Who owns the news?

Remember A Very British Coup?  Chris Mullin’s tale of how the Press and Establishment combined to bring down a Labour government highlighted the UK media’s default preference for the Tories. And over the years the political and reputational damage caused by this bias has stacked up.

Yet Labour’s election manifesto fails to address this crucial handicap, despite the obvious opportunity to nail an historic imbalance. Just a sole reference to the word media, as in social media. News gets only one mention, in the assertion that Labour’s plans for the economy  are…good news.

It seems then, that Sir Keir, and his advisers, have no intention of challenging the status quo, including the country’s two most influential opinion shapers, Rupert Murdoch and The Daily Mail, with a view to correcting their partiality. But, as a former Sun editor, David Yelland has said: “They’ll never be Starmer’s friends.” Days after the election, the Sun warned the new prime minister it would “scrutinise his every decision and hold his feet to the fire.”

Concentrated ownership

Fair enough on the face of it. In a healthy democracy, citizens need to know what the powerful are doing. In an ideal world, the media is supposed to hold the movers and the shakers to account. But the media ain’t what it should be – if it ever was. Fragmented by the digital revolution and sidelined by devotees of social media, the under-regulated UK mainstream media is now concentrated in too few hands for democracy’s best interests.

New technology has brought fresh and powerful media players into popular communication. Alongside traditional media barons like Murdoch, companies like Google and Meta with massive digital influence yet so far little accountability, despite attempts by US and EU legislators. The evidence is that these tech giants are perpetuating the disproportionate power of existing news brands, rather than bringing a wider diversity of voices into the public sphere.

In-depth, investigative, and local journalism have all  been hit hard by digital innovation this century, and support and encouragement from the digital corporates could help them survive. The lack of plural, and community sensitive, owners is particularly telling at the local level. 2021 research found that over 80% of British local newspapers were controlled by six companies – falling to just five in early 2022. The last two decades have seen steady reductions in staff and savage cost cutting, with a consequent drastic reduction in the volume and quality of local journalism. Council meetings and Crown and Sheriff Courts go uncovered where once they were assiduously reported.

It’s pertinent to note the lack of coverage given to local housing campaigners when they were trying to sound the alert about the flammable cladding on the Grenfell tower block. There was no vigorous local newspaper in Kensington to listen to and cover their cause. Effective local papers picking up crucial public interest stories are vital to democratic life, yet over  30m Britons live in areas without a single local newspaper. And that increasingly includes Scotland where outlets such as Highland News & Media have simply died out and readership is declining steeply.

Amid thousands of job losses for national, regional and local journalists in recent years almost 300 local newspapers have closed in the past two decades. Local digital offerings such as Glasgow’s The Bell or Edinburgh Inquirer are on the up but some of these use content produced by “citizen” journalists only. The Scottish Government backs a working group seeking to establish a Scottish Public Interest Journalism Institute but has, unlike its Welsh counterpart, failed to pout its money where its mouth is.

Never believe what you see

So much for print media in the UK. Broadcasting faces similar levels of corporate concentration, falling budgets and indifferent Government commitment to regulatory standards. Channel 4 was threatened with privatisation by the Conservatives, a move later abandoned but thought to be motivated by political opposition to its output. Although the BBC remains the dominant player in TV and radio, its public service mission is under threat. Licence fee freezes, persistent political interference and its own uncertain approach to the digital future have undermined performance. The Corporation is also under pressure over its domestic audience from global streaming competitors – Netflix, Amazon and YouTube – whose dominance is under more scrutiny in the US than in the UK.

Public trust in the media and BBC in particular has fallen dramatically in recent years, with viewers turning to the new unabashedly partisan channels like GB News and TalkTV. Their contribution to diversity is more than offset by the selectivity, tone and accuracy of their output, a blatant challenge to Ofcom’sduty to regulate accuracy and impartiality, and no help to healthy democratic debate. (Ofcom is now considering a statutory sanction…)

The BBC must regain that public trust, together with its own reputation for radiating authority, independence and honesty in  British public life. Yet, despite the overwhelming popular rejection of the Tories at the last election, the BBC still takes its news agenda passively from the front pages of the UK’s incorrigible right-wing press. Cowed by years of governmental pressure from without, and from government placemen within, the Corporation has long since ceased to craft and compile its own take on subjects for the news. The broadcaster also persists in its obsession with the balance beyond reason that began during Brexit.

The Kuenssberg on Sunday show, for example, continues its dependence on an agenda set by a partial and monolithic press. Its presenter sometimes seems to resent the change of government. I can’t recall Laura pursuing Tory freebies with anything like as much zeal as when she hounded Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary Angela Rayner about Keir’s free specs and her trip to New York for a full 20 minutes of airtime before she gave up and turned to a real question – what was the future of UK housing? And despite giving every candidate for the Conservative leadership generous airtime, she failed to elicit any important policy differences between them that could perceived outside the Tory bubble.

We pay a licence fee and in return deserve a fearless and objective public broadcaster. That may at last change the gloomy media weather forecast. It will require the departure of a number of staff – some on-screen, some not – whose grip on democracy, the public mood and decent journalism has been irretrievably damaged by 14 years of Tory government. As have all the vital channels of reliable information on their watch. It is a pity a change of government has not signalled a turning of the tide.

Featured image courtesy of David McAllister; Graphs via UK Press Gazette