20/01/2010

Available for over a year

The BBC Trust has started a year long review into the accuracy and impartiality of the BBC's science coverage, with climate change one of the topics which has attracted controversy. How does the BBC and the media at large measure up to the task of reporting science? And what does impartiality mean in the context of science reporting? Steve Hewlett is joined by James Delingpole of The Telegraph, Mary Hockaday who heads the BBC newsroom and Fiona Fox, director of the Science Media Centre. Lord Heseltine has stepped down this month from his role at the magazine publishers Haymarket. He talks about the challenge of competing with magazines linked to television programmes - and ways of making money from a magazine's name even when it is no longer actually printed. And what's really going on with pay TV? Reports have claimed that Sky is to be forced to drop the price it charges for its sports channel. Will this lead to lower prices for viewers - and will Sky get their pay channels on Freeview in return? Media commentator Mathew Horsman gives his view.