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roadcast media is backing itself into a culture war for reasons which seem unavoidable and yet fail a vital test of usefulness to audiences. If I tune in to a BBC news or current affairs show, from the agendas of the Today programme through to the 10pm news, am I likely to have any view I adhere to challenged or uncomfortable information or analysis tested? Or am I simply enjoined to switch into a conversation which feels like a rinse-repeat cycle of pre-agreed emphases and omissions?

The latest flashpoint is Tyrone Mingss attack on Home Secretary Priti Patel alleging hypocrisy over her denunciation of online racism against his team-mates in the aftermath of their Euros defeat.

In a week when football took on religious intensity and broadcasters threw their weight behind reporting racially motivated attacks on people of colour in the England squad, the response is now back in the headlines. Tropes correlating Marcus Rashfords activism on free schools meals with his penalty success were crass and reprehensible. But in an eventful world, one might also ask for how many of the various news and analysis shows should they provide the main talking point? Are we asking for the platforms to intervene? If so on what terms? If not, what is the criteria for more news with more people piling on a story about what someone else said?

Not everyone agrees with my criteria even in my own kitchen. To my daughter, monitoring her Instagram and asking testing questions about what is news?, the answer is often different to mine. She thinks news is what people are talking about which is the prevalence of casual, aggressive racism on social platforms. There is some truth in this, buried or dismissed for too long. Yet I have often found that the most important stories I reported or commented on were shifts and changes in the world that people were not talking about so loudly and I wonder what happens to those subjects while we are distracted.

Having listened to a handful of TV and radio news and analysis on this, I was still not much wiser on the relative scale of stupid and hurtful comments or how it differed from the norm of nastiness. I had consumed a narrative and argument without much analytical clout. And if the licence fee model is about something distinctive from other models of journalism, this matters a lot.

Culture wars in Britain are more like gripes grinding on than all-out combat. They have hit the BBC (again) in the case of a stand-off over the proposed appointment to a senior news role of a former HuffPost UK editor who sits squarely at the Leftish end of the spectrum and also brings experience from editing a disruptive digital platform after a stint at the Beeb. Jess Brammars proposed appointment came under critical scrutiny from a new non-executive director, Sir Robbie Gibb, who is also a former insider at the Corporation. He shares the view of a senior insider who observes that the wheel on the BBC News shopping trolley automatically veers Leftwards.

Call me Solomon, but they are both right to a degree and that is the bigger lesson of these spats. It should require a very high hurdle to seek to interfere (as alleged) in editorial appointments and this is usually a bad idea. The BBC is obliged to be impartial but not to be liked by a government of the day.

At the same time, a changing executive guard might also remind itself that the Corporation is often less questioning about the strengths and weakness of international organisations than its domestic scrutiny (try the recent Today programme on why the UK had not signed up to a particular UN protocol for a prime example) and that its scoping of candidates can feel too cosy.

The publication of its own report this week shows that male viewers are increasingly likely to feel that the BBC is not for people like them. Audiences are starting to look sceptically at what they see and hear. Niche players such as (uber-male) LBC and (insistently un-BBC) GB News see the chance to carve out their own space.

Something goes missing, however, in this fog of cultural wars the attempt to distinguish between significant events and ephemera and the habit of asking testing questions about what we know and light beyond heat. News, they used to say is what someone does not want you to print.

An overhauled version might be that it should test whether noise and counter-fury are the same as news or where the difference lies. Because it is a hard question, it is the one to ask.

Anne McElvoy is Senior Editor at The Economist

What do you think about the BBCs news coverage? Let us know in the comments below.

Read more:
Were at risk of losing sight of what matters in the fog of culture wars - Evening Standard