With former prime minister Boris Johnson soon joining Jacob Rees-Mogg, Lee Anderson and Nigel Farage as presenters on GB News, there appears to be little attempt by the channel to provide balance to its roster of right-wing voices and even current Conservative politicians. Should the media regulator insist that it provides that balance, or should broadcasters be allowed to present just one side of a political argument?
On Media Confidential, Alan and Lionel hear from media professor Steve Barnett, a critic of Ofcom, and veteran commentator and TV executive David Elstein, who views the growth of GB News far more favourably.
Download, listen and subscribe to Media Confidential on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
Follow us on X/Twitter: @MediaConfPod
Media Confidential is a podcast from Prospect.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Alan Rusbridger:
Hello, and welcome to Media Confidential, Prospect Magazine's weekly dive beyond the clickbait to explore the fascinating and contested world of media. I'm Alan Rusbridger.
Lionel Barber:
And I'm Lionel Barber. On this episode we consider politically opinionated broadcast news in the UK.
Rusbridger:
With the former prime minister, Boris Johnson, joining its right of centre lineup, inevitably we examine this issue through the prism of GB News, who Ofcom recently found twice breached due impartiality rules, including when two Tory MPs interviewed the Tory chancellor, Jeremy Hunt.
Barber:
Should there be a space in British media for broadcasting without balance? We consider that and the role of the regulator.
Rusbridger:
Don't forget to listen and follow us wherever you get your podcast to make sure you never miss an episode. Media Confidential is on X stroke Twitter, we are @mediaconfpod, all one word. Now, Lionel, I'm sitting next door to an empty chair where you should be because you're once again not in London, where are you?
Barber:
I'm in New York City, just opposite Central Park, Alan. Because I've been doing this broadcast I haven't been able to do my early morning run, but I'm off a little later to join some people talking about the state of the world.
Rusbridger:
Well, I hope you're planting lots of trees to make up for your air miles because you've been travelling a lot recently. Before we get going, can I thank the marketing gurus for creating a way to enjoy Prospect's journalism for a full month absolutely free? Take advantage of the new one month free trial offer and you could read all the magazines, best long reads, commentary and cultural criticism, with new writing added daily to our website as well as the entire 28 year archive. Sign up now at subscribe.Prospectmagazine.co.uk/mediaconfpod. Boris Johnson, the villain of the COVID inquiry to date and the hero of Nadine Dorries' political whodunit which is out this week, has announced he's going to be a presenter on, you guessed it, GB News.
Boris Johnson:
I'm going to be giving this remarkable new TV channel my unvarnished views on everything from Russia, China, the war in Ukraine, how we meet all those challenges, to the huge opportunities that lie ahead for us. Why I think our best days are yet to come. And why, on the whole, the people of the world want to see more global Britain, not less.
Barber:
He'll be joining a cast which includes Esther McVey and her husband, Philip Davies, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nigel Farage, Michael Portillo, Lee Anderson, and until recently, Dehenna Davison.
Rusbridger:
Is there something all these people have in common, Lionel?
Barber:
Now, it's funny you should mention that, all of them are, were, or are said to want to be, Conservative MPs. And we shouldn't forget Arlene Foster of the DUP, or Richard Tice, leader of the pro-Brexit Reform party.
Rusbridger:
Well, it's nice work if you can get it, Sir Jacob's register of interests, which I looked at yesterday, shows him to be earning around £30,000 a month for presenting four shows a week. That's around 360,000 a year on top of his MP salary, so Johnson's going to be, if nothing else, handsomely rewarded.
Barber:
Meanwhile, former home secretary Priti Patel used a speech at the Conservative Party Conference to lash out at Tory hating Brexit bashers, free speech deniers at the BBC, and the so-called mainstream media, at the same time as describing GB News, the newest, most successful, dynamic, no-nonsense news station, and the defenders of free speech.
Rusbridger:
And another Tory prime minister, former Tory prime minister, Liz Truss, remember her? Called for, quote, "More GB News." Quote, "To challenge the orthodoxy, broadcasting common sense and transforming our media landscape. So long may it continue," that's what she said.
Barber:
The Economist magazine recently described GB News as the conservative right speaking unto itself, which is very nice for the conservative right, but is it actually legal? And does it actually matter?
Rusbridger:
We'll tackle the first question in a second with a couple of distinguished guests. As to whether it matters, its audience is steadily growing, both on its own platform, about three million viewers a month, which is about a quarter of the BBC's news channel. But arguably more important on social media, where controversial clips reach millions more.
Barber:
But more than its current reach is the question of whether Britain wants or needs to have a TV channel that seems to be going down the route of Fox News in America. Someone coined the word angertainment for that kind of a highly polarised mix of news and comment.
