What motivates the media world behind the clickbait? What drives broadcast, print and digital media producers and journalists? In this episode, Alan Rusbridger and Lionel Barber answer listeners’ questions on media bias in an election year, the impact of 24-hour news on mental health, and whether President Biden should be active on TikTok. Plus—do Lionel and Alan think Taylor Swift could swing the US election?
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This transcript has been edited for clarity:
Alan Rusbridger:
Hello, and welcome to Media Confidential, Prospect Magazine’s weekly analysis of what’s really happening behind the scenes in the biggest media organisations. I’m Alan Rusbridger.
Lionel Barber:
I’m Lionel Barber. On this week’s episode, well, it’s over to you, our listeners. We’ve asked you for your questions, and you’ve delivered.
Alan:
We’ve received a varied assortment of questions relating to many of the subjects we’ve discussed previously. Thank you to those of you who sent them to us via X @mediaconfpod and mediaconfidential@prospectmagazine.co.uk.
Lionel:
Alan, what’s been landing in your inbox?
Alan:
Well, to start on a serious note, Lionel, the Committee to Protect Journalists has been monitoring the number of journalists who are dying in the current conflict in Gaza. I think we should come back and do a full episode on that. I was speaking to Jodie Ginsberg, a Brit who is currently heading the New York-based organisation, who’s recently been in Doha. She said the question she was asked by everyone was, “Why does the world not care? How can it be that 70 journalists have been killed and nobody is raising a protest?
I sense, behind it, there’s a complicated question about who is a journalist because we know there are no Western-accredited journalists in Gaza, so I think it’s too easy for the world to shrug and say, “Well, these people aren’t really journalists,” or, “They’ve got Hamas connections,” or whatever. The CPJ is pretty robust in saying, “Actually, we’ve looked at the list of people who have died, and we’re happy to stand by the fact that they were engaged in what we call journalism.” That’s a that’s a gloomy start to the program, isn’t it?
Lionel:
It is very gloomy. I’m afraid I’ve got worse news or as bad news, which is I spent two hours, first hour was just listening, second hour watching Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin. I had a special interest, obviously, because I had interviewed-- I think it was the last Western journalist, in fact, to interview Vladimir Putin five years ago.
Just watching Tucker essentially fail to ask Mr. Putin serious questions or challenge him or follow up on his baseless assertions and his engagement in conspiracy theories, I mean, “Ukraine’s not a real country. Poland, by the way, that got at least 25 mentions in this interview. Poland collaborated with Nazi Germany in ‘38, ‘39.” No real mention or follow-up on what Stalin was doing with Hitler in 1940, Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, et cetera. Carlson didn’t do his prep, doesn’t know his history. Well, I think I’ll give him a C minus, Alan.
Alan:
It was a bleak day for our trade. Tell me about Piers Morgan. Piers Morgan has jumped ship from talk TV and has announced that he’s going to do his own thing on YouTube, a bit like Russell Brand. Making no other comparisons between them, but there are these big brands, individual brands on YouTube.
Some people say it’s just about the money. Some people say it’s because talk TV is going down the tubes or it’s going to merge with GB News. There are the conspiracy theorists that say that Piers Morgan’s name has cropped up in a lot of phone hacking cases recently and that maybe the powers that be at news have decided to get rid of him before his name features even more prominently. What’s your take on that?
Lionel:
I don’t think that latter is the case. I have no proof, and I’ll talk to Rebekah Brooks, the CEO who’s running a news operation in London. I don’t know, but I think there are a few established facts. One is Piers Morgan was being paid a huge amount of money, a reported three-year contract worth £50 million. That’s a lot of money. What was his audience? Well, on good day, maybe 125,000. That’s not that much.
Now, of course, what he did have is 2.5 or so million subscribers to his YouTube feed. He was getting a much bigger audience there. I think he probably decided, “Well, actually, talk TV isn’t really going anywhere. I’m going solo.” I also think that the cost considerations for talk TV were also weighing heavily, and there’s scuttlebutt that Rupert Murdoch wasn’t very impressed with Piers’s viewing numbers. I have no comment.
Alan:
[laughs] There’s another name from the past who cropped up this week from a close reading of The Sunday Times. Do you remember Andrew Gilligan?
Lionel:
I do, indeed.
Alan:
Remind listeners how Andrew Gilligan-- what he’s most famous for.
Lionel:
Well, he was a BBC reporter who broke big exclusive stories saying that the government had exaggerated the threat from Saddam Hussein, sexed-up, dodgy dossier saying that Britain could be attacked with weapons of mass destruction within half an hour or so. As a result, the Labour government came down on the BBC like a ton of bricks, and Gilligan was actually responsible for the resignation of the chairman of the BBC and the director general. Quite an achievement.
