GB News has repeatedly breached broadcasting regulations, been accused of political bias and featured anti-vax stories—but it got away with such misdemeanors until Prime Minister Rishi Sunak appeared on a show called “The People’s Forum”, in which he was able to outline key Conservative messages, largely unchallenged.
Ahead of the general election on 4th July, this finally grabbed the attention of Ofcom. But what took the regulator so long? And what sort of sanctions can the channel—many of whose MP presenters will now be unable to host during the election campaign—expect to face?
Professor Stewart Purvis once served as a senior executive at Ofcom, and is dismayed at the way Ofcom has allowed GB News carry on unchallenged. He talks to Lionel and Alan about the way it should be held to account for lacking impartiality.
Also this week: The Bristol Cable, a crowdfunded independent media organisation has been given a rare chance. The investigative newspaper is attempting to fill a gap left by the demise of traditional local newsrooms—and if they gain enough new members by September, they could secure a chunk of much-needed cash. Will they pull it off?
This transcript is unedited and may contain errors.
Alan Rusbridger: Welcome to Media Confidential, your weekly deep dive behind the headlines, beyond the clickbait of the rapidly moving world of the media, with me, Alan Rusbridger.
Lionel Barber: And me Lionel Barber. Today, GB News is found to have committed serious and repeated breaches of due impartiality rules. What sort of sanction is Ofcom considering? We're joined by Stewart Purvis to ask what took them so long.
Alan: Also today, The Bristol Cable has been offered a fundraising boost to keep reporting on independent local news if they can increase their membership by September this year. We'll find out what that means, not just to The Bristol Cable, but for other independent news organizations copying the Cable model and how they can grow.
Alan: We're back in the studio after our visit to the Truth Tellers summit. Lionel, I think you've been in lycra again. It's quite distressing I had to say it, but your-- Anyway, you haven't got your lycra on today, but you've been cycling around your old news patch in the northeast.
Lionel: Well, I was going to test you with my Northumberland accent, Alan. Yes, many years ago, around 1878 when I became a cub reporter on Times regional newspapers, they used to have a graduate trainee program, and we wrote stories for the Newcastle Chronicle and the Newcastle Journal. I was up in the area around sea houses actually looking at the castles and cycling so thank you very much. What exercise have you been doing this week, Alan?
Alan: I've been walking the dog and cycling on my electric bike. Anyway, we're not going to trouble the listeners with the story you missed in the Northeast about incest but it explains why you ended up as a broadsheet reporter rather than a tabloid.
Lionel: And working for the Financial Times.
Alan: Working with Financial Times. What's been on your radar?
Lionel: Well, I saw that Tony O'Reilly, the former British Lions rugby player, media magnet on The Independent and The Irish Independent, South African newspapers, as well as Waterford Wedgwood Crystal. He died this last few days. I think he was quite a character. It all went pear-shaped in the end, I think he got overextended, but Ben Bradley was on that board, the legendary editor of the Washington Post. It was a big party while it lasted but then really ended in tears.
The other story, Alan, which absolutely fascinates me is that OpenAI that developed the ChatGPT digital assistant and Sam Altman-- I think if I was looking at this as an editor, I'd definitely be digging harder on this. Scarlett Johansson, the Hollywood actress, says that Sam Altman wanted her to use her voice for the new ChatGPT app, and she said no. Then lo and behold, a few days later--
Male Speaker: Hey, how's it going?
Digital Assistant: Hey, there. It's going great. How about you? Are you about to reveal something about AI or more specifically about me as a part of OpenAI?
Lionel: It seems very similar to her voice on the new digital assistant. She complains through her lawyers, says, "You've appropriated my voice." They deny it, but then they take it down. This is something, a, interesting the use of AI, b, I think Sam Altman is, well, somebody described him as a naughty boy. If I was an old news editor by saying, "Are there any examples of naughtiness?"
Given the corporate governance scandal that we had last year where he was ousted for a few days, and we'd just seen just last week Ilya Sutskever, the brilliant AI developer on the board, he's resigned, and also Jan Leike, another great scientist. Sutskever was saying that Sam Altman was not paying enough attention to AI safety and too interested in growth. If you tie that with the Scarlett Johansson story, you'll get 2 and 2, and it makes 10.
Alan: [laughs] My eye was caught by the Manchester Mill, Joshi Herrmann, who we had on this program, who was served with the threat of legal action and has rather daringly crowdsourced the legal action. We won't go into the details of what it's about, but his response was to go to his readers and say, "Help me do the research I need in fact checking all this." I rather applaud that. I think it suits the claimants when they write these private and confidential letters saying, "We're going to sue you." I should say we've had three legal letters now from the--
Lionel: Don't tempt them, Alan.
