Snakes Are Misunderstood...We Have an Understanding Now. We Know That Snakes Are Good'. The BBC reported that there were many in the audience who were angry at the decision to move on without question. One delegate, Chris, was angered by the move. 'I thought we were the BBC,' he said. 'It's a complete insult to what the BBC used to stand for.' He continued, 'What's happened with the BBC is the complete abandonment of public service broadcasting for political correctness. But I thought the BBC was different from other broadcasters.' Another called Gav, who was a teacher, believed that the decision to broadcast the event came from government pressure and said, 'The BBC has lost its moral compass.' But all of this was lost on the presenters. 'When that lady was speaking about the BBC being leftwing, I thought she was making a mistake,' continued Chris. The whole experience left Gav and Mark shellshocked. 'It's made me really angry,' said Gav. 'I thought the BBC was different. I thought the BBC was there to speak for the majority. It was a betrayal of the BBC.' In the debate the following day, Conservative MP Philip Davies, who has a long history of campaigning against the BBC and who received the backing of _Telegraph_ readers for making his criticism public, said the decision not to screen the event demonstrated why so many had expressed concern over the licence fee. 'Not everyone lives in metropolitan areas where they can access the BBC 24/7, so it's completely unacceptable that we have a "one size fits all" licence fee. The licence fee was invented for licence-payers to decide on what services are delivered to them. Why are we paying £145 a year for BBC services that may be seen as too left-wing for some people?' said Davies. At the time, another Conservative MP, Philip Hollobone, who had just left the BBC over its decision to give a platform to the former UKIP leader Nigel Farage, said the ruling was 'totally unacceptable'. He said, 'The BBC is funded by licence fee payers, and licence fee payers are people who have a range of views. When you ask them if they want to watch something that offends them, I don't think they would say yes.' What these three MPs and the scores of _Telegraph_ readers all failed to appreciate was that the BBC was at the centre of a revolution. It had stopped treating itself as if it were the nation's national broadcaster. It was a different beast. The new 'national' broadcasters of BBC Scotland, BBC Wales and BBC Northern Ireland had been set up following a series of reforms that had led to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all getting their own assemblies – as well as their own channels and newspapers. 'The BBC has started to accept its role as a commercial broadcaster and is moving away from its role as a broadcaster and information provider. The BBC also needs to accept the fact that its audience is in a rapidly changing world,' added another person. This was all a reflection of what had been going on with the media in the country for some time. It had been changing fast. By this point, the internet was widely being used to get news. The internet has also led to an expansion in the variety of news outlets and how people consume their news, with the rise of the tabloid press, the _Sun_ and the _Mirror_ 's right-wing bias and the emergence of so-called 'fake news'. The BBC was stuck in its traditions. It was failing to recognize how its role had to change. So let's take a look at what BBC Scotland had to say. The BBC's flagship local station for Scotland, BBC One Scotland, had to adjust to this new world order as well. In August 2015, viewers noticed that it had been renamed _Scotland Tonight_. This wasn't just any old update. The BBC explained that it was 'designed to help viewers and listeners navigate the range of news and current affairs programmes available on BBC Scotland'. It was an acknowledgment that the Scottish press landscape had exploded and that the BBC didn't want to lose viewers to these new outlets. If Scotland had a national newspaper and a news network and three local television channels, the BBC needed to acknowledge that, too. Meanwhile, Scotland's daily newspapers were competing with each other to create the best digital platform for readers. They were all investing more in technology, online and in print, in order to keep up with the competition from digital only providers. The _Daily Record_ , the _Daily Mail_ , the _Sunday Mail_ , STV and the _Scottish Sun_ were all now competing against each other online. There were now around 140 websites being paid for by Scottish newspapers. The most successful digital news provider in the UK was the _Guardian_. In 2017, the _Guardian_ had around 1.5 million unique users per month online and its website was one of the most visited news sites in the UK. It had beaten _The Times_ 's website, _Scotsman.com_ , which had 300,000 unique users per month and had been launched a few years earlier than the _Guardian_ and had a higher average monthly unique user than its most popular rival, the _Telegraph_. The _Guardian_ was competing against its own journalists – and those from other publications – for attention on social media, which was where the online readers were most likely to be found. Its digital newspaper had a new format which worked on mobiles and tablets, as well as on desktop computers. It also gave readers instant access to extra content. So, when a woman complained on Twitter about the _Guardian_ 's use of the gender neutral pronouns 'they' and 'their', it sent her a story and an explanation. 'We've noticed that you had a problem with our use of "they" in this piece. Here's what we do about it: http://bit.ly/2e4Fqfn,' it wrote. The BBC had to do the same thing as well. In 2010, Jeremy Vine had made it clear that a 'female BBC news presenter might be forced to wear heels' when she was on air. The BBC responded to the criticism by making a promise to no longer dictate to its female presenters on their appearance. 'Women on TV: how to break through the glass ceiling', BBC news, 26 February 2015. BBC executives argued that this showed how far the BBC had come from being the stuffy, middle-class broadcaster of the 1950s to becoming one of the first news organisations in the world to employ only female senior managers, editors and on-screen presenters. But how had it come to this point? How did the BBC, once the very bastion of middle-class conservatism, come to accept its place as a provider for 'alternative news'? ### CHAPTER 12 ### **THE BOOM AND BUST OF THE NEWS AGENCY** How could the BBC's flagship evening news programme survive without a regular on-air columnist to criticise its output? The BBC struggled to keep a 'balance' between the BBC News' two main presenters – and the 'balance' wasn't to be found in the main news editor's office. Instead, the BBC News had to be balanced in the words of its presenters, whose comments would be balanced for all to hear. For weeks, BBC News executives sat in their office agonising over whether they should replace Jon Sopel with Andrew Neil. There was no real discussion about whether the issue at hand was good or bad. It was simply whether the BBC should present a different point of view to readers of the _Telegraph_. 'Doing a deal with the _Telegraph_ is the end of the BBC,' said the BBC executive. 'It's a disaster in terms of their influence on viewers. They're just another news outlet. The BBC's role should be to provide an alternative to them. No broadcaster should be agreeing to have a regular column in a newspaper.' Everyone, including Jon Sopel, was forced to accept that the _Telegraph_ 's chief political correspondent, Peter Oborne, had an influence on how the broadcaster reported news, even if it was in a small way, using its 'national editors'. It was the perfect storm. The pressure from the _Telegraph_ could be felt in the corridors of Broadcasting House and it wouldn't go away. Within the BBC, the most senior figures understood what it meant to be in the middle of a storm. Their lives had to change. This was happening because of the emergence of new competitors. Some BBC executives could feel that the very fabric of their business was being altered because of the arrival of the internet, television and the emergence of new players such as ITV. BBC News, the main rival to the _Telegraph_ , was no longer the only game in town. The _Telegraph_ had grown in popularity during the years that the BBC had dominated television news in Britain. The _Telegraph_ could not afford to allow its rivals to become the new big players in news, not if it wanted to preserve its influence on public opinion. This, of course, was not entirely what happened. The _Telegraph_ 's influence didn't just extend to its rivals. It extended to politicians. With all the new interest in news coming from politicians, and with a daily audience that was higher than anything ever seen, there was a lot that