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Friday 29 March 2013

A few thoughts on the BBC and the media

THE BBC

Another journalists’ strike at Pacific Quay, with claims about the workload and of bullying. I may add that if such pressures were not enough, hard-pressed journalists have also had to endure a torrent of abuse on alternative media and by email, not least from deeply misguided independence supporters.

I am a supporter of the BBC, albeit a critic of specific instances of superficiality or lack of balance in political coverage. I support them because the BBC has been a central feature of my entire life since the early 1940s and I owe it a debt I can never repay, least of all by the licence fee which, for me, would be cheap at ten times the price. Without BBC news, current affairs, music, comedy, drama, culture and popular entertainment my intellectual life – indeed my life – would have been immeasurably poorer. As deprived child in Glasgow, there were four lifelines to the life of the mind for me – my radio, which meant effectively the BBC, the free public libraries and museums, cheap, quality newspapers and the wonderful soapbox orators of the Glasgow Barras market.  That world - the world of media - has now changed almost out of recognition, yet in spite of the new electronic media and channels of communication (which I have kept up with and utilise) the BBC is still central for me. BBC Four and the Parliament channel alone are superb examples of what a great public service broadcaster can do, what it can be.

However, my respect and gratitude are given to the programme makers, not to the governing body and senior managers of the BBC, who are responsible for much of what is undeniably wrong with it. The BBC produces quality output through its programme makers, its presenters, its journalists, its creatives despite the managers and governing body, not because of them. A generation ago, Dennis Potter, one of the glories of BBC drama, a dying man, supping from a flask of liquid morphine, excoriated the managers of the BBC in the era of Birtism – in his 1993 Croaking Daleks speech in Edinburgh. All that he criticised then is still present today: all that he forecast then is coming to pass now.

So I don’t support the BBC that engages in the gadarene pursuit of ratings, the BBC that pays megabucks to celebrity entertainers and presenters, the BBC that allows its most senior echelons to behave like kings of the universe, with salaries and perks to match, while they drain the life blood of resources from the front end people who keep them in the style to which they have become accustomed. I don’t support the faceless placemen and women who infest the higher governance of the BBC, drawn from the incestuous pool of the ‘great and the good’, remote from the lives and concerns of ordinary mortals. I don’t support the higher management in thrall to the insidious influences of shadowy, powerful interest groups, whether they be governmental, commercial, religious or political.

I also have nothing but contempt for the BBC that allowed Jimmy Savile to survive and prey on the young and vulnerable, and which tolerates behaviour from some of its ‘stars’ that is beneath the contempt of any thinking viewer. I despise the metropolitan laziness that draws its panellists on political programmes from the same rolodex of the usual suspects, complacently networking over London dinner tables.

I question the deeply reverential style adopted by the BBC when covering organised religion or the monarchy – a deferential mode of acceptance and support for institutions that are irrelevant to large swathes of the population, institutions that should be reported on objectively and questioned where appropriate.

Most of all, I question the competence of the present generation of managers to manage – to apply best modern managerial practices and techniques to the management of people in a time of budget cuts and resource pressure. I question the professionalism of my own discipline, Human Resources, as it appears to an outsider to be practised within the BBC, notably BBC Scotland at the moment, but I recognise the possibility – ever-present for HR departments – that they too are the victims of an oppressive management culture, incompetent in the management of change.

I unequivocally support the BBC trades unions on fighting for the security, dignity and respect owed to their members – the people who are the true heart of the BBC.

13 comments:

  1. POSTED ON BEHALF OF SHIRLEY GIBB (by email)

    Excellent article. You sum up exactly how I feel about the BBC, good and bad, but put it so much better than I could. Thanks.

    Shirley.

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  2. I agree with some of your points but to 'support the BBC' knowing that their primary existence is to protect the British Establishment no matter who is in government. The BBC like the bankers have become too big to fail which is damaging our feeble democracy as they are both unaccountable to those that fund them.

    The BBC is run by arrogant management completely unaccountable to the taxpayer as the establishment has a symbiotic relationship with government no matter its colour.

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  3. Whoever I got through to with my viewpoint, it certainly wasn't you, cynicalhighlander, so I won't waste any more words on trying.

