Fight like hell... for the BBC
ON a freezing cold February day almost eight years ago I paid my first visit to the BBC's local HQ.
The reception impressed, not least because they had an honest to god Cyberman head encased in glass.
"The stuff of nightmares, reduced to an exhibit," I thought to myself, instantly regretting that too few people in the regional press - or probably reading this blog - were conversant in Doctor Who references.
Even then, just a few days into my new journalism job, I was vaguely aware this would likely be my last hoorah. I was scarcely 30, but my trade was almost unrecognisable from just a decade earlier.
The local news had already succumbed to the thinking that people didn't much like local news actually (think greengrocers getting cold feet about cucumbers) In this new age what the readers really wanted was potted summaries of whatever Piers Morgan had grumbled about on Good Morning Britain. Or Greggs product launches. They fucking loved them.
The sudden enthusiasm for endless column inches on breakfast television, or breakfast more generally, hinted at the key strategic weakness of any profit-driven media outlet - what makes money makes the headlines.
And in an age when social media firms reward content which outrages and alarms this dependence becomes even more dangerous. Your agenda is effectively being shaped by what some set-up in Silicon Valley decides it wants your audience to see..
Advertising revenue also leaves titles horribly open to censorship; it is an education the first time your story about some grotty local business gets quietly binned after it turns out said enterprise has an account with the paper. The free press it transpires does have a price...roughly equivalent to a double-page ad.
Against this backdrop my BBC-funded job reporting job was something of a port in a storm, allowing me to focus on the public interest reporting that was once bread and butter for regional newsrooms - before digital teams decided the smart money was in trying to trick readers into believing Monty Don had been diagnosed with cancer.
Now I can't claim on the basis of my occasional encounters with the organisation to be an authority on its working. But for my part I have been in the building, I have meet BBC journos and crucially I've had an insight into the ethos that's drilling into new recruits - having gone through the same editorial primer as required of proper Beeb staffers. I even had to sign-up to not talking about politics for three and a half years, which given how political things had lately been was quite an undertaking.
From all this and my time in the industry more generally I can tell you a publicly-funded, truly independent broadcaster is pretty damn important. If nothing else the current set-up, while far from perfect, is well placed to deal with three massive challenges currently facing journalism.
1. Trust:
It is not ideal that journalists are pretty much universally disliked - enjoying public approval ratings similar to traffic wardens or Keir Starmer.
In an era of bots and AI and rampant disinformation on social media platforms we need more than ever trusted news sources. For all the noise and fury about BBC malpractice, confidence in our national broadcaster has held up pretty well. Trust in the corporation is +22, which may not sound stellar but compares well to broadcasting rival GB News (-15) or The Sun (-53).
The fact is that the BBC sets out to be even-handed and, while it will inevitably foul-up across however many hours of rolling news or web articles, the fact there is even that intent to be impartial marks it out from the outlets who write almost everything to a pre-set agenda.
2. Reach: In an age of streaming and infinite websites the days of any single media outlet having a captive audience are effectively over. But this leaves us open to echo chambers; to Facebook timelines carefully curated by algorithms to pander to our personal passions and prejudices. Like penguins? Prepare to see penguins. Like casual racism towards refugees? Here's Robert Jenrick. It is a recipe for polarisation (or polar-risation in the case of the penguins).
Part of the reason that we are not (yet) as divided as the US is because the BBC still reaches a surprisingly large number of people. Across the Atlantic no one platform engages with more than a quarter of the public, whereas Financial Times analysis suggests some 60 per cent of us regularly consume BBC content. Having a single shared source of information is no doubt infuriating for the corporation's commercial rivals but is hugely important in building consensus and bringing society together.
3. Ownership: I have already touched upon some of the obvious dangers of media companies being in hoc to shareholders and advertisers. The fact the BBC belongs to us - the licence fee payer writes the cheques - leaves the organisation uniquely vulnerable to criticism whenever it is revealed how much Claudia Winkleman gets paid for Strictly Come Dancing. But the obvious positive of public ownership is that it is rather harder to buy off the public.
By contrast, when private individuals operate huge media corporations it places them at the whim of maybe a single person. Overnight Elon Musk was able to turn the entirety of Twitter to his far-right agenda. Other media figures might not share Trump's ideology but are obliged to bend the knee because they fear that crossing the President might hurt their bottom line or frustrate their next big-money merger.
The BBC is not immune to these headwinds but it is insulated against them and that matters right now.
The mock horror in recent days about a single botched edit of a particular edition of Panorama aired more than a year ago - in which Donald Trump was shown to incite violence in a slightly pithier way than he actually did - is the culmination of a long war against the organisation.
Right-wing media outlets utterly envious of the BBC's reach and reputation will seize every opportunity to pour scorn on its output. As Today presenter Nick Robinson warned over the weekend, the recent barrage of attacks must be seen as part of a concerted effort to destroy the corporation (and let's face it, the competition) altogether.
One might forgive the critics' perma- pearl clutching if they had a proud record of their own.
In fact the only reason we aren't more aware of the endless cock-ups, hatchet jobs and conflicts of interest is the code of honour which generally prevents outlets dunking on one another. It is thus left to Private Eye to keep a running score of the scandals. Compare the BBC's top-of-the-bulletin handwringing over the last 48 hours with the studious silence from tabloids and others about their own blunders. Although they have, in fairness, recently re-embraced the Nazi thing.
The vendetta against the BBC, the one outlet outside this privileged circle of arse covering, is nothing new. When I sat my senior reporter exams all the way back in 2008, my train journey up to Newcastle took place amid the fury of the Andrew Sachs scandal on Radio 2.
