. Greg Dyke has spelled it out in fascinatingly bullish fashion in an email to anxious staff ahead of the Hutton report:
‘ “What is important once Hutton is published is that if the BBC is criticised we learn from whatever is written – assuming of course that we agree with what is said,” Mr Dyke told staff.’
Note- not ‘If we are criticised we must learn from our mistakes’, but ‘we learn from whatever is written’, and then only ‘assuming.. we agree with what is said’. If there was a movement for the dismantling of the BBC, it would feed on such arrogance of unaccountability. (Hat-tip to Mr Sullivan)
It is just such a stupid thing to say – in my profession we sometimes reject an audit point, but we always learn from the fact that it was raised. If the point is wrong, one must still be giving the wrong impression of the reality in your organisation. Has the BBC nothing to learn from the way it is perceived?
That email to BBC staffers would be totally appropriate and expected from a PRIVATE organization such as The Sun, The Guardian et al. The latter are partisan advocates for their owners (shareholders). That email is NOT appropriate for an organization funded by the public. Period. They may NOT advocate as a partisan against the government “owned” by the same “shareholders”. Therein lies the problem. Time to divest.
Dyke should take this opportunity to be quiet. (hat tip to Chirac)
More important in a constitutional sense (but probably not in reality) the Chairman of the Board of Governors, Gavyn Davies, has produced a similar line:
Davies: Hutton won’t bring reform
http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,1117004,00.html
It is theoretically much more important what the Board of Governors says than it is what the Director General says, because the Board is the organisation placed there by Parliament (Ministers) to ensure that the BBC is operated for the public good. There probably shouldn’t be anyone on the planet more interested in what Hutton might have to say than Gavyn Davies.
Not surprisingly, he merely demonstrates what a complete joke BBC ‘accountability’ is. None of them give the remotest sh*t.
BTW, I think anyone hoping for a major kicking for the BBC from Hutton is likely to be disappointed. It strikes me as far more likely that Her Majesty’s Government takes the brunt. That’s just a personal assessment by myself based on natural pessimism and an impression of Hutton that he is more inclined to criticise the accountable areas of the state than the unaccountable.
Even if Hutton criticises the Beeb, the media will focus on criticism of the Government.
Note how the media became mysteriously not at all involved in telling porkies about Jessi Lynch…apparently it was the Pentagon which wrote all those newspaper articles and rambette stories…the Media suddenly had nothing to do with it…it was the nasty Pentagon!
Media and responsibility are 2 words that will never share the same space.