    Thanks for posting


    regards,

    Peter

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  4. I am sorry what I read is 'He is a good father even though he abuses children'.

    Nothing else to say other than after two phone calls they still have not replied to my comments after promising to do so in writing within 10 days 60 days ago which sums up their arrogance and shows how Saville got away with what he did with their compliance for ratings.

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    Replies
    1. If your comments were couched in your usual tone, I'm not surprised. I find your first comment offensive. Don't bother posting here again.


      Peter

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  5. The BBC is just the propaganda wing of the establishment. George Orwell's 'Ministry of Truth'. Any employee who goes 'off message' is quickly moved on.
    The current agenda is support for Unionism, the global warming scam and the EU but these can change depending on the prevailing ideology. All programming will maintain this agenda. From chidrens tv to politics.
    I wouldn't care if it wasn't mandatory to pay £146 a year for the brainwashing on threat of prison.

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  6. Hi Peter, I'm glad you have clarified your 'support' for the BBC
    However I still can't see how you can conclude that on balance the BBC is great when the criticisms most people level is only against their continuing support of the British establishment and significant lack of any belief they have to present political or even cultural issues in an intelligent balanced way ?
    In this regard they have obviously decided that notwithstanding their worldwide audience the 50m audience south of the border will still be happy and even if we win Independence they will not lose the 5m Scots totally anyway. And btw their political bias covers a range of subjects from the SNP to Israel to Chavez! Mind you I confess I'm not sure I could nominate any organ of the great British MSM who do a balanced job in this respect. Depressing!

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  7. What depresses me, Alex is that some independence supporters have managed to needlessly alienate many dedicated and professional journalists and media people by their gratuituous, simplistic abuse.

    What worries me is that many SNP people demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of media and what drives newsrooms and news values, seeming not to understand the structure of media, and revealing concepts of what constitutes a free media and democratic values that would deeply concern me if they were replicated in the independent Scotland I want to see.

    Senior figures within the SNP could stop this folly in its tracks at any time if they chose to do so - the fact that they haven't speaks volumes.

    I understand that the lack of a major media channel of communication with an overt commitment to the nationalist cause and the undoubted bias displayed on occasion by many media channels tends to breed paranoia and a siege mentality, and I have been guilty of it myself on occasion.

    But to surrender to this is to strike a damaging blow at the heart of what my kind of social democratic nationalist politics stands for, and leaves us open to the charge of political immaturity - or worse.

    That you and other independence supporters (see some comments here - I won't embarrass you with the hysterical emails and abusive emails received!) choose to respond so narrowly to my piece, which was one voter's and viewer's perception of the great world public service broadcaster, celebrating its great achievements and recognising the struggle of its journalists and other contributors for equity and fairness, excoriating its senior management's flaws I find sad.

    regards,

    Peter

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    Replies
    1. Peter I didn't respond 'narrowly'. I concede that the BBC does many admirable things and I have never condemned them outright. What I tried to say was they are significantly flawed in some key areas and just because they do other things well does not justify letting them off the hook?
      If you think Newsnight Scotland is doing a fine balanced job of investigative analysis we're never going to agree
      But I don't want to get into a rammy so let's move on.

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    2. Let's do that, Alex. Don't attribute views to me about Newsnight Scotland that are patently disproved by scores of blogs, clips and comments I have posted, please ...

      regards,

      Peter

      Delete
  8. It should be noted that the contractual terms of BBC employees do not permit them to offer their views on political controversies of this nature, and preclude them from responding to individual abuse. However, where comments are defamatory, it has been made clear by the NUJ that they will respond vigorously through legal channels.

    Peter

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  9. I've deleted your last comment, Lord Monty - take your anonymous right-wing paranoia elsewhere, please.

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  10. For those who do not read carefully enough - I said BBC employees are discouraged from offering views of controversies of this nature - i.e. defending themselves against email allegations of bias. When it happens publicly, as in the case of Ian Davidson's notorious allegation of bias on television against Isabel Fraser, they are free to respond vigorously and to seek legal redress of they so wish.

    Peter

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