Broadcasting history was held to reveal the truth of this position. In the founding moments of the BBC, just after the 1926 General Strike, John Reith, the first director-general, famously wrote to his managers explaining that the BBC, in the best traditions of the press, was independent: “...but, on the other hand, since the BBC was a national institution, and since the Government in this crisis were acting for the people, the BBC was for the Government in the crisis too”. Balance? Shmalance!

As it began, so it went on. In the 1930s, the liberal Helen Matheson, the admired head of the feisty Talks Department, who had been Lady Astor's private secretary, was fired, but so was Vernon Bartlett, a pro-Nazi, ex-Daily Mail journalist who was the Berlin correspondent. By 1938, the net result of these “balanced” cavortings, was, in the words of the BBC's chief news editor, John Coatman, that “in the past we have not played the part which our duty to the people of this country called upon us to play. We have, in fact, taken part in a conspiracy of silence”.

Silence remained the order of the day. In 1942, to preserve “balance”, Beveridge was kept from the microphone, unable to present his blueprint for national insurance. A bit controversial, don't you know (despite being published under the aegis of a coalition government). In the name of “balance”, a bloke from MI5 sat for decades in Broadcasting House vetting “sensitive appointments” and marking any suspect's personnel file with that most wonderful badge of honour, an upside-down Christmas tree. (Someone's still doing this, for all we know.) But Mr Hitler and “This is London calling” gave the BBC a brilliant PR smokescreen of “independence”, thereby creating, in the red-blooded socialist language of John Prescott, a “brand” of worldwide renown.

Refined responses

By 1990, the rules were being written down in ever-expanding detail, e g: “While broadcasters should deal even-handedly with opposing points of view in the arena of democratic debate, it does not mean that ‘balance' is required in any simple mathematical sense or that equal time must be given to each opposing point of view.” Nevertheless, the injunctions, exhortations and prohibitions were still largely crass – for example, the demand that “opinion should be clearly distinguished from fact”. Fact. There's a quaint old Newtonian idea.

Enter now the “Ofcomers”. The new lords of the media universe (except, of course, of those bits they are not regulating) have statutory duties laid on them by the 2003 Communications Act, which established Ofcom, to ensure, among much, much else, that:

• There are “high general standards” of “content” and “quality”.
• Programmes are made with “professional skill and editorial integrity”.
• “Appropriate” provision is made for “a comprehensive and authoritative coverage of news and current affairs”.
• News must be of “high quality”.
• Time given over to news and current affairs must constitute “what appears to Ofcom to be an appropriate proportion of time”.
• There shall be “due impartiality” on:
  
  -Matters of political or industrial controversy.
  -Matters of current public policy.
  -Matters likely to offend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

The genius of this liberal democracy's broadcast media policy has been that regulation is applied seldom and then, usually, more or less in secret. On occasion the system even produces public bust-ups which usefully serve to camouflage the essential mendacity of the independence and balance on offer. The cataclysmic Kelly affair can be seen in this light and has only blown the gaff on the real power relations between broadcasters and politicians because a number of the placemen inside the BBC seemed to have fallen for the original con. They really believed in the myth of their independence. On the other hand, holding the BBC to account in the way it has been done wouldn't get the Government past an even more elementary test of the concept of free expression in a democracy.

Of course, for centuries, upsetting a politician in the press has not been any sort of indictable offence. The Mail on Sunday was just as implicated as Dyke in the Gilligan affair, but editor-in-chief Paul Dacre and editor Peter Wright were not invited to the Hutton shindig. There's the rub. Anthony Lester, Liberal peer and QC, wrote in The Guardian (31 January 2004) that if Blair felt he had been libelled his course of action was clear, like anybody else's. He should have sued, as his predecessors Wilson and Major had done. It is fitting that Lord Lester's chambers are named after Blackstone, the great 18th century lawyer whose commentaries on the laws of England in 1765 suggested that there should be “no prior restraint” on publishing expression. Blackstone was pointing up the implications of a position taken in 1695 when Edward Clarke MP argued for the abolition of media content control (then in the form of the Printing Act) by pointing out that it was “very needless”. No libertarian, Clarke envisaged not a free-for-all but merely an acknowledgement that the laws of libel, sedition, blasphemy and the rest rendered specific media control unnecessary.

Dodgy assertions

It's time to let go of nurse and make, for the broadcast media, the great leap forward into 1696. Ofcom's content board is a disgrace and should be abolished, the spurious “balance” requirement with it. We used to think such things were claptrap. They still are.