In December, the government launched its BBC Royal Charter review. Then in January, the Minister for Media, Lisa Nandy, wrote back to the coalition of civil society groups who had asked for genuine democratic participation in the process, and offered them a meeting with DCMS officials. The consultation, he noted, was open to anyone, and the government would carefully consider all responses. The Minister made no mention of citizens' assemblies or any more substantive form of public deliberation, and his letter committed to nothing beyond what the terms of reference published in December had already set out.
The Media Reform Coalition is organising an Alternative Green Paper, a collection of short proposals for BBC reform from across the sector, covering the full range of topics which the official process is unlikely to reach with the depth they deserve.The IMA is contributing a submission focused on local media.
The state of local journalism in the UK is reasonably well documented at this point: newsrooms have closed at a persistent rate over the past two decades, advertising revenue has continued a slow decline over several decades, and consolidation of national media groups has reduced the number of distinct editorial voices even where titles have survived. Still, what is less often discussed in policy conversations is what this means for the communities affected, especially for local issues of civil society and accountability, such as who is standing in an election, or whether a road closure has an end date.
Crucially, the BBC has followed a similar trajectory, with repeated cuts to its local radio network and a gradual shift towards programming made nationally and shared downstream across regions, even as the collapse of local print has made locally-made coverage more valuable.
The IMA's submission to the DCMS consultation will propose that the next Royal Charter include a new “Public Purpose” requiring the BBC to act as an anchor institution for local media across the UK, partnering with independent local publishers, opening its local resources for community-made public service content, and using its existing infrastructure to support rather than compete with the broader local media ecosystem.
The Charter is the mechanism through which the BBC's Public Purposes are defined, and those Purposes are what give Ofcom the basis on which to hold the corporation to account, which means the wording matters considerably. A vague commitment to partnership in principle tends not to survive Charter negotiations intact, and so the submission will include draft wording and outline structures rather than general aspirations, in the hope that specificity makes it harder to set aside.
The terms of reference of the government's Charter review do include questions about the BBC's role in the "broader media ecosystem," and the Alternative Green Paper is an attempt to make sure that question gets a serious answer.