Blaming the Media

John Lloyd’s new book raises a number of important issues, although it tends to be very one-sided in its account of the media diminishing public life. What’s missing is much of an acknowledgement of the way that public life has itself been hollowed out, an ‘achievement’ that could have been possible even without the media’s involvement (or even their existence). Meanwhile, defending the (pro-Establishment) BBC from charges of bias leads Roger Mosey to remind us of the limits of the counting conventions used to evaluate media bias. Is a government representative on air as a mouthpiece for the government or because they are an intrinsic part of the story? How we choose to classify bias can influence how we see the loyalties of broadcasters.

Both arguments also hint at a media establishment somewhat preoccupied with itself...