Rusbridger:
As to the legality, well, its critics argue that a TV licence in the UK comes with obligations to due impartiality. And the addition of Boris Johnson to a lineup of Tories past and present, as well as the former DUP leader and prominent Brexit campaigners, seems to make a mockery of any aspirations to balance.
Barber:
Now, the channel is supposedly regulated by the media regulator, Ofcom, in the news this week as it also takes on the burden of regulating online media. And while they've recently launched a number of inquiries into GB News, critics say it's far too little too late. One of those critics, SNP MP John Nicolson, himself a former broadcaster, recently took aim at Ofcom during a committee hearing in the Commons for its failure to take any serious action over GB News. Since Ofcom has declined to field anyone to speak to us today, we can hear its public policy director, Kate Davies, responding to Nicolson back in July about what he sees as the lack of due impartiality in Jacob Rees-Mogg's programme on GB News.
John Nicolson:
Every single day he churns out the same old right wing, pro-Brexit stuff. What he's doing is blurring news presenting and commentary. He does that every single day of the week. Your rules, I read out your rules to you, I won't do it again, they're very explicit, it has to be exceptional circumstances for an MP to do interviews. He interviews every single day of the week. He's breaching your rules, it's not a one-off, it's every day. Why don't you act to stop this?
Kate Davies:
If the programme constitutes a news programme, that is the law. If it constitutes a current affairs programme, we look at it differently.
Nicolson:
This is dancing on the head of a pin, because as a former news presenter myself, I know that news programmes often contain longer format interviews which could become current affairs programmes. I used to present BBC Breakfast, I would do long interviews every day, but it wasn't a current affairs programme, it was like Mr. Mogg's programme, a news programme. He is presenting a news programme, not a current affairs programme. He breaches your rules.
Davies:
I don't have anything further to say, I've been clear on how we take-
Nicolson:
Okay-
Rusbridger:
We'll speak to another of Ofcom's critics, media professor Steve Barnett, in a moment. But first we're joined by David Elstein, a veteran broadcaster and commentator who's watched the growth of GB News with interest and it's fair to say some approval I think, but we'll check with him in a second.
Barber:
David was a BBC producer before being director of programming at Thames TV, head of programing at BSkyB, as well as launching Channel 5 and running a number of independent production companies and chairing openDemocracy. Welcome, David.
David Elstein:
Thank you very much, Lionel. Thank you, Alan.
Rusbridger:
David, you know better than most that Britain has traditionally operated on a system where we have an opinionated press and strictly unopinionated broadcasters. Do you welcome the advent of opinionated TV?
Elstein:
Well, Alan, this has got a bit of a history, and I spent virtually all my career running regulated channels, current affairs programmes, news output, TV stations. But that was in a period of severely restricted spectrum, in other words, where everything had to be granted by government, it was terrestrial frequencies. And regulation was part of the deal, because it was scarce it had to be balanced and quite carefully regulated. I'm very used to it, I've spent 40 years doing it. Ever since the advent of Sky the rules of the game have started to soften. On Sky today you can get 20 news channels, most of them from abroad. Not just CNN, NBC, Bloomberg, but Arirang or Rai, NHK, France 24, Euronews, et cetera. To expect a UK regulator to apply exactly the same rules to all of these broadcasters is just not realistic.
And that's why when Ofcom applies its definition of, not impartiality but due impartiality, what that means is that impartiality which is appropriate to the channel and its audience. So for instance, Fox News was broadcast on Sky for many years before it went away because it was not profitable. It was barely noticed and it was barely objected to. It regularly received Ofcom complaints but those were rarely to do with its news content and more to do with its sponsored content. So I'm relaxed about the advent of so-called opinionated TV. I don't particularly watch TalkTV or GB News, but I'm not fussed about their being there, and I do think that Ofcom and the rest of the media worry about it too much.
Barber:
David, you're not a big fan of Ofcom, why not?
Elstein:
Well, I used to be quite impressed by their ability to regulate the regulated channels. And I was one of the few people who would read the monthly Ofcom bulletin on complaints. "Get a life," you might say, "Get Prospect," you might say, but in those days the Ofcom bulletin was the thing to read. I've been invited to apply to join the Ofcom Board a few times. Actually, the last time, last year when I was interviewed, and amusingly, rejected. Given that I know vastly more about the regulation of content than any of the people who were interviewing me, it was one of those things, but I've been a critic of Ofcom for its failure to protect public service broadcasting.
Not for the way it regulates content but for an abject failure, and it was a failure built into its invention in 2003, and Ofcom has been a huge disappointment in that respect. More recently I've come to think that even as a regulator of content it fancies itself too much and is ineffective. Within a few months of when I might have joined the board of Ofcom I would have had to resign because of a Channel 4 programme which I wrote to them about. I think I sent them a 20 page letter listing dozens of inaccuracies and outright lies, and they just waved it through and said, "Nothing to see here." And I at that point realised that Ofcom was not a serious content regulator either.
