Britain’s broadcast media is too valuable to be
the toy of politicians and moguls
Will Hutton
Rupert Murdoch launches a new channel, C4 is
threatened and notions of impartiality seem up for grabs. Are we seeing a
challenge to the old order?
Sun 19 Sep
2021 08.00 BST
Britain’s
stubborn attachment to non-Tory values infuriates and worries Conservative
politicians to equal degree. Yes, there is a suspicion of immigration or welfare
cheats and an attachment to law and order they can exploit, but belief in
fairness, in standing together and public spiritedness and, increasingly, in
matters green seem impervious to attack.
Right-of-centre
British newspapers have done an unparalleled job in attempting to move public
opinion to the right, but as their circulation declines so their influence
wanes. Without a politician of the campaigning zest of Boris Johnson, Tories
concede, their chance of winning elections will fade. The imperative is to use
the current conjuncture to follow the US and build a broadcast media as
effective as the fading print media in cheerleading the Conservative cause.
Public service broadcasting and, above all, broadcast regulators’ attachment to
impartiality are in their crosshairs.
Last week
came two important moves on the chessboard. Rupert Murdoch announced he is
expanding the model of talkRadio into a television arm, talkTV, signing up
Piers Morgan as a lead presenter. The ambition is for talkTV to be the channel
that GB News wanted to be – more aggressively to the right than its ex-chair,
Andrew Neil, thought congruent with journalistic integrity, but less tedious
and shouty than the rightwing headbangers who hector GB News’ shrinking
audiences.
Unlike
them, Morgan, for all his foibles, can broadcast (as can Neil). And Murdoch,
whatever else, has a nose for what works. But he might need Ofcom to indulge
his attempt to stretch notions of impartiality and for that he needs a
rightwing ideologue as its chair. That man was to be ex-Daily Mail editor Paul
Dacre.
But at the
end of May Johnson’s attempt to shoehorn him into Ofcom collapsed; the
Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport appointments board declared
him unappointable – he was disqualified because of his disdain for digital
technology and impartiality rules. Downing Street and, in particular, Johnson’s
aide Munira Mirza, who zealously polices all public-sector appointments and is
especially alert to the fulcrum role of culture and media, were not happy.
In July,
the former culture secretary Oliver Dowden, desperate to save himself in the
coming reshuffle, brought forward the politically toxic privatisation of
Channel 4 as proof he understood what his task was – a form of Tory virtue signalling.
It didn’t work. Last week, he was unceremoniously dispatched to be replaced by
Nadine Dorries.
Neither
Johnson nor the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, was impressed by the political flak
being incurred by the rushed sale of profitable Channel 4, allegedly for its
own good. Protests came from advertisers, independent TV producers and MPs
outside London. No 10’s doubts were intensified by the warmth of the reception
given to Channel 4 screening the final of the US Open – by buying the rights
from Amazon Prime – and Emma Raducano’s famous victory.
It was
looking like bad politics. Nor was it good economics. Sunak is concerned about
removing a pillar of one of the UK’s most successful industries – independent
television producers who count Channel 4 a foundational source of commissions.
He could not see how, with guarantees required about commissioning from small
British companies, sustaining British content and keeping a powerful presence
outside London, as Dowden had conceded, it was going to raise any serious
money.
What is needed in the DCMS is a thick-skinned Tory
culture warrior who will rerun the appointment for Ofcom chair
ITV’s chair
might salivate over the potential synergies if ITV bought the channel, but it
was unlikely that the Competition and Markets Authority would sanction less
competition in the broadcast media. Channel 4 would be sold abroad for a
pittance amid public and industry protest – and the protesters would be right.
Far more
important to Johnson now seems to be to spend scarce political capital in the
bid to make Dacre (or a surrogate) the chair of Ofcom, the chief blockage to
creating a broadcast media as openly partisan as that in the US. If that were
secured, everything else could follow. What is needed in the DCMS is a thick-skinned
Tory culture warrior and Johnson loyalist who will rerun the appointment even
if it breaks, as Julian Knight, the chair of the Commons culture select
committee insists, industry standards on allowing failed appointees to reapply.
Enter
Dorries. Her job is to appoint Dacre (or the surrogate), to weaken Ofcom and
its commitment to “due impartiality” in its broadcast code, cow the BBC and use
the DCMS to appoint culture warriors in her own and Mirza’s image on every
public body for which she has responsibility. If she judges it expedient to put
the privatisation of Channel 4 to one side, as new housing minister, Michael
Gove, has done with planning reform, then so be it. But she must deliver on the
big prizes – weakening Ofcom and the BBC – that will make life so much easier
for talkTV and other rightwing channels that may follow.
It may take
two parliaments or more to complete the job – Johnson is supremely confident he
will win again– but the dismantling of impartiality rules and the weakening of
public service broadcasting will be done, if slowly step by step.
Johnson is
going carefully because he knows the ground is treacherous: the British cherish
their public service broadcasters nearly as much as they cherish the NHS and
there are one-nation Tories, along with the new intake from the north, who
can’t see ending Match of the Day, The Great British Bake Off or even BBC News
as vote winners.
Yes, we
like the new streaming services, but we like them alongside traditional
broadcast channels with their commitment to impartiality, not instead of them.
Better still, if we don’t have to subscribe, as is the case with More4, because
the digital streaming is paid for by advertising.
The
opposition parties fight shy of entering this battle, but it could be an
opportunity if they had the same killer political instinct as Johnson. Britain
and Britishness are intimately wrapped up with our public service broadcasters.
It is the Tories, for their own partisan interests, who want to destroy requirements
of impartiality. For those politicians who blow the whistle on all of this,
there are rich electoral rewards.
Will Hutton is an Observer columnist
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