Leading UK journalist Paxman attacks "vacuous" media

EDINBURGH, Aug 24 (Reuters) One of Britain's most respected television journalists launched a scathing attack on British media today, accusing it of becoming vacuous and lacking any sense of purpose.

In a speech at the annual Edinburgh International Television Festival, Jeremy Paxman said the future of the world-renowned BBC could be in jeopardy if it did not maintain a high standard of broadcasting.

Paxman, who is known for his serious and aggressive style of questioning as the presenter of the BBC's flagship Newsnight programme, said the wider media agenda had become driven by what was available and not by its importance.

''There is a fight going on for the survival of quality television right across this industry,'' he said. ''As an industry we need to lay out much more clearly what we're doing and why.'' ''Let's spend less time measuring audiences and more time enlightening them.'' Former Prime Minister Tony Blair attacked the British media just days before he left office, describing it as a ''feral beast'' that tears people and reputations to shreds.

As a result, he said journalists had become driven by the ''impact'' of their reporting and had let their standards slip.

Paxman said he had been disappointed by the response to Blair's comments, saying ''hardly anyone engaged with the substance of the criticisms -- of our triviality, our short-sightedness, our preoccupation with conflict''.

Turning to whether the BBC had a future, he said he thought it would be foolish to be too confident, saying it would need to ''justify'' its existence ''not by the way it broadcasts or the buildings out of which it works, but by what it broadcasts''.

The BBC, like other UK broadcasters, has been caught up in a row over standards, after it admitted to faking the winners to some premium phone-in quizzes.

The corporation vowed to improve but almost immediately it became entangled in another embarrassment over the editing of a royal documentary produced by outside firm RDF media.

In its trailer, the broadcaster had implied that the Queen stormed out of a photo-shoot with celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz, something it later accepted was wrong.

The commercial television industry has also been hit in recent years due to a difficult advertising market and competition from the Internet while the BBC, which is funded by a tax on all television-owning households, received a smaller licence fee than it had hoped for.

Paxman said the industry should focus on improving its quality with less quantity.

''Right now we could do with less hyperventilating and more deep breathing,'' he said. ''We need to discover a sense of purpose.

''Once people start believing we're playing fast and loose with them routinely, we've had it.

REUTERS AK BST0218