Alan: From the Murdoch organization. Just for the sake of clarity, of transparency, because I think-- I'm not saying this is true of the Murdoch letters which have been perfectly civilized. Quite often, I think it's a bad situation where people try to gag news organizations through legal actions and the news organizations feel unable to say, "Look, we're being gagged. They're threatening to shut us up." It's a high-wire tactic by Joshi, the Manchester Mill to do this, but it'll be interesting to see how it works.
Lionel: Well, Alan, you and I have had dozens and dozens of legal letters over the years as editors. The first time you get them, it really does feel a bit chilling if you've had, as I had when I took over at the FT. We're in the middle of a badly liable action when we had messed up somewhat, and we needed to settle. Once you've done that and your natural tendency is, like a goalkeeper, to keep a clean sheet. As you well know, that's not a good position to be in if you're trying to do strong investigative journalism.
Alan: You have to have a thick skin.
Lionel: You do.
Alan: Once I was being threatened with jail. I was having dinner--
Lionel: Only jail.
Alan: Jail.
Lionel: Surely cat and... tails, a few other things.
Alan: I was having dinner that evening with-- Do you know who I mean by Denis Forman, who was a great figure, who--
Lionel: I certainly do.
Alan: I went to dinner with him and I said, "I don't know....
Lionel: You better explain who he is, Alan.
Alan: Well, he was chairman of Granada TV.
Lionel: I don't know who he is.
Alan: He was a great swashbuckling figure, started World in Action. I told him about my threat of jail, and he said, "Oh, what fun." He said, "I used to love those actions." [laughs] I thought, "Okay, I wouldn't describe it quite as fun," but I thought it seems-- I thought that, "I think it's a very healthy attitude when you get these."
Lionel: For Joshi, he doesn't have [crosstalk]
Alan: Not so much fun. If you're Joshi, no
[music]
Alan: We've been following closely the repeated rule bending by the broadcaster GB News. On the 12th of February this year, one segment led to 547 complaints being sent to Ofcom, the media regulator. It was the People's Forum slot, usually presented by Jacob Rees-Mogg, a highly impartial figure. Rees-Mogg was away, and so most impartially a recommendation was needed, and someone decided that the impartial Prime Minister should stand in.
Rishi Sunak: Good evening, everyone. Lovely to be here in Newton Aycliffe with you all, and thank you to GB News for hosting this first-of-its-kind event. Now, I've been out and about--
Lionel: Ofcom's stated ruling was that it had no issue with the editorial format of the program in principle, and they didn't mind either that the slot would mainly focus on the Conservative Party's policies and track record, "But GB News should have insured," said Ofcom, "that"-- I'm quoting here, Alan, "an appropriately wide range of significant views was given due weight in the program or in other clearly-linked and timely programs."
Alan: Ofcom continued saying that although the audience were challenging in their line of questioning, there was no opportunity to question what the Prime Minister said. Instead, Rishi Sunak was able to set out government policies ahead of the coming general election, and no alternative options of views were included. The PM was able to criticize Labour, but nobody from that party was present to respond.
Lionel: GB News hit back at the Ofcom ruling. "Ofcom's finding against GB News today is an alarming development in its attempt to silence us by standing in the way of a forum that allows the public to question politicians directly." Quick scan of X, formerly Twitter, will reveal how outraged the channel's presenters are at the regulator, seemingly oblivious of their wrongdoing. Now, Stewart Purvis is with us today to explore why Ofcom, where he once served as a senior executive, is seemingly dragging its feet when dealing with GB News.
Alan: We're very pleased to be joined by professor Stewart Purvis, I think is his full title, emeritus Professor or ex-professor at City University, but more importantly a very distinguished former editor of ITN as it used to be called. Stewart, welcome. You've been taking a long interest in what's been going on at GB News. Can you tell us why and what disturbs you?
Stewart: I worked for about two and a half years at Ofcom after I retired from ITN. It was a very interesting experience, actually. I rather enjoyed it, and was rather proud to have worked there. Then in June of 2021, GB News was launched. I reviewed it for a few people and I said, "Look, this is really challenging because they're challenging the rules." I was a little surprised a week later to hear the guy who was doing the job that I used to have say at a public meeting that he had nothing wrong in what he'd seen on GB news.
I thought, "That's odd because I was always trained not to say things like that." You were always trained to say, "We'll see whether there are any complaints, and we'll look into them. We'll take months to do it, and eventually we'll come to a verdict." To just say off the cuff, "No, there's nothing wrong," I thought, "That's odd. Have they been given a pass? Have been told in some way that it's all right to do it that way?"
