Alarm bells should be ringing about the future of TV news

Roy Greenslade
7 May 2008

There appears to be a general acceptance that television news on Britain's main channels is impartial. I say "general acceptance", but there are plenty of people - academics, journalists and many politicians from each end of the spectrum - who would contest that impartiality is in the eye of the beholder. Not only does it not exist, it is unobtainable, a holy grail that we forever seek and will never find. Most of the debate has centred on the BBC, which has suffered the slings and arrows of several outraged prime ministers, most notably Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. Both were most exercised by the coverage of wars, the Falklands and Iraq respectively, but their complaints touched on a whole range of other issues too.

Now comes a broadside from one of the BBC's former high-profile employees, Jeff Randall, its business editor for four years. "The job confirmed all my prejudices about the BBC's management, its bureaucracy and its appalling collective consensus," he says in an interview in the latest issue of Esquire magazine, due out tomorrow.

"It's not just that there's a liberal mindset. It's that it's all about selfpreservation. Those creatures of the corridor, whispering and worrying."

Randall, now editor-at-large with the Daily Telegraph, goes on to argue that "people like biased TV". This chimes with the views of Rupert Murdoch, whose Sky News in Britain is scrupulously fair-minded, but who much prefers the output of his controversial US channel, Fox News, the scourge of America's so-called liberal media.

Murdoch and Randall - who also happens to host his own Sky News show - are not alone. Conservative MPs have discussed the possibility of scrapping impartiality rules, a prospect that has alarmed broadcasters like Andrew Marr and Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Andy Burnham.

Marr, rightly, has pointed to the dangers of politicians demanding that broadcasters imitate the partisan coverage of newspapers, warning them: "Be very, very careful what you wish for."

Burnham thought it would be "a bad step" thatwould "be to the detriment of the cultural life of the country, to us all as a society". Then came his most telling point: "The public would start to lose trust in television news in the same way that they can't trust other sources."

Trust is at the heart of news consumption. I frankly admit that I already worry on occasion about the personal spin involved in two-ways with the BBC's political editor, Nick Robinson, during news bulletins. What stops me from making much of his performances is the fact that his analyses seem to be echoed by those offered on ITN and Sky.

In other words, he is reflecting the consensus among the reporters covering the Westminster beat. This is not to be entirely impartial either, but it is far better than having competing views presented with crowd-pleasing propaganda from left and right.

I fancy that Randall would say that transparency is more honest. Better an overt agenda than a covert one. But my viewing of Fox News, and my conversations with Americans who regularly watch it, suggest that coverage that makes no attempt to be impartial is even more sinister because it plays fast and loose with the facts. Critics who monitor the output of ultra-conservative Fox News host Bill O'Reilly find him at fault, whether by commission or omission, on a regular basis.

Accepting that impartiality is impossible does not negate the effort of trying to achieve it. The same goes for truthtelling, of course. Journalists know there is no way of conveying "the truth" about every topic, but the best of them attempt to get as close to it as possible.

But what constitutes news? When TV news bulletins are infected with news to amuse rather than news to use - in order, supposedly, to attract larger audiences - they sacrifice credibility. The result, contradicting the approach, is that people tend to stop watching.

It is one of the many interesting points touched on in a forthcoming book by Ray Fitzwalter, the longestserving editor of Granada's late, lamented current affairs programme World In Action.

In The Dream That Died: The Rise and Fall of ITV, Fitzwalter refers to an analysis of ITV's news output in which an evening bulletin covered a story about Kylie Minogue's underwear but failed to mention an important vote of House of Lords reform while a lunchtime bulletin revealed that Kate Winslet was happy about her fuller figure and ignored the latest tape issued by Osama bin Laden. Nor did it include items on a Bank of England report on houseprice inflation, or the possibility of a UN security council motion on North Korea. These stories were, however, covered by the BBC.

One other major theme of Fitzwalter's book concerns the loss of regional programming once the old separate ITV companies were gradually consolidated. Resources for local broadcast news have wilted along the way.

Burnham still appears to have faith in ITV's regional commitment, arguing that its "roots, strengths and DNA are in the regions". Its roots certainly were, but I fear for the future of regional news.