Why Britain needs new TV news channels
Two new news stations could soon be coming to British televisions. First there is GB News, the work of a company called All Perspectives, which is controlled by two British-American executives associated with the US billionaire John Malone. He’s chairman of Liberty Global, the parent company of the Discovery television network. According to Forbes, Malone, known as the “Cable Cowboy”, is worth almost $7 billion.
A second new station has more familiar origins. Backed by the Murdoch media empire, it is being set up by David Rhodes, a former Fox News executive who from 2011-19 was president of CBS News. It is unclear whether this will be a conventional TV channel or online only.
Malone and the Murdochs have two things in common: lots of money and right-wing politics. Like Rupert Murdoch, Malone is a big Trump supporter. He and Liberty Media were among the biggest contributors to Trump’s inauguration in 2017.
The principle reason for these two new stations is that there’s now a huge gap in the market. For decades, British TV news was renowned for its professionalism and its impartiality. In the last few years this has suddenly changed. Roger Mosey, former Head of BBC Television News, recently wrote in the New Statesman that BBC news staff are biased metropolitan, remainer liberals:
“The particular problem for the BBC is that many of its staff’s Twitter feeds reveal the metropolitan, Remainer, liberal bias that its critics have always suspected; and there is a battle ahead too to counter that perception about the mainstream output. It is fine for the BBC to be a liberal organisation internally, and it still needs to do more to increase the diversity of its staff. But it is not acceptable for the BBC on air to morph into a news organisation like America’s MSNBC, which is open about its left-of-centre position.”
Mosey, is one of the most interesting writers about TV news. He is BBC through and through. If he thinks there is a left-wing bias problem, then the BBC really is in trouble.
The real problem for the BBC is that Mosey is right. It started with accusations of anti-Israel bias. Then in the last few years a whole number of issues came together. The BBC’s flagship news programmes became anti-Brexit and anti-Johnson, presenter Emily Maitlis was criticised for attacking Dominic Cummings and Kirsty Wark misrepresented a speech by Michael Gove live on air. Newsnight offered no correction or retraction of this misinterpretation.
The BBC has also increasingly come to support environmental activists, Black Lives Matter activists and calls for the toppling of statues associated with slavery and colonialism. This summer, the BBC announced that the words for Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory would not be sung, it was assumed because of associations with British imperialism. This was hugely unpopular and the BBC was forced into a U-turn — but it was too little, too late.
The BBC has come under attack again and again on social media for its left-wing bias. There have been widespread calls to defund the BBC because its news is no longer trusted by many licence payers outside the liberal metropolitan elite.
Alistair Stewart, the former News at Ten newsreader, tweeted recently, “They [the mainstream news broadcasters] created the gap, and an open goal for challengers, with their puerile, dangerous partiality.”
This is a perfect opportunity for two media conglomerates to take on the BBC. A YouGov poll this week showed that 24 per cent thought a Fox News-style, opinionated current affairs TV station in the UK is a good idea. 34 per cent think it’s a bad idea and 42 per cent don’t know. But look at particular groups and the picture changes. 33 per cent of Conservative voters and 32 per cent of Leave voters think it’s a good idea. In other words, as the culture wars deepen, the Right is losing patience with the BBC, the Left is not.
The BBC is facing a number of crises. It seems out of touch with Middle England and obsessed with fashionable causes that appeal to the left-wing metropolitan young. But this has alienated a large part of its audience, those who voted Brexit in 2016 and Tory in December. It is now facing an all-out attack from Times Radio, News GB and a new Murdoch-supported TV news organisation, just when more and more viewers are attacking its news output and it is facing a financial crisis.