I've spent a lot of time since trying to find out what's going on, what's happening. I've come to the conclusion that Ofcom has got itself really possibly under political pressure into a pretty sad place. It is angered a group of people on the hard right who don't like what it's done, and pretty much everyone else is annoyed about what they hadn't done.
Alan: You worked for-
Stewart: 31 years.
Alan: -31 years. You worked under the rules that said you had to have due impartiality. When you look at what GB News has been doing what to your mind is breaking those rules?
Stewart: I think there are two different elements to it. The one that's caught people's attention is the idea of having politicians present programs. Now, when I was at ITN, we did a program for Channel 4, a lunchtime politics program. As a summer break, we thought, "Let's get a few politicians to present." We went to the then regulator and they said, "Okay, you can do it but you have to have complete political balance." You have to have one from one party and then one from another. It can only last about two weeks."
That's how the system could work if people did it properly. What I never expected was that you would have a channel where every night all the primetime programs would be presented by people who were openly either politicians or public supporters of right-wing parties.
I say right wing because they're either conservatives or they're Reform UK, and that there would be the minimum of challenge within those programs, and that there would be the minimum of representation by other parties. That's not what I think the rules said.
I think most people who worked in the broadcast business over the period that I did always thought that too. The question is, did we miss something...could we have done it if we'd wanted to do it that way?" That the Ofcom position is, "Well, the rules never said you couldn't do it that way."
I think that the moment it became clear that GB News was a mainstream UK-focused news channel and putting out in prime time only one point of view in its presenters, that's when Ofcom should have said, "Oh, this is a new situation. It's never occurred before. We need to stop and think about whether this can be allowed or not."
Alan: You say that's one thing...
Stewart: Yes, it was. The other thing is really the idea that what previously would be regarded as harmful remarks on the air, and I think particularly people who would make remarks about health issues, Ofcom always used to be very, very tight on people talking about cures for cancer or things which might be dangerous. They really want to see the scientific basis for this, and people were regularly reprimanded not from mainstream channels but, frankly, from some other fringe channels for these kind of claims on air.
Then now to see, again, on a mainstream British news channel people making all kinds of remarks like this, and we're told, "Ah, but this is freedom of expression." I thought, "It's freedom of expression, but regulation is in itself a constraint on freedom of expression. It's one we all sign up to because we want to see and hear different people on the air. Actually, just to give a program to one person who has a particular view about the vaccines damage as they see it with minimum of challenge is not what I thought the rule said.
Alan: This question about the presenters being of a particular party, it seems to me-- I think it's an important point but it's, in a sense, not the only point. I'd be interested in your experience as a journalist in how you would respond to this. The thing is that the framing is all right wing, I think. If you say we're going to do five programs in a row on immigration and none on food poverty, that's a right-wing framing. You might have somebody on who-- I'm sure they would say, "Look, we have people on with alternative points of view," but you've begun by framing what subject you're going to discuss and so on and so forth. That's new as well, isn't it?
Stewart: It is. I think it's an interesting point that you raised up the framing. I've put it slightly differently in terms of the agenda which a channel chooses. I've said that I have no problem in a channel or a radio station choosing right wing talking points as its agenda of the day, or somebody choosing left wing talking points as agenda day. No one has ever been found guilty of breaching impartiality because of the stories they chose to cover. It's the way they cover that's been the issue. The assumption has always been that you need a reasonable balance. Now, the word due impartiality is really crucially emphasizing the role of context. It's not saying that on every issue you need to have a complete split between every political party, they all have to have their say. You have to make a certain editorial judgment and say, "What are the most relevant points of views on this issue? Let's hear from them." The rules have always allowed for common sense. What I don't think the rule was ever allowed for was basically one-sided propaganda night after night from one channel.
Lionel: Well, I'm not going to carry water for GB news but their argument is that this falls into a different category. It's not news. It's current affairs. Actually, Lord Grade, Chairman Ofcom seems to share that view. What's wrong with that argument in your view?
Stewart: If you're an Ofcom lawyer, you go straight back to the statute which set up Ofcom. Ofcom is-- I wouldn't say it's dominated by lawyers but lawyers play a leading part. You would find that in the statute the Communications Act, there is no mention of current affairs. Basically, it says the kind of programs that politicians or particularly members of parliament can't present and that is news programs. Now, that interpretation had traditionally been pretty broad. If you look at the guidance that Ofcom used to offer broadcasters, it actually mentions, for instance, daytime chat shows and things, a fairly broad interpretation of the programs that politicians can't present. Ofcom's argument was, "Oh, these are not within that category. They're in this different category called current affairs. Now, Lord Grade, in particular, claimed at an event that I was at that the public could tell the difference.
