Television chief calls for measures to safeguard UK news broadcasting

The Chief Executive of the Independent Television Commission (ITC) has warned that television broadcasting in the UK faces challenges from increased competition, changes in tastes and markets and a fracture in the relationship between broadcasters and politicians.

These, Patricia Hodgson said, had the potential to threaten the quality of news and political coverage in the UK and, by extension, to damage trust in democratic institutions.

Multi-channel competition and new forms of communication, such as PDAs, mobile phones and the Internet, fragment audiences, making it harder to justify investment in, and peak-time scheduling for, news. "But shared discourse is a key to shared decision-making," said Hodgson, "and vital to the legitimacy of any elected government." Without it, she said, Britain would become increasing hard to govern.

She praised Sky's news service, which had pioneered the idea of a core news service with more depth available interactively for viewers with special interests.

In a series of recommendations about the future of television news, Hodgson urged the new communications regulator, Ofcom, to use its powers to ensure ITV news was well funded and that commercial public service channels schedule news at times convenient for audiences.

She urged the BBC and government to put news at the heart of BBC's new Charter proposition and ensure the service remains well resourced. Stressing the value of the BBC's international news services in a time of global terrorism she said thought should be given to how this could be improved, "perhaps by grant-in-aid for BBC World, together with a fresh impetus behind English language teaching."

Turning to the relationship between broadcasters and politicians, the ITC chief said recent tensions between politicians and the BBC had led to speculation about 'top-slicing' licence fee income and diverting 10-20% to other public service broadcasters. It had also been suggested that politicians might be tempted in the future to seek additional controls over the BBC through Ofcom.

She said the top-slicing proposal was unlikely to run: "It's just not practical politics to divert part of the licence fee - a poll tax on every household in the land - to increase the income of commercial broadcasters who already have access to substantial advertising and subscription revenues."

She further warned against transferring key responsibilities of the BBC Governors to Ofcom. "The strength of the current Charter settlement is that the Governors can be independent, are required to be so and are reinforced by 80 years of precedent. That independence is, in the long term, a vital support for an independent and impartial national service of television news. It is more important to democracy than any rows about an individual issue. We dismantle it at our peril."

Calling on broadcasters and politicians to commit to a series of measures to reinforce trust in news and political broadcasting in the UK, Hodgson quoted research that showed that 70-80% of the public cite television as their main and most trustworthy source of news. The ITC chief described broadcasting as "the lifeblood of democracy" and said, "Britain has developed, by any standards, an extraordinary public service; a great success."

Though, with a plea to restore distance and mutual respect between broadcasters and politicians, she concluded that the relationship was "sometimes too close".

(GB/SP)