Senior broadcasters have warned of a possible wave of “disinformation” about coronavirus if the UK loosens its constraints on broadcast impartiality.
“I am especially concerned about the disinformation regarding Covid-19 which is rampant in the US media. We must not allow that here,” Dorothy Byrne, Channel 4’s former head of news and current affairs, said.
Ex-BBC director-general Greg Dyke told last night’s Media Society event that without impartiality, “what you get is people watching the news they agree with… that’s what Fox has done in the United States”.
Their comments come ahead of the expected launch next year of GB News, which is set to receive its broadcasting licence in January.
Presenter Andrew Neil said it is “aimed at the vast number of British people who feel under-served and unheard by their media.”
Andrew Cole, one of the founders, claimed it would lead to a “revolution in UK TV News”. It is expected it will follow the models of US broadcasters MSNBC and Fox.
At the same event, Mr Dyke also hit out at Paul Dacre, the ex-Daily Mail editor rumoured to be in the running for chair of Ofcom, saying “he doesn’t know what impartiality is”. Partiality wars.
Boyega: I was honest with Disney over Black roles
John Boyega says he has had a “very honest” conversation with Disney after the Star Wars actor criticised the franchise for marketing the black characters as important and then pushing them aside. Boyega, who played Finn in the films, told The Hollywood Reporter: “They gave me a chance also to explain what my experience was like… I hope that the conversation is not such a taboo or elephant in the room now, because someone just came and said it.”
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Comedian Aisling Bea, who has finally wrapped on the set of Home Alone, has a message to her past-self: “LOL.” During the Montreal snow storms in February she thought: “Well, it can’t get any harder to film than this.” Bea added on Instagram that there is a high chance it will be a Christmas movie, “but not this Christmas”. Next year will be better…
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Noel Fielding ran virtual art classes during lockdown and has been selling his own work ever since. On Saturday, DONT WALK WALK gallery in Kent sold out of the Great British Bake Off host’s idiosyncratic drawings. They included a portrait of Elvis: a white crayon circle on a black background, priced at a cool £950. He told fans: “You have made an old goth very happy.”
SW1A
Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party relaunch as an anti-lockdown force is conveniently timed, David Gauke notes. If Boris signs an EU trade deal, the ex-Justice Secretary said, this would require concessions, which Farage “would noisily oppose”.
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Jeffrey Archer tells us he worries he will die if he stops writing. The 80-year-old former MP who now sits in the Lords said: “If I just stopped I’d watch afternoon television and fall down dead. So no, please call back when I’m 100.”
