[DavidWhitfield]

Interesting article, Brekkie. I hadn't seen this. I don't know whether 'shutdown' sounds any less severe than 'lockdown' personally, but that's really not the point of the article.

One BBC insider said: “Particularly on the website, our headlines have been determined by calls from Downing Street on a very regular basis.”

I'm afraid I'm simply not knowledgeable enough in the field to know whether this is common practice politically or not. Would, for example, in the days of Thatcher, someone from Downing Street routinely call around the news outlets to try to influence what the BBC / ITN / newspapers etc cover in this way? In Blair's day? In Cameron's? Is it seen as a run of the mill part of politics/journalism? Or is the suggestion that this interference was a completely newfound thing at the outset/during the pandemic?

In any case, to me - admittedly as a complete layman - it should be entirely up to each individual broadcaster/publication which stories they publish and what (if any) angle they come from and they should be able to simply say 'no' if any such unwelcome coercion on which stories to push and which stories to dampen comes in from any outside agencies. (I accept I'm probably seeing things far too simplistically so I'm genuinely interested in the responses from those who have more experience.)