now on bbc news. it's time for the media show. hello. can a savvy media strategy save borisjohnson? headline—grabbing policies are being rolled out this week in what's been dubbed operation red meat. but is there really such an operation? we're also looking at the apparently cosy relationship between those in government who set policy and the media, which is supposed to hold them to account. and we're asking what the new bbc licence fee deal means for the industry at large. let me introduce you to my guests. first, joeyjones was spokesman for theresa may when she was home secretary. before that, he was a deputy political editor at sky news. helen lewis writes for the atlantic. laura hughes is political correspondent for the financial times. and phil riley is the chief executive of boom radio and has had a long career in commercial radio, including running chrysalis and overseeing its sale to global. and, phil, we'll be talking a lot in the programme about the revolving door between journalism and politics. and times radio have just snapped up ruth davidson, the former scottish conservative leader. why are ex—politicians so popular with you radio executives? any room for one more on boom radio? well, i actually started back in lbc... when i was chief exec there in 2004, we invited tony blair to do a phone—in and literally sit there and push the faders and take the calls, so i'm probably to blame for all of this. yeah, now they're all at it, aren't they? i think we took the view, and certainly the people that now run lbc have taken this to fantastic level, that, actually, it's great to have an unmediated opportunity for listeners to speak directly to politicians. it's great thatjournalists do, and the journalists have got knowledge and detail to bring to the party, but it's great also to be able to have real people, unmediated, talking directly and getting the views of politicians. and i think it's a good thing and it's been a good thing for democracy, and it'll be interesting to see how ruth gets on on times radio. good luck to them. 0k, phil, we'll come back to you in a moment. but let's start with the dramatic scenes that i expect will be dominating tomorrow's front pages. borisjohnson appeared at prime minister's questions today after a pretty dramatic morning, which included an mp defecting from the conservatives to labour. what did you make of it all, laura hughes, political correspondent at the ft? well, it was... not to sound like a football commentator, but it was an event of two halves. at the beginning, you started with this enormous bombshell of a tory mp defecting to the labour partyjust minutes before the prime minister faced parliament. and that felt like a real, real sort of moment which actually served in the prime minister's favour, because i think it scooped a few tory mps who were feeling a bit nervous now. but then, at the very end of prime minister's questions, david davis, a former cabinet minister, a very sort of senior, veteran tory, stood up and delivered this extraordinarily dramatic line to the prime minister, where he quoted a former tory cabinet minister in 1940, basically telling chamberlain it was time to go. and that was incredibly damaging for a prime minister who we all know wants to be winston churchill, not neville chamberlain. and i think we can hear that now, that sound bite which will be played in all the bulletins, i imagine. so i'll remind him of a quotation - altogether too familiar to him of leo amery. to neville chamberlain. you have sat there too long - for all the good you have done. in the name of god, go. joeyjones, you're the former spokesman for theresa may, as well as having worked at sky. i mean, tell us, how does it work from the inside? will the political spin rooms be operating like crazy, kind of making sure that their lines, their views, their spin is reported in the press today and tomorrow? well, i sat in the press gallery, obviously, as a journalist a number of times, and in the press gallery, you can actually see the two teams from the two sides, if you like — the spinners, the heads of communication. and they struggle to have pokerfaces, if you like, as pmqs is actually going on and not to to wince or to sort of punch the air with delight when their contender lands a blow. so what will they be doing today? what will be happening now? actually, i think boris johnson's team will have felt most of the time that it was a better pmqs for him than last week. and i think that it was quite a scrappy pmqs in general. and the tone was odd because the labour party, with their new recruit, were in very boisterous form, and that meant that there was much more sort of cut and thrust between levity, actually, and mockery from keir starmer towards the prime minister that borisjohnson was much better equipped to deal with than the contrition that you could see he found very difficult at last week's pmqs and, indeed, notably, in that interview that took place with beth rigby yesterday. we can see why you were good at your spinning job back then! helen lewis from the atlantic, that quote from david davis, you know, it's the kind of quote that newspaper editors dream of, isn't it? yeah. i thought it was very. interesting to go back and have a look at the hansard records of that 1940 debate . because leo amery, who delivered - it the first time... well, the second time, after 0liver cromwell also sort of whispered it. . and that was, to me, - the most interesting thing. the kind of drag ends i of pmqs — without being rude to backbench mps — i can often deteriorate into, "would the prime i minister like to say anything about the opening of my new garden centre?"j and so what was interesting was, asjoey says, - it was a very heckling pmqs. but, actually, when david davis stood up, it fell silent. - and i think that was because people - thought, "hang on a minute, this is the kind of guy- who might lob a grenade into the chamber!" - and sure enough, he did. and there have been some reports- since then, saying, "well, actually, - this and the defection have rallied _ the tory mp round| because they don't like kind of rank disloyalty." but i think it's very hard i to think of something else that is a more arresting i visual moment from today that it will be i on the bulletins. 