Introduction: From Public Mission to Public Mood
The recent controversy surrounding the BBC’s edited footage of President Trump’s 2021 post-election statements is more than a journalistic misstep. It is a reminder of a long-standing truth about broadcasting itself: the medium is structurally drawn towards drama, simplification, and emotional confirmation. When the BBC spliced together footage in a way that critics say misrepresented Trump’s tone and meaning, it did not merely err; it acted according to the underlying pressures that govern all modern broadcasters — the pressure to hold attention, shape a compelling narrative, and retain audience trust in a fiercely competitive media landscape.
Yet this is a far cry from how broadcasting began.
A Short History: When Broadcasting Still Had a Mission
Early radio broadcasters in the 1920s and 1930s—and later public television—were built around an almost moral purpose. The BBC, founded in 1922 under John Reith, did not see itself as an entertainment company. It saw itself as a national tutor. Reith’s famous mandate, formulated in the early 1920s, was simple and severe:
to inform, to educate, to entertain — in that order.
Broadcasting was conceived as a public good, almost a civic sacrament: a way of lifting the moral and intellectual tone of the nation, binding citizens together in a shared culture of seriousness, clarity and common purpose. In Germany too, early public broadcasting (RRG and later NWDR/ARD) was shaped by the post-war determination to build democratic resilience, civic literacy, and a calm, sober national conversation.
For a while, this worked. News bulletins were plain and factual; debates were formal; national broadcasters believed they had a duty to speak truth with restraint, not theatricality.
But the pressures that gradually transformed the media ecosystem — commercial competition, falling attention spans, political polarisation, and the shift from shared national culture to fragmented identity groups — pushed broadcasting away from its Reithian roots.
The Drift Towards Drama
Today, the motivations are different.
Broadcasters compete for clicks, views, and emotional loyalty. They operate in an environment where
– attention is the currency,
– emotion is the engine, and
– Confirmation bias is the bond between audience and broadcaster.
This is why so many modern news programmes—whether establishment, populist, partisan, or “alternative”—gravitate toward exaggeration, indignation, and oversimplification. It is not that journalists have become less intelligent. It is that the medium rewards drama and punishes nuance.
The BBC–Trump incident is therefore not an aberration. It is a symptom of a deeper shift: broadcasting has moved from a mission to a market, from public instruction to emotional reinforcement, from seeking truth to securing audience attachment.
What These Programmes Actually Offer
When you look closely at typical party-political broadcasting — on any side — you see the same pattern.
The programme offers:
– no nuanced analysis (because the programme is too short for analysis),
– no balanced data (because the programme only has time to present its main arguments),
– no alternative viewpoints (protagonists rarely, if ever, examine their opponents’ point of view),
– no context for judicial decisions or migration law (the programme assumes the viewers already know about these),
– no verification of claims (because the programme is too short for in-depth analysis and wishes to give prominence to its main arguments),
– no separation between legitimate concerns and generalised assertions (typical of most heated arguments regardless of party politics).
Conclusion: the tone of such programmes is typical of party-political broadcasting. I would be surprised if there were any truly neutral broadcasters. All of these programmes are sensational and essentially for entertainment purposes only.
In that sense, populist outlets and “respectable” broadcasters inhabit the same ecosystem. They differ in style and polish, but not in the basic structural temptation: to dramatise, simplify, and affirm.
Why Audiences Prefer This Style
There are clear psychological reasons why audiences gravitate toward emotionally charged, simplified, partisan broadcasting. Programmes built on strong opinion rather than careful reasoning make few demands on the viewer. They offer ready-made judgements, not cognitive labour. They also confirm the listener’s existing beliefs — and this confirmation produces a sense of comfort, even pleasure. Humans are naturally drawn to drama, conflict, comedy, and narrative exaggeration; these require no analysis and deliver instant emotional reward.
But the dynamic is not one-sided.
