New proposals to prioritise ‘trusted’ news outlets like the BBC online will be chilling for free expression
Daily Telegraph 24/06/26
Britain’s ruling class has a new saviour in Andy Burnham, but on the 10th anniversary of Brexit, that darkest of days for the bien-pensant, they still want answers, and they are still seeking revenge.
Why do voters remain so bigoted, so nationalistic, so ignorant, so susceptible to fake news, so unwilling to parrot the groupthink propounded by their betters, they ask themselves? Why do ordinary folk still not listen to experts? Why did the public turn so ferociously against Sir Keir Starmer, a good man, a human rights lawyer for Gaia’s sake!
The elite’s conceit, their delusion, is off the charts again. They cannot fathom why Middle England is so preoccupied with what, from their rarefied technocratic vantage point, are exaggerated, divisive, dangerous issues such as migration, Islamist extremism, social decay or elevated energy prices. Wouldn’t it be safer just to ignore inconvenient truths such as the rape gangs, the failure of net zero and our looming national quasi-bankruptcy? What did our establishment do to deserve such a stubborn, uncooperative public?
It can proffer only one explanation for voters’ otherwise inexplicable refusal to embrace progressive dogma: bereft of agency and critical faculties, the masses are being brainwashed by misinformation and disinformation. There is no battle of ideas, no agreeing to disagree: if you reject the Leftist world-view, you must have been indoctrinated by malicious propaganda.
The guilty parties: private media including newspapers, independent podcasters and social media. In 1992, the Left blamed the Sun’s splash “If Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights”. In 2016, they blamed Right-wing newspapers. Today, they blame the internet, and believe they have a historic opportunity to get their own back against all of their enemies at once.
Their solution: nudge people into watching the BBC, Channel 4 and other “public service broadcasters”, presumably to be told which “facts” are valid and which conclusions to draw.
The mechanism, dreamt up as a parting gift by Starmer: force social media and video-sharing firms to promote these broadcasters’ content above everybody else’s, better to re-educate the population. Bad luck for newspapers’ text, video and audio output, for GB News or for independent podcasters such as Triggernometry. Just as the BBC is fading, here comes Labour to prop it up and, perhaps in time, justify handing it even more taxpayers’ cash.
The Government is consulting on proposals to ensure “our regulated public service media is seen and heard in the fierce battle against mis- and dis-information”. There would be “interventions” to make its content “easily discoverable”. The Government would no longer be a neutral bystander in a free marketplace of news and ideas.
This plan could lead to state regulation of journalists through the back door. The green paper’s proposed regime could be extended to newspapers, but only if these are recognised as “trusted” news providers.
How would they qualify? Would publishers have to submit to regulation by a state-sanctioned body such as Impress, set up after the Leveson Inquiry and originally bankrolled by Max Mosley? There are good reasons why the free press refused to sign up, and relied instead on the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso), a self-regulatory body, or on internal mechanisms.
Any plot by Labour to make publishers subservient to state-backed regulation must be resisted. Newspapers must not be controlled by the state, any state. There must be no government-supported kitemarks. There must be no incentive schemes, no cajoling, no bullying. Newspapers must be truly independent, free to report and comment.
Strong digital papers are more important than ever. The US tech firms often behave abominably. Social media can of course be a force for good, but it is also an addictive, AI-fuelled cesspit where lies, manias, deepfakes, hysteria, libels, anti-Semitism and hatred run rampant, damaging social cohesion, fuelling racist pogroms against immigrants and promoting conspiracies and fabrications.
We should apply the standards of the US First Amendment: freedom as the default, but prosecute incitement, speech that provokes and is likely to lead directly to “imminent lawless action” such as violence. We should be harsher than America when it comes to cracking down on extremist groups, including Islamists. We should ban rogue states, including Russia, Iran and China, from engaging in foreign interference by weaponising social media to wreck our society.
Yet none of this justifies Labour’s absurd green paper. The real answer is to encourage a viable, profitable, diverse and competitive free market in digital news and comment, encouraging ever more people to subscribe to high-quality private-sector journalism, not to prioritise government-regulated media. We need more free speech, not less. It isn’t for the state to tell us what to read or think.
It would be a terrible error to promote Left-leaning broadcasters with their own, highly damaging biases and systemic errors. I blame the BBC for fuelling anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism over the decades with its one-sided coverage of the Middle East. The Telegraph revealed BBC Arabic’s deeply problematic reporting on Gaza and how rogue LGBT+ reporters effectively censored coverage of the trans debate. BBC Panorama “doctored” a speech by Donald Trump, making it appear that he had called for violence on the day his supporters stormed the Capitol. The BBC and Channel Four have long been severely biased in a statist direction on economics, tax cuts, net zero and spending cuts.
When the establishment sought to control the narrative during Covid, it censored and cancelled truth-tellers on X and Facebook. The shifting official line – on the efficacy of masks at population level, on whether the virus came from a lab leak in Wuhan, on vaccines’ side-effects – was deemed the only acceptable viewpoint. Dissenters turned out to be right, but not before their lives were ruined. The BBC became the official voice of the state, advocating catastrophic lockdowns.
What will Andy Burnham do with Starmer’s proposal? When he served in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, he backed Leveson II, a bad idea he hopefully no longer supports. Hugh Grant and Steve Coogan, of the Hacked Off campaign, visited him in Makerfield. One of Burnham’s allies, Miatta Fahnbulleh, was the minister in charge of social cohesion, which the green paper supposedly addresses, when it was being drawn up.
For 35 years at least, the Left has blamed its woes on the media. As it prepares to crown Burnham, it should re-embrace its liberal roots, dust off John Stuart Mill’s defence of free speech, and start taking responsibility for its own actions.
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