Alan: He said that everybody knows the difference between news and Panorama which is current affairs.
Stewart: Yes, and he took the two extremes, if you like, of a News at Ten bulletin and a Panorama, but completely missing was the growth of a whole group of programs, if you like, in the middle, starting as far back as Newsnight, Channel 4 News. Most importantly, I think in this context, is rolling news. Rolling news, if you look at one and a half of Sky News or BBC News or GB News it can be completely different from the next hour or even two hours later because they're constantly responding to events.
Basically, that old fashioned view of news is bulletins, and current affairs is weekly debates and examinations of issues, it doesn't stand up any longer. Michael Grade, who very much come from that period I'll have to say, said people would understand the difference. It went out to research, and actually what it proved conclusively was that people couldn't tell the difference because they were shown clips from the kind of programs I'm talking about, the rolling news channels and some of the use of hybrid programs, and they obviously didn't know whether they were news or current affairs. Actually, that is the basis of Ofcom's interpretation of the difference between news and current affairs. I have to say it's flawed, and they proved it's flawed from the research they've done.
Lionel: Stewart, I think we should dig deeper into why Ofcom has taken this light touch to no touch regulation, this very liberal view of due impartiality. It does come down to people, doesn't it? We've got Lord Grade, we've got Melanie Dawes now chief executive, and we also in the background we have Boris Johnson, former Prime minister, who was clearly interested in securing the people he wanted for the top jobs at Ofcom. Tell us a little bit more about that.
Stewart: I've looked in some detail into the sequence of events and a lot of it revolve around the whole issue of public appointments. If you go back to 2018 when Theresa May was still in power. Lord Burns, Terry Burns, he's often known.
Lionel: Former head of the Treasury? Civil servant.
Stewart: Former head of lots of things, who I worked with when I was on the board of Channel 4. Highly regarded, high respected figure. He was appointed to a four-year term. The next year, 2019, Boris Johnson became prime minister. I think it's fair, immediately began focusing on, shall we say, getting the right people into the right jobs as far as he concerned. I've, actually, at the time, saw an email from a person whose job was to find these people to go into these jobs and looking for candidates. Anyway, we then get to a situation where in 2020, it's time to appoint a new chief executive.
Basically, Terry Burns supports the candidature of Melanie Dawes, who's a civil servant. There's a little bit of debate inside Whitehall and government about this. In the end, she's appointed. The condition is, we are told, that Terry Burns has to resign as the chairman of Ofcom. He's resigning only two years into his post so that his candidate can get the job of chief executive, a pretty odd process. My own experience at Ofcom was that they hate having a chief executive and a chairman leaving at the same time. They liked to get a proper transition. What was that all about? Then, we have a situation where the Downing Street was leaking pretty easily prominently that they wanted--
Alan: Like a defective set?...leaking.
Stewart: Exactly.They wanted Paul Dacre to be the new chair of Ofcom.
Alan: The editor..
Lionel: Long time editor of the Daily Mail.
Stewart: Editor of the Daily Mail. I think most people assume that was going to happen. If you remember, there was one go at appointing him, which, basically, didn't work because the committee that was meant to give him the thumbs up gave him the thumbs down. They then changed the rule to give him another go at it. Here we have Dame Melanie Dawes, as she now is sitting in Ofcom as the chief executive, expecting the arrival of the former editor of the Daily Mail, who is the appointee of Boris Johnson as her new boss. Could she possibly have separated that fact from the decision she was making at the very time GB News was launching?
Alan: Just pause there. With innocent years, this is all astonishing.. The whole point Ofcom is that it's independent of government because we don't live in a state where government has a direct influence over the media. That would be a different democracy. It feels from what you're saying, that something very fundamental has happened to the status of Ofcom and its alleged independence.
Stewart: I think it has. One has to say and remind ourselves Ofcom was a creature, a creation of New Labour. It came from New Labour’s preparations for the election that got them into power. One of the key figures inside Ofcom had been a prominent policy wonk inside..
Alan: Ed Richards.
Stewart: Ed Richards. I work with Ed Richards. Ed Richards he's a straight guy in terms of politics. Even though his politics were New Labour, I found him to be excellent in every way to do with politics.
What I found was on the rare occasions, because they didn't happen that often where as head of content and standards, I and my team were making judgements which the government of the day would not like. I was never under any pressure of any kind to make them fit the Labour government view, shall we say. If there was a response or feedback to the decisions that I made in that time, nobody ever told me about it. Nobody ever complained about those decisions.