0k, well, let's think about how borisjohnson and his team have responded to it all because, you know, we keep hearing news reports of something called 0peration red meat. laura hughes from the financial times, what is 0peration red meat? is it even real? it doesn't sound like it is real, but unfortunately it is. and the idea behind it is people around number 10 and around the prime minister are chucking out these big headline—grabbing announcements, in the hope that it will remind the great british public that the pm is focused on delivering for them and will distract away from all these party allegations, because that's what the pm's effectively trying to say every time he stands up, that, "let's stop talking about these ridiculous stories and, you know, let me get on with the job." but it's clearly been quite a rushed process of getting out these massive headline—grabbing announcements. the bbc funding one, for example, the ft reported this morning that there were cabinet ministers yesterday who were concerned they'd been bounced into supporting this. it was all very rushed. the same goes for the policy announcement that came a couple of days ago. so the government said they would send the military and the navy to help deal with the small boats crisis, and a lot of sort of royal navy chiefs and mps themselves on the tory side were criticising that. it all feels very rushed, a little bit desperate, to try and distract us all. and we will come back to the bbc licence fee later. butjoeyjones, you know, as someone who was theresa may's spokesman when she was home secretary, do you believe what's happened this week is a deliberate distraction technique? and did you ever resort to it? i think it was a pointless technique — i mean, a pointless attempt at distraction, if you like. i mean, either borisjohnson is being badly advised or he's being very well—advised and he's ignoring the advice. but whichever it is, he's ending up trying to, as i say, tick—box populist policies to allow some of his potential critics on the backbenches to feel that their hobbyhorse issue is being advanced at the same time as the british public and the activists, the tory activists, can see that he looks a broken man. and those optics, i think, have a much more profound impact than any policy that he might try to put forward in a sort of kneejerk reaction. and, helen lewis from the atlantic, i mean, in the sunday papers, various newspapers — the telegraph and sunday times — they were reporting it as a blizzard of crowd—pleasing policies. you know, laura's touched on it, but, you know, one of them was the announcement about the bbc licence fee. within a few hours, lo and behold, the culture secretary, nadine dorries, was tweeting on sunday about that bbc deal. so does that mean that we should see the bbc deal, as laura was suggesting, as part of operation dead meat? yes, one of the manyl operations going on... operation save big dog is, i think, _ still the worst—named of all the operations this week. l but what i thought was interesting. about that is the wayl that nadine dorries... obviously her team had briefed the mail. on sunday and then she tweeted about it, and then when it came to - the commons, she couldn't quite put the pedal- to the metal on that. and it became kind of, "i think we should all. have a really serious - debate about how the bbc's funded." now, there was a very good piece _ in the times this morning byjohn whittingdale — who is a very strong. critic of the bbc, was previously. at the culture brief — - saying what everybody knows, which is that if you want to abolish - the licence fee, it really falls i to you to come up with an alternative model. i and so far, no—one has managed to doj this to the satisfaction of everybody. - you know, advertising has got its huge problems. . lots of parents, for example, really love being able - to put their kids in. front of programming that doesn't have any advertising in it. - and any kind - of subscription model is very hard to do when a lot- of people who use bbc services, particularly older people, - don't have reliable broadband. yeah. i mean, i'd like to bring in phil riley here, chief executive of boom radio. you know, you've built up radio stations, you know commercial radio really well. let's take nadine dorries at face value. you know, if this is the last licence fee to be announced, as she's suggesting, how could the bbc be funded? helen was touching on a couple of options, but what are the options, do you think? i think helen hit the nail on the head, really. i don't think there is really another funding model that works for anything like the scale of bbc that we have today. subscription is an interesting idea, but it falls very badly when you consider that 18 million households in the uk access their television via freeview. it's impossible to put subscription on freeview. it hasn't got conditional access. so there's 80 million people who, if you take the bbc off them, the freeview model falls over. the bbc, if it were to go down a subscription route, simply can't have bbc radio any more — because radio is subscription—free. there's no subscription for radio, it's a free—to—air service, and no subscription company is going to throw £500—600 million a year into the pot of funding free—to—air radio. so then you get into whether or not you have to make the radio services ad—funded. that then has a knock on effect for the commercial sector, as well as having, i should say, a huge effect on bbc radio were it to be ad—funded. you can... yes, because... sorry to interrupt, but basically, you know, we could talk about — we probably will end up talking about — this licence fee over and over on the media show. we'll look at telly, but, you know, in terms of radio — which you know