What has changed in the almost 20 years since that previous bout of teeth-gnashing is that politicians are more willing to link arms with outraged newspaper editors to try and claim a scalp or two.
It was not always so. It is striking that one of the most passionate defences of the BBC's record in recent days came from former Tory chairman and sitting Peer Chris Patten.
"When people say the BBC needs to change its worldview, what they actually mean is they want the BBC to reflect their own prejudices, whether or not they reflect the truth," he told Evan Davies.
Patten heralds from a different generation of conservative for whom institutions were important and the BBC's reputation overseas - as a former Hong Kong governor he would have known of its standing internationally - was perhaps a quiet source of pride.
Contrast that with the frenzied interventions of Nigel Farage the same day, who accused the corporation of "systemic bias" and, in the case of the Panorama episode, of "election influence".
One can only speculate why he wasn't nearly so furious about political balance on our screens when he joined the ranks of Reform and Tory MPs taking paid presenting jobs on the hyper-partisan GB News.
Or ponder why he wasn't quite so agitated by attempts to subvert the democratic process when Musk repeatedly called for the overthrow of our British Government or amplified lies which only last summer led to violent race riots on our streets.
But of course Farage has always been pretty damn comfortable with anything which may ultimately benefit him. And like all populists he has an instinctive loathing of any institution whose independence may prove a problem should he ever get his nicotine-stained mits on power.
It is essential to recognise how important the BBC is in holding the powerful to account and defend it amid the most concerted assault in perhaps its entire 103-year history.
In recent days there has been no shortage of progressives who have voiced their own deep misgivings about, for instance, the broadcaster's coverage of Gaza or, ironically enough, a perceived failure to properly challenge Reform.
Such frustrations can give way to a League of Shadows-style fatalism; that like Gotham City before it, our national broadcaster is beyond saving and should be allowed to die.
This feels like a grave miscalculation, rooted in the left's overly optimistic assumption that what follows will inevitably be better.
Even if the resources could be found to set-up some progressive alternative to GB News and its ilk - and it was able to win a war of influence against a much better-funded opposition - I am not sure that is a path we should seek out.
The lesson to take from the States is that rival blocs of left and right-leaning news outlets, in which people pick a channel and tune in to hear people agreeing with them is far from healthy.
Nor should the work the broadcaster supports away from its flagship current affairs programmes be overlooked. The scheme I signed-up for allocated millions in funding to ensure dedicated reporting of local authorities across the UK. I have no confidence that, without this public subsidy, most regional papers would do anything other than minimal local government reporting at this stage. And I know this because before I came into post, the council I had been assigned to, a council with 200,000 people, had barely had a reporter through its doors in three years.
If you have caught some of the recent coverage of Reform councils suspending members, choking on tax pledges or accidentally cancelling Christmas you should know that a lot of this scrutiny relies on
putting arses in seats in boring little committee rooms. This note-taking is not as well noticed as what questions Kuenssberg asks of a Sunday morning but is as important for accountability in its own way.
The fact remains that ending the BBC in its current form would be met with cheers from Clacton to Moscow (quite possibly on a video call between the two). Better then to think about the hard yards needed to improve and future-proof the organisation. Here everyone from Lib Dem leader Ed Davey to Labour MP Clive Lewis, a former BBC journo himself, has made some valuable suggestions.
Replace the licence fee with a more progressive funding model. I am not hugely persuaded by the idea that people should not pay for what they do not use - I don't use, or much approve, of nuclear-armed submarines but I still have to foot the bill. That said there is an argument that a lollipop lady (or person - men can direct traffic too) paying as much as King Charles is less than ideal.
More importantly end political appointments to the board (a practice clearly abused during Boris Johnson's time) and reconsider the 10-year charter renewal. All of these steps reduce the risk of the corporation being crippled or coerced by a future government hostile to its very being. We need reform of the BBC not Reform of the BBC.
And I am still optimistic enough, based on public polling, to think this is what most people want. Farage might cheer at the prospect of Trump threatening single-combat with David Attenborough, but do the public? Does the average Cash in the Attic viewer relish the prospect of the BBC scrapping the next series to pay-off some chippy git in the White House - who most of us loathe anyway.
And this cuts to the heart of why trying to chop Auntie off at the ankles might be a foolish move. As Labour minister Chris Bryant pointed out this week, the BBC is not just "a newsagent" it has been a part of our cultural make-up for more than a century. The through-line runs from Neville Chamberlain speaking to us, over the airwaves, from 10 Downing Street to people chuckling through Gavin and Stacey last Christmas. From an elephant crapping on a studio floor to Michael Fish fluffing his line about hurricanes.
And just maybe that attachment has weakened in the age of streaming and phone screens but it clearly hasn't vanished. Just days ago more than 11 million viewers tuned in to watch the final of Celebrity Traitors, suggesting audiences are more keen on broadcast television than perhaps many assumed.
All of this could still be on the line of course. Dr Who. Newsround. The Sky at Night. Match of the Day. Today. Tomorrow's World (I know they cancelled that, but I was on a good run there). When the so-called Leader of the Free World is throwing a paddy and a man with his eye on government is egging him on, the danger is all too real. Traitors, and I'm not talking about Alan Carr in a cloak, would sell out our history in a heartbeat.
But I for one don't want the most successful news outlet going and a huge part of our national story consigned to a glass case to please some of the world's most dishonest people. The stuff of nightmares indeed...
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