Rusbridger:
You say you don't watch a great deal of GB News but you must be aware of the controversy around it, do you think it's working within the rules and within the law?
Elstein:
For the most part, yes. Obviously with I think 15 open investigations by Ofcom there's an open question as to whether it's transgressed, but whatever it does, these transgressions are minor. I think GB News' biggest mistake was to get an audience, an audience sometimes larger than Sky News, sometimes even larger than BBC News, and that really has annoyed the establishment. "Why should some upstart, right wing opinionated channel get more viewers than us? What's wrong with Britain?"
Barber:
I'm sympathetic to that view, David, but I'm just struggling to understand how it can be compliant if all its political presenters are overwhelmingly drawn from the ranks of the Conservative Party and Brexit parties.
Elstein:
That's because you don't understand the concept of due impartiality. Due means that which is appropriate to its audience, its audience is self-selecting, therefore that's what they want to see. If you watch NBC News its coverage of Brexit is ludicrous. If you watch CNN its coverage of Brexit is ludicrous. If you watch Bloomberg... But what do you expect from a broadcaster emanating from New York? So Ofcom needs to take a relaxed view of the opinionatedness and look at actual offence if it causes offence.
Barber:
So, David, we're looking at really Fox TV in the UK then.
Elstein:
It's not really Fox, Fox is outlandish. You're in New York, if you ever bothered to watch it I'm sure you'd just go-
Barber:
I do.
Elstein:
You do? Well, careful, your brain may be fuddled by the time we finish.
Barber:
It's still working, David, don't worry.
Elstein:
Good. Look, we can all look at Fox, or indeed CNN, which is the mirror image of Fox, and say, "What on earth is all this nonsense about?" But there's an audience for it because American viewers are very polarised, they want that red meat stuff, be it blue or red. GB News is really mild by comparison with Fox, and if you look at its real history, Angelos Frangopoulos, the managing director, he ran Sky News in Australia for many years. Sky News, this is not the Murdoch owned Sky News, pre-Murdoch, was raucous, outspoken, loads of ex-politicians, ex-prime ministers, people who've fallen out with their parties turned up, did a stint, got fired, went and did something else. And it was noisy, and like most Australians, very outspoken.
The only one exception I would make is the new manager of Spurs who is a very, very mild mannered man but a very effective one. But there is an issue here, which is a cultural one, this is noisy, vigorous, outspoken, more entertainment than current affairs, but it has a place in the world. I don't have any objection to it being there, and I do have an objection to Newsnight putting together a panel to discuss GB News and having three of the four members of the panel calling for it to be closed down. Honestly, what is all this? Newsnight maybe should be closed down after a programme like that.
Rusbridger:
But David, I think I can follow your argument that you say this doesn't particularly bother you that all these presenters are drawn almost exclusively from the ranks of Tory and Brexit party because they're reaching an audience, but that not what the law says, is it? The law says that you have to exclude all expressions of the views, of opinions of the person providing the service. So I can see that you may be saying the law should be different but that's not what the law says at the moment.
Elstein:
Yeah, but it's not provided personally by Paul Marshall, he's a funder.
Rusbridger:
No, but Jacob Rees-Mogg and Lee Anderson and Philip Davies and Esther McVey.
Elstein:
You're misreading the law, the law is the ownership of the channel, it's not to do with the actual presenters. You can have any presenters you like. So when I was at ITV for instance, we weren't allowed to have Dora Gaitskell on a programme because she was a director of one of the ITV companies and she had strong political views. It was mildly ludicrous but that was the law. There's nothing to stop MPs turning up or politicians... When Boris Johnson was presenting Have I Got News for You nobody was saying that he owned the BBC, he was just a guest of the BBC. Likewise with Jacob Rees-Mogg, Esther McVey, Philip Davies, et cetera, Lee Anderson. Look, if there is some broadcaster who wants to provide out-of-pocket expenses to Tory MPs or ex-Tory MPs, do I have a problem with that? Actually, no.
Rusbridger:
I'm just going to read you the Ofcom code. It says, "Alternative viewpoints must be adequately represented, either in the programme or in the series of programmes taken as a whole. Additionally, presenters..." Not the owners, "Presenters must not use the advantage of regular appearances to promote their views in a way which compromises the requirement for due impartiality."
Elstein:
Well, it's entirely up to Ofcom to decide whether they've compromised the requirements. Are they presenting their views or are they presenting a programme? Are they doing party political broadcasts or are they doing discussions within the Conservative Party? I don't have a problem with any of that, and if Ofcom chooses to wave a yellow or indeed a red card, it will just prove that Ofcom is an entirely pointless organisation.
