Examination of Witnesses (Questions 857
- 859)
WEDNESDAY 14 NOVEMBER 2007
Mr Ed Richards and Mr Peter Phillips
Q857 Chairman:
Mr Richards, thank you very much for coming. You have also brought
your colleague Mr Phillips. Would you like to introduce yourself,
Mr Phillips?
Mr Phillips: I am Peter Phillips. I am Ofcom's
Partner in charge of Strategy and Market Developments.
Q858 Chairman:
I wonder if I could start in a general way. We have been looking
at the media generally, to try to guide a later consideration.
How do you see the provision of news in the United Kingdom? Is
it in decline? If it is in decline, is it in serious decline?
We went to the United States and I know that you are a fairly
frequent visitor there as well. I think it is fair to say that
both in the evening television programmes and newspapers they
were fairly downcast about the future. How do you see it in this
country?
Mr Richards: I do not think that I am quite
as pessimistic as that. There are real pressures in some areas,
but there are some reasons to be optimistic in other areas. I
think that you have to look at the overall range of news provision
and ask what is happening across the full range. In television
news, clearly there are some commercial pressures on the resourcing
and the provision of television news, in particular in the commercial
public service broadcasters—and I am sure that we will talk
more about that. Equally, the BBC is still very well funded and
news is and must remain the bedrock of their provision. If you
look at the quality of the news that is on television, certainly,
by the analysis we did in our document New News, Future News,
we would say that there is no clear evidence that it has been
in decline in terms of quality. We would be cautious about saying
that it has been improving, but I do not think that we saw evidence
that it had been particularly in decline. The style has changed,
of course, and the style changes are not to everybody's taste
but, in terms of the range of international news and political
news that was being covered, it seemed to be a reasonably good
story. In newspapers, there is clearly a lot of pressure on circulation
pretty much across the board, with one or two exceptions. There
has been pressure on certain kinds of news in newspapers for many
years, and I think that we are familiar with what they are. In
radio, you have very strong news provision by the BBC and you
still have obligations, which we have been able to sustain so
far, on commercial radio for news and information, including local
news and information, and we have not taken a backward step on
that yet. There are therefore some pressures in that area that
are very real but, equally, you cannot answer this question without
also looking at the internet and asking yourself about the positive
things that have arisen there. Not all positive: we all know that
the internet also has one or two dark sides. However, it is true
that there has been an explosion of availability of alternative
news sources. If you want to access news from a different country,
you can now do so via the Web. If you want to access it from a
particular perspective, you can do so. There has been the bubbling
up of what we call "citizen journalism", which has added
a particular angle to it; and, of course, the "bloggersphere"
has also grafted on a whole new layer of opinion, where people
of all kinds are able to express themselves and comment on opinion.
It is a very complicated picture, to be honest, and I would not
want to say that I am pessimistic or entirely optimistic. I think
that you have to understand the change that is going on.
Q859 Chairman:
In terms of newspapers, what responsibilities do you have?
Mr Richards: Very few. Hardly any responsibilities,
and nor do we seek them. We have some marginal responsibilities
in relation to cross-media ownership rules.
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