Alan:
There was that clip on the Today program that led to the decapitation of the chair of the BBC and the director general of the BBC at the time. In subsequent life, he then went to work for Boris Johnson at City Hall and then followed Boris Johnson into Number 10. His name is on the 2023 list of special advisors who are working inside Number 10, being paid nearly £100,000 a year.
The context was that he is now allegedly or reportedly being used by Rishi Sunak to compile a dossier. I won’t say dodgy dossier, but a dossier on Keir Starmer and the people he defended because that’s one line of attack. It does raise questions about if he’s been paid by us, the taxpayer, should he really be doing that hit job on Keir Starmer? Anyway, a name from the past who’s still with us.
[music]
Lionel:
Today, a listener’s Q&A. Alan, we’ve been in the media now for, Oh, dear, I think it’s over 90 years.
Alan:
Stop it. Nobody needs to know that.
Lionel:
Well, let’s just say--
Alan:
We’re vastly experienced, is all that matters.
Lionel:
Late 70s, grim time. I remember it well.
Alan:
Hold on, we’re not in our late 70s.
Lionel:
[laughs] Anyway, we are going to be answering your queries about the media, print, broadcast, and digital.
Alan:
We’re privileged to be joined today by Ellen Halliday, who’s Prospect’s deputy editor, who is also not in her late 70s, who’s going to put these questions to us both on behalf of the listeners who have written in.
Lionel:
Ellen, let’s go for it.
Ellen Halliday:
Well, thanks for that generous introduction, Alan. Our first question is from a Cris Cohen in Stoke-on-Trent, and Chris asks, “Why do you think there is a perception from the political left that the media is right-wing, and paradoxically, there is the same perception from the right about the media being left-wing? This, to me, completely undermines any sense of responsibility, creates confusion.” He says, “Could this be the reason?”
Alan:
What is left and what is right? I have a diagram in my head that has the center line as being roughly Lionel’s FT.
Lionel:
The moderate middle.
Alan:
The moderate middle. [chuckles] Now, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that’s where the middle is. To the right of that, in no particular order, I would put the Times, the Telegraph really quite right-wing now. The Mail has always been, I would say, very right-wing. The Express, if we still count that, very right-wing. The Sun, in recent years, right-wing, sometimes very right-wing.
On the left-hand side of the ledger, there is the Guardian, which I would say is moderate left, and the Mirror, which is the only paper which supports the Labour Party. I think objectively, the print media is right-wing. It’s always puzzled me when I hear this talk about the liberal media, liberal journalists, and left-wing journalists because it’s just not borne out what I think of as reality.
Lionel:
Well, the reality is that, as you say, the press is right-wing in this country. The majority of newspapers. The perception of the political left is actually reality but when it comes to the right, saying the media is left-wing, I think they’re really talking about the BBC. That’s the issue.
Alan:
We’ve discussed this before. I think it’s a deliberate tactic. I think all those people on the right who may well think, “Well, we’re so far the moderate middle,” but I think it’s a deliberate tactic to say that the BBC is left-wing because it has an effect. The BBC then tries not to be left-wing and moves to the right, and then the whole center of media in the country moves to the right, which suits the people on the right.
Lionel:
I guess the last point is that these labels are lazy, and actually, what we should be thinking about is what is right-wing? In my view, identity politics are trumping redistribution and economic politics, and that changed the kaleidoscope.
Ellen:
Our next question is from Mike Joffe. Follows on quite nicely from that one in a way. Mike says, “People often complain about The Mail and sometimes other right-wing tabloids, but The Telegraph doesn’t get the critical focus it deserves, in my opinion. Often the manipulation of news stories is subtle with the tone designed to elicit an angry response. See, you’re disgusted of Tunbridge Wells. If you’re old enough to remember that," Mike says. “There are occasions when it is just blatant. I wonder whether a more sustained analysis of how The Telegraph behaves would be useful, as the general perception seems to be that it is a quality newspaper.”
Lionel:
Ooh, a sustained analysis of the Torygraph. [clears throat] That could be an equivalent of hard labor. When I look at the Telegraph, it’s certainly changed a lot from the ‘80s, ‘90s, edited by Charles Moore and Max Hastings. You can see that they pick up stories definitely to get a lot of people angry, not just in Tunbridge Wells, but up in Salford, the red wall, et cetera.
