{"id":142965,"date":"2025-11-19T12:33:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T12:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/142965\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T12:33:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T12:33:09","slug":"fox-news-favored-over-bbc-news-by-uk-public-says-minister-ian-murray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/142965\/","title":{"rendered":"Fox News Favored Over BBC News By UK Public, Says Minister Ian Murray"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMuch of the British public would \u201crather have Fox News<\/a> on BBC<\/a> One than BBC News,\u201d according to the new UK minister responsible for TV and film.<\/p>\n

\n\tIan Murray<\/a> delivered the doom-laden proclamation at the British Screen Forum<\/a> (BSF) as his governing Labour party faces a challenge from Reform UK, the party led by right-leaning GB News lead anchor Nigel Farage, who is no fan of the 100-year-old British broadcaster and who is a friend of Donald Trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tOff the back of a fortnight of crisis at the BBC with the Trump Panorama editing scandal, Murray was passionate about how the government and British public \u201chas to save the BBC.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBe under no illusions, there are lots of people out there who want to see it go,\u201d he added. \u201cThey would rather have Fox News on BBC One than BBC News. But if we go down that route then our national story will be diminished. That is not an easy fight to win but the ecosystem has to help us with that argument.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tIan Murray. Image: Leon Neal\/Getty <\/p>\n

\n\tMurray was delivering a staunch defense of the BBC although he did note that the Trump scandal, which has seen the Director General (DG) and news chief resign and the POTUS threaten $1B legal action, \u201creminds us of the responsibility the BBC has to uphold editorial standards.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tWith the BBC\u2019s charter renewal coming up under a new DG \u2013 an existential moment as it will set the corporation\u2019s future funding model \u2013 Murray said the whole episode has \u201cgiven insight into what will be prominent in the charter review.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe BBC is a big organization,\u201d he added. \u201cIt will make mistakes and have editorial challenges, but let\u2019s set that aside and say that the positive thing that has happened over the past year is people have come out to support the BBC.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking on a BSF panel after Murray, former ITV chair Peter Bazalgette said the government investing another \u00a3200M ($262M) to \u00a3300M in the BBC World Service is the key here. The soft power news org could therefore reach anything up to one billion people around the world (it currently reaches around 450 billion), he explained. \u201cIt has a once in a generation opportunity when Trump has defunded the Voice of America,\u2019 he added. \u201cWe need to back the BBC World Service. I doubt we will do it though.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking about the BBC brouhaha last week, Murray\u2019s boss Lisa Nandy blasted fellow politicians<\/a> for \u201claunching a sustained attack\u201d on the corporation amid claims of institutional bias. But earlier this week, Farage told the Telegraph the BBC should only do news and that the current license fee funding model is \u201ccompletely unacceptable.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tMurray recently replaced the popular Chris Bryant as Labour\u2019s Minister of State in the UK\u2019s Department for Culture, Media and Sport. He was speaking at the BSF after TikTok UK boss Dominic Burns and before Prime Video Europe chief Andrew Bennett and director Richard Curtis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Much of the British public would \u201crather have Fox News on BBC One than BBC News,\u201d according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[2974,96672,65,156,25356,96673,111,139,69,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-142965","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-bbc","9":"tag-british-screen-forum","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-fox-news","13":"tag-ian-murray","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nz","17":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}