News Broadcasting: Regulation

Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, and to sincerely thank him for the work that he does in attempting to provide some clarity and oversight, which is very obviously and urgently needed, coming from a civil society perspective. To reflect on the noble Lord’s speech, the rate of change and the difficulty of regulation highlights the need for us to have education on media literacy and critical thinking. The public need to have the tools; young people going through our education system need to look at something and see where it is coming from and understand it from a critical perspective. It is important that we stress that.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for securing this debate on such an important subject. I declare my position as a former newspaper editor with the Guardian Weekly; I also worked for the Times, the Independent and the Telegraph. I just want to mention that, unfortunately, I was not able to take part in the Second Reading of the Media Bill, but I plan to take part in the further stages. To respond to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, I have also taken part in Times Radio’s “Political Frenemies”, along with the noble Lord, Randall of Uxbridge, and the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. That is the kind of case where you can get politicians talking with a neutral adjudicator in the middle, which is very different to politicians talking to each other. I mention to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, that there are more than two parties around if he wants to invite more parties on to his show.

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury (LD)]

I am a third party.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Okay—the noble Baroness is a third party.

In preparing for today’s topic of debate, I looked back at a press release that I put out in 2012—a dozen years ago now—in immediate response to the Leveson report. Boy, there has been a lot of water under the bridge in our media since then. I said then that I welcomed what Leveson offered—most of it has not subsequently been delivered—and I criticised the report for its lack of tackling the issue of media ownership. We do not have the kind of plurality that we need—the kind of issues I addressed yesterday around overseas ownership, and in particular the ownership of the Telegraph. An issue there is whether and how mergers and acquisitions are referred, and that has not been dealt with.

I also want to come back to the rather fraught point of the potential for Leveson 2. My understanding is that in December, the Observer reported that Sir Keir Starmer was not intending to revive the second stage of the Leveson inquiry into press standards should he form the next Government—it was abandoned by the Conservative Party in 2018—nor would Labour oppose the plans to weaken the press regulation regime in the Media Bill. It is worth noting that under previous leaders, Labour was in favour of reviving the Leveson process. In May 2018, the former party leader, Ed Miliband, said that axing the second stage was “contemptible” and

“a matter of honour, of a promise we made”—[Official Report, Commons, 9/5/2018; col. 724.]

to the victims of phone hacking. I know that a lot of things have happened, and a lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. However, that scandal is still very much alive and present, as we saw recently in a court case.

It was suggested to me that this debate would be all about GB News; I will just take a minute on that. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that civil society campaigns, taking a stand, doing politics, HOPE not hate saying it thought that what GB News is doing was unacceptable and that brands might not want to be associated with it, are all part of the right of a free society for people to campaign and call for boycotts—that is another issue that we are tackling the Government on in another Bill. However, there are some serious questions that the Government must provide guidance to Ofcom on. Will Ofcom allow senior party officials to present election programmes as long as they are not candidates? Can a channel host party loyalists from only one side who deliver nightly polemics and try to direct the results of election campaigns? As a professional journalist myself, I can see that GB News has taken a pattern where, in the daytime it tends to be relatively straight and have ex-BBC presenters, but in the evening, when it is likely to have more impact, there is a very different tone. Therefore, when we are thinking about balance, surely Ofcom needs to look at the impact as well as just the content that is spread over 24 hours.

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury (LD)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord McNally for this debate, and also for his role in the Communications Act 2003, when he and others, notably Lord Puttnam, paved the way for the last 20 years. I declare an interest; I was a TV journalist and an executive working for the PSBs—at the BBC, alongside the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, at ITV and at Channel 4. How lucky I was. How lucky the country is to have this cornucopia of public service broadcasting. Take Channel 4: the incubator of our independent production sector, but also the broadcaster of “Channel 4 News”—one hour of independent news and current affairs at the heart of peak time, giving us more choice of outstanding television journalism, all subject to the same standards of impartiality and accuracy as the BBC. An hour of peak-time news on a commercial channel: that is unheard of anywhere else.

A central part of the new regime 20 years ago was the introduction, as we have heard, of a new and powerful regulator, Ofcom. It was given a very clear duty to serve the interests of citizens as well as consumers. I can think of few more important elements of that duty than to uphold the rigorous traditions of impartial and accurate journalism that have served us so well for over 100 years. Of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said, we are in a very different world from when Ofcom was established. I am glad that the Minister shares concerns about what should be in Ofcom’s regulatory scope in relation to online news channels, and that his department is consulting on the risk of unregulated content appearing on television. That is very timely, because of the Media Bill and also because TalkTV has decided to go online. Can the Minister say when we will be able to see the results of this consultation? Does he agree that there should be a level playing field with the Ofcom-regulated traditional broadcasters?

As my noble friend has said, as well as the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, we have concerns about how Ofcom is dealing with GB News. A year ago, in advance of last year’s Budget, we saw two sitting Conservative MPs interview the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was not a challenging interview; it did not include a wide range of views. But it took Ofcom six months to decide that it breached impartiality rules. Timely investigation is very important, as is timely remedy—falsehood travels faster than the truth. And that case is not the only example of a tardy response from Ofcom. Does the Minister think Ofcom has the capacity to investigate such matters?

More worrying, as my noble friend mentioned. is when complaints are not even pursued. Last September, the then deputy chair of the Conservative Party, Lee Anderson, interviewed the then Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, about immigration. Ofcom received 1,500 complaints, but declined to pursue it. When asked by the Guardian last September about the propriety of a Conservative deputy chairman interviewing a Conservative Home Secretary, Ofcom’s CEO said that rules around impartiality

“require us to prioritise freedom of expression”.

But the idea that impartiality and free expression are somehow not compatible is wrong. The whole point of an impartiality regime is that it obliges channels to present all sides of any controversial public policy issue, so that citizens can make up their own minds after hearing a range of diverse opinions. Impartiality actually promotes plurality. Does the Minister think Ofcom’s current leadership understands this?

At a gathering of GB News staff pre launch, CEO Angelos Frangopoulos allegedly told them they were working not for a broadcaster but for a tech company—a disruptor. That is wrong. They should be regulated as any other broadcaster; there should not be a two-tier system. We saw the first disruptor, Rupert Murdoch, off. He wished Sky News was Fox News—something he told my noble friend Lord Fowler when I was sitting on his committee.

To conclude, more than ever we need news that can distance itself from the partisan. This is provided by the BBC and our other great PSB outlets. Others should not be allowed to act differently.