about — are you suggesting that, actually, it might affect the whole of radio in the uk, notjust the bbc? the whole of radio, yeah. my rough back—of—a—cigarette—packet calculation suggests that if you were to divest bbc radio in its totality from television, as a result of tv going subscription—only, you would have to... first of all, you'd have to close down, i'm afraid, bbc local radio and all the nations radio. they simply are not commercially sustainable, given their audience level and the costs involved. nobody would touch them in a privatised world and try and make money out of them. they're simply not commercially sustainable. so this isn't about making a kind of kneejerk "defend the bbc" case? no, absolutely. this is about thinking about the rest of the radio industry... absolutely. ..and how the commercial world would be affected? well, not only would all those bbc local and nations services close down, the bbc networks collectively — i, 2 3, 4 and 5 — could just about survive if they were prepared to cut their content costs by about 60%. well, good luck saving the good bits of the bbc that people know and love if you have to take 60% off the cost. and then the third leg of this is that the commercial sector... if the bbc, if the networks were taking commercials, the commercial sector would suddenly find its own revenue base cut back by 10%, 15%, 20%. therefore, the commercial sector is making no money. all of the investment that the commercial sector has put into radio over the past ten, 15, 20, 25 years, really, as commercial has really grown in the last 25 years, that's all for nothing, too. bbc radio is 100 years old this year. commercial radio is 50 years old next year. if this came to pass, it would be a terrible indictment on this government that they would throw away a cultural part of this country that is so well—established and that 90% of the population, you know, listen to every week. it really... you know, radio is always forgotten in these conversations, and it's terribly sad to see that, once again, that's the case. nadine dorries simply didn't even contemplate radio, probably, when she made her announcement. but there are people in the commercial sector who feel that bbc radio, for example, is too big, it strays into their territory. so what is their appetite out there for it to be reined in? i think, yes, we are constantly arguing to government and to ofcom that the bbc funding model, which is essentially public money, it's a tax in one form or another, needs to make sure that, then, the bbc adheres to the highest standards, in terms of the contract they have with ofcom. i think ofcom have been actually less forceful than the old bbc governors were, and i think that's a mistake, and we should — and we do — try and press ofcom harder on that. but it's radio 1 and radio 2 that people worry about as being too commercial and, you know, getting into territory that they shouldn't be in? to a degree, although i think you have to... you have to acknowledge, if you're going to allow the bbc to be in the radio business, it's going to have to be in most bits of the radio business, and therefore it will be in the popular music end. but we expect if they're being funded the way they are that they do more than just play the hits, that they have a breadth of music and a breadth of subject matter, which, you know, should be in a contract that they have with the population, if you like, through their ofcom contract. and that needs to be enforced. and the other element you've said, katie, is the bbc is extraordinarily well—funded compared to the commercial sector. and i think one of our concerns has always been that they appear to be so well—funded that they can then go and do things which are simply not possible for us to compete with, whether it's launching new services on a whim — without really checking whether they're filling a commercial need — or outbidding the commercial sector for massive amounts of sports content on radio. in television, they've opted out of doing that, but in radio, they're still doing that... ..andjust spending money in a way that we can't compete with. joeyjones... sorry to interrupt, phil, but, joey, if ijust bring you in — you looked at bbc funding, i think, when you were in government. is axing the licence fee by 2028 a realistic possibility, do you think? actually, the period i looked at it was when i was supporting the dcms select committee as a specialist adviser, during their inquiry into the wider public service broadcasting landscape. and, of course, they did have john whittingdale in front of them at that time, answering questions. and i think that... i mean, iwent into that inquiry thinking, "yes, why doesn't the bbc have the courage of its convictions around some of its great content?" "why don't they ask people to pay for it?" and they could end up maybe making more money out of that than they do from the licence fee? but what i learned, as you've heard from from helen and from phil, is that we don't have the infrastructure that would allow that to happen. a key tenet of the bbc has to be universality. and if, ultimately, you went down a subscription route, you would end up disenfranchising or cutting people off from bbc content at the most vulnerable fringes of our society — so, people who are geographically remote or perhaps don't have the money or the inclination to get onto high—speed broadband — and that would be the last thing that anybody wants. so, on that basis, there is a big problem with the licence fee coming because, ultimately, young people aren't... they're not watching on tv. so in some ways, a licence fee has to attach it to itself to some other form of infrastructure that's more universally used. and also, young people aren't consuming bbc content in the way that older people do. but that's something that needs to be considered. the argument that the government appears to want to be having is the wrong argument. ok, well, radio 4 is taking a deep dive into all these issues about how to fund