I remember at Tassajara [San Francisco Zen Centre] once talking to a classical composer and musicologist named Lou Harrison. I apologised to him for the lack of music there and for the fact that there was even a rule against having musical instruments. "Nonsense!" he said. "This place is full of music. You have all the musical instruments and music you need. I hear your bells, that thick hanging board and the drum going from morning to night. There's a lot of space in your music, but it's all you need".I was reminded of that passage from David Chadwick's book Thank you and OK! An American Zen Failure in Japan by last night’s resignation of the BBC director general George Entwistle. This blog's criticism of the BBC predates the current Murdoch press witchhunt by some years, and On An Overgrown Path has repeatedly expressed concerns about the management controls within the BBC – the very factor that precipitated the present crisis. But I feel no schadenfreude about recent events, just a great sadness. I joined the BBC from university in 1971, and not only do I owe any communication and technical skills that I have today to my time with BBC Radio, but the idealistic culture of what was then a public service broadcaster left a profound impression. However, over the intervening four decades the rise of the commercial nexus, the deregulation of broadcasting, society's fixation with celebrity, and the almost infinite increase in communication bandwidth has created an out of control media monster of which the present day BBC is just one part. But I cannot sit in judgement, because on an infinitely more modest scale On An Overgrown Path - and this post - is also part of that new media monster. And push-button publishing and citizen journalism in the form of blogs and social media have not - as was once hoped - levelled the media playing field, instead they have merely reduced it to the level of the lowest common denominator.
As the Newsnight scandal has shown, there is no space in today’s media: speed has usurped accuracy, sound-bytes have replaced considered debate, and anything goes providing it falls outside the narrow definition of defamation. At the heart of the problem is the simple fact that over the past decade the number of news events has not increased, but the demand for news – driven by digital communication technologies – has increased exponentially. With the result that the reporting of news – genuine or otherwise – has expanded to fill the available space. It is inevitable that media organisations around the world will be watching and learning from the Newsnight scandal. And it is also inevitable and right that the result will be more rigorous editorial controls that constrain the supply of news, thereby leaving space in today's sprawling broadcast schedules. Classical music and the other arts need to do some fast thinking and seize the opportunity to fill the post-Newsnight media vacuum. And on my part I have resolved to leave more space in my blogging. That is Lou Harrison above - more on this under-appreciated composer in New music nourished by the forgotten past.
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