There are things that Ofcom does which it actually is implementing government policy and sometimes it's actually selling broadcast spectrum for the Treasury. You cannot disentangle Ofcom from the government. I have to say what's different now, if indeed these dates and facts I put forward led Ofcom to make a decision about content because of the view of the government of the day, that is new and that is wrong.
Alan: You've now got Lord Grade. When the process was rerun, they ended up with a shortlist of two. Both of whom were conservative peers. Nadine Doris claims there was a bit of skullduggery around switching names and trying blah blah blah. Anyway, it was a small talent pool of people who both of whom were conservative peers who got the job. Grade comes in and has a fairly laissez faire, libertarian, "I'm on the side of free speech" in this, but who actually makes the decisions about the content? There's a content board, isn't there? I thought Clive Jones, who you must know was an ex-ITV [unintelligible 00:24:47]. Are they making decisions that are independent from Grade and Dawes?
Stewart: First thing to say is that Clive is really very new in the job and would not have been involved in the process we are talking about. What I learned, as, effectively, I was the almost the managing director of the content board when I was there, Was that the truth is the content board was imposed on Ofcom by actually by the House of Lords, of all people, as a way of offsetting what was seen as the overly commercial view of life that the Ofcom might take.
As a result, I don't think it's ever been a popular organization within Ofcom. I think it's important. I think it's crucial. I certainly fought as best I could for its continuation. I think the conservative government when it came to power, it was looking to kill as many quangos as possible. The content board was on its list but it survived.
The honest truth is the content board are non-executives. They do have some say in these cases and I have no inside sources in this. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them might be uncomfortable with these decisions. If you are non-executive and executives bring you their version and ask for your confirmation, these are quite interesting moments in people terms about who says what to whom.
I say I don't know the chapter and verse of who said what, where but the content board would've been aware of these decisions. Whether they actually fully agreed with them or whether they pushed back against them, I honestly don't know.
Lionel: It's worth pointing out that Ofcom did censor GB News for that program where Rishi Sunak faced an audience in County Durham. He was presented with what they say was an independently selected audience, but he was given an hour's free time. Ofcom has since, and we'll have to see how that translates.
Alan: Can I just interrupt for sec? I think that's a really important point. Yes, Ofcom has made decisions against GB News, and GB News is going to fight back big time. I would anticipate now a whole series of legal threats, legal actions between GB News and Ofcom. That's like the separate and in some ways might be the headline story coming up.
The other criticism that was made actually by Andrew Neil the other day is, actually was that the right case for Ofcom to choose? Weren't there better cases? Weren't there better examples? Weren't there lots of better examples that they could have focused on rather than that one?
I think that was a technical breach of the rules, the case they chose. Whether it was worth the 100 pages that they've devoted to it and the focus they themselves Ofcom have chosen to give to it, I think is debatable. My concern is about the ones they're not looking at as much as the ones they are.
Lionel: We're going to come to that. If you think of the looking at GB News, don't let them silence us. Join the people's channel and a lot more very robust defense. Stewart, you gave testimony to the House of Lords about GB News. You identified the problem that the regulations were not being followed regarding enforcement of due impartiality. You have made certain recommendations to redress the state of affairs.
Stewart: Yes. It's difficult to do anything other than to say to Ofcom, "Do your job." I think that's the way most people would summarize how they feel about what's happening along with Ofcom. Therefore, what could be done to say to Ofcom, "Would you like to have a look again at this issue?" We've suggested-- this is working with another former Ofcom colleague, Chris Banatvala. Really, there ought to be a full consultation particularly on this issue of politicians presenting.
Are we really expecting to go into a general election where Nigel Farage introduces and presents a program where he does an opening rant and then interview somebody from Reform and then the Conservative party? Is that quite what it's come to? Again, if it was coming from the left, I'd say exactly the same thing. We need to really, and we need quickly to try to resolve that issue.
The second thing is, are Ofcom treating news and their focus on news which-- As an old news hack. I welcome, I love people talking about news. Are they missing a trick about all the other things that are going on in broadcast journalism, current affairs, documentaries. Should they not be taking as close a look at that as they are at news? In my experience, looking back over the history of this stuff, it's quite often the so-called current affairs programs that cause more the rows than actually the news programs do.
They seem to have got the things slightly out of balance. They basically need frankly, to start again, but regulators don't like starting again, do they? They basically made judgements. They've got to defend those judgements. They've got to go to court, defend them. It's not easy to say, "Oh, we made a mistake, we're going to do it differently." That's the hole I think they've dug for themselves.
Lionel: Publish some of the cases where they've not held up, upheld the complaint but people don't know why.
