Here’s the first attempt at thinking through a solution to the BBC’s problems that I’ve seen.
Of course it depends what you think those problems are…and this is Labour’s Tessa Jowell:
BBC crisis: let the public run our national broadcaster
The BBC can weather this storm if we eradicate its culture of moral smugness
The problems it faces are serious and need swift resolution, but they should not be allowed to undermine the case for the BBC, or its continuing success.
Trust is an overused term, but a guarantee of impartiality and accuracy in news and reporting is what the corporation is for.
So is the BBC not impartial and accurate?
This crisis must not be allowed to herald the slow death of the uniqueness of the BBC.
To assume that it operates in a normal commercial market is to miss the fact that the BBC is an institution that is sorely needed to counter-balance failures in the market. It is truly a public good…..keeping journalistic and production values higher in the commercial sector than if it didn’t exist.
That’s just an article of faith….where’s the proof?
The culture of moralistic smugness which pervades the BBC has to end. There has been a sense that it has sought the benefits of the private sector while enjoying the certainties of the public sector.
Is that really all that’s wrong with the BBC’s ‘moralistic smugness’? How does it manifest that smugness? By ‘managing’ what viewers are allowed to see and hear because the BBC knows best?
The BBC Trust was created in 2006, as part of a new form of governance. This was in response to the largest-ever deliberative consultation with the public in the course of developing a new charter and negotiating the new licence fee. But the Trust has not yet been a strong enough or assertive enough voice on behalf of the licence-fee payer.
So that’ll be the ‘largest-ever deliberative consultation with the public’ to develop the Trust…..and yet it failed….so how is ‘mutualising’ going to be better?
Once the dust settles, the progressive long-term solution to restoring trust in the BBC would be to make it the country’s biggest mutual, with 26.8 million licence-fee payers as its shareholders. As one of our most treasured and important public institutions, the principles of mutualism – democratic ownership, solidarity and equity – would fit perfectly with the BBC’s editorial remit of impartiality, transparency and accountability.
Clearly this is a woman who has never listened to the BBC and never had to make a complaint.
By co-opting the public’s voice, a more democratically accountable Trust would have more legitimacy in managing what has become an overly strong BBC executive. Second, the public need to feel after Savile that they have a stake in rebuilding trust in the BBC, rather than a top-down solution based on the appointment of a few new senior women or men.
Shame old Tessa didn’t feel the same way when Labour were in government…not much interested in what the voters, or was that ‘Bigots’, wanted!
One of the reasons the Trust has lost confidence is because it is out of touch with the public.
You don’t say…..
A mutual BBC would insist on this and remind trustees that their first loyalty is to the licence-fee payers, not the institution itself.
Does it really need to be reminded? Does it not read its own charter?
The third reason for introducing a mutual BBC is that it would give the public more of a say over programmes and direction. It is a simple principle that if we pay for the BBC, the institution should be more accountable to us.
So that’ll be very unbiased, non partisan ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ then six times a night? Followed by Eastenders and Top Gear.
Can Justin Webb dance? Guess he might have some time on his hands….if I have a vote.
What would I like to see?….
- a separate, independent complaints body.
- a new recruitment policy pulling a wider range of views and experience.
- a rotation of journalists so that they don’t get complacent, arrogant and condescending stuck on one programme for years.
- an effective flow of information up and down the management structure.
- more willingness to tackle subjects in depth and with admission of all types of views that the BBC now thinks too sensitive to touch….Islam, immigration….and bias on the BBC itself.
- News that examines subjects far more in the round….more context and depth rather than an extremely narrow view of things that means we only get a very one sided, partisan view….say of Europe or the economy.
I don’t want a vote, I just want them to do what they’re paid to do…and the Trust to do what it’s paid to do…make sure the BBC does what it’s paid to do.
Those bullet points at the end…that’s the start of a much longer list I presume, and it would need an “All of the above” option too.
But primarily, subscription to the service must be on a voluntary basis. If it changes and demonstrates its much vaunted impartiality, then people will pay for it. If not, then it doesn’t deserve to exist. I’m afraid that my understanding of what Ms Jowell is saying is just rubbish and the more risible coming from her and what we know of her and her husband. I wonder how her family finances compare before and after the Olympics?
A ‘mutual BBC’.
Bit like the, er, agenda-free Co-Op then?
Not really because you don’t have to shop at the CoOp if you don’t want to.
Nah, Jeff Randall did it better years ago.
How to save the BBC from itself (and get its hand out of our pockets)
Since defenders of the BBC are anxious to portray the current crisis as the product of a management structure / systems failure, having nothing to do with a non-existent institutional bias, it’s worth quoting the section of Randall’s article, linked above, where he talks about their blatant one-sidedness on the issue of immigration:
“In 2003, I was fighting an internal battle to bring more balance to the BBC’s coverage of immigration. I felt that some of its reporters had been programmed to promote the benefits of cultural diversity as an incontrovertible fact.
Fed up with what he perceived to be my subversion, one of the BBC’s most senior figures sent me an email: “The BBC internally is not neutral about multiculturalism. It believes in it and promotes diversity. Let’s face up to that.”
I was amazed that he felt unembarrassed to put this in a formal memo. It revealed an arrogant mindset at odds with millions of his customers. Impartiality was fine, but only if it confirmed the prejudices of the BBC’s editorial elite, the self-appointed custodians of liberal values.”
‘“The BBC internally is not neutral about multiculturalism. It believes in it and promotes diversity. Let’s face up to that.”
If validated (I’m so last newsroom) that may be worth popping up there on the right.
Comments on impartiality relevant here, nickscottjim?
So that’s two major political issues the BBC is ‘not neutral about‘. Just for the record, you understand.
Oh, forgot – shall we add the Balen Report and make it three?
So thats:
‘Climate change’
Multiculturalism
Israel
Will keep you updated – sure the list can only get longer!
‘How to save the BBC from itself (and get its hand out of our pockets)’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeffrandall/2792715/How-to-save-the-BBC-from-itself-and-get-its-hand-out-of-our-pockets.html
Any reason just one person (on my browser) appears to have reccommended just one comment?
I note this as an early effort at arrogance in action:
If it bothers you so much then just stop watching television and don’t pay the license!!
How’s about… don’t pay and keep watching?
Meanwhile potty poll goes even further down the road of political propoganda.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/12/soap-operas-wash-hands-politics
I see no mention of the obvious point – the requirement to fairly represent those who are paying for the BBC – ie. the taxpayers, represented by the government, which will sometimes be Tory, sometimes Labour.
NOT the pro-Labour, pro-EU, pro-Democrat, pro-rioter, pro-benefits claimant, pro-immigrant, pro-Palestine, pro-windmill, anti-army, anti-police, anti-capitalism, anti-bank, anti-Christian that they do currently represent.
‘let the public run our national broadcaster’
One presumes, ‘coordinated’ by a ‘unique’ entity to ‘filter’ our wishes into how they get suitably enacted?
Perhaps ‘overseen’, with a light touch by a carefully-selected ‘board’ with, what, who, her, at its head? If she can squeeze in the time. To speak for the nation, as they ‘want our views’.
That… is so unique, I wonder why no one from Labour has suggested it before.
There was also a bloke once wrote a book on how such things got farmed out. Worked in a room at the BBC that he used in his writings too.
When I gave proof that a Professor of History deliberately used a totally false statement to incite hatred , the responce from the BBC was that “Not enough people would find it offensive” In other words the BBC has a license to broadcast lies as long as not many people notice it !.