believe it if she read me a weather report.”
Tapper’s tweet included a link to a Variety story reporting that Britain’s Office of Communication, better known as Ofcom, had received more than 40,000 complaints about Morgan’s comments by 2 p.m. the next day.
“We have launched an investigation into Monday’s episode of ‘Good Morning Britain’ under our harm and offence rules,” an agency spokesperson told the publication.
Like any good champion of free speech, Tapper was beside himself.
“Governments should have no role in policing news broadcasts,” he wrote. “You can tweet Piers what you think of his comments. That’s not what this is about.”
Iesha Mae Thomas, social media producer for a country radio station in London, had a different take.
“Jake, honey, do your research,” she tweeted. “We’re perfectly fine without a First Amendment. (And Ofcom isn’t the government.)” Part of the problem, Tapper later acknowledged, could be summed up by the old saw that the United States and Britain are two countries separated by a common language. We use the same words, but those words don’t necessarily have the same meaning.
Take the word “government.”
For Tapper, it seemed obvious that a public agency would be considered an arm of the government. For the British, though, a government is more tied to politics. It’s what a prime minister forms after putting together a majority in Parliament. The word is used in a way similar to the way Americans use the word “administration.”
On its website, Ofcom describes itself as an independent agency funded through fees paid by the companies it regulates. The agency has broad responsibility. It oversees all types of communication, including not just radio and television, but also broadband, telephone services and even mail delivery.
British citizens responding to Tapper suggested that the real insanity was in an American system where news operations broadcast lies with near impunity.
“OAN wouldn’t last five minutes here,” one said, referring to the Donald Trump allies at One America News Network.
“Neither would MSNBC,” another shot back.
For Guru-Murthy, putting oversight of broadcast news outlets into the hands of a nonpartisan agency only makes sense.
“The alternative is TV news that can mislead, manipulate and lie without consequence acting as cheerleaders for politicians, helping grow division and conspiracy theories with the only regulator being the commercial market,” he tweeted. “To many Brits, that’s dangerous and undesirable.”
Hyunsu Yim, business reporter for the Korea Herald, said it’s not just the British who look askance at the American model.
“It’s really hard to emphasize and get it through to Americans sometimes,” he tweeted, “but most countries are NOT envious of America’s no-holds-barred approach to freedom which seems like pure chaos to the rest of the world.”
To be honest, it sometimes seems that way to Americans.
Kelly Hawes is a columnist for CNHI newspapers in Indiana. Send comments to awoods@aimmedia indiana.com.