Stewart: Yes, that's another thing is to say, "It's freedom of expression now. It seems that freedom of expression now, almost anything could be said rather than providing a detailed rationale.
Alan: The question we perhaps should have started with, why does this matter? Why does impartiality matter?
Stewart: The British model, if you like, is that we have a public broadcasting system of BBC, ITV, channel 4, channel 5, S4C in Wales, which delivers to the British public a range of voices, a range of views in, I think, a pretty fair way. Of course, there are exceptions. Of course, there are moments. The Gaza situation is a clear example of how there are such strong views on either side. That isn't an argument for abandoning the system. It's an argument for trying to run the system as sensibly as possible.
As a result, the British broadcast media is more trusted than virtually anything else in Britain, certainly more than newspapers, certainly more than politicians. Are we saying that we should abandon the most trusted model of media for some version of freedom of expression which seems to favor, frankly, the crankier views of the world? Or do we need to hear from the crankier views of the world? Is that part of what we need to hear more from? I argue that we should hear from them but in a structured, regulated way.
Lionel: Sometimes listening to Michael Grade, he is wholly on the side of the free speech, he thinks. It's rather odd coming from somebody who's taken this job, clearly wanted this job that it's a rather old-fashioned concept that you've got the nanny state telling people what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. You have to set this in the context of the press as well, which is absolutely free to say what it likes.
Stewart: That's the balance, isn't it? That's the balance of the British model between, if you like, one section which is statually regulated, one section in terms of most of the press, which is, let's call it self-regulation, for the lack of a better phrase. Then there's a whole area which is mostly unknown, which is completely unregulated.
Now, I think what some people have missed, in the media bill, which is going actually in the House of Lords at the moment, it is intended to extend broadcast style regulation to what's sometimes called TV-like content online in which if it looks like television, the fact that it's coming to online doesn't really matter. It's still, to most people, television. When I heard Jacob Rees-Mogg say, arguing against-- basically for scrapping of all regulation as he was on that, I said, "But your government is just actually trying to extend regulation in this area."
I think there's a muddle going on amongst the people who are propagating free speech as the primary reason for loosening the rules. They basically need to look again at the rules and say, what are the rules which are appropriate for broadcasting, what are the rules which are appropriate for online, and come to, again, some sensible decision.
Alan: Just explain how that bit is supposed to work. If you've got now these refugees from the GB news are setting up their own shows--
Stewart: Interesting word, "refugees," Alan.
Alan: -on Bumble or YouTube. There's this show with Lawrence Fox and the person we must call Father Calvin Robinson. I don't know how they'll be affected.
Stewart: Again, this is where the debate really should be focused on. The truth, there isn't a lot of debate about this. Those just capsules of content, if you like. It's not intended to cover those. There is no suggestion that-- This podcast, for instance, is suddenly going to fall within [crosstalk]
Lionel: That would worry me, Stewart.
Stewart: [unintelligible 00:33:40] Can't take this too far [unintelligible 00:33:41]. There are other big players, and obviously, the streaming services are the most obvious examples, which to most people look and feel like television. We then get to question of, "Well, if you've got a podcast at one end and you've got streaming services at the other, where in the middle is the appropriate way, an appropriate place to switch in, if you like, a statutory regime." Part of that will come from the way it ends up in the law, and part of it will come back from the practice of how Ofcom, in its extended role, is going to interpret that.
Alan: How do you think it's all going to end? You're talking to people who are concerned about this. What do you think it's going to happen?
Stewart: I think it's going to end up in the courts. Actually, I think there's going to be a series of court cases. The funders of GB News, Sir Paul Marshall, and the Lagartium Institute, are well-funded themselves. They have the money and they probably have the appetite for a fight. Ofcom itself is always prepared for a fight in court. Sometimes, actually, it's not so happy to go to court, but obviously, it will defend itself. I suppose it's going to make them even more careful about anything they say on this subject.
They won't be offering or running any more running commentaries on whether GB News is or isn't within the rules. They'll be taking it absolutely case by case. Of course, the other thing is that they take so long to come up with their verdicts. You then have this issue of sanctions. People are saying, why don't they find GB News? The answer is because they've got so many cases. I think there are seven cases still on the go at the moment.
If they were to make a decision about, oh, we decided that's wrong, but then they're looking at a transmission that went out before they announced that it was wrong. Can you legitimate the sanction for doing something which at the time you hadn't told them was wrong? It means a complete lawyer's delight. I think a listener and viewer's nightmare.
Lionel: Stewart, before it goes to the courts, before the general election, and in the interests of due impartiality, we think we should have somebody from Ofcom on Media Confidential.
Stewart: I'm sure they listen and this is an open invitation for them to come on.
