Critics of UK media could redefine BBC and Ofcom, but is there enough momentum to make the appointments a reality?
- Moore appointment ‘could put BBC independence at risk’
- ‘Drunk on free money’: Moore and Dacre on the BBC
Appointing Charles Moore and Paul Dacre, two socially conservative critics of the UK’s broadcast media, to oversee British broadcasting would allow the government to reshape the British media in its own image. What is still unclear is whether ministers have the willingness to push the appointments through – and how much Moore and Dacre would be able to change.
Giving the job of BBC chairman to Moore, an ardent Brexiter and the authorised biographer of Margaret Thatcher, would likely be the death knell of the BBC’s existing funding model. The former Spectator and Daily Telegraph editor, who employed Boris Johnson as a columnist and was recently given a peerage by him, was prosecuted in 2010 for refusing to pay the licence fee after the BBC refused to sack Jonathan Ross when he and Russell Brand left obscene messages on the actor Andrew Sachs’s answerphone in October 2008).
