BBC Leadership Debate
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Lord Fowler
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BBC Leadership
Lord Fowler Excerpts(1 day, 4 hours ago)
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Lord Fowler (CB)
My Lords, I have been a journalist for 60 years, leaving aside a rather lively period in which I served with the late Baroness Thatcher. But apart from that, I have been a journalist, and in that time I have also chaired two regional newspaper groups.
Of course, the BBC has made mistakes; we have heard about one this afternoon. I would be the last to deny that and I hope that we will put that right. But in my general experience, the gold standard in fair reporting has consistently been set by the BBC, in reporting both home news and news overseas. We should have a position that maintains and strengthens an independent BBC. That should be our goal and no other. Surely what we do not want is the partisan and none-too-accurate Fox News being put down our throats by some of the people who now seek to imitate it.
Although the BBC has gone through a very difficult stage—incidentally, we have taken a long time in this House to come to this issue—there is very wide public support for the BBC, much wider than people such as the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, obviously feel. There are—
Noble Lords
Lord Fowler (CB)
I ask that the noble Baroness should support the gold standard of the BBC in its reports, and in its general reporting duty.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Culture said in the other place yesterday that if we did not have the BBC, we would have to invent it. It has a proud history of over 100 years, and it can have a proud future, hopefully, of more than 100 years going forward. I concur with the noble Lord’s sentiment. Some 94% of UK adults use BBC services each month. The majority of people still believe that it is effective at providing trustworthy news. In an age of misinformation and disinformation—when we have hostile states attempting to confuse the whole context in which we are operating—it has never been more important. But we want it to be the absolute best it can be: we want that gold standard.