Favorite stories are all about identity politics, diversity. Best one really to get everybody upset was this story about how the armed forces are not being able to recruit because of the gender diversity targets and political correctness. There’s maybe a little bit of truth in that, but that’s a real classic, today’s Telegraph story.
Alan:
I agree with Lionel. It’s changed a lot. There was a pretty rigid divide on The Telegraph between news and comment, and that has been eroded over the years. It’s had two editors who come from the Daily Mail, which has a particular style of editorship in which everything really fits one mold.
There was a crisis in around about 2015 when the chief political commentator of The Telegraph, Peter Oborne, walked out and effectively called his own paper corrupt. His accusation was that the commercial side of the paper, the advertising side, was running the newsroom. It got a bit of pickup at the time, but no one really looked into it. I think it was a classic example where IPSO, the new regulator after Leveson, which has got an S in it, standards. If that’s not about standards, so I think IPSO failed as a regulator then.
I think under the Barclay brothers, it wasn’t The Telegraph’s finest age. We’re now living in a time where I think you’re right, Lionel, that this overwhelming sense that you have to take sides in the culture wars can distort news agendas. There are still some very good reporters on The Times. There are some interesting columnists, though I think the commentary in general has moved to the right. I just wish it would not get caught up in these fundamentally, to me, quite tedious ideological battles over culture wars that leave me cold.
Lionel:
You can’t be repetitive day in, day out. Readers will actually drift away, I think. Anyway, there’s a PhD thesis for you.
Alan:
Sustained analysis, that’s what we want.
Ellen:
Well, you can sustain that analysis on this podcast, maybe over future episodes. Next question is from Joan Devaney. Joan says, “Your Murdoch insights have been fascinating. I sincerely hope he doesn’t succeed in destroying the BBC as he’s been trying to do for the last 30-plus years. Would he consider that his greatest achievement? Is there anything we can do to stop him?”
Alan:
Well, I suppose the first thing to be said is that he’s not getting any younger. [chuckles] He’s about to be 93, I think, in less than a month. I think it has been a lifetime mission to try and do as much damage to the BBC as possible, but I think the BBC will outlast him. On the other hand, that story last week that showed that he’d had 5 meetings with Rishi Sunak in a space of 12 months to discuss political priorities and political matters shows that he’s still in the game.
Although he said on oath to the Leveson Inquiry that he had never asked a politician for anything, I suppose we have to believe him, it defies credibility. I think that the things he says in public about the BBC, he doesn’t also say in private. I don’t think he will achieve his mission, but I do think he’s done a lot of damage to the BBC over the years.
Lionel:
Destroy is too much. Damage? Definitely. Of course, he would say he’s introduced competition. He created Sky. Satellite broadcasting came in under him. There were others, but was then consolidated. Of course, he also created competition in America, Fox, which we know distorted later on, but initially was a great achievement. I think he will see that he’s had some positive, made a positive contribution in his early days [crosstalk].
Alan:
Do you think that he sees that or that we should see that? [laughs]
Lionel:
No, I think he saved the British newspaper industry in the ‘80s through taking on the print trade unions, Alan. I spent three sessions out in the streets where Sunday Times was being destroyed by [crosstalk].
Alan:
I’ll give him that but no, sincerely, I think whopping, painful and brutal though it was at the time, was somebody had to do that and probably only Murdoch could, but the assault on the BBC, I think, is a different kind of thing. You just have to ask yourself, would you rather live in a country with the BBC or in a country with Fox News? The question is answered for itself.
Lionel:
To be clear, I support the BBC as an independent institution. I’m just saying the competition has been good for it. There’s a little bit of smugness occasionally around the BBC. I’m glad we’re disagreeing on something, Alan.
Alan:
Our producer, Martin, is-
Martin Poyntz-Robert:
[laughs]
Alan:
-poised to step between us.
Ellen:
Our next question is on a slightly different theme. Steve Hodge from Nottingham asks, “Could phone hacking, or similar, happen again now? Why hasn’t the backlash from the public been stronger? Some of what the reporters did says Steve was vile.”
Lionel:
I got a handover to Alan in a very short while because this, of course, was the Guardian’s story for a number of years. It was incredibly courageous reporting of exposing the phone hacking scandal. I believe that it’s very difficult for history to repeat itself. It will be something different. Why has the backlash from the public not been stronger? Well, there’s not always a great degree of sympathy for celebrities. That’s one reason.
I think as well, there is an undercurrent of support for, well, understanding that media will make some mistakes. They will cross lines. The issue here, of course, was this was absolutely egregious and should definitely have been cracked down on much, much earlier.
