The Examiner has been your local news title for more than 130 years. We are proud of our long history of keeping the people of Huddersfield informed and entertained since we were founded in 1890.
Since we launched YorkshireLive in 2020, we’ve widened that brief to the whole county - and our readership is bigger than ever. It’s our job to provide trusted, balanced local journalism for the communities we serve. We carry out that work with great pride and responsibility - our journalists care as much about Yorkshire as our readers do.
That’s why we campaign on issues that matter to local people, such as the terrible impact of knife crime through our Bin the Knife, Save a Life awareness campaign , or on celebrating everything that makes Yorkshire so special through Explore Yorkshire . Our communities need trusted local media to stand up for them and hold power to account. But the BBC is on a mission to be the only show in town.
READ MORE: Heartbreaking case of emaciated dogs kept outside and starved
It has taken the local out of local radio, drastically cutting the number of hours of locally produced shows on BBC Radio Leeds - and intends to write more news online, directly competing with YorkshireLive at a time when we are battling with tech platforms like Google, Meta and Apple for a fair share of the value generated by the content we create. The BBC’s funding is guaranteed by the licence fee, meaning the British public is underwriting the biggest threat local journalism has ever faced.
It is choosing to push that money towards local news websites, thereby making it increasingly difficult for proud, independent news sites like YorkshireLive to survive in the long term. None of us have asked for this - and the effect on a free press will be catastrophic. Imagine a country where there is only one voice - and that voice is connected to the state, and which cannot, due its need to be neutral, fight on your behalf.
It sounds like it couldn’t happen here. But if the BBC’s plans are not stopped, that is the road we will be on. A publicly-funded organisation is quickly establishing itself as the single biggest threat to the survival of local, independent journalism in the UK.
The BBC says it wants to be a good neighbour to local newspapers. But if these plans go ahead, they will be remembered as the point where the power of big tech and the BBC merged to crush the proud, British tradition of a free, diverse and independent media. What a shameful legacy that would be for Tim Davie, the 17th Director-General of the BBC.
The idea is that the BBC will produce more news online to meet demand it says is there. Making aggressive moves into sections of the market served by commercial and independent operators is not what a public service broadcaster was set up to do. This comes at a time when the local independent press is particularly vulnerable. Our reporters hold local decision-makers to account, campaign on your behalf, research and share essential information and hold up the mirror to local successes.
But the press which has represented the interests of communities for generations has been battling two major threats in recent years. American tech companies - Google and Facebook - have been allowed to take the lion’s share of the advertising revenues that our stories generate. And the explosion of the internet means that many of us now read news on phones or laptops, rather than buying a paper as we used to.
And the BBC’s move into online publishing has accustomed us to believing news is free. In reality, news is expensive to produce. It always has been. Getting reporters and photographers out onto the streets of Yorkshire, turning what they see into an accurate story you want to read in a format that suits you - that is a finely-balanced process. It’s also governed by legal principles as a key function of a democratic society.
Without advertising money, without readers buying papers, our ability to do this suffers. This is the behind the scenes battle The Examiner has been fighting for years, with only you, the reader, as our support. This battle is the reason behind changes you might have noticed in the way your local paper has had to operate to survive.
The BBC doesn’t have to worry about any of this, because it is funded by what amounts to a mandatory tax. A tax that will land you in court if you don’t - or can’t - pay it.
Which brings us to where we are now. A huge publicly-funded organisation, using your money, and its power, to embark on a project which will reduce the number of places you can get your news.
None of this is to say that the BBC doesn’t have an important, long-cherished function in our society. But an organisation like the BBC can be trusted precisely because it is one voice among many - part of a system that has evolved over decades. Its function is to support our democracy - not weaken it by silencing independent voices which carry their own authority.
That delicate system of media checks and balances has been fighting for its survival for years. And now it could be lost overnight. The BBC says its plans will deliver 'a stronger and more distinctive local online news service for 43 different local areas in England'. In reality, the sector as a whole will be anything but ‘stronger’ and ‘more distinctive’ if this scheme is allowed to go ahead.
The Government is taking welcome steps to tackle the market abuses by Meta and Google through the Digital Markets Bill, which we hope will create a level playing field between publishers and tech platforms.
Now it is time to rein in the BBC as well. To remind it that it is at its best when it is not trying to compete with businesses that don’t share its advantages - and that if it wants to compete like a business, then it should be willing to give those advantages up.
Don't let the BBC silence YorkshireLive and other regional media
14
5
05.12.2023
The Examiner has been your local news title for more than 130 years. We are proud of our long history of keeping the people of Huddersfield informed and entertained since we were founded in 1890.
Since we launched YorkshireLive in 2020, we’ve widened that brief to the whole county - and our readership is bigger than ever. It’s our job to provide trusted, balanced local journalism for the communities we serve. We carry out that work with great pride and responsibility - our journalists care as much about Yorkshire as our readers do.
That’s why we campaign on issues that matter to local people, such as the terrible impact of knife crime through our Bin the Knife, Save a Life awareness campaign , or on celebrating everything that makes Yorkshire so special through Explore Yorkshire . Our communities need trusted local media to stand up for them and hold power to account. But the BBC is on a mission to be the only show in town.
READ MORE: Heartbreaking case of emaciated dogs kept outside and starved
It has taken the local out of local radio, drastically cutting the number of hours of locally produced shows on BBC Radio Leeds - and intends to write more news online, directly competing with YorkshireLive at a time when we are battling with tech platforms like Google, Meta and Apple for a fair share of the value generated by the content we create. The BBC’s funding is guaranteed by the licence fee, meaning........
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