Barber:
Do you think it would have been a good idea if Paul Dacre, longtime ex-editor of the Daily Mail, took over Ofcom as chair?
Elstein:
Heaven forbid. No. Look, Michael Grade is a very experienced broadcaster. I'm slightly surprised he would want to run Ofcom, especially with the Online Safety Bill and all the new rules that are coming in that Ofcom is completely ill-equipped to manage, but he would be fine. Paul would have been a disaster.
Rusbridger:
If you'd got the job at Ofcom, David, what would your attitude have been to climate change deniers presenting programmes?
Elstein:
So long as it's explained that they're climate change deniers, that's fine. Climate change denial is not at the moment illegal, Holocaust denial is, outright racism is, and you can't do that. So having Nigel Lawson, as he then was, turning up on occasional BBC programmes, I think was quite helpful because it forces you to sharpen your view. "Actually, what is wrong with this argument?"
Rusbridger:
You've just complained that Ofcom didn't take inaccuracies on Channel 4 seriously.
Elstein:
Not inaccuracies, lies.
Rusbridger:
If people are saying inaccurate lies about climate change, why is that different?
Elstein:
Lies is not the same. Outright lies, statements of clearly provable untruths... With Nigel he was offering his view of the facts. Now, it was a highly contestable view of the facts, but that was his view. He wasn't trying to put out a piece of propaganda and being treated as a truth sayer. He was being treated as a participant in a debates, and I think there is a slight difference between those two positions.
Rusbridger:
Final question from me, David. The reality is that rich people, the sort of people who can afford to lose 30 million a year on a channel like this, are unlikely to want to promote left wing views. So the logic of your position is, you're relaxed about rich people coming along and starting up TV channels, but that means we're going to have a much more right wing media, isn't it? Are you relaxed about that?
Elstein:
Well, you say that. Look, the Scott Trust has got £1 billion of assets, nothings stopping the Scott Trust launching a TV station. My feeling is that GB News will struggle to break-even, and it will probably migrate to online only more for cost reasons than for Ofcom reasons in the next two or three years, because it's got a very strong online following. Look, the published press is dominated by right wing people, and they spend lots of money supporting newspapers, but Rupert Murdoch spent hundreds of millions of pounds supporting The Times during a period when it was losing money. Was it a right wing newspaper? I would have said it's more centrist right, it's not The Daily Telegraph, it's not the Daily Mail. He launched Sky News, a loss making proposition along with the rest of Sky. At one point Sky was losing £500 million a year. He eventually sold it, or his half share of it, for nearly £10 billion. So was it an indulgence or an investment?
Rusbridger:
Thank you, David, so much for coming along and joining us.
Elstein:
Pleasure.
Rusbridger:
Of course we should say that some GB News stars, I'm thinking of Dan Wootton, the former actor, Laurence Fox, have been suspended after Fox's lewd language about... There's no way of getting around this, shagging someone. I don't know, what do you think, Lionel? I don't know whether that was a worry because Ofcom couldn't really ignore this, or was GB News owner, Paul Marshall, worried that this might get in the way of his bid to buy The Daily Telegraph?
Barber:
Well, I think the owner, Paul Marshall, hedge fund owner, he had to act irrespective of any interest that he looks as though he does have in buying The Daily Telegraph, because Wootton and Fox were so out of line.
Rusbridger:
And we should mention that Ofcom has now, some would say belatedly, got no fewer than 14 open investigations for assorted offences that include impartiality, causing offence, fairness and privacy, and more. What do you think of the penalties that Ofcom has up its sleeve, Lionel?
Barber:
Well, Alan, when you were talking about those contracts for the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson in terms of what they can earn per month, it looks to me as though some of these fines are fairly mild slap on the wrists.
Rusbridger:
You'd think a Jacob Rees-Mogg £360,000 fine, one JRM would be an appropriate fine for some of these breaches.
Barber:
I think it's a rather good idea to have a new category of fines, it's called the JRM, the Super JRM. But actually, the serious point is some financial penalty, but what you really want is a robust enforcement with language that people find convincing.
Rusbridger:
Coming up, another perspective on this issue of political broadcast news in the UK. And then we'll discuss if a contender to own The Telegraph has disappeared after a big appointment in the United States.
Barber:
This episode has been sponsored by the award wining management consulting firm, Q5. Q5 is all about good organisational health, Q5 work with their clients to ensure they optimise their organisational strategy, their structure and their culture, so that they can achieve all their goals. From strategic conundrums to operational gripes, Q5 combine the art and science of organisational health to address challenges. And Q5 works with a range of organisations, those at the top of their game, and with those who are in turnaround mode. If you want to know more about how Q5 can help your organisation improve and excel, please visit www.q5partners.com.
