According to UNESCO, over 1,600 journalists were killed between 2006 and 2023, with almost 90% of the killings “judicially unresolved”. The UN’s “International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists” was established after the death of two French journalists in Mali on 2 November 2013.
Journalism’s move from the written to the audiovisual is central to the 20th century. Warren G Harding was born on 2 November 1865 and remains the only president to have worked primarily as a journalist. He owned The Marion Star. Alive, he was one of America’s most popular presidents. Dead, revelations of cabinet-level scandal and of an extramarital affair while a senator which yielded a child made him one of the worse. Journalism has played its role in that and in his more recent rehabilitation.
The 2020 election which saw Harding become president has a place in the development of journalism, as 2 November is traditionally remembered as day of the first broadcast by a commercial radio station, the subject being the result of the election.
The event is an interesting example of spin-off money making. Westinghouse had made deep investments in the new technology of radio and had benefitted from government wartime contracts. These had gone off. In Harding’s words, there was a return to normalcy. Westinghouse and its arch competitor GEC were looking for new markets and broadcasting was one. GEC in this regard may be better known by its subsidiary name, Radio Corporation of America or RCA, a leader in home media for the next half century.
Public broadcasting, or at least government-sponsored broadcasting, is more a European than a US tradition. The BBC launched its BBC Television Service on 2 November 1936, known as BBC1 since 1964. The UK’s Channel 4 is a hybrid affair, a state-owned but not publicly funded channel, which opened for business on 2 November 1982.
Just as radio disrupted media at the outset of the 20th century, so the potential of satellite disrupted at the end. In each case, a major element in the disruption was “who gets the government licence”.
By November 1990, the battle in the UK market was intense and complex. On one side was a consortium called British Satellite Broadcasting who had won the local licence. On the other was that extraordinary operator Mr Rupert Murdoch who having being refused a regulatory tick to join the consortium had announced a pan-European “Sky Channel”. The rival investments had been huge, losses were severe, and potential profits were immense. On 2 November 1990 the parties took an obvious step and merged into British Sky Broadcasting.
At one stage, British Satellite Broadcasting commissioned the Hughes Aircraft Company to provide satellites for its business. Ironically, Mr Murdoch’s empire would pick up the leftovers of Howard Hughes’s empire in 2003 and rebadge it as The DirecTV Group. Mr Hughes was in the day as famous as Mr Murdoch would become. One of his ventures was a heavy transport flying boat known as the Spruce Goose. Its first and only voyage occurred on 2 November 1947.
