17 November 2016
Free Speech in Toytown
Without advertising revenues there can be no free press
by J.R.Thomas
PC Plod has long retired, to a quiet cottage in the country where he can grow strawberries and reminisce over the garden gate to passers-by about collars he felt long ago. It brings a ruminative smile to the old policeman’s lined face, as he relates how he clipped the ear of that little rogue Noddy for scrumping apples from Mrs Miggin’s orchard. Odd, the old copper thinks, how his audience tend to laugh nervously at that point, and next day walk by on the other side of the lane. But wait! What’s this? It’s Postman Pat with a very important looking letter. Old Plod rips it open, hoping for notification of an increase in his ever shrinking pension; but dent my helmet, it’s a writ. Something about a Royal Commission into Standards of Conduct Towards Minors in Regional Policing. Time to ring Mr Manningham-Buller the Toytown barrister, thinks Plod.
No, you are right, Enid Blyton never got round to writing “Noddy and Big Ears Give Evidence at the Public Enquiry”, but there seems little doubt that, should she be at her desk in 2016, she would be working on it. As it is, the job has passed to Lego, the manufacturer of little plastic bricks that can be used to build a fantasy world of whatever you please. From the postwar days when plastic bricks and a few doors and windows and roof shaped pieces constituted the entire range, Lego have expanded into miniature figures who move their heads and arms – or at least can have them moved for them – and have swords and light sabres thrust into them. There are space craft and castles and boats, Lord of the Rings sets and Cinderella sets and everything that the modern child’s imagination might reach to. The figures are still predominantly male and largely white and the concept toys mainly warlike and with incipient violence, no doubt reflecting the markets in which most of the sales are made. But Lego is making great strides in becoming inclusive and all-embracing and not reinforcing social or racial stereotypes, a reaction both to criticism of the social and ethnic narrowness of its range, and (cynically) to falling sales some years ago. It is after all a Danish company, based in a country and culture which has managed largely to overcome old shibboleths and embrace the modern world.
But Lego’s latest move to demonstrate its impeccably correct and socially aware credentials is running into some criticism. For many years it has run a series of heavy promotions and special offers, coupled with extensive advertising, with the Daily Mail, Britain’s big selling rightward leaning tabloid newspaper, owned by the family trusts of Lord Rothermere. The Daily Mail, which has long positioned itself as the preferred reading of women in general and middle class, middle income, mums in particular, was presumably the ideal advertising medium for Lego, with an audience of devoted and relatively well heeled mothers. But now the perfect symbiosis has come to an abrupt end; Lego has announced that this long-standing cosy arrangement has ended and that it is not planning to resume it.
The toy company, in one of those announcements that at first sight seems to be a spoof, and remains equally weird when revealed to be serious, said “…we spend a lot of time listening to what children have to say. And when parents and grandparents take the time to let us know they feel, we always listen just as carefully.”(sic)
What these worthy and thoughtful toddlers, teens, and oldies are saying, so the company says, is that the Lego brand could be damaged by links to newspapers that take hostile stances on race, immigration, and gender issues. And you thought those noisy playground chats were about whose turn it was on the swings or selecting members of teams for the next game of tag (or how to fool your mum that you are not playing Grand Theft Auto). No, the nation’s youth do not like the Daily Mail’s stance on racial stereotyping. Or at least, their parents don’t, if we tend to think that in reality children tend to prefer playing to setting up discussion groups to consider innate conservatism and embedded racialism in the national media.
Lego has not revealed how it monitored and considered the views of its customers in this matter, or how many young teenagers and aging grannies were polled in this profiling. It may though have been more influenced by a new campaigning group, Stop Funding Hate, which has particularly focussed on the tabloid press’s role in reporting on immigration, sexual profiling, and minority treatments. (The right wing tabloid press, that should say; it has concentrated on the Daily Mail, Express, and Sun; the Mirror is thought to be beyond reproach, we presume.) With circulations in constant and accelerating fall, and advertising revenues diminishing even faster, the newspaper industry is becoming very vulnerable to pressures from advertisers. Stop Funding Hate has found that advertisers are also responsive to pressure from campaigning groups, particularly when their core customer base is young people, who are both more interested in such social concerns and more likely to redirect their spending towards companies that are seen as “correct” or “liberal” in their approach to trading.
The campaign has had some success; Gary Lineker, a former footballer and now football commentator, has asked Walkers Crisps to stop advertising in the Sun, though he has not gone so far as to stop working for Walker’s as the face of their current advertising campaign; nor has he expressed a view as to the role of the salty fatty snacks in teenage obesity.
Stop Funding Hate now has moved onto a bigger target, the John Lewis department store and supermarket group, which owns Waitrose. So far, without success; John Lewis says it does not decide advertising policy by pressure from special interest groups. The Co-op Group, also under pressure from the campaigning group, seems likely to modify its policy though; its customer base is rather different to John Lewis and it spends a lot less with the rightward leaning media.
We all want to live in a better, finer, more noble world of course; like the late Robin Cooke’s intended ethical foreign policy, discouraging behaviour that hurts our fellow citizens is a very worthy cause. But it is often one that turns out to be not nearly so clear in the execution as it does in the dreaming. The problem here, it hardly needs pointing out, is that of free speech, and a free press. A free press is a wonderful concept, but we would be the first to acknowledge that one cannot produce a newspaper without commercial reality creeping in from time to time. Without revenue, the ability of the media to speak freely will come to an early end.
The main commercial media groups – in other words, pretty much everything except the BBC and some voluntary groups – need their print and on-line sales, and their advertisers, to fund their businesses, and most have already cut the quality of what they produce as declining circulations and advertising cut that life blood. Newspapers do inevitably bend to the wishes of their advertisers on occasion, though most have lines they do not cross; in the end reputation trumps income, at least in the short run. Toy companies, it seems, are also vulnerable and will change their behaviours, when it comes to well funded and articulate pressure groups. That does not remove freedom of speech, but it is a further concerning trend in a world where political correctness is squashing robust debate.
Maybe there is a commercial opportunity for Lego here with perfect child appeal – a new range in which Monopoly money and a lots of messy inks can be integrated. Build a Lego printing press, create a newsletter, sell it to your fellow toddlers. See how far you can get when they won’t pay for it, teacher refuses to run advertising in it, and you run out of ink and have no money for more. Guaranteed tears before bedtime.
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