There are significant murmurings, within New Broadcasting House, that the current, lavish broadcast of the festival has had its day. For weeks, the discourse centred around the Irish rap trio Kneecap, who had been referred to the police over comments made about Palestine and political violence (Mo Chara is currently on bail for terrorism charges).
square GLASTONBURY 'I'm a free man!': Kneecap drew in the masses for an incendiary Glastonbury set
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Bob Vylan made themselves a household name on Saturday as they led a chant of “death, death to the IDF”, referencing the Israel Defence Forces, who are currently engaged in a series of bitter conflicts. The backlash was instantaneous. The festival organisers said they were “appalled” by the comments, and politicians – including Keir Starmer, Health Secretary Wes Streeting, and shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp – rushed to condemn the band. A BBC statement today said that “with hindsight we should have pulled the stream during the performance”.
But TV has changed things. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that the BBC partnered with the festival to bring live music to living rooms across the UK. And it was another 15 years before the festival began to stream on iPlayer, a move that has resulted in the near-simultaneous broadcast of most acts at the festival. It has unlocked live music for a population who wouldn’t dare brave the raucous atmosphere on founder Michael Eavis’s dairy farm. But it has exposed the BBC to its least favourite commodity: risk.
Caption: Kneecap performing on the West Holts Stage during the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm in Somerset. (Photo: Yui Mok/PA WireThe BBC will now be faced with the temptation to cut or reduce their Glastonbury content. They might do it under the cover of cost-saving, a plan that has already decimated their live exhibition of events like the Olympics. But the belief that the BBC’s impartiality straitjacket must, necessarily, apply to Glastonbury is misguided. The corporation, after all, broadcasts all the major political party conferences, and gives its audience the credit of being able to ascertain what is a personal statement, and what is the opinion of the BBC. And though of course Bob Vylan’s onstage chants went beyond party politics, few who tuned into the Bob Vylan livestream will have mistaken the comments for anything other than a punk act going rogue.
The BBC, the Culture Secretary and the festival organisers should all have the courage to stand up and say, in no uncertain terms, that the festival cannot be defined by the uncensored words of a couple of private citizens playing a side stage. When the festival returns in 2027, after a fallow year, it must do so with renewed commitment to its broadcasting bravura and not with an enforced timidity.
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