Broadcasting: Recent Developments

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

I begin by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, on introducing this debate with great erudition and wisdom. I will concentrate on some very important issues. The recent Israel-Palestine war and the American takeover of Venezuela have raised all kinds of issues about the relevance and limitations of the public service media. Some of these issues are old and familiar, and we have learned to live with them; other issues are relatively new. Some, we have not faced before, and it is important to concentrate on those issues and work out a radical response.

The first issue, as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler said, has to do with the BBC. The whole thing began when the BBC attributed certain remarks to President Trump. Obviously, this was not properly researched, and the BBC was wrong to do so. But the question is this: was it wrong that the President was presented in such a manner? The remarks attributed to him were totally in character with what he had been saying elsewhere. Therefore, attributing to him the remarks was simply a mistake of a procedural, administrative kind and not a substantial, malignant kind.

The second issue is that we are told that the BBC has an institutional bias. It is bound to have an institutional bias—every institution has a bias. The House of Lords has a bias in favour of the peaceful, moderate resolution of conflict and against terrorism. Universities have a bias. What does it mean? An institution exists to promote certain values, and these values inform and inspire its actions, and therefore bias is inevitable. We can accept the bias, learn to discount it from what we hear or see, and move on. That is what we do all the time. I watched a BBC programme on India. I found it disturbing and not particularly accurate, but I know that, whatever line it takes, it is bound to be unsatisfactory to somebody. You discount it—what is the big deal?

My point is that we ought to learn to appreciate the limitations of human intelligence and ingenuity. Nothing can be perfectly free of bias of any kind. Every institution has bias. The third thing is the necessity of educating citizens. The BBC and other media exist to promote their programmes and identity. Therefore, they make sure that their audience is manipulated in a certain way. The question is how an audience can resist this kind of manipulation and make sure that it is not taken for a ride. Therefore, public service media have a responsibility to make sure that people are properly able to engage critically with issues and the reporting of them.

My last point to make, in the four minutes, I have is that media in any society have an extremely important role in keeping society going. Social cohesion means that no group should be left out. How do we make programmes that are open to diversity? You cannot leave out certain groups; you have to make them visible and audible. The media have not tended to do that. The BBC has, to my knowledge, failed in educating the citizenry and local groups. I have not seen programmes where an individual has sat down and gone through the way the programme was reported, showing the audience of millions how to read a programme.

I very much hope that we shall resist any false, malignant pressure on our public service media, from whatever quarter it comes.