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Media scholar Paddy Scannell once queried in relation to the BBC, during moments of crisis in ‘whose interests, in the last resort, broadcasting is there to serve - those of the state or the people?’
The reverberations and aftershocks of the 2008 financial crisis – and the often drastically unjust policy responses they have prompted domestically and internationally – have brought with them ample opportunities to cast a critical eye on the political roles and functions played by national public service broadcasters. The opportunities are particularly rich not just because of the scale and intensity of the crash but, crucially, because of the co-existence of economic crisis with a deepening democratic crisis of political representation.
