Why the BBC and Labour are a threat to the Free Press
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy extols the merits of Press freedom – as long as it’s a state-blessed, self-improvement scheme
While political attention was focused on the Assisted Dying Bill at Holyrood and Angela Rayner unsheathing the stiletto intended for Sir Keir Starmer’s back, UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy was sharpening a few knives of her own.
On the face of it, her speech to the Society of Editors conference In London was good news for media folk, and indeed it probably was for the relatively well-upholstered BBC, now to be freed from the ten-yearly ritual of arguing the case for renewal of its charter, and the opportunity for politicians to have a go for whatever blunders Auntie had committed in the previous decade.
Ms Nandy’s justification for replacing the BBC charter renewal process with a rolling charter which never ends was that it was wrong for such a vital institution to face a cliff edge every ten years because the threat of going out of existence did not hang over other national “treasures” like the NHS or Bank of England.
“If the NHS is essential to the health of our people, the BBC is essential to the health of our democracy,” she said. “This is about protecting the BBC – and everything that it represents – for the long term for all of us…”
Not that the BBC’s demise was ever likely, but it’s fine if you believe, as Ms Nandy implied, that the BBC is an unrelenting force for good whatever it does, like a civilising missionary going off into dark, uncharted lands. I doubt Ms Nandy would appreciate the colonial comparison, but that’s how it seemed.
“In recent decades the BBC, which has always adapted and evolved throughout its history, has reinvented itself as an engine for the whole nation,” she said. “And it underpins the whole ecosystem. Every streamer, every investor, the BBC is the foundation on which they come to build.”
Unwittingly, she hit upon the very problem which the rest of the ecosystem has been raising for years, that when then BBC flexes its massive, licence-fee-swollen muscles to enter commercial markets, they instantly become distorted and previously level playing fields hopelessly tilted.
That the BBC is a respected, quality broadcaster and news source is not in doubt, but it uses its reputation and the licence fee − the future of which she did not mention – to operate wherever it chooses beyond pure broadcasting at a scale other operators struggle to match. Try promoting a music event in Scotland this August, as the over-marketed behemoth that is Radio 2 in the Park rolls into Stirling.
If anything, the new plan for the corporation to be held accountable to its staff, aka the unions, actually threatens its impartiality on an ongoing basis, far more than any political pressure brought to bear during charter renewal.
Ms Nandy’s notion of what represents a trusted news provider deserves scrutiny because along with unshackling an already all-powerful BBC, she has the big independent publishers in her sights, particularly the system of self-regulation to which the vast majority, including this newspaper, subscribe.
The threat is not veiled because, in a Q&A session after her speech, she claimed the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) was a failure because it hadn’t fined any publisher for breaking the rules, and only a small number of complaints – many politically motivated − were ruled as breaches, implicitly rejecting the alternative interpretation that these were clear signs of compliance.
How she intends to force publishers to sign up to a government-approved regulator wasn’t explained, but the narrative of failure is one pushed by the government-funded Press Recognition Panel (PRP), the front of a system established by the Conservative government after the 2012 Leveson Report to validate press regulators, with which IPSO refuses to cooperate because of a direct link with political control.
With nothing to do except give the ‘official’ alternative press regulator Impress a clean bill of health every three years, the PRP has morphed into a campaign against the mainstream press for which it receives an annual government grant of £430,000.
It is deeply ironic that, as the UK Government fritters away thousands on a niche pressure group, Ms Nandy has also announced a £12 million fund to underpin a new Local Media Strategy, most of which will be invested in digital innovation and community radio, and to tackle so-called “news deserts” where there are no news operations covering local authorities. It sounds promising if it strengthens local journalism, but it came with a threat to existing publishers.
“If you are prepared to act as responsible custodians, we will be the active, supportive partners you have been looking for from government for far too long. But if you are not, let somebody else take these vital institutions forward,” she said, and then went on the attack.
“Too many of us have been written off, our contribution disrespected and our lives not reflected in the story we tell ourselves about ourselves as a nation. The fact that our media is one of the most class, geographic and ethnically concentrated industries is a major problem,” she said.
Despite repeating how important it was for independent journalism to hold the powerful to account, in reality she was throwing down a gauntlet. Stick to the kind of stories the government thinks are important, change who reports them and how, be subject to a regulation system with official approval, and watch the BBC, the biggest elephant in the UK news media savannah, become even more omnipotent.
She is just the latest politician to extol the merits of Press freedom as long as it’s some sort of state-blessed, self-improvement scheme, but here is the news: it is at its best when it doesn’t give a stuff about lofty politicians like Lisa Nandy.
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