We're facing the consequences of a media that offers more choice, but less understanding

It is one of the greatest paradoxes of our age that the explosion in choice resulting from the profusion of alternative news outlets has led to a narrowing of perspectives and opinions

The viewing figures for the BBC’s news programmes in the 1980s were staggering (BBC)

In a media world awash with choice for anyone seeking news and opinions, we appear to be retreating into bunkers designed to ensure that we receive only those messages we are comfortable with. Is it any wonder then that the most striking feature of the recent EU referendum and the US Presidential election results was the utter disbelief of many who were on the losing side? This reaction seemed to go far beyond the conventional “Oh bugger, we lost” response that echoes after every election outcome. And this stunned incomprehension was duplicated in many newsrooms across London.

A thousand years ago, when I was young, the media landscape was profoundly different from today. Mass circulation newspapers and limited broadcast outlets captured and held enormous audiences and their readers and audiences were exposed to a wide spectrum of news and views. As a reader or viewer, I was exposed to opinions I liked and those I didn’t; unless I boycotted newspapers, as well as television and radio news, my diet included both.

Also, there were powerful shared cultural references within these mass audiences. One of my favourite radio programmes was Round the Horne at Sunday lunchtime. Two regular characters were the riotously gay Julian and Sandy. The reason I mention this is that many millions of people across all ages and classes exploded with laughter every Sunday at two openly gay men at a time when gay sex was a criminal offence. Indeed, in one sketch where they were masquerading as lawyers, the Julian character announced: “We have a criminal practice that takes up much of our time.” It was a time when the mass media not only reflected our culture but also helped shape it.

Whilst political analyst at ITN, I was asked to take over producing the internal weekly summaries of audience figures when the person responsible went on maternity leave. As a result, I inherited ITN’s library of weekly viewing figures from the Broadcasters Audience Research Board, stretching back to 1983. Given my sad nature, I could not resist getting stuck into them and during the summer of 1991 I turned them all into quarterly averages.

This article is prompted by my finding a copy of the bulletin I produced that year, setting out these figures.

The size of audiences for news programmes then were eye-watering; but it was a different age of broadcasting: BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4 dominated television audiences, with cable and satellite television in their early infancy. The radio landscape was more diverse but much of that diversity took the form of local commercial radio stations, with the BBC dominating national radio output. And the publicly available world wide web was only launched with a whimper in August 1991.

In the first quarter of 1983, the average daily audiences for main news programmes were as follows:

TV Programme Average daily audience

Lunchtime news ITN/BBC 4.5 million

Early evening news ITN/BBC 16.7 million

Main evening news ITN/BBC 14.9 million

C4 News/Newsnight C4/BBC 1.5 million

Over the period Q1 1983 to Q2 1991, the high point for daily audiences for lunchtime news was a joint 7.6 million (Q1 1987); for early evening news it was a joint 20.5 million (Q1 1985); for the main evening news it was a combined 17 million (Q3 1985); and for C4 News/Newsnight it was 2.6 million (Q1 1991).

Since then, as our population has grown significantly, this cultural monolith has fragmented. The decline in national newspaper readership has been profound and, compared with even two decades ago, television news audience figures have declined significantly. Where do we go to experience shared national cultural references today? Nowhere, I would suggest. The dominant themes today are choice and diversity. A multitude of websites cater for our individual preferences. We are invited to select and filter news stories that are likely to be of interest to us on our tablets and smartphones. God forbid that we should ever have to endure the trauma of being confronted by opinions that contradicted our own; and how could we cope if such opinions were presented objectively rather than being mercilessly lampooned by our favourite comedians and satirists? We devote our time to exchanging brief sentences with our Facebook friends, in lieu of debate and discussion. And then it comes as a great shock to us that the UK votes to leave the EU because all the friends and colleagues we communicate with, the webchats we engage in, comprise of people who agree with us. In the words of that great philosopher of our age, Homer Simpson, doh!

All of us are influenced by the environment in which we live and work but I think this territory is increasingly narrow – a place where fewer and fewer important differences of view are given either space or the time of day. I think it one of the greatest paradoxes of our age that the veritable explosion in choice resulting from the profusion of alternative news outlets has led, in my view, to a narrowing of perspectives and opinions rather than enlargement for many people. Whereas in the ghastly limited choice of yesteryear we were often confronted and challenged by views and ideas that we were not comfortable with, today we can bury ourselves in the great forest of choice and seldom, if ever, stumble across any view or opinion that seriously challenges our comfort zone.

Does any of this matter? I believe it does: profoundly. We venerate diversity but where is there any element of national solidarity? In a world that worships difference, where is the space for what unites us? And if there is nothing that does, then whoever grabs the current zeitgeist will prevail (albeit not for very long). We end up with fragmentation and toxic levels of distrust that, in some cases, slide easily into mutual hatred. There are plenty of demons from the deep ready to be summoned into such an environment.

David Cowling was head of political research at the BBC and was previously political analyst at ITN