Most people's 'window on the world' these days is the television screen, so their perception and understanding of events beyond their immediate locality is heavily influenced by those governing the content of television programmes. It follows that TV controllers should be above reproach in their efforts to avoid news distortion and tendentious programmes and to defend basic freedoms. However, the present controllers' abuse of public trust is apparent from the most cursory inspection of TV (and radio) output.

All public companies and public services are subject to regular independent audits of their finances to ensure public funds are not abused. But much more than financial propriety is at issue when dealing with the huge power and influence of the mass media in today's world. What price 'press freedom' if it is used to enslave everybody else? There is now an overwhelming case for a genuinely independent 'Media Management Audit' with the following remit:-

1. To establish a code of practice whereby:

   a) No political party will be discussed in the absence of its representatives.

   b) Any bona fide political party will be given media space to rebut misreporting of its policies, membership or behaviour, this space to be equal to that given to those doing the misreporting.

   c) 'Due proportion' should apply to the amount of media space given to particular topics and participants in programmes.

   d) Gratuitous insertion of obscenity, violence and profanity will be prohibited.

   e) 'Outside' assessors will be involved in the recruitment and selection of media personnel and the drawing up of their contracts of employment.

   f) Entertainment programmes will not be used as vehicles for political or pressure group propaganda.

   g) Media output will be regularly monitored to ensure conformity with the above rules.
   
   

2. To recommend desirable amendments to broadcasting policy and practice.

The views of media employees should be disregarded when establishing these regulatory arrangements, for the same reason that the main planks of political policy are not subject to approval by civil servants. What has to be addressed is the tendency of some media personnel to shape media output to accord with their own political, moral and aesthetic perceptions. For obvious reasons, this subversion is obliged to conceal itself, so media manipulators use the most popular programmes as vehicles for the promotion of certain political or social causes which, baldly stated, would not stand up to public challenge.

All 'virtual reality'

Thus we find fictionalised versions of reality in which, for example, Negroes, Asians and females are slotted into unfamiliar (because unrealistic) roles, and the plot tends to diminish or marginalise heterosexual white males as primitive bigots or ineffectual wimps. They follow Hollywood/Sollywood/Gollywood in the promotion of blacks and sexy females in grotesquely unlikely roles from crime-solving to space exploration and national leadership.

Such productions bear the same relation to reality as a Disney cartoon. Pointing to the odd Black or female seeming to contradict this assertion is simply a case of the exception proving the rule. For example, few people would recognise the frequent description of the American politician Colin Powell as 'black', when he is patently of mixed race. And who seriously believes that, with thousands of more eligible white males, the eight-strong crew of a billion-dollar space mission had to include black and female members as the best available people and not as politically-correct window-dressing? So proportional representation - a favourite liberal mantra - is nowhere to be found when multi-racialism or feminism are being promoted. Some risible examples follow:-

• An unquotable Negro 'poet' presenting the prize to the (all-white) winners of the University Challenge quiz programme.
  
  
• A Negress explaining natural history to (all-white) children in an English meadow.
  
  
• A Negro presiding over a classical (all-white) piano competition.
  
  
• A film scene depicting a Negress teaching Shakespeare to (mostly white) American students.
  
  
• Space exploration film dramas with Negroes in leading technological roles.
  
  
• 'Saving the world' film epics with Negroes in leading roles.
  
  
• 'Screen-filler' Negroes in most Coronation Street pub scenes and even rural Emmerdale scenarios.
  
  
• War films depicting Negroes in 'undercover'(!) operations against the Nazis.
  
  
• A film scene about Vikings including a Negro.
  
  
• A Robin Hood film where the (valiant and sagacious) 'Saracen' visitor is actually not Arab but black.

Similar examples are now commonplace, and all are intended to promote the notion that nothing of importance can happen anywhere without the inclusion of Blacks, Asians and females. And TV advertisers are blatantly pursuing the same agenda, so that Blacks are nowadays becoming an obligatory presence whenever two or more people are on screen; indeed, Blacks are sometimes the only people presenting the product. Another insidious example of this advertising genre is the inclusion of Blacks in most tea party or Christmas scenes or children's garden games. Yet another example is the inclusion of Blacks in boardroom scenes. The 'sermon on the screen' is therefore essentially the same as the pulpit variety in seeking to promote a particular version of the world.

'All multi-racialists'

Obviously following the example of a predecessor (Lord Hill), who once claimed "We're all Socialists now," the BBC and ITV have obviously decided that we're all multi-racialists, feminists and bisexuals now. Some things never really change; in his famous cave metaphor over two thousand years ago, Plato referred to people besotted with shadows on the wall while reluctant to emerge into the glare of reality outside.