One hour to find out… Jon Snow chairs with Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, ex-Sun ed David Yelland, ex-Express and Independent editor Rosie Boycott, and the FT's John Lloyd.
7.05pm Late kick-off, and sad to say there are more empty seats here than at any other event so far. That's how much they hate the media.
7.07 John Lloyd wastes no time in identifying some culprits: "Bloggers think that the mainstream news media are now past their sell-by date and that blogging, people going online and putting their own opinions on the web, is better than top-down journalism… It's me journalism of the most basic kind."
Yes, we bloggers are part of a "many-pronged serious threat" - in with newspaper-owning arms dealers in France, Silvio Berlusconi and the Pope.
7.13 Rosie Boycott is very strong on how the press seizes on tragedy, and manipulates feeling. From James Bulger (who was never called Jamie by his mother, just the tabloids) to Soham, she identifies the "pornographic nature of tragedy… and gross irresponsibility and distortion" perpetrated by the press.
7.21 It's David Yelland, not very Hay. As editor of the Sun, he says, "The aspect of my job that I enjoyed more than any other was writing leaders. The idea of a leader I wrote at 7pm going down the A40 the previous day becoming government policy by noon…" Depressing but, Alan Rusbridger later confirms with reference to the Mail, sadly true.
7.29 Rusbridger notes that people don't hate the BBC or local papers – this is about national papers. The problems are in tone, behaviour, arrogance. "We're in danger of becoming the nasty industry." Journalists, he says, tell themselves three things: that we say the whole truth and nothing but; that what we do is in the public interest;
and we perform a civic duty. "But I think the public would say the reverse is true."
Once, he says, "We knew best and we told you and it was self-evident that you trusted us, there was nowhere else to go. That has changed: this monopoly has been eroded very, very fast."
7.35 Boycott: can you ever get the quality to fill the airtime, she asks, with rolling news? "Instead of a few sources of excellence, there are millions of sources of mediocrity." Sorry, folks.
Snow joins in to point out that the power of rolling news is that although barely anyone watches them (25,000 at any one time, he says), those who do tend to be other newspaper editors and media folk.
7.40 Yelland has clearly been reading Murdoch: the internet revolution is now happening! Post tsunami, we were accessing people's experiences direct via weblogs, he says: this is the future…
7.47 Two days in – first Hay heckle! David Yelland bemoaning the decline of sales of the Sun, interrupted by woman in audience: "Isn't that good news?"
7.50 Rusbridger points out that people are turned off by both politicians and the media who report on them; both could go down together if they don't address global issues properly.
7.52 A good question from the floor: how are you actively attempting to combat this crisis? Rusbridger: at the Guardian, a bumped up role for the readers' editor, social audit, more training, a redesign for the paper with a quieter voice.
John Lloyd: "I wrote a book…"
7.55 Yelland now garners the first Hay boo! "I think Rupert Murdoch has made a bigger contribution to the British media than anyone else… He just needs a good PR man."
Snow: "A good PR man would suggest he pay some tax here?"
7.58 Someone from the BBC is on her feet! Now it's warming up. And she's abusing another audience member. The panel sit on, looking bemused.
8.03 Yelland reckons you can't find a BBC journalist who has a good word to say about George Bush…
8.05 …which gets the Guardian's Jackie Ashley up from the audience. As wife of Andrew Marr she knows lots of BBC journos who think Dubya is the bee's knees, so Yelland can go figure.
8.07 Privacy law? Wouldn't work, says AR. Yes/no/maybe says DY. Should do, says RB. Change the culture, says JL.
8.08 That's it, no vote, everyone leaves. Hate the media? Or just rather be elsewhere?
