Culture Secretary Addresses Media Misconduct (Part 3)

Engage on this issue. You know, of course, she is the Culture Secretary, but sometimes a politician might be quite circumspect, even in the aftermath of a big, complicated, shocking trial. But I think in other circumstances we've seen before for Oblisa Nandi, who of course has retained a job that she was doing for a couple of years under Sir Keir Starmer as well, that there's various ways in which she thinks the media industry, including the BBC, doesn't necessarily have its house in order on how it manages some of its most prominent personalities. The talent, if you will, very heavily in inverted commas there. And she. It was. Was clear that she believes that there is probably still things like this happening. And it was fascinating. She even said, people have come to me telling me about things that have been going on. And I asked her if, you know, she. Well, then, was she suggesting people had gone to her with evidence of bad behavior happening right now? And the implication was very heavily, yes, that people have been going to her to try to sort of blow the whistle. And very strikingly, she said, time is up, time has to be up on this kind of behavior. I think, hand on heart, I can't say to you, as the Culture Secretary, that this is not happening today. It, in fact, if I had to wager, I would say it is. Is that based on evidence you have? Partly, yep. So it's based on the fact that since I've been the Culture Secretary, and I've taken quite a firm line, sometimes quite an interventionist stance around incidents of men, usually in powerful positions, abusing younger people, often women, in the media industry, and been criticized quite heavily for doing so. Because of that, many people have come forward to me from institutions, including the BBC, to allege that things have happened to them that I obviously raise with media institutions across the board when that happens. But the biggest reason I say that, Laura, and I wouldn't say it lightly, is because I do not see that much has changed in terms of the way that institutions in the media industry and across public life, including politics, deal with women who very brave.