Alastair Stewart

Impartiality and the battle for broadcast

Two big kites were launched by the Sunday Times that could, should they fly, redraw the broadcasting landscape. ‘BBC critics set for top jobs in broadcasting’ its front-page headline announced.

The Prime Minister, it suggested, has offered Lord Charles Moore the chairmanship of the BBC and Paul Dacre, the chairmanship of the media regulator Ofcom. Both are former editors of newspapers of the right and neither has much love for what the BBC has become.

For some, it is simply an obscene Tory stitch-up. The former Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, was perhaps the most succinct: ‘No process. No joke. This is what an oligarchy looks like.’

Well, ‘Up to a point, Lord Copper’, to borrow the line from Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop, the celebrated satire of print journalism. As Peter Riddell, chair of the Commission for Public Appointments, was quick to point out:

The search for new chairs of the BBC and Ofcom, both regulated by the Commission, have not yet been launched. Each will involve a Senior Independent Panel Member to provide assurance of a fair and open process as in the Government’s Governance Code.

Peter is a former FT man and an ex-director of the Institute of Government. It is fair to say he knows what he is talking about.

The thesis is that public service broadcasting needs a shot across its bows, not least on impartiality

What is more, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport confirmed this on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show. But Oliver Dowden also offered a fascinating footnote as to the sort of person he wanted in post at the BBC. 

The successful candidate, he said, would be someone who would guarantee the genuine impartiality at the Corporation. They would, Dowden said, have a capacity to deal with the technological revolution in communications.

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