Alan:
It’s an interesting question. When people used to ask me this question, my answer was that after we did the main stories in 2009, that was the stories about Gordon Taylor, the Professional Footballers’ Association guy, which showed that it wasn’t just one rogue apple within news.
I think Nick Davis and I thought you’d be crazy to go on hacking phones after that because there was a series of criminal trials, the Leveson Inquiry, blah, blah, blah. Yet, court papers that have come out recently strongly suggest that hacking went on right through the Leveson Inquiry. My previous conviction that you’d have to be an idiot to go on behaving illegally was slightly undermined by that. In general, I--
Lionel:
It was absolutely intrinsic to their business model, the phone hacking, because to get the celebrity stories, to write about the royals, that’s why I think it went on, wasn’t it?
Alan:
I’m sure that’s right, but what seems to have come out, and we’ve talked about this on a previous episode, it then became corporate espionage. It was so that the skills were within the organisation and it was too tempting not to go around hacking phones, even if it was in pursuit of Murdoch’s business ambitions. I think probably the answer is there’s less criminal behavior, less use of private detectives, but I don’t think you can confidently say it’s completely stopped.
Ellen:
Does it happen or has it happened in any other countries or is it specifically British phenomenon?
Alan:
It’s an interesting question. There was a moment where it looked as though there might have been some evidence of it happening in America, but actually, that evidence didn’t really turn up. I think it’s a particularly British phenomenon, and why? I don’t know. To go back to the last question, I’ve always thought that Rupert Murdoch doesn’t really like Britain very much. He doesn’t like our institutions, doesn’t like the royalty.
Lionel:
He doesn’t like the British establishment.
Alan:
No, which is--
Lionel:
Slightly different.
Alan:
Funnily enough, I once met Richard Flanagan, the Australian writer who went to the same college at Oxford as Rupert Murdoch.
Lionel:
Worcester.
Alan:
Worcester College. He had a visceral loathing for Oxford in the way that he felt that Aussies were regarded by the British establishment as represented by the crop of undergraduates that he met there. I’m sure that Murdoch’s experience was the same. There was something about that just really made him want to sort of tear apart the British establishment.
Lionel:
Well, he had a bust of Karl Marx in his lodgings at Worcester, I’m told.
Alan:
Who knows where that is now?
Lionel:
Probably not at News Corporation headquarters. I certainly remember interviewing him for the book I co-wrote on Reuters back in the early ‘80s, and actually, Murdoch specifically describing Lord Rothermere as the worst form of jumped-up British establishment, so what?
Alan:
He came into Britain wanting to really shake things up with no sacred idols at all, which in a way is a good thing in a journalist. Whether it’s been good for the country, I don’t know, but we must get off at Rupert Murdoch. What’s the next question?
Ellen:
Well, there you go, Murdoch’s origin story. The next question is from Rachel Johnson.
Alan:
Not that Rachel [crosstalk].
Lionel:
Not the Rachel Johnson, we hasten to add.
Ellen:
Another Rachel Johnson. She asks, “If mainstream media continues to decline, who wins and what is the end game of those constantly complaining about the so-called mainstream media?”
Lionel:
Well, I think that the great trend and story about media in the ’20s, now, is the fragmentation phenomenon and also the way in which individual brands-- we talked about Piers Morgan’s leaving talk TV and organisation and just going on his own through YouTube. That’s the way things are going. If you think about Tucker Carlson, was fired from Fox News, he’s going through his own channel, using streaming to raise a mass audience. I see fragmentation is the winner, certainly not mainstream media.
Alan:
Does that matter? I suppose is the question.
Lionel:
I think if it matters if certain institutions, I would put the Financial Times and would also put The Guardian there and The Times, if they truly decline and experienced journalists leave, then you lose institutional memory. You lose context and everything becomes very shallow. Individual voices, however good, can’t compensate for that.
Alan:
I broadly agree with that. I’m still one of the maybe last remaining people who [chuckles] had prepared to put in a word for social media. We were discussing this on another podcast with Alice Garner, the young voice, at the end of Prospect because it’s interesting she had no sense of what the world was like before social media. She’s too young. She takes it for granted that everybody on the planet has access to a mobile phone and can publish and have a say in things.
I asked her to imagine what it was like actually for you and me, Lionel, when we were growing up if we wanted to be heard, there was no way of doing it. [chuckles] I think it’s easier to take it for granted that we live in a world now in which anybody can have a voice and the people who were powerless and never had a voice now have a voice. That that’s part of fragmentation.
