Will Ofcom ‘grow a backbone’ over politician presenters?

What comes around goes around. Instead of Ofcom doing the scrutinising, the media regulator found itself under the microscope this week. On Tuesday, Ofcom’s CEO was hauled in front of peers on the Communications and Digital Committee during its inquiry into the future of news. After the regulator was recently urged to ‘grow a backbone and quick’ by Andrew Neil over its approach to politicians presenting TV programmes, Dame Melanie Dawes was quizzed about claims of inconsistency in Ofcom’s monitoring of impartiality.

Defending her case, Dawes insisted that ‘impartiality as a concept is in the eye of the beholder somewhat’. It is right that ‘there is a degree of flexibility’, she added. How interesting.

The chief exec continued:

Often it depends on people’s perspective; people will often judge the same content very differently depending on where they sit, and this is often what we see, for example, in relation to the BBC…

I think a lot of people would like us to draw bright lines here and to say “this, that and the other is not allowed”, or “this language is not allowed”, or “these presenters are or aren’t allowed”, but it’s an incredibly important principle in law and for Ofcom that we are a post-broadcast regulator, we do not censor in advance.