Last week, thanks to my friend Marcus Watson, I had the pleasure of addressing the Adoreum Partners Club at Ivy Club about the new conditions driving the modern media agenda, which make reputation and fame harder than ever to manage.
Some factors I discussed included our falling trust in the reliability of news, the echo chambers in which we entrench our world views, our polarising society, and our need to protect – and be protected- from offence.
When researching examples of these phenomena, I began to speculate about when (beyond the Kafkaesque carnival of the general election) they would next manifest in the public eye.
Glastonbury is one of the great behemoths of the British cultural calendar and its partnership with the BBC has been key to its establishment at the forefront of public consciousness. The current conditions suggest the BBC faces a major a headache.
But anyone who knows #Glastonbury, and the UK’s wider music and arts scene, knows that freedom of artist expression often involves the expression of opinions that breach the BBC’s neutrality policy, and thus the broadcaster always has a tightrope to walk in, giving this community a platform as significant as the one it gives Glastonbury. Practically consider the flags that line the Glastonbury crowd; how can a broadcaster stop protest banners and positions of support for Gaza? Are they going to censor this imagery or physically manhandle these signs? Any action over political messaging is a stance, and the BBC must have a well-thought-out plan for this; otherwise, it will become a major focus of this year's festival.
In 2019, there was a mild controversy around Stormzy’s anti-Tory political statements, but ultimately, it was a scandal manufactured by right-wing media feigning shock that a left-wing headliner would find sympathy for their politics in an equally left-wing Glastonbury crowd.
That was a minor sideshow, but the world is a more divisive place than it was in 2019.
This year, The Great Escape and Latitude festivals have already been engulfed in controversy relating to the dreadful situation in Gaza—in both cases, sponsorship by Barclays, whose links to suppliers of the Israeli military, caused artists to withdraw. Just this week, investment firm Baillie Gifford was pressured by #FossilFreeBooks into dropping its sponsorship of literary festivals after festivals, including Cheltenham Festivals, pulled out of partnerships because of issues around the company’s links to fossil fuels and companies linked to the Israeli military.
#solidarity #socialimpact #challenges #climate #protest #crisis #environment #climateaction
