Defend the BBC despite its faults
JVL Introduction
Like many others JVL has been fiercely critical of the BBC but that does not mean we have any time for the efforts of Nadine Dorries and the Tory Government to wreck it and we see the urgent need to defend the BBC.
John Booth explains why the destruction of the BBC will serve the interests of the media barons who fear any move, no matter how gradual, towards socialism and open up Britain to a Fox-like assault on truth.
The BBC, like many public services, is in need of improvement not of politically motivated destruction, leaving a corpse for the privatising vultures to feed on.
John Booth writes
How many of us haven’t been exasperated by the BBC? From Jimmy Savile to Panorama’s cast of unidentified smearers of the Labour party or discovering the salaries of Gary Lineker and Zoe Ball, there’s plenty to get us licence payers worked up.
So what better time for beleaguered Boris Johnson to seek to appease some of his many critics by getting I’m-a-Celebrity MP Nadine Dorries to freeze the corporation’s funding in the name of saving voters money? With it not only comes that immediate warning to nervy BBC journalists to lay off the Prime Minister: the Culture Secretary promised that this licence fee settlement, allowing inflation-only rises after that freeze melts a little in 2024, will be the BBC’s last.
A system of public broadcasting finance initiated almost a century ago with the Wireless Telegraphy Act will disappear in five years’ time. It seems to be one more thing, like remembering responsibility for slavery, from the British past that this Tory government doesn’t want to conserve.
What Johnson allies do want to maintain is his occupation of No 10 Downing Street – at least for now. More important in that operation is not the number of letters Sir Graham Brady receives in his 1922 Committee Chair inbox, nor the Commons rhetorical denunciation of former ally David Davis. Even less is it Sir Keir Starmer’s eager embrace of a rather unpleasant defected Tory MP. What matters is that the two big media opponents of the BBC – Rupert Murdoch of News Corp and Viscount Harmsworth of the Daily Mail and General Trust – stick on Johnson’s side of the barricade.
The Sun, whose No 2 left the service of the Prime Minister with one of the Downing Street parties his boss claimed not to know about, has stayed loyal to him during recent revelations in other papers.
The Daily Mail has printed many party stories and critical comments but, like the Murdoch tabloid, has not campaigned for his resignation.
In what I suspect is a quid pro quo, these proprietors have agreed to stick with him so long as he intends to damage – if not destroy – the BBC. In this operation Culture Secretary Dorries appears to act as the errand girl sent to do the media moguls’ bidding.
Murdoch, now with Times Radio and his new TV station, is a long-time critic of the BBC whose output and reputation he sees as a direct threat to his global activities. Harmsworth sees his Mail Online challenged by the BBC’s popular internet operation. Both have long backed Johnson’s rise from dishonest journalist to double-dealing Prime Minister. They’ll doubtless dump him one day as they have a long line of previous used-up Prime Ministers – but not just yet if he can severely wound the BBC first.
But should socialists, who have so often found themselves abused, ignored and patronised by some of the BBC’s senior staff, fight to preserve the corporation when its current Director-General is a former Tory councillor and the chair of its trust a big Conservative party donor?
As with many of our old and still-valued institutions the answer is a qualified yes.
I say this not because my heart leaps when BBC Radio 4 offers us the wit and wisdom of Jonathan Freedland or Andrew Marr or when I remember Kirsty Wark’s abuse of Jenny Manson on Newsnight. Neither is it because I regard the eye-watering salaries of those reading aloud from the autocue as fair payment for a daily shift that nurses, bus drivers and others to whom we entrust out lives can only dream about. Even less is it because the sums some of these BBC big names can earn on the side can exceed their licence-funded salaries.
Rather it is because as someone who lived in the United States I greatly appreciate the importance to democracy of public service broadcasting. I don’t think Fox News and the mad world of shock jocks strengthens the cause of fair reporting and free speech. And I certainly don’t see there anything remotely like the range of programming the BBC offers Britain for a licence fee costing about £3 a week. This becomes increasingly important as local radio seeks to fill some of the role no longer effectively performed by the provincial press.
Of course, the BBC is neither independent nor impartial as Tom Mills’s research study confirms and as Media Lens regularly points out. Members of Jewish Voice for Labour are among many thousands of activists who know from direct experience that this is true. If you want insider confirmation, read Greg Dyke’s account of what happened to the BBC when Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell wanted to divert criticism over the death of Dr David Kelly.
What the BBC needs, if public service broadcasting is to be defended effectively in the age of Murdoch, Harmwsorth, Netflix and the rest, is fundamental reform of its funding, its recruitment, its constitution and its structure. The fate of Dyke and others seeking to change the corporation suggests this cannot be done from the top down.
So how about this as a popular grassroots cause for Sir Keir Starmer? Seated next to a few Union Jacks and rejuvenated by memories of his pro bono youth the Labour leader could patriotically espouse the democratic reform of a much-loved British institution. Perhaps even a revitalising new contract with the freedom-loving British people?
