UK GOV REJECT PUBLIC FUNDED JOURNALISM YEAR AFTER REPORT

There's a well-established tradition of governments ignoring reports into the media with recommendations that may antagonise their major press allies (Tories 2 year delay in responding to Calcutt's post-PCC 1993 review) or further antagonise their major press foes (Labour's similar delay on the 3rd Royal Commission on the Press, 1977). Just long enough that when they finally do respond, rejecting the carefully crafted proposals of experts, the heat has gone out of the story.

The routine abuse of the Official Secrets Act to censor reportage on government actions (such as Thatcher's meetings with Murdoch in the early 80s to strategize his purchase of the Sunday Times) until decades later may have a longer time scale but works on a similar calculation.

And so, as the police, judges and local councils around Britain begin to enjoy freedom from scrutiny as the local and regional press die a death of a 1,000 cuts with as revenue bleeding out to the tax-dodging, regulation-swerving global FANG giants, the Tory Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan has rejected an expert panel's recommendations of funding a public interest journalism pool. Because it would interfere with the free press.

But they're free to die an agonising death. And just such schemes work fine in such totalitarian regions as Scandinavia.

By happy coincidence, this returns pressure on the BBC, already slashing budgets as it faces a £800m bill to pay pensioners' license fees on the insistence of a party heavily reliant on the votes of the old, which has threatened to privatise C4 and effectively do the same to the BBC by forcing it to fund itself from subscription and ads only.

Which by happy coincidence would delight the right-wing press barons like Murdoch and Rothermere (Mail) who have long campaigned for the Beeb to be privatised. A company they'd then love to buy.

Whither the fourth estate?

Ministers snub proposals to fund public-interest reporting

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jan/27/ministers-snub-proposals-to-fund-public-interest-reporting?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Gmail