Rusbridger:
This is Media Confidential with Alan Rusbridger and Lionel Barber, and today we're discussing politically opinionated broadcasting, and broadcast news in the UK and its regulation. And in particular, GB News, which has been sanctioned four times for various things by the regulator Ofcom, with 14 more investigations, count them, into the broadcaster currently. Now, earlier we heard from David Elstein, but some MPs don't share his relaxed view of Ofcom and GB News. Tory MP Caroline Nokes and former Sky News political editor, Adam Boulton, have both called for the channel to be taken off air. And here's the SNP's John Nicolson again in the DCMS Select Committee questioning Ofcom about their sanction of the broadcaster for a lack of impartiality when Tory MPs, Esther McVey and Philip Davies, interviewed Conservative chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, in March.
Nicolson:
We've just lost all sight of objective journalism, and it's your guys' job to enforce the rules and you're not doing it. And we're going to precede down a route till we end up with awful American style ranting at the camera, we're already seeing it, all masquerading as news.
Barber:
Now, to be fair to Ofcom, that was one of the occasions when they found against GB News. But the sanction, none, Ofcom did not suggest any penalty and said the programme did not breach the rules on politicians presenting news programmes as this programme was classed as current affairs. GB News said Ofcom's definition of impartiality was imprecise.
Rusbridger:
So we're joined now by Professor Steve Barnett, who's a professor of communications at the University of Westminster, an established writer, broadcaster, and he specialises in media policy and regulation. Welcome, Steve.
Steve Barnett
Very pleased to be here.
Rusbridger:
Perhaps we can begin, Steve, if you could explain the law governing impartiality and that word which pokes its nose in, due impartiality.
Barnett
Yeah. So the law is actually very clear and it was part of the 2003 Communications Act, sections 319 and 320, which say specifically that broadcast programmes, TV and radio, licenced by Ofcom should be broadcast with due impartiality. So they use the word due in the act, but then Ofcom itself interprets that act of Parliament through its own code. And section five of the Ofcom code deals specifically with impartiality, and rule 512 of Ofcom's code says that programmes must have an appropriately wide range of significant views in programmes dealing with matters of political and industrial controversy. So yes, there is the word due, but the rule is perfectly clear, and in any service that's licenced by Ofcom, those rules have to be followed.
Barber:
So is there any doubt, Steve, that GBN is actually bound by this legislation?
Barnett
No doubt whatsoever. Every broadcaster that is licenced by Ofcom, and GB News is licenced by Ofcom, must follow these rules. Now, it is true to say that the word due allows some flexibility to Ofcom. In my view, this is a flexibility that has been interpreted beyond the bounds of what Parliament intended. But if I give you just one example, Fox News, the original Fox News, as is now broadcast to the United States, was licenced by Ofcom. It did broadcast in the UK for 15 years until the Murdochs themselves took the decision to take it off air.
Rusbridger:
That's what we've just heard from David Elstein, so there are a couple of points that he made that I'd like to put to you. One is he says that the impartiality requirement is on the owner of the channel, not the presenters, I'd like you to respond to that. And secondly, when we said to him, "Look, 95% of the presenters are identifiably from the Conservative Party or Brexit parties or unionist parties," he said, "Well, that's okay because that's within due, the audience know where they come from and they expect that." What's your response to that?
Barnett:
No, with all due respect to David I'm afraid that's nonsense. The point about impartiality and Ofcom's own rules is that you have to have an appropriately wide range of views on any programme. And it's quite obvious, you only have to watch half an hour of GB News, to see that even if they do try and offer a different perspective or a different argument, it's dismissed, it's treated with contempt. So the idea that it's okay because the audience knows where it's coming from, that is absolutely not what the law of this country is. Now, you could argue that perhaps the law should be changed, but it's quite clear that that is the law, and Ofcom's own code makes it quite clear that quite a lot of GB News' output is breaking its own code. But I'm afraid it's sitting on its hands and doing very little.
Barber:
Well, why is it sitting on its hands, Steve? Why has Ofcom been so slow to react?
Barnett:
Well, it's a really interesting question, and I think it's partly... A lot of the rhetoric coming out of Ofcom, and you hear it from Dame Melanie Dawes, the chief executive, is the emphasis on freedom of expression, allowing a diverse range of opinion. Now, we all want to embrace Article 10 of the European Convention, freedom of expression, of course it's very important. The idea that this is somehow antithetical, it's the opposite of impartiality, is simply not true. And there is a sense within Ofcom, certainly until very recently... There's been a couple of recent judgements where it's looking like it might be changing tact, but certainly until very recently it's as if they've been imbibing this culture wars rhetoric.