Lionel: Indeed. Thank you so much.
Stewart: Thank you.
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Lionel: Alan, hat was absolutely fascinating. Stewart Purvis is a veteran broadcaster, worked in Ofcom, but also explained to me, at least, a lot about why certain decisions were made at certain times with key characters, including your old favorite, the walk-on part for Paul Dacre, ex-Daily Mail.
Alan: He's exactly the right person to be talking about this. He's steeped in public service broadcasting. He's done 30 years of working under what I think we all understood was the regime and understanding of what due impartiality meant. He's got it through and through in his veins. Yet he's also worked inside Ofcom itself. He's got a unique perspective. I'm not surprised that the House of Lords wanted him in to give evidence, and I hope they're listening to him with great attention.
Lionel: I think the other point, which is really rather interesting, that's one to explore in future episodes, is Stewart's call for a integrated approach to media regulation. You can't have off-com looking at [unintelligible 00:37:17] in one way and then ignoring the way in which the media bill is being framed, online harm, the social media websites, et cetera, that you need to have it a whole package with a consistent overarching view. That's clearly lacking. I suppose one of the reasons is when you have the ministerial turnover or even prime ministerial turnover, as we've had in recent years, it's not surprising.
Alan: The other point which he made, there's always a danger with regulators that they're not as well financed as the people who are taking them on. If you've got a big, powerful person who's prepared to fight these court cases, has Ofcom got deep enough pockets to hire people of an equal caliber to see them in court?
Speaker 3: This is Media Confidential from Prospect magazine. After the break, we'll be focusing on the Bristol cable. We'll be right back.
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Lionel: In this week's Prospect podcast, Deputy Editor, Ellen Halley has been talking to writer and professor of English at the University of Cambridge, Priya Gopal, about the rise of on-campus protests against the war in Gaza, across universities.
Priya Gopal: They had a list of demands to the institution, which they had sent to the institution and which were posted up for all to see. What I was really struck was how very calm things were, how despite the very clear passions and sense of engagement, there was a real sense of relaxedness is perhaps the wrong word, but a sense of calm purpose, of quiet purpose, rather than noise or disturbing. I certainly saw absolutely no evidence of any violence.
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Lionel: Welcome back to Media Confidential with Alan Rusbridger and me Lionel Barber. The Bristol Cable was founded in 2014. The independent media company was established as a reaction to what was happening in the media market at the time. The people behind the Cable spotted that whilst the newspaper business model was in freefall as the internet was replacing paper copies, local investigative journalism had been suffering for some time.
Alan: A small group of volunteers in Bristol decided to do something about the fact that many of the local newspapers were now owned by a handful of corporations. They organized themselves and set up a crowdfund to create a reader-owned media model. The Newspaper is thriving now with thousands of subscribers across the city, but there's always more that can be done with increased funding.
Eliz Mizon is the strategy lead for the Bristol Cable, and she joins us now to tell us about an opportunity they have to expand the reach of their journalism. Eliz, welcome. Tell us about the Bristol Cable. What's it trying to do and what was the lack of news in Bristol that you were trying to fill?
Eliz: What the cable was trying to do and is still trying to do, is to really have a paper that is funded and steered by people in Bristol. We do have several newspapers in Bristol magazines, maybe is the right way to describe some of them. There is a lot of breaking news, there is a lot of culture, restaurant reviews that sort of thing. What Bristol was lacking was independent investigative news at the local level. That's really what the UK is still struggling to generate now. We don't have really any investigative journalism at the local level.
Lionel: Eliz, let's look at the market in Bristol. Are there any traditional newspapers? I believe Reach, does have a local newspaper there.
Eliz: There's Bristol Live, or the Bristol Post as it used to be, still calls itself the Bristol Post in its print edition, but Bristol Live online. There's also a culture magazine called Bristol24/7. There is also a Bristol World, which is online only.
Lionel: How do you compare your performance compared to those rivals?
Eliz: Really, we all feel a really specific niche. Bristol24/7 is very much about culture and business in the city. Bristol Post will do the breaking news updates. If a water main bursts on the A37, they will be there to cover it, we won't. Bristol Cable really does what is happening in the community, what's the big picture. Local democracy, investigations into maybe rogue landlords or rogue business owners. We're really there to hold power to account and do the kind of traditional, sleuthy journalism that we are really lacking in the UK.
Lionel: The Bristol Post, or the Bristol Evening Post as I remember it, used to be a fine local paper. Can you give an example of a story that you've done that you don't think the Bristol Post nowadays would do or didn't do? What kind of event, just to give our listeners a sense of the investigative journalism? What's one that you're particularly proud of?
