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This article examines the evolution of public service broadcasting (PSB) regulation in the UK, contrasting two opposing perspectives on its role and addressing its contemporary challenges. Analysing the historical context and recent regulatory changes, the article argues that PSB remains vital to the UK's media landscape, providing high quality content and serving the public good. However, it identifies technological advancements and political interference as significant threats to its continued success. The article critically evaluates the draft Media Bill's potential to address these challenges and enhance PSB's competitiveness. Additionally, it raises concerns about potential bias within the regulatory body, Ofcom, urging greater transparency and fairness in its oversight of the media market. The article emphasises the need for a robust regulatory framework to ensure the continued viability of PSB and foster a vibrant and diverse media ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Impartiality has been a core principle of public service broadcasting (PSB) in the UK for 100 years. However, it is under growing pressure as audiences increasingly rely on more opinion led content on television and especially online. The hostility towards PSB has been fuelled by politicians and commercial media undermining the value of regulation in the twenty‐first century. The UK regulator, Ofcom, has offered a flexible approach to oversight which the authors argue may have contributed to further confusion over what impartiality is, and its value in a competitive media environment. Greater independence, accountability and transparency—for both broadcasters and regulator—are suggested to be vital to maintaining the value of impartiality in PSB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine Brian Winston's defence of freedom of expression as a key Enlightenment principle and his criticisms of broadcasting regulation in the UK for departing from it. I also focus on the notion of harm, deriving from John Stuart Mill, that Winston employs to indicate where the limits of freedom of expression should lie. Winston complains that notions of offence and insult have increasingly expanded definitions of harm and so narrowed the bounds of freedom of expression. I use this critique as the starting point for an analysis of the regime of online regulation currently being proposed by the UK government in the form of the Online Safety Bill. This, I argue, threatens to create an unwieldy, unaccountable and unnecessary state apparatus of online censorship, operates with far too broad and vague a notion of harm, and will see material expelled from the online world which is entirely legal in the offline world. I conclude by examining recent proposals from the Law Commission for bringing the regulation of certain categories of online and offline communications into line, and for clarifying what is actually meant by harm in certain specific pieces of legislation. I argue that the commission's carefully delimited approach to the issue of harm in the communications sphere is greatly preferable to the regulatory Behemoth proposed by the Online Safety Bill, which would very seriously endanger the communicative freedoms espoused by Brian Winston. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]