LSST SU President invited to debate on BBC Radio 4’s The Media Show
By Kunal Chan Mehta | Article Date: 21 June 2018
Photo source: LSST 2018
LSST’s Students’ Union President, Renata Carvalho and LSST’s Press Office were invited to participate in a live debate on BBC Radio 4’s The Media Show.
In the first of a series of programmes exploring the media revolution, Amol Rajan, the BBC’s Media Editor and Fran Unsworth, the BBC’s Director of News, panelled a debate with Peter Henegan from social media company LADBible and Madhumita Murgia, European Tech Correspondent of the FT.
Whilst at the debate, LSST’s SU President and Press Office staff were faced with controversial questions that revolved around the notions of the relationship between the media and its sources. Such questions included asking whether they thought journalism can still trust its traditional sources whilst successfully differentiating between truth, myth and lies.
Being pushed by host Amol Rajan to justify assumptions and conclusions, attention-grabbing debates ascended with different perspectives arising as to what the ideal approach should be by the BBC to ensure its own survival in a competitive media landscape.
Photo source: LSST 2018
Speaking with LSST, Richard Hooper, Producer for BBC Radio 4’s The Media Show, thanked LSST for its participation and added: ‘We often feature the media CEOs and newspaper editors on The Media Show but we don’t often meet the consumers. This was an opportunity to bring the two together and we were delighted to welcome a full house for the broadcast.’
Renata Carvalho, LSST’s SU President said: ‘Smart phones have made us all instant-reporters and journalism often loses out on this form of citizen-journalism. Also, after hearing from the panellists, I am sure that the future of news consumption is likely to involve AI-driven voice interfaces.’
Kunal Chan Mehta, LSST’s Senior Lecturer and Press Officer said: ‘Being part of this much needed discussion with a diverse group of people and guided by a leading figure in this area was a great experience, probing deeper into some of the major challenges faced by the media revolution’.
Listen online on the BBC Radio 4 website
Please email the author of this article kunal.mehta@lsst.ac for any questions or comments or if you would like to take part in future interviews with industry leaders.
LSST students, join the debate and comment below: Do you find the BBC trustworthy?
30 thoughts on “LSST SU President invited to debate on BBC Radio 4’s The Media Show”
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I can’t live without the BBC as it forms culture for me in the UK. I depend on many of the BBC shows for entertainment and news too. Also I am not happy to watch adverts and BBC allows me to just get on with watching shows or news.
Good points raised here.
I really enjoyed listening to this thanks LSST. I am rather intrigued why the show focused so much on the BBC changing when in fact the media industry needs to. It really is not keeping up at all.
The BBC can be trusted as a news source and I feel although I could live without it, I could not find much better.
Gina
Good points raised here Gina. Thanks for sharing with us.
I think to begin; it is important to consider the origins of the BBC. The BBC originally started in the 1920’s, with its growth brought technology, communications, regulations etc. It has been continuously heralded by the public and its major competitors as the “cornerstone of public service broadcasting” and “a benchmark for quality in programming” worldwide as outlined in the BBC Charter Review (House of Lords, 2006). I think it’s also important to distinguish between the products and services and the organisation as an individual entity. Is the BBC’s news reliable, the Ofcom polls agree, however in the same poll in 2015 it is clear that many believe that the BBC is no longer “impartial and unbiased” (Ofcom, 2015). The question then is why?
With the development of technology and the revolution in communications come the 1990’s with the access of the internet provided to the public, we as consumers have been flooded with multiple sources of information, whether accurate or not. This has fundamentally changed the way that we consume and access information. One of the points raised in the debate by Amol Rajan was “is it really true… that young people really don’t have the same attention or is it just they are being given shorter stuff… why would it be within the space of a generation attention spans would disappear completely”. I think this in itself highlights a key point which is missed in understanding the trustworthiness of the BBC and that is, choice. I can name over ten news sources which provide me with a choice of content for the same topics of interest. This in itself provides consumers to move towards sources which suit their lifestyle, their work, their society networks and so forth and therefore changes how we use the sources we access. The reality is that every day we as consumers spend a huge amount of time on the internet, the amount of information we take in equates to several books per day. This will impact on our perspectives, our perceptions and how we judge one organisation from other. Does this not therefore impact how we judge the trustworthiness of the BBC?
If we are to look at trustworthiness of the BBC, look towards the BBC’s history and content produced, perhaps an approximate single digit percentage would amount to issues or problems historically for the organisation which would affect its trustworthiness, however in almost all cases this has been acknowledged or confronted in respect to the situation at the time.
Do I find the BBC Trustworthy? I’d like to think that the BBC upholds its Royal Charter and UK Regulations/ Legislation to the full extent, what more would you ask of it?
Thank you Dawn for this detailed reply. Raises a large depth of points. It will help students see the BBC from a wider angle also! Thanks again.
I think the BBC is really trustworthy. It is up to us to also check facts and use a number of news sources to establish facts.
I am business student in Birmingham and I am happy to see this success for the student union at LSST. I listened to the show and found it was informative and made me think of the future of news. I think it is in good hands and BBC doing good job for us all.
Thanks for this feedback Amir. Please stay in touch with us so we can get your views down for future events.