New reports bolster a National Media Trust

The latest Ofcom report and the new Reuters Institute book in their different ways bolster the case for a National Media Trust. They don’t know it, of course.

Ofcom studiously avoids big change

It’s early days, but this week’s news suggests that Ofcom is stuck in the wearisome old game of keeping the existing players going. One can’t help feeling that Ed Richards and his cohorts are trying to keep as much of the BBC and Channel 4 institutional nexus alive as they can. An outsider (that would be me) is inclined to see this as the nomenclatura looking after itself.

How much bolder it would have been to reconsider the whole nature of “public” funding of broadcasting and how to dismantle rather than maintain the two state-owned broadcasters.

Answer: a new National Media Trust

Reuters Institute nearly puts its finger on it

The new Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism report (What’s Happening To Our News) is not a great read but it does reinforce the idea that the web is a threat to serious journalism. I think the main point is that more and more people will consume news in an arena which can’t yet monetise their eyeballs. The news media has migrated to the web because it didn’t dare not do so, and long before it had any way of earning fresh money from the switch.

Answer: a new National Media Trust