Eliz: Sure. I think one thing that has been a really big case for us recently is the case of Thomas Flight, who was a rogue landlord. He had a number of properties. He intimidated, harassed, and bullied his tenants. He kept deposits where there was no need to keep deposits. He really treated people very badly, and our reporter, Sean Morrison, was the only reporter in the city to be at every court date that he had.
We broke the story. The BBC had then subsequently picked up that story and have reported on what he's been doing since, what Thomas Flight has been doing since. We've also reported on what he has been doing since being fined under the, I believe it was Trading Standards Act. He is now renting out those properties on Airbnb, and his Airbnb guests are getting very similar treatment.
For us, it's quite often to do with the issues that most people are facing, housing, the environment. We're doing investigations into specific instances in those fields. What we're also doing is following stories. We're not just taking a story when it's got a big, sensational headline and then dropping it for the next clickable story. We are really following up on the investigation and following it at length.
Lionel: If I become a member of the Bristol Cable, what influence can I have on what you're doing?
Alan: He's really interested in influence, always has been, Eliz, don't worry about it.
Eliz: [laughs] What we say usually, is that the membership has a steer on what we do. We have an AGM every single year because we are a co-op. We invite all of our members to come. We usually get a core group of about 100 really dedicated members, who want to sit and talk to us about what we're doing. Should we have a different tone of voice, or are we speaking to people in Bristol in the right way, reporting things in the right way?
Should we be more tabloid broadsheet, or should we go straight down the middle? We've asked them for example, how much influence they want to have. Do they want to be consulted every time we make a big decision? We take editorial steer and we take organizational steer, but we don't run every single decision by the membership.
Lionel: How many roughly people are reading what you put out every week?
Eliz: What we have is a quarterly paper, but we also upload online most days. We will do podcasts, and we will do online articles. We're getting several thousand people a week, but obviously, when we put out our print newspaper, we print anywhere between 15,000 to 30,000 copies. We know that about 300,000 people visit our website every year. We have a pretty big readership in Bristol. In terms of paying members at the moment, we have around 2,500.
Lionel: You're looking for money now, aren't you?
Eliz: Yes, that's right. Yes. We are currently running a huge membership drive. We were essentially offered a bonus grant if we were able to increase our membership in a year by 50%. 50% is £60,000, so we were offered to the opportunity to have an extra £40,000 to make it up to £100,000 if we were able to increase our membership by 60,000 this year. We're now almost 60% of the way to that target.
Lionel: Anybody living in Bristol who's listening to this should definitely become a member in order to trigger that extra much funding.
Eliz: Absolutely. We're doing very well with our membership campaign so far, but we're about to launch the final leg of it. Now is a very, very good time to become a member of the Bristol Cable.
?Alan: We spoke in an earlier episode about a local outfit called The Guildford Dragon, which has applied and been successful in getting charitable status. Is that something that interests you?
Eliz: Yes, absolutely. Even at the CJP, I'm the administrator of the charitable journalism project who led that project. We were incredibly proud. It took a very long time, but we were incredibly proud. What we have been thinking about at the Cable is potentially doing something like what the Bureau for Investigative Journalism did, which is set up a charitable arm.
I think that a lot of the time people have, particularly in Bristol, which is a very active political activist, you might say, city, have a lot of opinions about the media and what it should do. The Cable gets a lot of flack sometimes, I think.
Lionel: Flack is good, Eliz.
Eliz: [crosstalk] positioning itself as a campaigning newspaper that fights for certain values. I think that there is arguably a possible problem with being regulated by the Charity Commission, where people might feel that that's inappropriate. What we would do if we were to pursue charitable status, is probably set up a charitable arm so that we can ensure that the editorial decision-making is separate.
Lionel: We wish you every success in your fundraising.
Eliz: Thank you so much.
Lionel: Look forward to seeing you in in the future, bigger and stronger.
Eliz: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. If anybody does want to become a member including you, Alan, it's the bristolcable.org/join.
Lionel: Good luck.
Alan: That's all from Media Confidential. Thank you to Stewart Purvis and Eliz Mizon for joining us today. We'll be back next week with more analysis, big stories, and an interview with a true technology guru, Kara Swisher, to kick off our look at how artificial intelligence is going to impact news and media.
Lionel: With the UK general election set for July 4th, how will the media cover the campaign?
Alan: You can send any questions or comments to mediaconfidential@prospectmagazine.co.uk, or you can get in touch on X, formerly Twitter where we are @mediaconfpod. Remember to follow Media Confidential wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening to Media Confidential, brought to you by Prospect Magazine and Fresh Air. The producer today is Martin Poyntz-Roberts.
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