In her first major keynote speech since becoming Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lisa Nandy set out the new Labour government’s priorities for the UK’s diverse media industry. Nandy, the Member of Parliament for Wigan since 2010, used her speech to emphasise a new era of relations between the media and government. Her first meeting in her new role was with popular children’s TV personality Hacker T Dog.
This meeting was important to Nandy as she believes children’s television gives communities a connection to who they see on screen and a belief that broadcasters are telling their stories. This belief is at the core of Nandy’s department; the media thrives when people see themselves and their communities on screen. However, she admits this will be challenging given the ongoing technological and media revolutions.
In 2009, eleven million newspapers were sold in the UK, whereas now many people reach for their phones to receive news from TikTok and other social media platforms. While acknowledging that the challenges brought about by new technologies are not new, Nandy admitted that new technologies can damage the relationship between the media and government. Nandy does not want this to happen under her watch, instead wanting to emphasise a new relationship between the government and media following a “dark and divisive decade”.
Nandy also declared the “era of governments stoking culture wars is over, as without holding truth to power, we can never remedy the collapse in trust in politics”. This brought Nandy onto the topic of public service broadcasting, something the Labour government believes in. As we witness profound changes to how and where people get their news, broadcasters such as the BBC matter.
Nandy believes that without PSBs, “warring political sides can construct their own narrative through different news outlets, resulting in us being unable to understand one another”, as occurred this summer when riots erupted throughout the UK following the spread of unchecked disinformation. To prevent the spread of disinformation, the government wants to utilise new powers brought in through the Media Act as well as an upcoming Online Safety Act to reform the regulations of TV and Radio. This will ensure that as the media rapidly changes, so do the regulations.
Finally, Nandy criticised the film and TV industry for being one of the most “centralised and exclusive industries in the UK”, and it is Nandy’s mission that her department celebrates the UK’s rich diversity, so people know their contribution to society is valued. She praised the creator of the BBC’s Peaky Blinders efforts to recruit local people in Birmingham as he converts disused factories to film studio, calling on more companies to undertake similar projects. Nandy’s speech showed a resetting of the media and government’s relationships with a commitment from the government to support the media industry during turbulent times.
The speech also showed Nandy’s belief that the industry must become decentralised to support local communities.