the bbc if the licence fee goes. the briefing room with david aaronovitch is on thursday evening at 8pm on radio 4 and available via bbc sounds afterwards, for listeners now who want even more on the licence fee! but for us today, let's zoom out of these discussions for a moment, because within all these newspaper scoops about operation red meat and parties at downing street, there are some pretty difficult questions for the media to answer. for example, one of these parties was held the night before prince philip's funeral. it was a leaving party held forjames slack, a former daily mail journalist who was working as borisjohnson�*s director of communications, and he's now back on fleet street as deputy editor in chief of the sun. helen lewis, writer at the atlantic, you know, first up, can you just clarify how normal is it for a journalist to move between journalism and politics like that? well, it's enormously common in one - direction, moving from journalism i into politics, if you think - about the fact that, you know, david cameron's spokesman was craig oliver. _ you know, this is not... labour had seumas milne from the guardian. - you know, this is not l an unusual thing at all. what's slightly more unusual in this case is moving back. again so quickly. and that, i think, is the thing that makes it very hard, - because people are inevitably asking, "hang on a minute — is the sun reportingl this with one hand tied - behind its back because its own hierarchy are involved in the story?" - and that can be very difficult as a kind - of conflict of interest thingi to square, but also the way through this... you know, borisjohnson- is a formerjournalist himself. he has great contactsl in a number of papers. there has been, you know, - an enormous problem of cosiness and perhaps undeclared interests of people - writing about this story that i do . think has a really corrosive effect i on people's trust i injournalism now. you know, you can't be a whitehall- or lobby correspondent - without having really brilliant soui’ces, and sometimes those source relationships do tip - over into friendships, but i think probably something we could learn from americanl journalism — and it pains me to say this as a brit — - is that we need to be . much more transparent about those relationships. joeyjones, you went through that revolving door. you were a deputy political editor at sky news before you went to work for theresa may in 2016. what is a politician buying when they offer a job of this kind? i think it depends on the individual politician. i mean, obviously if a politician is taking someone from the lobby, they would expect that individual to be very good at putting themselves in the shoes of a journalist and anticipating the way in which a story may develop where it might head. they understand the personalities at play because they've worked alongside those, those journalists as well. some politicians, i think, actually probably are better served by people who have a very different background. i mean, some of the best spin doctors were notjournalists. i remember sitting at the back of the red lion watching, watching damian mcbride firing off emails left, right and centre on gordon brown spin dr. absolutely, you know, pushing all the buttons of the sun lobby. he was absolutely- a complete master of that. whereas i think borisjohnson, as helen says as somebody- with a journalistic- background, he probably would have been better served by someone like dominic- cummings with his disdain. for the lobby probably trying to reign in the prime minister's— instincts, always to respond to the front page headline. i so, you're doing you're doing your colleagues, ex journalists out of a job because of course they remember, course they remember, raab, as you're saying, was not a journalist. so, he was better at it than some of the people that have perhaps gone in there. but laura hughes, political correspondent at the fty, it was the benefit to the newspaper, you know, hiring someone like james slack straight out of downing street. what is the benefit to the sun of that? presumably, it works both ways, so the reason why a politician would hire a journalist is because a journalist like james, like, for example, was very good at preempting what we were going to ask. so, it would work the other way as well in the sense that perhaps they thought he might have an insight into how government was working would have good contacts there. but it's less it's less clear to me, actually that the benefits of that because whether or not what you would do, that i am not so sure. and there are lots of rules for people that do move between these two worlds that try and govern them. but i think what this story did make clear is that it can be incredibly awkward to move back and forth so so soon after you've been in one role because, because of the questions that have inevitably come up about this, and we know that clearly he wasn't telling the sun about the parties that were going on, so they didn't get any insight from him, from having hired him. and helen, i mentioned the telegraph. borisjohnson was their star columnist for years. they've supported him throughout this crisis. but it was the telegraph that broke the story about parties the night before prince philip's funeral. do you think borisjohnson has lost their support? i wouldn't bet against in some future time him being offered another massive contract to write telegraph columns if his, you know, reign of a thousand years ever end. obviously, you can imagine that happening. obviously, who can imagine that happening. but what's interesting to me about the fact is, i think the telegraph have played this much more straight down the line actually, than the express, which has become a kind of borisjohnson fanzine and the mail, which reheated a may 2020 sun story about keir starmer having a beer and there's a photograph of him by the window. and the telegraph have actually been a lot straighter down the line than perhaps anybody expected. you know, they