Speeches, etc.

Margaret Thatcher

Speech opening UPITN Headquarters (comment on Anglo-US relations) [“far as I am concerned Anglo-American relations are in good heart”]

Document type: Speeches, interviews, etc.
Venue: 31-36 Foley Street, London Wl
Source: Thatcher MSS (THCR 1/17/111A): speaking text
Editorial comments: 1100-1200.
Importance ranking: Major
Word count: 1277
Themes: Employment, Trade, Foreign policy (Central & Eastern Europe), Foreign policy (USA), Foreign policy (USSR & successor states), Media, Science & technology

It is a great pleasure for me to be here today, in response to your kind and thoughtful invitation, to open your splendid new Headquarters, international news centre and marvellous electronic workshop.

It is kind of you to do so because I would have thought that after the [end p1] last fortnight you would have seen enough of me on your screens.

After all, your cameras have dogged my every step—firm and never faltering, as you will have noticed—from New Delhi to Old Goa; from Commonwealth to Common Market; and from Athens to what next? [end p2]

In fact, I would go so far as to say that Summits wouldn't be Summits these days without Michael Brunson, who must be as well known as I am in the 70 countries to whom you bounce your pictures by satellite. [end p3]

So it is very reassuring to know that you aren't getting bored with me—or him.

I also described your invitation as thoughtful because this ceremony allows me to recognise a number of important achievements and to say a few words about television and the opportunity that lies ahead of it.

Let me first recognise the achievements: One is the international collaboration inherent in U.P.I.T.N.. You have [end p4] grown out of an Anglo-American coalition of resources and expertise, involving UPI and ITN and then the American network ABC, to embrace Australian commercial television. Such a combination of forces should guarantee a lively service to your viewers. [end p5]

The fact that all too often it appears fractious rather than friendly provides you with hours of satellite time.

But we generally get there in the end, and supply you with the happy ending that bores you to death. [end p6]

A number of newspapers this morning described my attitude to Anglo-American relations in terms that vary from wholly untroubled to spitting mad.

I wonder if I might be allowed to say a word? And this will be the truth.

So far as I am concerned Anglo-American relations are in good heart.

Even as the press were describing my attitude I was having a customary warm and friendly discussion last [end p7] evening with Secretary Regan.

It is with friends you can talk frankly; never with rancour; always with friendship; always with understanding.

That's the way it is between Britain and the US, and that's the way it always will be. [end p8]

I think we should also note the extent to which London is increasingly becoming an important world media as well as financial centre.

U.P.I.T.N.'s decision to make london the base for its world-wide operations is an example of this. And this, no doubt, owes much to our ability in this country to bring together financial, technological, journalistic and management expertise to provide [end p9] a keen, competitive and top quality television service to the 150 TV stations who are your clients across the world.

This is not to mention your major competitors, the BBC, who keep you healthily on your toes—to judge from my close observation of these matters.

Another achievement we mark today is the making of an export business out of [end p10] information technology. U.P.I.T.N. is in truth an export house earning $18million a year, and on the up and up.

Here we are at the centre of a world-wide profit-making business offering not merely news but also documentaries, a library service, special coverage of events for subscribers, and commercial film production. [end p11]

An export house running on the best of British information and communications technology.

I am not surprised to hear that this is the most advanced purpose-built TV news bureau in the world. That is what I would expect. But it is encouraging that well over half of the equipment is British—a proportion which I very much hope will increase as you develop your own technology. [end p12]

When people ask me—as your interviewers seem to do almost daily—where the new jobs are to come from perhaps I ought to say: “Go and have a look at U.P.I.T.N. House” .

Or, if you can afford the time and the fare, go and have a look at a modern Summit meeting and see for yourself the legions of the employed behind the modern international news industry. [end p13]

I also find in this occasion a portent of things to come in the international TV news and current affairs market place.

So I would like to make just a few simple points about television and the future.

The first point is the opportunity that lies ahead.

We now take a world radio service for granted. BBC External Services have developed this to a fine art with a [end p14] formidable reputation for accuracy and objectivity.

But the prospect before us is of a truly world television service—indeed services—with the advent of Direct Broadcasting by Satellite.

We are not there yet. But as time and technology move on so satellite broadcasting will plant an ever broader footprint—or combination of footprints—across the globe. [end p15] And so more and more countries will, if they choose or are allowed to, be able to tune in to a world TV service.

Already U.P.I.T.N.'s product reaches the screens of viewers in 70 countries—rich and poor, developed and developing, sophisticated and awakening, free and regimented.

This just shows how rapidly we are moving towards the concept of a world TV service. [end p16]

Of course it is one thing to provide a service. It is another thing to be able to take advantage of it—or to be allowed to do so.

Jamming of the airwaves is an all too familiar feature of radio broadcasting. And it could be used to blot out a world TV service by regimes who fear the consequences of allowing their people to see what Western freedom delivers to its people. [end p17]

But you can't obliterate everything. Every day U.P.I.T.N. transmits a 10-minute package of news in pictures to Moscow and Moscow in turn transmits it on to Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, East Berlin and Cuba.

What Communist Editors make of it all is another matter. If pictures cannot lie they can be made to tell a different story. [end p18]

But what is undeniable is that more and more flashes of the Western way of life are penetrating the Eastern fog. And the beams of enlightenment not merely get through unedited but are widely seen close to the frontier with the West.

The question is what impression do they leave?

Not all of the Western way of life, as presented on our TV screens is pretty [end p19] or cosy or reassuring or inspiring.

Too much of it is bloody and violent and ugly and depressing.

News values put a higher premium on conflict than concord.

So we must be aware, Mr Chairman, of the kind of television archive that is being built up. If news is by definition the unusual and conflict is news the archive will not accurately [end p20] hold up a true mirror to our way of life.

The point is graphically illustrated by unemployment. Yes, one in eight of our people is unemployed. Far, far too many. But seven out of eight are in fact at work.

This has some very serious and weighty implications for the profession of journalism as the technology of disseminating news, comment and [end p21] current affairs positively explodes before us.

Never before have we needed such a rigorous professionalism.

A journalism that pursues truth and enlightenment. But a journalism, too, which recognises in the practice of its craft a responsibility to the society of which it is a part. A responsibility to tell things as they are. Yes warts and all. But not forgetting the all. [end p22]

And that all is a free society made good, prosperous and just by a common, freely expressed determination.

Modern broadcasters bear an increasingly heavy burden of responsibility for objectivity and balance the wider their technology takes their measure.

I have seen enough of your professionalism at work to know you can shoulder it. [end p23]

It is because I believe that you will rigorously apply that professionalism, with all that that implies, that I am delighted to declare U.P.I.T.N. House formally open. [unveil plaque]