IMPARTIALITY is one of those big sweeping words that is used inside television as if it has extraordinary status, a word that soars beyond criticism and reproach. It is a bit like democracy a concept that we are all supposed to abide by come hell or high water.

But unlike democracy, impartiality is on life-support, it no longer commands the universal respect that it once did, and it maybe that the ear of impartiality is coming ungraciously to an end. Words come and go when we no longer need them and sometimes, I think impartiality is a word a bit like ­powfag a 19th-century word which means “to tire bodily from overwork; to ­become worn out in mind from care or anxiety; to work to the point of exhaustion”. It was once in ­common usage but has all but disappeared from our daily discourse. Might the same fate await impartiality?

This will be a landmark year for ­impartiality in broadcasting. We await the launch of two new services Rupert Murdoch’s forthcoming opinionated television news channel, which will be called News UK TV. It is planned as an evening only news service and has been approved by the media regulator Ofcom to start broadcasting soon.

Meanwhile, Andrew Neil a walking personification of the end of impartiality, who recently quit the BBC to launch a new right-leaning opinionated rolling news channel called GB News. Andrew Neil’s new service has already drawn comparisons with Fox News and aims to serve the “vast number of British people who feel underserved and unheard” by existing television news channels.

The commercial success of the radio station LBC and its pre-eminence ­within talk radio in London underlines an ­already clear message – opinion is the new mantra of news broadcasting and its blustering volume leaves impartiality hanging by a thread.

When he came into the post in September, Tim Davie, the recently appointed director general of the BBC announced “an impartiality crackdown”, warning staff he would be bringing in stringent new measures – and telling them they would face the sack if they broke the rules. It was a brave announcement somewhat akin to the brave announcement Prime Minister Jim Hacker frequently proposed in the Whitehall sitcom, Yes Minister, a brave statement that civil servants then spent the rest of the episode reeling back on.

Davie is a very credible appointment but not for matters of journalism. He is a commercial leader with an instinctive understanding of global deals, format rights and broadcast partnerships, in a brave new world where the US streamers are re-writing the rules of commissioning and programme funding.

Much has changed since impartiality entered the vocabulary of public service broadcasting. Firstly, the genre of reality television, which dominates factual television is predicated on exaggerated personality and competition formats, even the most genteel baking shows are about winners and losers.

Secondly, the inexorable rise of social media has turned “opinion” into an ever-present phenomenon in our lives.

Thirdly, there is America, and its recent presidential vote, where opinion-led news services dominated how we viewed the election.

On the week of his retirement, I interviewed the departing BBC Scotland political editor Brian Taylor, the self-styled “Tannadice Lad”, who had witnessed so many seismic moments in the story of Scotland – Dunblane, Lockerbie, the referendum that delivered a Scottish Parliament, the failed referendum on independence and finally the Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit. Throughout all of that, he baulked at social media. He had opened a Twitter account but left it tantalisingly unused and then departed with a sardonic goodbye – “You stay classy Scotland. Toodleoo-the-noo!”.

I asked Brain if he now felt he could abandon the fraying strait-jacket of ­impartiality, but he replied without ­delay – “Certainly not it’s in my bones”. He may be one of the last of a generation that honestly believes that, and it now seems clear that one of his reasons for avoiding social media was not just the cesspit, but he knew that as an intelligent man with a quick wit, he could not trust himself to honour the code of impartiality in the partisan world online.

Unlike the days when Brian Taylor started out, there is now an expectation that broadcasters will be visibly present on social media spreading stories and alerting followers to breaking news. It is a less controlled and less controllable medium marred by fault-lines, pitfalls, and obsessive scrutiny. Being impartial on a nightly news report is a stretching enough target. Appearing impartial on fast-moving and sarcastic social media is considerably harder, as Laura Kuenssberg has found out to her reputational cost.

Towards the end of last year, I made a checklist of programmes which came from with the news and current affairs departments of major national broadcasters. It is staggering how many are not remotely impartial, nor in many cases should they even try to be. That for me is the biggest flaw in the whole fallacy of impartiality, it can ruin good programmes.

One resounding example was when the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine was given approval. There was a near collective cheer across newsrooms, presenters openly smiled and pronounced their relief that an emotionally significant milestone in the battle against Covid-19 had been met. The time for scepticism or balancing ­voices could wait. After an exhaustive year of deaths, infections, lockdowns, cancelled holidays and business failures, there was no appetite for impartiality and the sigh of relief was palpable.

In Scotland, we travelled through an emotional cloudburst when the men’s national football team defeated Serbia on penalties, to qualify for the finals of the European Championships. A long humiliating wait was over, and even on news bulletins, impartiality was drowned out by the sounds of Yes Sir I Can Boogie.

I recently watched a good observational documentary about the footballer Marcus Rashford and his political campaign to fight food poverty. It did not even try to be impartial, nor should it. The viewer was invited to be on the side of the young footballer and his mother as they told their personal back story and asserted the need to change the government’s stance on funding free school meals in England.

Impartiality would have ruined the programme and undermined its emotional purpose. It had a clear point-of-view invested in Rashford’s campaign, on a subject of political controversy, that joyfully breached producer guidelines.

Clear proof that impartiality is in retreat is a modification that now appears in Ofcom guidelines, the term now in more common is “due impartiality”. It is a qualification that accepts that some arguments deserve more weight than others. Even the most rules-obsessed broadcaster understands there is no requirement to be impartial about issues like rape or racism, and that there is no space for false equivalency.

The BBC has long since admitted that it made a mistake covering climate change by not giving enough weight to scientific study and wasted an opportunity, by seeking the “balancing” opinion of climate change deniers. Slowly but surely, broadcasters are moving towards the more flexible concept of “diversity of opinion”.

Impartiality will be with us for years yet to come but the clock is ticking on a word that will be battered and bruised throughout 2021.