It would be unfair to claim that all producers deliberately manipulate audiences for political gain. Most believe sincerely in the stories they tell. Yet it is true that media institutions — including the BBC — can drift towards particular worldviews as their management and editorial teams come to share similar assumptions, priorities, and ideological instincts. The result is not conspiracy but cultural alignment: a collective mindset that subtly shapes which stories are emphasised, which are minimised, and how events are dramatised or framed.
In other words, the attraction is mutual. Viewers tune in not primarily to be informed, but to feel vindicated, understood, entertained, or emotionally energised. Broadcasters respond — consciously or unconsciously — by giving audiences exactly what keeps them watching.
This reciprocal loop of expectation and confirmation is what drives modern broadcasting far more powerfully than its former commitment to calm, public-spirited neutrality.
From Mission to Marketplace
Here we arrive at the blunt economic truth.
The main purpose of any broadcasting is to make money to cover necessary production expenses and provide income for its producers. That, I would say, is the bottom line.
Once broadcasting ceased to be a scarce public utility and became a global free-for-all, this logic intensified. We now have millions of publishers and channels worldwide: traditional TV stations, streaming services, YouTube creators, podcasters, TikTok accounts, and countless niche outlets. Everyone is, in effect, a micro-broadcaster.
But we not only like comedy and tragedy; we also love to communicate — again, as personal confirmation bias. We do not simply want to be entertained; we want to speak and be heard, to see our opinions reflected and reinforced, and to join a tribe of like-minded voices.
Modern broadcasting, in all its forms, sits at the junction of these forces:
– economic profit,
– emotional drama,
– and psychological confirmation.
The Confirmation Loop
At the heart of it lies a simple mechanism:
If I say something, I seek confirmation.
If I watch something, I seek my own views confirmed.
Broadcasters speak into the void and listen for echoes in the form of ratings, clicks, comments, donations, and subscriptions. Audiences tune in not as neutral observers but as participants in a shared emotional script.
This is why so much modern media feels like theatre: it is comedy, tragedy, and melodrama performed under the banner of “news”.
Why I Write
Then I ask why I publish my own thoughts on my website and on Facebook.
I think I have enough belief in my own conclusions not to need confirmation. Besides, as far as possible, they are researched and evidenced. I do not promote myself aggressively, because I do not wish to impose a point of view but to provoke debate. I hope that people will “find” my articles rather than having them thrust under their noses.
And here is another strand: I regard my thoughts as my children — what might be a legacy for posterity and give me some measure of eternity.
If someone reads it — fine.
If not, it still exists, and existence is enough.
In that sense, my writing runs counter to the dominant logic of broadcasting. It is not designed for maximum reach, virality, or monetisation. It is closer to the older, quieter tradition of publication: placing something into the world and then letting it go.
Shakespeare and the Idea of Survival
This impulse gives a peculiar sort of life to Shakespeare’s sonnet.
“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”
The poem does not beg for attention; it simply is. Its existence is its endurance. As long as it can be read, something of the poet and the subject remains.
In a very modest way, I think of my own writing like this. Not as “content” to be pushed, sliced, and recycled, but as a small archive of thought that might outlast me.
Broadcasting and Its Alternatives
This brings me back to the purpose and goals of broadcasting.
At its best, broadcasting can still inform, educate, and even ennoble. There are documentaries that illuminate, interviews that genuinely probe, and discussions that respect complexity. But these are exceptions, often struggling for space in a medium increasingly shaped by economics and emotion.
Most of what we call broadcasting now — whether on legacy channels or online platforms — is caught in a triangle of:
– profit,
– drama,
– and confirmation.
It offers little nuanced analysis — but this is less a flaw of the programme than a feature of modern broadcasting itself. Short-form media is not designed for depth. Yet even this comparison hides a deeper change. The town crier who once walked through the village square shouting “Oyez! Oyez!” was not delivering political sound bites or ideological battle cries; he was conveying essential information — market days, lost property, civic announcements, emergencies. His role was communal and factual. Modern broadcasters, by contrast, often use the same short, memorable format to deliver opinion, drama, and emotional cues. The form has stayed the same; the content has shifted from informing the public to stimulating it.