I think it’s a good part of fragmentation, but I do think the toll that it’s taken on mainstream media is potentially disastrous because I don’t think that the ability to get at facts and unearth them and stand behind them is something that is easily done without institutional muscle. I think societies that can’t agree around facts are very vulnerable.
Lionel:
I’d add one other thing. If social media encourage the sort of instant judgment and everything’s done in a rush and mainstream media of course has digital arm, got newspapers plus digital, but you want forum where people and journalists have time to reflect. I always used to say at the FT, in fact, I said it from Day 1, I don’t want to be first. I want to be competitive, but I want to be right rather than just first.
Alan:
We can’t round off this bit about so-called mainstream media without confronting the fact that the people really don’t trust it. I think they should trust it more, but I think mainstream media for years knew that there was a real problem with trust. They were like Millwall Football Club, “Nobody loves us, we don’t care.” I think it’s about time now that we’re facing a crisis of trust in mainstream media that editors begin to ask themselves, “Well, why is it that nobody trusts us?”
Lionel:
And what is to be done?
Alan:
What’s to be done?
Lionel:
There’s a podcast coming up. I feel it coming on.
Ellen:
Our next question is from Scarlett Barker. Scarlett says, “20 years ago, people likely read about things once or twice a day in the newspapers. Now, we have information on tap, in our pocket all the time. We’re instantly notified when something horrific happens. What do you think the impact of instant news is on the mental health of the population?”
Alan:
Great, really interesting question. Let me try two ways of thinking about that. One is that one of the impacts is that people are switching off news, they’re avoiding news. We talked about this a bit in an earlier episode with Rasmus Nilsson at Oxford, who’s just written a book about news avoidance. The figures are quite startling now. Something like 40% of Americans, 30 something percent of Brits now say they actively try to avoid certain kinds of news because they find it so intrusive, upsetting, pervasive, deadening, oppressive, all these words that the effect that news is having on them.
The other thing is, I think, a desensitisation. You can’t look at all those images coming out of Gaza at the moment without putting up some protective shield because otherwise, it really does have an impact on your mental health. I think people form a kind of extra skin in looking at some of these images and coping with this constant input of news. What do you think now, Lionel?
Lionel:
Well, I think you’ve described this phenomenon of bombardment very well. I think the impact is negative. I think it turns people off. What worries me, democracy depends on an informed citizenry, and I think news is part of that. The dissemination of information. If people are to use your phrase, desensitised, then it means that for example, President Trump last week told this story about how he basically told another NATO leader, “If you don’t pay, I don’t care what happens to you. In fact, I’d encourage the Russians to invade your country.”
Then you have a load of Republicans saying, “Well, it doesn’t matter, it’s just Trump,” and people just turned off. Well, in a few months, they’re going to have to vote, and they should be voting on this kind of story, which betrays a politician’s judgment. If discourse doesn’t matter and is reduced and the information flows don’t matter, then we’re not going to have a democracy anymore.
Alan:
I’m not sure there have been enough academic studies yet on what this constant hamster wheel of news does to people’s understanding, this constant stream in which the news is constantly being updated. I think it takes quite a brave news editor to step off the hamster wheel and say actually, “What happened before this story? What’s going to happen afterwards?” What’s the context so that news just doesn’t appear completely out of context in this fragmented form in which it’s difficult to make sense of?
I think you do need perspective and reporters who work to a different pace. Plug here. That’s what Prospect magazine is trying to do, but I don’t know how you coped with that, Lionel, when you were editing.
Lionel:
One used rather trite phrases like context is king or queen, and that’s context all the time. Give time to people to report. Don’t expect the story just now. Don’t go for clicks. You and I’ve talked about this in the podcast. That’s not the right metric. Look at things like how much time a reader’s spending looking at the story. Are they sharing it? There are other metrics which are much more important than clicks.
Ellen:
Something that I think about a lot with this relentless pace of bad news that we’re exposed to, for somebody of my generation, you think the world is in absolutely dire state. I ask myself, “Has it always been this bad?” It’s the way that we’re exposed to news, it makes it feel a lot more catastrophic.
Lionel:
It’s pretty bad, Ellen, [crosstalk].
Ellen:
Is it actually worse than it’s ever been?
Lionel:
I think 2024, we are not in a good state in the Western world because of what’s happening in Ukraine, Russian advances, an election in America. Often, we hear this all the time in media that this is the most important election since X. Well, actually with Donald Trump versus Joe Biden aging, and this is the world’s most powerful country, all that, to me, says we’re in a very difficult spot. Media will reflect that.
