[Humphrey Hacker]

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.


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.)

Not a UK thing but I suspect it happens here too but there can be agreements to not run this story and be compensated in favour of another juicy story, etc... etc... Just as there can be agreements for exclusives to not use certain language/tone in agreement for getting it. The 'regular basis' thing regarding the website headlines does seem rather unusual.

I do think the BBC should be above and beyond all this though as a public broadcaster. Though there is the obvious flipside, in the context of threats to scrap the license fee at the time, that upsetting the govt would probably not be in their best interest which is an issue which private broadcasters/press would not have to contend with.

Would be interesting to see whether those who did use the term 'lockdown' also got similar messages from Downing Street or not.

When I read these kind of posts about getting rid of the license fee I always ask myself "what can replace it?"