A question of balance

I don't know if this is in the wrong thread or not.

While newspapers regularly impose their political views on readers would similar TV stations in the UK have a similar pull? I'm not just talking about Fox News, RT and Al-Jazeera I mean general entertainment channels with a specific political and or religious slant/

That is against the law, and you would be fined, and more likley lose your licence as in the case of Fox news

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code/section-five-due-impartiality-accuracy

TV news is required to be impartial. News channels can air "both sides" of a discussion in alternative hours if that's what they wish, but Ofcom would get a bit upset if there was a bias towards one particular side.

As to general entertainment channels, vast majority don't actually take sides as such as they don't air anything to show a side of. The religious channels probably will as most of those have their own agendas.

I wish the press was required to be impartial too, maybe this country would be in a better state without their partisan **** stirring headlines.

Like most things its down to history, political parties used to sponsor newspapers and a lot of that continues to trickle down today (even though some publications change their party allegiance fairly regularly) so presumably when TV came along it was a chance to do something different news wise (and also to avoid going down the tacky product placement route the US had gone down).

But of course it means certain publications carry the whiff of authenticity, so you get your trustworthy sources like The Times and the Telegraph, and then you get populist crap like the Daily Star and The Sun, and the free rags like Metro they give away on public transport.

Metro is owned by the daily mail.

I wouldn't say the Telegraph is pretty trustworthy these days, they've descended into right wing hysteria the last couple of years.

It's not that they wanted to do 'something different' it's due to the fact that broadcasting was, and still is to an extent, a limited resource.


Anyone can print something and distribute it, you don't need a license (would be very very difficult to) or have to compete for the right to publish.
Broadcasting is different, there are finite frequencies and so who got access on those was restricted and therefore heavily regulated. He in the UK there was only one chance to get a TV or radio license in each area until the 90s as the stations were franchised.

Imagine if Central TV was partial to one particular viewpoint, there'd be no balance as they had a monopoly in their area.

Now its a bit different in terms of capacity, although there is a theoretical limit, but the rules remain.

Yes, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make though. The description 'populist rag' is apt no matter who owns it


It's a very different to The Mail titles in terms of its outlook and political allegiances. There's not necessarily a correlation between owner and the publications outlook. The Mail and Mail on Sunday had different positions on Brexit as did the owner of the company. The Express and The Mirror have the same owner, but the two papers are very different. It actually makes good commercial sense to do that of course

There are times when I consider impartiality legislation an anachronism due to a combination of long standing bias in the print media and changes in technology. The legislation does not officially apply to non-British satellite channels that can be received in the UK or internet TV, which raises questions whether it should apply to any other TV channels that are not PSB.

Although in some areas it's a franchise - in South Wales for instance, it's published by Reach (formerly Trinity Mirror). Presumably that's one of the reasons that it has never endorsed a political party and remained pretty uncontroversial.