The post-Brexit rhetoric that the mainstream media are a bit lefty, a bit metropolitan elitey, and that here we have a different kind of voice, a different kind of perspective, which needs to be allowed to flourish. And I think this is the kind of philosophy they're coming from, and they're trying to fit that philosophy into the existing legal framework, and it just doesn't work. And what worries me is you've obviously got a chair in Ofcom, Michael Grade, who is a Conservative, he sits on the Conservative benches.
Rusbridger:
He did.
Barnett
He did. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rusbridger:
Yeah. He's become a crossbencher.
Barnett:
Yes, he has, because he had to, but I think we know where he's coming from politically. Not least because apparently when Laurence Fox was once on Question Time he said something like, "There is someone who speaks for us." That's how he was quoted in The Telegraph I think it was. So you actually have someone at the top of Ofcom, the chair, not Paul Dacre, who apparently Johnson wanted to put in charge, but frankly, not much different politically in my view. And you've got a CEO who is talking about freedom of expression as if this trumps everything else and somehow makes impartiality more difficult to implement, when in fact, the two are perfectly compatible.
Rusbridger:
You've written that you think GB News is a threat to democracy, that's overstating it a bit, isn't it?
Barnett:
I really don't think it is. And I'm glad you brought that up, Alan, because you only have to look at what Fox News has done in America. And I think that's the angle that I think we all really need to focus on. In the 1980s America had a similar system of impartiality, it was called the fairness doctrine, and in the 1980s, under Reagan, it was abolished. And that basically allowed opinion channels to flourish, and that was the basis of where Fox News came from. And what you have now is a channel that is openly a platform for conspiracy theorists, for white nationalists, for a lot of people whose views bear no relation to reality. And that is where Donald Trump came from. Donald Trump was effectively a creation of Fox News, and there are a lot of people who will say in the States... People who've studied this much more carefully than I have, that had it not been for the two million people a day who watch Fox News in prime time, Trump would not have been able to be elected.
And he used that as his platform, partly through no one questioning the nonsense that he was coming out with, the conspiracy theories, the lost election. And there is a direct line from the people on Fox News who were enabling his conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, and that led directly to the insurrection on the 6th of January, 2021. And that to me is the danger, that is the danger to democracy. We hear now that Trump might be in line for reelection in 2024, the things that he's talking about, the kinds of things he's talking about enacting I think we would all regard as dangerous to democracy. So I do think that you can draw a line from not implementing our legacy laws properly to the threat of both extreme right and extreme left wing views being given more prominence on important platforms that are trusted.
Barber:
Steve, you mentioned legacy laws, what is the point of the due impartiality clause for TV? Do you not think it perhaps needs revisiting? Is it a bit too quaint and old-fashioned?
Barnett:
No, and I completely get where that question's coming from, Lionel, and I understand, 20 years ago we didn't have the proliferation of online sites that we have now. I would argue that actually, that makes these laws even more important than they were 20 years ago. And that's partly because if you look at the trust figures for the media in this country, broadcast media are by far the most trusted. And I'm not just talking about the BCC, I'm talking about ITN, about Sky, Channel 4 News, et cetera. They're the outlets that people trust, people are actually really quite sceptical of social media, despite the fact that the Ofcom figures suggest that more younger people in particular are getting their news from social media.
So this is the medium that people trust, and as soon as you undermine the laws that actually create that trust, I think you're then in danger of letting that trust slide. And in the end what you get is what you have in the States, is this extreme polarisation, you have this cynicism about the so-called MSM, the mainstream media, which doesn't yet exist in this country, and everyone exists in their own filter bubble. And that's where the divisiveness, the polarisation, the extremities come from, which I do believe, going back to what I said before, are a potential threat to democracy.
Rusbridger:
Sadly GB News, the blushing violets that they are, wouldn't put anybody up to appear on this podcast, and nor would Ofcom, which surprised me. But you've mentioned their chief executive, Melanie Dawes, and we have got a clip of her appearing before a House of Commons Select Committee in March, and this is what she said.
Melanie Dawes:
We are always thinking about freedom of expression here and do not want to see just a single monocultural or mono representation of views on British TYV. And I think when you compare what you get in the UK with what you see in America, which is unregulated, it is very, very different.
Alan Rusbridger:
Steve, what struck you about that statement?
Barnett:
I think it's extraordinary that the chief executive of Ofcom should talk about a mono representation of views in relation to impartiality. Because actually, it's the complete opposite. The point about impartiality is not that you only have one perspective, it's that you actually have multiple perspectives vying for each other, allowing people to make up their own minds. So you don't invite me on and say, "I just want to hear your opinion and we're going to get someone else on who thinks the same as you, and we'll have a whole string of people who say the same thing as you." What you do is you say, as you have on this podcast, "We're going to have someone like you, and then we're going to have someone who disagrees with you," and let people who are listening make up their own mind. That is the essence, that is the logic, the philosophy, behind the impartiality framework. And it appears that Ofcom's own chief executive just does not understand that, which I find extraordinary.
