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Stewart Purvis, former Ofcom regulator on GB News and the BBC's relationship with government
Season 3, Ep. 6
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Stewart Purvis is probably the pre-eminent broadcast news journalist of his time. A former editor of Channel 4 news, he went on to become ITN’s Chief Executive – and then the poacher turned gamekeeper. The now Professor Purvis served as one of the content regulators at Ofcom and oversaw standards cases involving the BBC between 2007 and 2010. In 2015 he was a member of the BBC Charter Review Advisory Group and has been a non executive director of Channel 4 among many, many other things. We discuss GB News, the BBC's role and cuts, the merger of the BBC news channels, the Charter Review in 2015 and the BBC's relationship with government.
“My concern about their decisions on GB News is…that looks like a policy decision. That we, the British government and Ofcom are going to change the approach on British television to impartiality.”
“I would hope that with the departure of Richard Sharp as the chairman of the BBC Tim Davie will be free with the next chair, whoever it may be, to work out their agenda for debate. To take account quite properly of the government's view, but not to be on their knee to the government’s agenda of the day, which I think is close to what the BBC has been in recent months, at least in policy terms, if not in on the air terms, in what they perceive to be what the government wanted them to do about impartiality.”
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