did break the bring your own bottle story. they just didn't have that email, that incredibly incriminating email, so, it didn't get as much play. they did break the story of the head of the covid task force having a leaving party, for example. but i think it is significant to me that tory supporting papers papers have been very sympathetic to brexit have been willing, particularly in recent days, tojoin what otherwise might have been dismissed as a kind of leftie luvvie dismissal of, you know, minor things that real people who actually care about real issues don't. you know, this is you can sense it sometimes when you're a journalist, there isjust a kind of pack mentality. and what's become fascinating is watching that pack mentality kind of take over here. and there is no real competition among lobby hacks about who can find the next scoop and detail because there is a lot you know, what we have is always in systems is checks and balances. and one of them here is the fact that every individual reporter wants to be the one to nail the absolutely amazing scoop that brings down a government and that is counteracted by the perhaps the pressures they might have from their organisation and their political positioning more widely, which is a very, very healthy thing to have in a democracy. joeyjones what's your assessment about whether boris johnson has lost the support of the telegraph? well, there was a period before christmas, so i think it was around a leg of allegra stratton resignation and the leak to itv news of that test, resignation and the leak| to itv news of that test, if you like press - conference when both the telegraph and the sun was studiously looking the other i way, they ignored the story around that period. - and i think that the difficulty for for for| those two publications and for others that might be temptedj to go down that route - because they have, if you like their man in downing street, somebody. that they they become closely associated - with and where there's a sort of mutually reinforcing - backslapping relationship- between the news publication and and in this case, the prime minister is if they end up not. writing a story that everybody else - can see right in- front of their noses is a really important issue. it damages their credibility. the telegraph has - obviously changed its tune very significantly, _ probably because they know that their readership is not coming - from the same place that they were. - the other side of christmas. but i do think that if if i mean, - helen was talking about somethingl that is corrosive of| trust injournalists. ifjournalists actually knew about any of this before, l if there were individuals l that did know about some of these parties l and didn't report them, i suspect that . may come out in time. and that will be that - will be, you know, that's really problematic. i hope that's not the case. i sincerely hope - that's not the case. but i do think that journalists, - if they know about information i that is damaging to government, they have a, they. have an expectation. we all have an expectation. they'll get it into i the public domain. laura, just quickly as we end, i mean, does it undermine does all this undermine trust injournalists, in newspapers? i think if that were to emerge, then yes, potentially it would. i think it would raise questions about the relationships that people have with those in power, because presumably that would be the only reason anyjournalist in their right mind wouldn't pursue a story. because, as we said, regardless of who you work for, you want to get the best scoop and pound for, you want to get the best scoop in town you want to you want to hold the government to account. it's aboutjournalists sort of working in a sense for themselves. so, yes, but i mean, i don't think that we know of any evidence of that at the moment. and actually, all these stories have come out because ofjournalists, because of really brilliant journalism from the likes of typekit career, the mayor of, for example, paul brown at itv and actually just everyone working together. absolutely. and i'm afraid on that high note, i'm going to have to wrap you up. i'm really sorry because we are running out of time. thank you to all my guests to helen lewis, from the atlantic tojerryjones, former spokesman for theresa may. laura hughes, political correspondent at the financial times. and phil riley, chief executive of boom radio. the media show will be back at the same time next week, but for now, thanks for watching. goodbye. hello. there will be some occasional rank will be turning have your share. a touch across from england but if few mist and patches, plenty of cloud around and yes, a few sunny spells and more pressure towards eastern scotland in northeast england though mild in scotland and northern ireland, and over the past few days, very limited frost on saturday night, parts of wales and england, most fora saturday night, parts of wales and england, most for a touch of it in a bit of mist in fog patches on sunday morning and across southern areas, the winds are quite light but pressure on northern ireland, especially northwest scotland in the western gales developing, still be patchy rain but it was a friend moving in for sunday night and turning winter in scotland. then, elsewhere on sunday, lots of dry weather and lots of cloud. that your forecast. welcome to bbc news. i'm nuala mcgovern. our top stories: with russian troops massed near ukraine's borders, the us and russia hold frank talks about moscow's intentions. washington warns of "massive consequences". aid agencies say an air strike by the saudi—led coalition on a prison in yemen has killed dozens of people. hello and welcome to bbc news. the us and russia have held what they called "frank talks" in an effort to reduce the risk of a conflict in ukraine. us secretary of state antony blinken and russian foreign minister sergei lavrov spoke for 90 minutes at a meeting in switzerland, afterwards both said further talks are possible.