Lionel Barber:
I wonder whether Ofcom can truly be regarded as independent after Boris Johnson's efforts to instal Paul Dacre, not just once, Paul Dacre being the longtime editor of the Daily Mail, in as chairman of Ofcom. And then of course when that was blocked in effect, he put in Michael Grade, who's now a crossbench peer but obviously has conservative views, in charge. Do you think that damaged Ofcom?
Barnett:
I do, and I think it's a huge shame, the politicisation of Ofcom. Which as I say, was created 20 years ago, it is probably one of the most trusted regulators in the world, which is saying something. There are other countries which have looked at what we've done. It was one of the very first converged regulators, and it was set up to be wholly independent of government and of political influence. And first of all we had the nonsense about Paul Dacre, and you really couldn't get anybody with more trenchant views, and had expressed trenchant views, about the media in charge. That was derailed, but instead we got someone else quite clearly who then sat on the Conservative benches, was quite clearly a Conservative, and I think that was unfortunate.
Now, we have had political appointees before, and I think it's fair to say this, and Labour did the same when Ofcom was created in the 2000s, but these were never people who wore their political colours on their sleeve in a way that I think Grade does. And the way in which Ofcom was run, from the chief executive downwards, never appeared to be so overtly political. And I think this is the problem now, that it undermines our faith in a regulator that actually has had a fantastic reputation over most of its 20 years. And I really hope, assuming that there is a new government within the next 12 or 15 months, that the new government will do something to restore our trust in Ofcom, not by simply putting its own political place person in charge.
Rusbridger:
The Communications Act, Steve, is now 20 years old, passed before YouTube, before Twitter, before Facebook, before Google had really taken root. It's too late, isn't it? It's too late to put the genie back into the bottle, don't we need a new media act? I know that there's a new rather pallid media act announced in the king's speech but don't we need a new media act that reflects the reality of today's media landscape?
Barnett:
I'm not sure we do. I don't think anybody wants to put the genie back in the bottle. I think we can actually celebrate the diversity of different online platforms. If people want to get stuck in their filter bubbles, they can do that on Twitter, or X as we now have to call it, on TikTok, on Instagram Reels, whatever. There are plenty of opportunities to indulge our own opinions and either get into online fist fights or revel in lots of likes and reposts. But the point is, what are we going to do about finding out the truth? Finding out the truth about what's going on in the world, the truth about what's going on in this country, and being given the opportunity to develop our own opinions and views in a dynamic democracy which is based on factual information. And doing that within an environment that is trusted, which is properly moderated.
And as I said, I think it's actually even more important in this kind of environment, not that we try and suppress the diversity of views on social media, that's fine, but that we have a space. We have a protected space, we can trust that those who are the gatekeepers if you like are doing what Parliament intended, which was to give us a whole range of views within that trusted space.
Alan Rusbridger:
Steve, thanks so much for coming and talking to us today.
Barnett:
Pleasure, thank you for inviting me.
Alan Rusbridger:
I think if you think about the information ecosystem that we live in today, which is, especially with younger people, dominated by social media, where we know there's a tide of inaccuracy and hate filled stuff, the role of impartial regulated broadcasting becomes more, not less important. So I'm personally quite grateful that there is a space there which is so heavily regulated, I'd like it to be more regulated. I'd like Ofcom to be doing its job, not sleeping at the wheel. So I'm rather on the Barnett side of not seeing why we should rip up all the rules in the way that I think David Elstein thinks is appropriate for the 21st century. Where are you, Lionel?
Barber:
I was sympathetic to David's comment when he said the problem with GB News is it's actually found an audience, and there is something to that. The problem is that GB News has really tried to drive a coach and 20 horses through the the legislation, it hasn't been very subtle. If they'd just gone a bit, if you like, towards the LBC model, where you do have some other views... It's just so overwhelmingly of the same, where they're coming from. And with all the Conservative MPs talking to each other, it just seems to me there they need to dial it back a bit. I'm certainly not in favour of shutting it down, I think that would be an enormous mistake.
Rusbridger:
Yeah, I completely... I listen to LBC on my cycle into work, and I get the end of Nick Ferrari and I get the beginning of James O'Brien and they perfectly compliment each other. But what GB News has done is to have 10 Nick Ferraris, and that seems to be like they're having a joke, they're having a laugh at the expense of Ofcom.
Barber:
Yeah, I worry about Ofcom having 14 cases. It's a bit like all those cases against Donald Trump. Here I am in New York, just a few blocks down from Trump Tower. I think if we'd just had two cases which were really laser-like focused on this big conduct, that would be a bit more credible. It does feel a little like Ofcom's employing 14 sledgehammers.
