Quote:Sixty years ago George Orwell published 1984. Its message is more relevant now than ever.
As Orwell foretold, to let the state enjoy a near-monopoly of information is to guarantee manipulation and distortion.
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We must have a plurality of voices and they must be independent. Yet we have a system in which state-sponsored media – the BBC in particular – grow ever more dominant.
That process has to be reversed.
If we are to have that state sponsorship at all, then it is fundamental to the health of the creative industries, independent production, and professional journalism that it exists on a far, far smaller scale.
Above all we must have genuine independence in news media. Genuine independence is a rare thing. No amount of governance in the form of committees, regulators, trusts or advisory bodies is truly sufficient as a guarantor of independence. In fact, they curb speech.
On the contrary, independence is characterised by the absence of the apparatus of supervision and dependency.
Independence of faction, industrial or political.
Independence of subsidy, gift and patronage.
Independence is sustained by true accountability – the accountability owed to customers. People who buy the newspapers, open the application, decide to take out the television subscription – people who deliberately and willingly choose a service which they value.
And people value honest, fearless, and above all independent news coverage that challenges the consensus.
There is an inescapable conclusion that we must reach if we are to have a better society.
The only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit.

Quote:There is an inescapable conclusion that we must reach if we are to have a better society.
The only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit.