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What the speakers said

Baroness Virginia Bottomley

• I think the world is moving so fast, and the balance for what is acceptable between the Press, the government, and the readers will change with time.
• For those of us in western democracies we become paranoid about newspapers because when we're hoping to be elected we're sensitive about every last comment, and every last editorial. We're looking for bias, we're looking for distortion.
• Our watchword has always been diversity of view and plurality of ownership as being the way forward. In a modern and changing world nothing is set.
• The British Broadcasting Corporation is highly regarded by the public for its news content.
• In British newspapers, there's a much greater tolerance for comment. In many newspapers you see lots of gossip, lots of opinion, lots of attitude without the same need for the total balance in integrity that is required of the electronic media.

Lord Thomas McNally

• The growth of giant global media corporations are a danger to the independence of the journalistic profession and to national and cultural identity.
• In the debate now going on in Britain about the future of the BBC, it is essential that the BBC retains its independence of government and its capacity to inform, educate and entertain.
• A free Press is a bulwark against bad or unjust government and an essential component of a free society.
• While the new technologies create circumstances whereby media can be more accurate, people better informed and government more responsive to popular will than ever before, it is equally true that the new technologies are capable of unleashing dark forces which threaten the peace, stability and prosperity of our planet.
• More than half (53 per cent) say that they often don't trust what news organisations say. Just one in three think that the Press usually gets the facts right.
• There is an increasing tendency in the media to create “view papers” with a strong editorial line linked and meshed into the news reporting.

Peter Bottomley

• Journalists stand in the frontline like soldiers.
• Human cost of news is worst than ever before.
• There are awards for outstanding journalists, awards that recognise that journalists around the world who do things that are brave and uncomfortable endanger their lives.

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