Rusbridger:
Before we finish this week, Lionel, I want to ask you about Will, or as we have to call him, Sir William Lewis, who was rumoured a couple of weeks ago to be trying to buy The Telegraph but now he's got a big new job in Washington.
Barber:
He's the new publisher and CEO of The Washington Post, he's running the business side, it's a very important job and he's likely to have to do a quite serious restructuring, saving money. Washington Post reported to be on course for losing as much as $100 million a year. Now, I've known William, he was definitely Will in those days, for more than 20 years, he succeeded me as news editor of the Financial Times in 2000, and he was a great reporter, he's a man of swagger. A very good reporter, made his name on Wall Street when he broke a huge merger between Exxon and Mobil, the biggest oil merger at that time.
And it was a clean scoop, and I remember arranging between Will and Robert Thomson to actually delay publication on Thanksgiving until the afternoon so that all our rivals, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, would have their turkey meals disrupted in the most brutal fashion by the FT and Will Lewis. So it'll be interesting what he's done, he worked a long time with Robert Thomson at News Corp. He was CEO of Dow Jones, he was editor of The Daily Telegraph, ran the expenses scandal. A very experienced journalist, but he's not a Washingtonian, he's a New Yorker, so he's going to have to adapt a bit.
Rusbridger:
The whole thing will rise and fall on whether he gets on with Bezos and whether he can act as an intermediary between this enormously rich billionaire and the newsroom. Bezos has just announced he's cutting 250 jobs, that would be small change to him, but he obviously feels it's important that The Washington Post wipes its face. What did you make of his role at News when he was really part of the cleanup squad after the phone hacking? There were different views, weren't there? A lot of The Sun journalists can barely bring themselves to mention his name because he handed over hundreds of millions of emails to the police, he was doing Murdoch's bidding and he was rewarded with a job at Dow Jones. Was he behaving in a completely straight way or was he a company man?
Barber:
Very much the company man. At that point he was essentially having to do all the dirty work, and he decided it won't be what Nixon called the modified limited hangouts at Watergate, he literally hung out everything, and a lot of the journalists, or some of the people, to dry as well. So it was a dirty job, it was a dirty business, and he did it, and he got his reward. I would say Will's great strength is that he's a people person, he's very good at "Ho, ho, ho," his sunny optimism and can-do approach to everything will have gone down well with Jeff Bezos. I can imagine those two getting on quite well actually, although Will probably needs to spend a bit more time in the gym.
Rusbridger:
Unkind. Well, he's one of three Brits now running major American institutions. You've got Mark Thompson running CNN, we've got Emma Tucker running The Wall Street Journal, it'll be fascinating to see how they all do. Also out now is the Prospect Podcast, and this week I've been speaking to Lord Peter Ricketts. Peter was the chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee under Prime Minister Tony Blair and a retired British senior diplomat. During our in-depth discussion Peter told me how he thought the next phase of the Israel-Hamas war will play out.
Peter Ricketts
I think we will see pauses beginning any time now to allow a degree of increase in humanitarian supplies and injured people out. I don't think that it's possible for Israel to go on defying particularly America indefinitely. I think we're probably still weeks away from a cease-fire, and even if there is a cease-fire it's going to be a very fragile and uneasy one, especially if Israeli forces remain in military occupation of Gaza.
Rusbridger: One of the pertinent thoughts we covered was the role of the U.S. in brokering a peace and the significance of that role, particularly with a U.S. election on the
Ricketts:
How America plays this crisis, how it comes out of it, can it succeed in at least influencing, and that is towards a cease-fire, and also, how it comes out of the war in Ukraine, I think that will really determine how the world looks in terms of national security for decades to come. Because either America will show itself still active and effective as one of the major players in trying to limit the consequences of conflict around the world, or a nation that has failed to do so, and perhaps under a future Republican presidency, retreats further from any sense of international leadership. Which really does leave us in a world where might is right, and small states around the world need to feel quite anxious about that.
Rusbridger:
That's the Prospect Podcast, follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Now, if you've got any questions about the media, please email them to mediaconfidential@Prospectmagazine.co.uk, and we'll be answering a few of them on a future episode.
Barber:
Thank you for listening to Media Confidential, brought to you by Prospect Magazine and Fresh Air, the producer is Danny Garlick.
Rusbridger:
Remember to listen and follow us wherever you get your podcasts, with new episodes every Thursday.
Barber:
And we're on Twitter slash X too, @mediaconfpod.
Rusbridger:
Lionel, you need to go off and have your breakfast. To the listeners, thank you for listening. Don't forget to check out the November edition of Prospect Magazine, which is on the streets now. Read it in app, online and in print, and with Prospectmagazine, all one word, .co.uk, updated with news stories daily.
