Media Brief

I'm the BBC's media correspondent and this is my brief selection of what's going on.

The Guardian says the BBC Trust chairman, Sir Michael Lyons, has warned that the BBC's digital TV services may have to be cut back, as it seeks to make at least £300m of savings in the wake of last year's licence fee settlement. In an open letter to Mark Thompson, Sir Michael said efficiency savings would not be enough to meet the funding gap alone and "hard choices about content and services" would be required. Today the BBC director general addresses staff about the impending cuts.

The Independent says the appointment of the next chairman of the BBC Trust could see short-listed candidates taking part in "an X Factor-style popularity contest" before a panel of MPs. The two front-runners are Lord Patten, former Tory party chairman, and Sir Howard Davies, director of the London School of Economics. Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has been urged to allow the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee to summon the final two candidates to demonstrate their credentials.

Following Miriam O'Reilly's tribunal victory, Selina Scott says in the Telegraph it will take "a seismic change" to alter the culture of the Corporation. She says "Listen to Lorraine Heggessey, the former Controller of BBC One... Her view on Newsnight and on radio was that her successor, Jay Hunt, had every right to recast a show 'on a whim'".

Stephen Glover says in the Daily Mail it is "a rich irony" that the Corporation should have been accused by an industrial tribunal of 'social engineering': "The BBC likes to present itself as the most progressive organisation in the world, a trenchant opponent of sexism, racism, ageism and every other kind of -ism you can think of."

The BBC's newspaper review says graphic images and tales from the flood-stricken Australian city of Brisbane fill many of the papers. The Independent shows aerial shots of hundreds of homes submerged by flood water in "the city that drowned".

Links in full
• Guardian | BBC Trust chair: we may cut back digital channels
• Independent | You've seen X Factor - now get ready for BBC Chairman Factor
• Telegraph | Selina Scott: I know the ageist ways of the BBC
• Daily Mail | A BBC obsessed with diversity and feminist pieties is gloriously hoist with its own petard
• BBC | Newspapers review

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