In 1925 John Reith, General manager of the BBC at the time, wrote a `memo' to establish the guidelines of public service broadcasting. This guideline stated several obligations he felt that PSB needed to comply with. This guideline formed the basis of Greg Dyke's guideline update in 2003, which contains many of the same points as Reith's without the detail or the older ideals which cannot be held up now such as bringing the nation together as one man. I'm sure it has been realised that the information presented by the news can never be presented in such a way as to ensure universal access as it would have to garner universal interest, cosmopolitan Britain is filled with a much wider need than in 1925, this is shown by the emergence of all the other channels- each one could be seen as `pandering' to their own target audience.

The guidelines of...