Alan:
The different way of answering the question, Ellen, as I think, is this question of filtering. When I was approximately your age, everything was filtered before it reached me, whether it was by newspaper editors or TV editors, but it had all been through a filter. You felt you were reading a highly digested version of the world. Now, it’s much, much more raw.
Already this morning, I’ve seen horrific images that would never appear in a national newspaper or broadcast in general. Rightly or wrongly, you can argue that the world was too sanitised by the gatekeepers, but that sense of the world being ordered for you by someone else has gone. There’s a degree of information chaos which I think is destabilising for individuals.
Ellen:
Our next question’s from Peter Welsh of Wells. His question pertains to politics shows in general and BBC Question Time in particular. “Why are certain guests perennial, while others seem subject to the [unintelligible 00:31:57] Halley’s Comet formula for booking? The Green Party may think that June 2060 is a while to wait. Even then, it’s only a strong maybe, I guess, that they’ll appear. Would be interested to hear both of your views,” he says.
Lionel:
Well, I do think that there are definite perennials on this Question Time. It’s a quite popular program, but when I appeared some time ago now, but I did appear when I was editor, they’d always want to know, “Well, what are you going to say about this question?” I’m not a great fan of that. I believe in a bit of spontaneity, but obviously, if you’ve got seasoned performers whose views are very well known, that fits the program’s format.
Alan:
I’m looking at a chart produced by an academic at Sheffield Hallam University called Russell Jackson, who’s analysed every guest on BBC Question Time. This is two years, 2022 and 2023.
Lionel:
God, I’m really impressed with this research, Alan.
Alan:
[laughs]
Lionel:
Well, here I’m blowing off [clears throat] a bit of improvisation, and you got charts.
Alan:
I’ve got facts, and the conservatives vastly outnumbering the people on the left of the chart.
Lionel:
Which is what we were saying earlier.
Alan:
That’s what we were saying earlier. Then you’ve got these outliers like Nigel Farage, who I think has been on 35 times. He’s never succeeded in being elected as an MP. I get that he has a big political influence, but arguably, he has a big political influence because people keep inviting him on shows. I’m not sure what the science is behind why he, in particular, is invited so many times. It’s probably a nervous-
Lionel:
I don’t think it’s science. It’s business.
Alan:
[chuckles] Well, there’s a nervous instinct within the BBC that doesn’t want to be accused of being left-wing, so they invite Nigel Farage on and it becomes a self-reinforcing bubble. There’s also, this academic, Russell Jackson, he looked at Fiona Bruce’s chairing of BBC Question Time. One example was a question of immigration.
This was an episode last year in February, and he timed how long Fiona Bruce allowed each panelist to speak on immigration. Ruth Wishart, Scottish journalist, 30 seconds. Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye, two minutes. Lionel Shriver, novelist and columnist, two minutes. Stephen Kinnock, the Labour guy, spokesman on immigration, 3 minutes and 30 seconds. Robert Jenrick, the Conservative guy, 10 minutes.
Ellen:
He’s very difficult to interrupt though.
Alan:
[chuckles] Well, that’s Fiona Bruce’s job, isn’t it? It’s quite interesting to have that analysis behind it. You would hope that the BBC is reading his research and has good answers because on the face of it, it does look as though Question Time has a slight problem.
[music]
Lionel:
This is Media Confidential. Coming up, we’ll be answering more of your questions, focusing mainly on GB News. We’ll be right back.
[music]
Alan:
Take out a digital subscription to Prospect and enjoy a one-month free trial to our digital content. You’ll immediately get full access to rigorously fact-checked, truly independent analysis and perspectives. There’s no commitment. You can cancel at any time. To take advantage of this offer, visit our website or go to your favorite search engine and search for “Prospect Magazine subscription”.
Before we begin the next part of our listeners’ Q&A, let me quickly let you know about this week’s Prospect podcast. It’s all about cash. Stuart Jeffries is a journalist and author, and he joins Deputy Editor Ellen Halliday, who happens to be with us now to talk about the future of money and how we go about spending it.
Stuart Jeffries:
In 2017, debit card payments overtook cash the first time, and that trend was accelerated by COVID where people didn’t really want to pay with physical cash. By some estimates, by 2043, we will be completely cashless.
Ellen:
That’s in the UK?
Stuart:
In the UK. Yes, in the UK. There are other societies where that will happen. It’s likely to happen or particularly to happen faster in particularly in Nordic countries and China for some reason.
