A point about whats happening, that is relevant to this thread and another one (just made a similar point there).
The BBC and other media outlets are supposed to be about holding power to account.
In recent years the ability to do this has MASSIVELY been curtailed by the rise of social media.
For the BBC the impact has been two fold: firstly in the instant world of social media, fact checking isn't valued, speed is. The BBC cant do its traditional fact checking, without being behind the curve. Secondly there's been massive issues for the BBC in terms of remaining solvent. The only way its been able to do this is to make MASSIVE cuts to its number of journalists.
It means that it can't be so shit on on the case of any politician. This in turn means those best at PR can be most slippery. If you can do a polished interview you can spout bollocks and get it away with it in a way you couldn't previously.
But the bigger impact that fuelled public dissatifaction probably has been the loss of local newspapers. There is now virtually no accountability at that level of governance, and this means local councillors can get away with things that they probably never could in the past. And that travels upwards into wider discontent.
This has pretty much lead to this creation of Two Britains with totally different world views:
One which is essentially viewed as 'The Establishment' This is settled middle class, we are doing ok and are fairly comfortable Britain who like the status quo and probably have fairly middle management jobs or are in education to that. They are more progressive in nature and travel fairly regularly, wanting to take in other cultures.
The other is dissatisfied Britain. Who have have a fair amount of contempt for the safe middle class management and everything it represents. To them its unfair HR or overly beaurcractic ideas or pointless training days on diversity in the workplace which are viewed as more important than actually spending time doing 'the real job'. They possibly have lived in the same place their whole lives and don't have much need or use for the world beyond that. They want things to be straightforward and simple. But they see this as impossible and that their local community is being destroyed in some way or another (community decline is connected a lot with migration patterns - which can be foreign OR domestic, economic and social participation levels). Further to that its about this concept of bullshit generation whilst ignoring those day to day issues of community decline: Example police spending time on a promoting LGBT awareness rather than investigating who stole my car or insisting you spend three days doing diversity training where you are taught that you are evil and bigoted for refusing to believe in gender or spending millions on new leaflets removing the word woman in the NHS, when you can't get a basic referral for cancer at your local hospital.
The politician PR drives to deflect from why they aren't solving problems are a MASSIVE part of the distrust. They all do it regardless of whether they are in power or not.
The classic one this week is banning phones in school, even though most schools already have a ban. Which will do fuck all to resolve online harms which is a difficult subject.
But as I say its not just the Cons in power. The same thing is true when you have MPs blocking on twitter and refusing to engage on certain subjects because they just don't like the person's opinion - the refusal to explore WHY the person sees this as an issue is a really big problem.
Anything 'difficult' can just be ignored, rather than power being held to account.
How do you solve this issue? - well how do you bring people back into the mainstream, restore trust and conversations in separate echo chambers?
You start by admitting there is a problem with bias and an inbility to challenge the spin of politicians by the likes of the BBC and to get to the real heart of a issue. That involves acknowledging there are some really difficult conversations that need to be addressed involving interest groups and individuals you don't like and that cancel culture is effectively diversive and driving the issue in many ways.
On the one hard you have the narrative of a diversity drive being a positive thing that enables ethnic minorities to have opportunities they never had. On the other hand you have the idea that diversity drives are't helpful if they essentially create the concept of the 'oppresser' to be Bob from Blackpool who can't get to hospital because he can't afford a taxi and there's no bus anymore and he wasn't alive in the 1700 to early 1800s and his own relatives were in a hovel trying to not die from dysentry and starvation were almost as just at much at the mercy of the British Upper Classes as any one else in the rest of the Empire.
It has a tone deafness to a huge number of problems of our current era and it ultimately is directed at individuals who have much less agency of their own in real terms than they are given credit for. Its all about political blind spots which become bigger when you stay in your safe echo chamber and don't go out of it because its not a vote winner anyway so its not worth your time and effect.
Again this isn't to say we SHOULDN'T be encouraging better representative. The issue is the narrative accompanying it and the neglect of real time social issues in order to drive these narratives. And this DOES come the media who are cheer leading them as wholly good with no unintended consequences.
Its an era of New Puritanism. But New Puritanism doesn't save people from poverty and suffering anymore than Puritanism and God saved anyone when it first had its day (not that Puritanism was a key feature of the Civil War Era).
In terms of getting down to Reality and Real Issues - this is where there is a serious blind spot in our society. Its driving misinformation and the rise of alternative facts - particularly amongst those who are less educated and less well able to articulate an argument in a PR friendly and polished style acceptable to the tastes of the Middle Class. And the BBC is DEFINITELY guilty on this front. And politicians are DEFINITELY guilty on this front.
Whats noticable is the most right wing politicians are the ones who have picked up on the problem most, to their personal advantage rather than because they want to fix the issues it present. Again this ISNT restricted to the UK either - there are plenty of examples throughout the rest of the world.
In terms of GB News I find it hard to argue bias greater than other broadcasters at this point for those reasons. And it absoluetely pains me to say that. I also don't think Ofcom really has the grasp of this either.
Its way beyond just being an issue in broadcasting. Its a total schism in British Society as a whole.
I'll pose this point: How does Rishi Sunak reach certain voters if they are alienated from the BBC (and perhaps start to pull them more left and away from the Reform Party)? Conversely its not worth Keir Starmers time to appeal to those same voters, because thats not where any extra vote for him will come from because they are too politically removed from his position. THATS the problem here. And in saying that Sunak can not do an interview to an audience of that nature, its fundamentally undermining democracy in a way.
Its such a DIFFICULT subject because its so broad, and really the whole womans rights v trans right thing is just a teeny tiny part of the whole thing.
(goes to do something more productive with the rest of my afternoon)