I guess I should send whoever is writing Andy Burnham‘s speeches a copy of Can You Trust The Media?

Standards are what have kept British broadcasting valued, celebrated and trusted in the UK and around the world. And I think they are becoming more, not less, important to traditional print and broadcast media as we look to the future.

Being trusted has never been more important. People are still relying heavily on TV news – despite the explosion in information sources. And trust is what people value most, particularly in news, as the Ofcom phase 1 PSB review recently found…

With so much of the online world untrusted, I feel we should preserve standards of accuracy, impartiality and trustworthiness, rather than dismantle them. People still use the internet and TV for different reasons and with different expectations and we mustn’t forget that.

Lower standards and you lose the trust and the public support that goes with it. Lose trust and you lower the quality, you lose innovation, you lose the ability of programme makers to take risks, you lose new possibilities, new talent goes undiscovered, and high quality programming is compromised.

This is the context in which we must consider the recent phone voting scandals and it is why it is a very significant issue. In my view, this has holed broadcasters just above the waterline in terms of public trust – damaging but not fatal.