Alan:
To hear more of Stuart in conversation with Ellen, follow and subscribe to Prospect Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
[music]
Lionel:
This is Media Confidential with Alan Rusbridger and Lionel Barber. In today’s episode, we’re answering your questions. Alan and Ellen, GB News.
Ellen:
We’ve had a lot of questions about GB News, one here from John Dixon. Straight and simple. He’s just asking, “What can Ofcom do about GB News?”
Alan:
[chuckles] Good question. To my mind, it depends whether Ofcom think they’re there to enforce the law as it exists, or whether Ofcom currently has people in the form of its chief executive and chair who have a different view of what the law should be.
Lionel:
Melanie Dawes is chief executive and Lord Grade--
Alan:
I think from their public pronouncements, they’re rather sympathetic to the idea that Britain could do with opinionated TV. I’ve heard Michael Grade say things to the effect that, “It’s not my job to go around censoring people.” Well, it is his job to enforce the law at the moment, and there is a law about due impartiality. That’s the phrase on the broadcast networks, and GB News chose to be regulated by Ofcom.
If you look at the lineup of presenters, you’ve got Jacob Rees-Mogg. You’ve got our old friend, Nigel Farage. Richard Tice, the Reform Party. Esther McVey and Philip Davies, husband and wife, Tory MP. Arlene Foster from the DUP and now Boris Johnson. What do they all have in common?
It is baffling to me that Ofcom thinks that’s okay. They might count on, “Well, we have left-wing guests,” but it’s the presenters who frame the discussion. Also, you have to look at how those programs are then chunked down to use on social media in which nearly always the left-wing guests are chopped out. I think it baffles many people that the media regulator is asleep at the wheel.
Lionel:
They’ve definitely got a policy change which coincides, of course, towards the end of this conservative government where they are not applying the wording at the wall, which is due impartiality. They’re taking a very liberal, a very expansive view of that. Essentially, opening the door, I’d say there’s a coach and several horses going through that door right now on opinionated news. What’s striking is, of course, as you say, Alan, is this is not presenters with a conservative bend. These are actually politicians, elected politicians, which is quite different.
What can they do about it? Well, they can fine them. They have fined, as I understand it, GB News, in one or two other cases, but here, they’ve [stayed their hand. In the last resort, of course, under their powers, they could close it down, could they not, but they won’t.
Alan:
Who thought it was a good idea that Jacob Rees-Mogg has a week off? In his rather patrician way he says, “I’ve got the Prime Minister standing in for me,” and effectively, the Prime Minister runs his own Question Time. That’s just a propaganda platform, isn’t it?
Lionel:
They’ve really thought how they are going to use every little loophole and push-off, come around. This is the new phenomenon.
Alan:
Who’s advising Rishi Sunak? Did Cabinet Secretary not take him on one side and say, “I don’t think this is very advisable, Prime Minister. There’s a considerable controversy about this station.” This is now something of a Frankenstein monster because the center of gravity on GB News is now way to the right of the Conservative Party and is actually tinging towards reform. If the Conservative Party in allowing them this soft approach thought that this was going to be good news for them, I think it’s now a bit out of control.
Lionel:
In my view, you’re going to see consolidation in the broadcasting media around GB News. I think talk TV may well consolidate. You may see something similar to what happened with satellite broadcasting 30 years ago where then, Rupert Murdoch was the great consolidator, but watch this space.
Ellen:
Our next question on GB News is from Simon Cockshutt. He says, “Surely it’s helpful if all the presenters of GB News are the likes of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson without any pretense at impartiality by having a presenter with different views. The notion of having to present news ‘impartially’ is for the birds. There’s always an angle of some sort influenced by where the presenter sits on the political spectrum.” Discuss.
Alan:
In a sense, this is the age-old debate about objectivity and subjectivity, and there are people who think objectivity is for the birds because there’s no such thing as objective news. We all bring our prejudices, and there are people who say, “We’re in favour of subjectivity.” Yes, but I think it goes back to the last question. That’s fine, but it’s not what the law says about broadcasting.
I’ve said this in the past. I cycle into work listening to LBC, and I hear the dulcet tones of Nick Ferrari, who I think is pretty right-wing. Then I get James O’Brien, who is pretty left-wing, and that’s fine. That’s what LBC does, and they balance each other out. That’s what the law says. Without repeating ourselves, we know where all these guys are coming from, but it doesn’t mean that it’s what should be happening.
Lionel:
Alan, it’s interesting that you bring up LBC because I think they’ve been much smarter than GB News about introducing opinion, but they’ve also had elected politicians, David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, but also LBC had Nigel Farage, who then left somewhat rapidly. I think some of the journalists were a little bit uncomfortable with that. They’ve done this in a format where there’s an interaction with listeners, and it’s just less shoved down your throat with party politicians in the format that GB News is using.
