Professor Jean Seaton, Professor of Media History at the University of Westminster, wrote an article for The Conversation about leaked information from the government to The Sunday Times.
Talking about the leaked information and what it might mean, Professor Seaton said: “‘Leaks’ from No 10 to the Sunday Times published on September 27 about the anointing of Charles Moore and Paul Dacre as the next chairs of the BBC and Ofcom may have been intended to distract the British public from the government’s performance on COVID-19. Getting people into a lather about the BBC is a good tactic. I have, however, no doubt that this is a serious proposition: these candidates are not merely being ‘floated’, they are the Downing Street choices.”
She later added: “More widely, the leak implies a new politicisation of public life, where it is taken for granted that the currently vacant public roles will need to be filled by people who are not merely Conservative but only from that narrow fraction that is sympathetic to the particular strand of conservatism now in power, or members of the court around the prime minister, Boris Johnson. This narrows the pool of talent to a microscopic puddle.”
Read the full article on The Conversation’s website.
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