Dorothy Byrne’s passion should be welcomed at a TV Festival

Her lecture was a masterclass in caustic and at times self-deprecating wit which cantered back across the decades of television, telling her own story as a woman exposed to all manner of sexual harassment, but using those anecdotes to expose the lazy male entitlements that have dominated the television industry to its detriment.

“I am the Methuselah of TV, I’ve been in the industry nearly 40 years and at Channel 4 for 20,” she joked, setting up the altar in which she would sacrifice the twin beasts of ageism and sexism. Dorothy did not leave her scalpel at home either. Limb-by-limb, she cut into the sagging flesh of television and the conceits that have propped up the industry throughout her formidable career.

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She began with a blistering attack on those that had stood at the lectern before her, pointing out that the McTaggart had once been delivered by the disgraced actor Kevin Spacey “and, by an extraordinary coincidence, three people with the same surname – Murdoch”.

Byrne’s vitriol was saved for the younger Murdoch. “I especially enjoyed James Murdoch from 2009,” she cajoled “He told the audience that it was important to ‘encourage a world of trust’ and that newspaper readers were ‘treated with great seriousness and respect’. Then the coup de grace: “Let’s delight ourselves by remembering how Ofcom described him just three years later, in his role at News Group Newspapers during the hacking scandal. He ‘repeatedly fell short of the conduct to be expected of him as a chief executive and chairman’.”

As I listened to Dorothy Byrne’s waspish and anti-authoritarian wit, I realised why I no longer make the annual pilgrimage to Edinburgh to sit in the crowded pews of the McTaggart. I have long since fallen out of love with the Edinburgh Television Festival and I am not alone.

The TV veteran Michael Grade once said Edinburgh was where people went to slag their bosses. He had a point. It was once a festival with an edgy sense of urgency where issues like managerial censorship, government interference and investigative journalism were fervently debated. Across time it has become more akin to a trade fair than a festival of ideas. It is now a place where independent producers go to meet commissioners and where format rights holders go to schmooze clients. This year there were sessions on the opening up of Chinese markets and a chance to speed-meet commissioners, all very well if you are a producer but hardly cutting-edge if you care passionately about television as a cultural form.

The biggest drawback of the Edinburgh Television Festival is its shyness. Few people actually know it’s on and the general public are kept at arm’s length. It has no outside audience to speak of and at a time in the year when Edinburgh is teeming with people, most pass it by largely unaware it even exists.

I share with Dorothy Byrne a genuine fear that television and in particular the Edinburgh Television Festival have deserted the intellectual high ground. “Our country is undergoing seismic changes,” Byrne argued. “There is widespread disillusion and a loss of a sense of belonging as society fragments. Whatever happens about Brexit, we need big new ideas to take us forward. But I don’t see big ideas on TV now. Too many programmes are saying small or medium-sized things about society.”

It is always easy with television to slip into the comforting nostalgia about the past, but in Byrne’s case she brought substance to the party, not just memories. Byrne was a graduate of the “World In Action” era when British television set out to overturn miscarriages of justice, expose corruption and unsettle governments. “How many people in TV today would say out loud that they wanted to use TV to make Britain a better place?” she asked rhetorically. Not many.

Another reason I have tired of the TV Festival is that it feels deeply out of step with modern Scotland. At a time when the host nation is at its most politically and culturally exciting, it rarely features. The priorities of London’s TV plutocracy always wins out over other matters. Whilst the Book Festival and the Fringe remain outward-looking and responsive to ideas, the TV Festival feels increasingly sclerotic and inward-looking. Decisions are taken in London, planning meetings are held there and the ideas that give it shape are usually reflective of television’s own narrow concerns. One of the biggest decisions the TV Festival’s directorate has taken in recent years was shifting the dates – to accommodate an English bank holiday.

Elsewhere in Edinburgh, the Book Festival ripped up the script and juggled venues to accommodate Beloved: A Tribute To Toni Morrison, an event which honoured the towering African American novelist who died after the programme of events had been published. At the TED Summit in Edinburgh, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon broke with conventional statecraft, arguing for a society that privileges wellbeing over GDP growth. Meanwhile, one of the standout theatre experiences of the year was America Is Hard To See, a verbatim documentary with music which is set in a sex offenders village in Florida. It is difficult to imagine the TV Festival showing a similar lust for challenging ideas or the same responsiveness to real-world events. Like a network television schedule in the era of format shows, the TV Festival often feels like it was put together months ago and with little passion for change.

Among all her wisecracks and wisdom, Dorothy Byrne left this year’s McTaggart with the sting of a great lecture. One of her key themes was how television journalism should treat politicians in an era of high stakes. “We have a new Prime Minister who hasn’t held one major press conference or given one major television interview since he came to power,” she said, before opening fire on Boris Johnson.

The lecture skewered Johnson, attacking his evasiveness under scrutiny and the number of times he has lied about the European Union. Calling him a liar, she asked her audience: “If we continue to be so polite, how will our viewers know that politicians are lying?” Byrne’s use of words like “liar” and “cowardice” has provoked a backlash of sorts, not only from hardcore Brexiteers but from journalists who might otherwise be at her side in the trenches. John Rentoul of The Independent castigated Byrne on Twitter although he was not necessarily defending Johnson’s honour. Rentoul’s counter- argument was that a television executive in news and current affairs, bound by expectations of impartiality, should not be taking a public platform to call the Prime Minister a liar. By bashing Byrne with the Ofcom rule book, Rentoul seemed to have forgotten the higher values of freedom of expression and a higher legal threshold – veritas. Dorothy Byrne was not on air, nor was she editing a news bulletin, she was at a lectern where her opinions should be valued if not supported. An intelligent and thoughtful editor can express opinions and yet still have the intellectual capacity to lead a world-class news team with impartiality.

Pestered by rival television stations with no great love of Channel 4, Downing Street has since hit back too. A Number 10 source told Sky News: “It’s disappointing to see the head of a supposedly impartial news organisation decide to use deliberately inflammatory language to make a strong political statement.”

There you have it straight from an undisclosed source’s mouth – it was a strong political statement at the Edinburgh Television Festival. It felt like the fresh air of yesteryear at an event which was once a lively forum for dissention, and not a cosseted business convention.