Sorry, you can't turn politics off

Your support helps us to tell the story

Support Now

Find out moreClose

As your White House correspondent, I ask the tough questions and seek the answers that matter.

Your support enables me to be in the room, pressing for transparency and accountability. Without your contributions, we wouldn't have the resources to challenge those in power.

Your donation makes it possible for us to keep doing this important work, keeping you informed every step of the way to the November election

Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

The most common response to the words "there now follows a party political broadcast ..." has always been a frantic rush to switch channels. But in future there may be little chance of escaping the propagandists, other than by switching the TV off altogether.

The BBC and the terrestrial commercial channels have long presided over a status quo in party political broadcasts (PPBs), which has served the main political parties well, allotting them slots depending on their electoral firepower. This favours the biggest parties in terms of air time but misses out on the growing audience who prefer subscription, satellite, cable and digital to terrestrial TV.

Until now, these newcomers to the game have remained unburdened by the duty to show some of the most hated television in Britain. But that may change as the Government struggles to find new ways to overcome voter apathy and re-engage people with politics. A report to be released by the Electoral Commission on Tuesday – and revealed exclusively to The Independent on Sunday – recommends that any channel commanding audiences over a specified number should be obliged to carry PPBs too.

"The old regulations apply only to terrestrial broadcasters but are now very old. We think PPBs should be extended to any popular channel, including some of the Sky ones or even lifestyle stations," a commission source explains.

The commission, which has been investigating political broadcasting since the disappointingly low turn-out at the last election, has come out against legalising paid-for TV advertising in the UK. It is concerned that the high cost of US-style campaigns could count against smaller, poorer parties and place even greater pressure on the main parties to raise more cash.

But at the same time it is calling for tighter rules on what discretion the BBC and the main independent broadcasters can exercise over who they will permit to show PPBs. At present the law states that parties fielding over a certain number of candidates in an election have the right to at least one slot.

The BBC has relied on the discretion apparently granted by its statutory duty under the Broadcasting Act to avoid offending public taste and decency The result has been that PPBs have remained the safe but deadly boring products of the mainstream parties – until now.

A decision is expected from the House of Lords within the next few days on whether it will allow the BBC leave to appeal against a Court of Appeal judgment that strikes at the heart of the BBC's powers and the cosy world of PPBs.

Auntie's power of "censorship" looks likely to be the latest victim of the European Convention on Human Rights. A single-issue, anti-abortion party – the Pro Life Alliance – won backing from the Court of Appeal for its argument that freedom of speech in a democracy is paramount over the BBC's hazily defined duties of discretion.

This means that unless the House of Lords not only agrees to hear the BBC's appeal, by no means certain, but to overturn the lower court's findings (which most experts think unlikely) then the Alliance and other parties like it will in future be free to broadcast shocking mat- erial in the name of democracy. The only requirement will be fielding a sufficient number of candidates in an election.

In the Alliance's case, it wants to show a PPB containing images of aborted foetuses so graphic that one hard-bitten lawyer who has seen the film winced just at the mention of it. The Alliance will probably get its way, opening the door to a raft of other minority parties to transmit equally controversial material across the broadcasting spectrum.

But the likely changes to the old regime do not end here. The universal political impartiality requirement on British broadcasters is also under attack – from a think-tank with impeccable links to Downing Street. On Wednesday, the Institute of Public Policy Research will argue in a new book that that efforts by broadcasters to avoid being accused of bias have backfired.

The principle of impartiality has been the lynchpin of broadcasting in the UK since the General Strike of 1926, when the BBC started regular news reporting. But according to the IPPR, the modern interpretation of the rules means that broadcasters focus too heavily on the viewpoints of the two main political parties at the expense of wider debate.

The research is backed by a survey of broadcast journalists, who admitted that the regime has sometimes led to dull television. "There is always a danger of producing bland broadcasting which recites fatuous arguments and fails to expose the truth and encourages laziness," complained one BBC journalist .

Damian Tambini, the report's co-editor, says: "The UK approach to impartiality in broadcast news has done a lot of good, but the way rules have been interpreted have also been partially responsible for transforming news into a kind of political football game, with policy decisions reduced to a knockabout battle between two familiar teams.

"The codes applied by regulators are suited to the old world of opposition, class politics, but they urgently need to be modernised for our more complex political world."

The IPPR, which helped shape the plans for the multimedia regulator Ofcom, will urge the Government to make last-minute changes to the proposed Communications Bill. It would like a lighter regulatory touch, with the impartiality rules applying to traditional news broadcasters such as the BBC, Sky and ITN. But with digital television offering hundreds of "special interest" channels, the IPPR argues that niche players should be allowed to take an editorial line, such as a Greenpeace channel advocating sustainable development.

Second, the IPPR wants the proposed Ofcom to encourage a "broader approach to balance", requiring news programmes to shift from formal party politics to wider reporting on policy.

Third, if a complaint is made against a broadcaster over bias, the IPPR believes the burden of proof should pass from the broadcaster to the complainant. This shift, the IPPR will argue, will give journalists a "more pragmatic approach to reporting and programme making".

All brave stuff but will it make politics any more appealing to the masses?