Friday 2 November 2012

Should the media in Britain be biased?

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/unreported-world/articles/blog-should-the-media-in-britain-be-biased

As a British broadcaster I was brought up to believe impartiality is the guarantor of trust. And when there were just a few broadcasters with a virtual monopoly on the airwaves there was a big responsibility on us to serve everyone. But with the advent of more TV channels, blogs, vlogs, apps and newspapers getting into audio and video the landscape has changed dramatically. Influential figures like the former BBC DG Mark Thompson have argued for deregulation and opinionated media here too. It was all sounding quite persuasive. And despite the crisis of trust in newspapers prompted by the hacking scandal broadcast media has remained reasonably trusted up until the Savile scandal broke. So I went to America (before Savile) to look at the impact of talk radio with a fairly open mind.