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Dan Hannan shames the BBC and proves need for broadcasting freedom Dan
Hannan shames the BBC and proves need for broadcasting
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Yes indeed, Dan Hannan has become a global internet phenomenon. And he is
absolutely right to say
<http://www.telegrap h.co.uk/comment/ 5056587/For- once-Gordon- Brown-had- to-sit-and- listen.html>that
the stupendous impact of his speech proves that the web is a new force in
the political game. But it is also true, as so many commenters and bloggers
have noted, that this entire incident constitutes a shameful note in British
broadcasting history - perhaps even a turning point. For this splendid
speech and all the dramatic significance of a prime minister having to face
a relentless critique across a democratic chamber, was ignored not just by
the BBC but by all of the mainstream television and radio news media in this
country. To put the final twist on this ignominious story, Fox News in the
US - for whom British domestic politics are not generally a top priority
- both carried the speech and gave Dan a lengthy interview.

Belatedly, and presumably out of sheer embarassment, one BBC programme, *The
Daily Politics *showed a brief clip of the speech followed by a discussion
between two bloggers - the whole segment being designed to depict this
phenomenon as a rather amusing internet story rather than a political
one. On the BBC website, the item is now being carried under a
headline implying that an obscure MEP has become a surprise hit on the web
by attacking Gordon Brown: so Dan's speech is categorised as a kind of weird
popular oddity, like a skate-boarding duck. But the really significant thing
to remember is that it was not just the BBC that systematically ruled his
performance out: all of the news and current affairs programmes on the
terrestrial and digital channels did the same. (Channel Four's seven o'clock
news eventually made an effort, on very similar lines to *The Daily Politics
*: this was a story about the power of the internet.)

What must we conclude? That there is a pernicious consensus in news
broadcasting about what matters and what should be conveyed to the public.
It has very little to do with what the public wishes to know and hear. It
has a great deal to do with the regulation of news broadcasting which
stipulates a statutory "neutrality" : what this amounts to is a narrow set of
criteria for what counts as being acceptable and of mainstream concern. You
can interpret this as journalistic laziness, cowardice, lack of imagination
or something more sinister - but we have now had a quite dramatic
illustration of how pervasive and restricting it is. It is time that
we liberated news broadcasting - particularly on radio and the digital
channels - to be as politically lively and differentiated as it is in the
US. Then you could choose your news broadcaster just as you do your
newspaper, on the basis of its convictions. Maybe then we would have a
chance of seeing and hearing things that, at the moment, nobody wants us to
know about.