I’ve been thinking a lot about the comments made by James Murdoch about the BBC being state sponsored and therefore unfair competition for private news organisations. He has a reasonable point, after all, how can they realistically charge for news online when the BBC provides almost the exact same thing free at the point of use.

But there is a strong counter argument that has been less well articulated. Do we want to end up with the likes of Fox News able to spit out utter rubbish and have people believe them? Do we want national coverage of politics and important but unexciting issues to fall by the wayside like they have done locally?

Politicians really should be stepping up to make these arguments, but in their absence BBC reporter Robert Peston does a pretty good job of summing up.

I urge you to read the full transcript of this speech, but here is the key section:

…What I am talking about here is the importance of public service journalism, about informing and educating the public so that there is democratic participation in big decisions about the future of capitalism.

Against this backdrop the certainty that commercial news groups will start charging for online access is relevant. We should be in no doubt about this. Every news organisation – with the exception of the BBC – will start charging very soon for any information that has any proprietary element to it at all.

Against that backdrop, much of what the BBC does – especially the stuff we do online – may look like unfair competition. And as someone who worked in the private sector without a break from 1983 to 2006 – and who rather assumes that he will return to the private sector one day – I completely understand why James Murdoch has argued that the BBC’s online news service looks like state-subsidised unfair competition. Much of the private sector sees the BBC as crowding out legitimate commercial players. I feel the private sector’s pain on all this – although there is a counter argument.

With financial paternalism in its death throes, just as we are being forced to take control of our financial lives as never before, are we sure that a wholly liberalised commercial news market would ensure that everyone has access to the kind of news and financial information they need and deserve? There already appears to be a consensus that in the provision of regional news there has been a massive market failure that will require state intervention and subsidy to rectify. But is that market failure limited to regional news?

Will the new paid-for online model inform and educate on hard issues – financial matters, but also medicine, the environment, education and so on – that matter to us, or will it concentrate on the more sensationalist and titillating bangs for the buck? And even if paid-for online services do endeavour to fill the gap created by the death of financial paternalism, will millions on low incomes be excluded from access to this information? Should we be relaxed if ‘can’t pay’ means ‘can’t know’?

There is a debate here about two kinds of fairness. There is the fairness of ensuring a level playing field for players in a commercial market. And there is the fairness of the distribution of information and knowledge to all who need it, irrespective of their material circumstances. These are two different kinds of fairness. They are apples and pears of social justice. But having just lived through the greatest failure in history to distribute financial resources in an efficient and equitable way, we certainly shouldn’t assume that a commercial digital market in news will distribute information in a way that would support a healthy democracy. Walter Bagehot – as luck would have it the greatest ever writer on banking – defined democracy as government by discussion. But you can’t have a decent chinwag without having the facts. And the big question – one which perhaps Richard Dunn would have relished – is whether the incipient structure of our new digital news industry will promote or undermine the healthy discussion that is necessary for democracy to thrive.