2024: A ‘best of times and worst of times’ kind of year
Opinion
From ITV’s Post Office show to the sale (or not) of The Daily Telegraph, if nothing else 2024 showed UK media continues to have influence. That’s more than what you could say about the US media.
It was the best of times and the worst of times for the media this year and almost everybody else.
The year was bookended by two remarkable programmes.
It seems a long time ago, but 2024 was launched by ITV showing insight and courage to commission Mr Bates vs The Post Office. Although the inquiry is still trundling on and many compensation payments have still not been agreed, the broadcaster has done as much as possible to ensure some of those who deserve jail actually end up there.
In the run-up to Christmas, there was a rather different magic moment — this time from the BBC, when blind comedian Chris McCausland won Strictly Come Dancing.
In the strictest of objective dancing judgements, McCausland may not have been the best dancer, but the achievement was beyond parallel.
As blind former home secretary David Blunkett said: “If I had a hat, I would raise it to him.”
McCausland’s performance alone saved Strictly, which, like many programmes, had been tarnished by behaviour that had nothing to do with the script.
Trump preparations
In the overall media world, the technology billionaires got richer and, with exception of LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, they either acquiesced in the return of Donald Trump or, in the case of Elon Musk, put more than $250m behind the campaign of an impeached and convicted felon.
Most have now also queued up to donate to the Trump inauguration bucket, just to stay on the right side of the irascible president. Self-interest über alles.
As a result, there have been multiple examples of media failure.
There was the embarrassment of Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos preventing the title from endorsing Kamala Harris and something similar from Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the Los Angeles Times.
The great newspapers of the world just lost a couple of members
But that was only the half of it.
Traditional media in the US has lost so much of its influence that Harris declined to dance to tunes set by the White House press corps and Trump got away with declining a second TV debate with Harris. His was a campaign fought on TikTok and friendly outlets such as Joe Rogan podcasts.
It is a historic degree of influence that may never return and presidential elections may never be the same again, whether or not Trump carries out his threats against the media.
For now, it will be extraordinarily difficult to hold to account the Trump who promised continually during the campaign to bring prices down but who recently told Time magazine, which made him Person of the Year: “It’s hard to bring things down once they are up.”
Once-in-a-lifetime opportunities
In the UK media world, some of the most interesting phenomena were things that did not happen.
In 2024 — at least so far — no national newspapers have closed or even joined The Independent in the online-only domain.
The remorseless downward pressure on print sales continues, but the conundrum that most revenue comes from the declining part of the operation appears unresolved. If there is to be a tipping point, we can only presume it has not yet been reached.
GB News has been properly fined at last by Ofcom for breaching broadcasting rules and The Spectator was successfully sold. But silence surrounds the planned sale of The Daily Telegraph to little-known New York Sun publisher Dovid Efune, who has been in exclusive talks since mid-October.
Ofcom issues first financial penalty to GB News for Rishi Sunak Q&A
Another once-in-a-lifetime opportunity has just popped up in the capital.
London Live, which has only lost £20m so far, is said to be looking for a buyer. The leak is one of the first signs of life remaining from Jeremy Hunt’s great local TV adventure, launched in what seems like aeons ago when he was culture secretary.
ITV has not been sold either, although some think it might be soon. There have been rumours of such an occurrence for more than 20 years and nothing has happened so far — but you never know.
The problem in the past has been that the likeliest candidates, the Americans, tend to have a weak grasp of the concept of public-service broadcasting and do not like being subject to detailed regulation. There might also be expensive pension fund obligations.
While the BBC has continued to produce excellent programmes — Brian Cox’s Solar System is a standout — overall it has been a bad year for the corporation.
First, Newsnight was effectively axed, leaving behind a hollowed-out chat show; and now they plan to kill off Hard Talk. Wrong choices. Wrong messages to send in advance of government talks over the future of the BBC.
And that is before we get to its glacial speed in dealing with the behaviour of “the talent” off and on camera.
Let’s hope the latest BBC scandal finally leads to some agreements about work behaviours
The right-wing attack
Perhaps one of the defining characteristics of the year has been the total failure of most of the right-wing press in coming to terms with the entirely predictable arrival of a Labour government.
The Sun is a possible exception. After its long-awaited acceptance of the impending reality on the eve of the general election, the Rupert Murdoch title has naturally been critical of Labour, but within the bounds of reason.
For the rest of the usual suspects, it has been endless, crabbed bias, as if there had been a collective nervous breakdown without any therapists being available.
The matter has come to a head over Brexit, which a majority of the British public wishes to undo.
For The Mail on Sunday, prime minister Sir Keir Starmer’s modest — many think far too modest — attempts to get closer to our biggest market amounts to a “surrender squad” to “undo Brexit”.
As for The Daily Telegraph, it fears that the EU will want Britain “to surrender” freedom of movement for students and unchanged fishing rights for its trawlers before there is any progress.
Wow. But there seems to be something in the water at the Telegraph.
In the run-up to Christmas, the newspaper’s arch Brexiteer Tim Stanley has clearly had a vision and has called on conservatives to stop moaning and rejoice — because “the political reality is that the right is winning” and that the long-awaited victory has finally come.
Despite such hogwash, there really could be a bit more of the best of times to come for the media next year from distinguished journalists and programme-makers.
Raymond Snoddy is a media consultant, national newspaper columnist and former presenter of NewsWatch on BBC News. He writes for The Media Leader on Wednesdays — bookmark his column here.