Looking ahead.
I would very much like to see a non-political well regarded and independent journalist as the next DG.
“Why does it matter? We have seen, the world over, that populist and authoritarian leaders move swiftly to diminish or kill off public service media. It suits them to (in the words of Steve Bannon) “flood the zone with shit”, so no one knows who or what to believe.
It suits them to have all the channels of social media to be concentrated in the hands of a few billionaires, who then duly fall in line. It suits them that much of the mainstream news media is economically on its last legs—and that its ownership is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands.
Look no further than the Daily Telegraph, which reported the BBC’s difficulties with such glee last week. One past owner went to jail. The next proprietors—strange and reclusive tax exiles—turned out to be walking bankrupts. For the last two years, the paper has been stuck in purgatory, furiously protesting about the probity of the only people willing to stump up the asking price. From these lofty heights, its writers seek to demolish a funding model which sustains a vast output of local, national and international journalism. And which, according to a recent YouGov poll, beat the Telegraph for trust by a full 22 points.
Or look at the Murdochs, who have been campaigning for years, if not decades, to finish off the BBC. The BBC’s ethical and editorial failings are as nothing to the wild fraudulent and criminal excesses of the past 25 years in Murdochland. Executives going to jail. Literally billions paid out in legal costs and damages. Admissions that they knowingly broadcast lies about Trump’s defeat in 2020. Suspicions, which they naturally deny, that they employed armies of private detectives for commercial and political ends as well as journalistic snooping.
And that’s before we even mention the Big Tech algorithms that promote division, noise, fury and discord over measured, fact-based reporting and analysis.
Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, last night gleefully retweeted the president’s charge that Davie and Turner were “corrupt” so-called journalists, and instructed people to watch GB News instead. Nigel Farage would love that.
We have a choice. We can regain a sense of proportion and support the BBC as it tries to dig itself out of its current hole, some of which is undoubtedly of its own making. We could, if we wish, embrace something like the current US media landscape, with its near-collapse into information ”
Part of an article by A. Rushbridger
10\11\25
Prospect.
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