[music]
Ellen:
Right, so finally, here are a few quickfire questions. Let’s see what you think. First up, Should Joe Biden be on TikTok?”
Lionel:
No, 81, and after that TV performance last week, I don’t think so. He’d have to be very carefully stage-managed.
Alan:
Yes, I don’t care. Of course, he should. He may be disastrous, but that’s what democracy is all about, isn’t it?
Ellen:
Very good. Next. “Which media appearances usually make the difference in the run-up to an election? Are they random or dependent on political blunder? For example, Ed Miliband eating his bacon sandwich, et cetera.”
Lionel:
I’ve always been a journalist who watches for the moment. Covered three presidential campaigns as a reporter in America, and there’s always, sometimes, something happens. It’s an incident. I think Joe Biden’s TV appearance last week was such a moment, which defines the campaign.
Alan:
That Ed Miliband bacon sandwich thing always seems to be so unfair. It was just the way the camera clicked at that particular moment. I’m trying to think of the other ones. There was Neil Kinnock falling into the sea in Brighton. There was Gordon Brown, and he was in Rochdale, wasn’t he? Talking at Rochdale, he caught on on a hot mic.
Think of Nick Clegg. The other way, not a disaster, but suddenly everyone fell in love with him during a couple of debates. Our producer, Martin, is throwing a left hook, which I take to mean John Prescott. Ellen, you’re too young to remember.
Ellen:
I do remember that.
Alan:
You do remember. You remember John Prescott, something, somebody in the crowd. I don’t know whether these are completely defining moments, but I agree with Lionel that maybe that Joe Biden moment is not going to go away.
Ellen:
They live on in our memories anyway. Next. Is Taylor Swift in the election a bogus story which shows trivialisation of news, or is it serious?
Lionel:
Deadly serious because in one respect, which is, if Taylor Swift, who, as we know, is the most successful pop star in history, bigger than the Beatles, if she urges younger people to vote, doesn’t mean they need to come out for the Democrats or the Republicans. If she says, “Vote,” that could trigger people, which I think would be a good thing to get out of bed. Youth, get out of bed and vote in November in the American election.
Ellen:
Last question, keeping it light. What is the biggest threat facing the media this year, in your opinion?
Lionel:
Well, Ellen, I’m afraid I’m not going to go light here. I think that the biggest threat to those journalists trying to cover the conflict in Gaza, and there’s dozens of journalists who’ve been killed. If you look at what’s going on elsewhere, the space for independent journalism and independent reporting is getting shrunk by the week.
Alan:
I wouldn’t disagree with any of that, but I think there are some technological trends that are really alarming. One is the share of advertising that is going to, I’m going to call it old media, is really pretty dire, I think, this year from friends who rely on advertising revenue. This thing that Google is doing in search, where they give you the result in search in Google so that you don’t then have to click through to the original site, really threatening to the business models of a lot of companies because you’re not getting people landing on your page.
Facebook’s behavior and down-ranking news, Facebook almost opted out of news completely. Then who knows what AI is going to do? I think you almost need a tech guru within your news organisation to see what these trends are doing and to try and react, but they’re all bad, I think, as far as I can see. Thank you, Ellen. I think you could have a future as a continuity announcer on radio-
Ellen:
You’re too kind.
Alan:
-if everything else goes wrong.
[music]
Alan:
Well, thank you for all those enlightening questions, and I hope we’ve answered some of them satisfactorily. Keep them coming, as we’ll be hosting another Q&A episode in coming months, I’m sure.
Lionel:
Next week, I will be in America and Alan will be here. We’ll be returning to the topic of how the continuing war in Gaza is being covered.
Alan:
Lionel, it’s been lovely having you in London.
Lionel:
I’m going to be looking at the presidential campaign in America, in Aspen, with the family skiing, so it’s going to be hard work.
Alan:
What better place to look at it from [unintelligible 00:48:19]?
Lionel:
I will be back after a week, and then off again.
Alan:
Don’t work too hard.
Lionel:
Remember, you can contact us at mediaconfidential@prospect magazine.co.uk or get in touch on X, formerly Twitter. We are @mediaconfpod.
Alan:
Thank you for listening to Media Confidential, brought to you by Prospect Magazine and Fresh Air. The producer is Martin Poyntz-Roberts. Remember to listen and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Lionel, safe travels and we’ll see you next week.
