Stop the press! Media is biased… or is it?
Whether the controversy over the way BBC Panorama edited video of Trump’s 6 January speech, fury over investigations into former Cambridge professor Jason Arday, or long-running battles between celebrities and the press, the behaviour of mainstream media is itself newsworthy. This has fuelled calls to rein it in, from a new ‘Leveson 2’ press regulator and extending Ofcom’s remit to less defined but ominous demands, such as the Green Party’s call for the media to be ‘sorted out’.
The mainstream media’s reputation is certainly at a low ebb. The latest Reuters Institute report finds global trust in news at an all-time low of 37 per cent. In Britain, trust has fallen five points in the past year to just 30 points, 20 points below a decade ago. Audiences are shifting from traditional outlets towards digital channels, social media and apps. Under pressure to stem haemorrhaging audiences, the mainstream seems trapped in an intractable conflict.
The media is shaped by powerful cultural elites and dominated by editorial teams and journalists who echo their liberal agendas on race, gender and religion and such like. An impulse to keep content ‘on-message’ coupled with apprehension that audiences are not to be trusted with difficult stories, can produce selective reporting on diversity, trans issues or Israel. Meanwhile awkward topics – from grooming gangs and immigrant crime to disputes over sex-segregated spaces – are overlooked.
Yet as a DCMS survey reveals, audiences actually want accurate, transparent and informative news and are up in arms over a media perceived as endlessly driven by partisan political agendas and institutional bias. Hence public incredulity at the BBC’s flattery of Jason Arday as aggrandised Verify fact-checkers overlooked any hint of false claims; or the anger at news teams who sneer at populists while fawning over liberal in-joke Count Binface in a way that comes across as being told how to vote. People’s instinct that they are being lectured to is regularly confirmed by exposés such as the Prescott report, which revealed BBC Arabic’s pro-Gaza propaganda or activist journalists burying ‘difficult questions’ on transgender issues.
The result is a flourishing alternative media alongside growing demands to rein in the mainstream media. New right-leaning outlets cover issues audiences want to hear about – but which are ‘off-message’ to liberal elites – while new left-leaning channels openly embrace partisan causes over truth. Ironically, when the Guardian did undertake high-quality reporting on Arday, it fuelled demands for controls on ‘press harassment’, while the (black) journalists who produced it became targets of attacks for doing their job as investigative reporters rather than promoting DEI narratives.
As trust in truth-seeking journalism declines and perceived needs for news to foster social cohesion come to the fore, government responses are increasingly calls for greater control over the information sphere. This can include direct regulation or more subtle attempts to shape online narratives, such as algorithmic boosting on social media of state-approved channels. But editorial policy is stretching into dramas and soap operas, too. For example, there was the morality play on working-class boys in Netflix’s Adolescence or the recruitment of ‘racial justice’ influencers to shape EastEnders storylines to improve attitudes to ‘migration and racial justice’. Will this not further alienate audiences?
What is driving the collapse in trust in mainstream media, and what are its consequences? Are critics right that biased or partisan journalism requires greater regulation? Can any form of external regulation genuinely restore trust, or should media organisations and platforms remain free to set their own agendas?