John Booth is a journalist who writes at www.Forthzando.com and tweets @JohnBooth2017
I am afraid I am opposed to the idea of defending the BBC. Their Panorama programme claiming antisemitism in the Labour Party and Kirsty Wark’s treatment of Jenny Manson on Newsnight was bad enough but the BBC’s refusal to subsequently acknowledge their bias in these programmes is, in my view, unforgivable. The (fake) antisemitism charge against Corbyn and the left, promoted by too many BBC presenters (Emma Barnett,Nick Robinson), is stomach turning while propagating just one world view (like in connection with Russia, China, and so on) is a long way from balanced journalism. Sad times.
don’t agree. I’m not saying I support it but I am completely indifferent.
The BBC is a state propaganda organ and all the more effective because it is seen as neutral. It has always been anti-working class and now it is running with the war propaganda against Russia and China.
It is not worth defending
You might be “opposed” or “indifferent” but you’ll sit up and take notice when we have a media entirely controlled by the likes of Murdoch and Harmsworth. You’ll soon know the difference.
As Joni Mitchell sang: “You don’t what you’ve got till it’s gone.”
The defence of the BBC, whatever its faults or the things that we don’t like, is an absolute necessity for socialists.
I find this half-hearted attempt to defend the BBC remarkably unconvincing. For what is in my view a more profound and excellently referenced analysis of the increasingly toxic role which the BBC plays as the propaganda arm of the corporate state, I recommend the Medialens article referred to above which can be found at
https://www.medialens.org/2022/save-the-bbc-in-whose-interests/
Medialens starkly illuminates the level of chauvinist political self-satisfaction which the ingestion of a lifetime of BBC propaganda has induced in vast swathes of the older British population, including much of the middle class intelligentsia.
The BBC’s state propaganda is more noxious even than that of its private corporate rivals precisely because of its reputation as an ‘unbiased’ public institution. This objectively absurd reputation is itself a triumph of ruling class ideology, carefully honed over a century of broadcasting, perhaps the most successful and subtle 20th century example of the longterm manufacture of consent anywhere in the world. In the last 20 years however the political control of the BBC has become so direct, and its mendacity so obvious to internet savvy younger generations, that many will just shrug if it disappears. It will have drowned in its own excrement.
The real task is not to defend the BBC, but to build an alternative online progressive media. An astonishing array of high quality sources already exist covering many different topics – the problem is that for a mixture of sectarian political reasons and misplaced competitiveness they do not collaborate as an organised and structured network. There is a general failure on the left to understand that a successful progressive online media network cannot be tied to the ideological purity of any one party line.
I’ll make the analogy, once more.
Defunding the BBC because of the dreadful state of BBC News and Current Affairs, would be like defunding(privatising) the NHS because of the dreadful state of the NHS Dental Service.
Cure the illness, don’t kill the patient.
The BBC is a key battlefield in the battle of ideas. To hand it over to the friends of Murdoch is a big mistake. The vast majority of British People have only a very superficial understanding of what Britain does in the world. The BBC seeks to present the UK Govt. as a ‘doer of good’. We need to fight for a more balanced approach. Over the years we have had victories. Most people believe what they want to believe and what is comfortable for them to believe. Developing their critical capacity is infectious. They begin to question everything. Such people are dangerous to the likes of Murtdoch and we should cultivate them.
The BBC, like the Guardian, has always served the interests of the bourgeoisie & has nothing but contempt for the working class, The chairman of the BBC, Richard Sharp, made a massive donation to the Tory Party just before his appointment, but this is perfectly acceptable & left unchallenged as the BBC becomes a political organisation in its own right with ever closer links with Murdoch’s News International.
The license fee has become a political subsidy to finance right wing politics as platforms are denied to anyone with ‘left-wing credentials’, which probably explains why Sir Keir has reneged on yet another promise not to give copy to ‘the Sun’. MSM is being sanitised. & made impotent & sterile.
Despite the BBC’s manifold failings in its news broadcasts which infest far too much of its radio and TV output, it is a valuable part of British culture which has provided airtime for many performers who would otherwise have been ignored. It’s probable that neither Annie Nightingale nor John Peel would have built careers as radio DJs outside the Beeb. It needs radical reform but not privatisation. Jeremy Corbyn offered some ideas in 2019:
– Funding for the Local News Partnership – which pays for the pool of new Local Democracy Reporters – to be made available to local and investigative news co-operatives with a mandate to report on local authorities
– Giving staff and local licence-fee payers the ability to elect BBC Board members, with minimum representation for women and minority groups
Improving transparency around the make-up of the BBC workforce with the publication of equality data, including for social class, for all BBC content creators
– Putting the BBC on a “permanent statutory footing to end “Government control” through Royal Charter renewal
– The creation of a new independent body to set the BBC licence fee
– The introduction of a new digital licence fee, funded by tech giants and internet service providers
The BBC is a distraction from what really matters, which is public service broadcasting. That needs to be retained, and the BBC is the principal player. However, the BBC is not likely to be reformed and decoupled from its state/establishment role under Starmer…
This could work for Johnson, it’s going to be popular.
It would all be sold to the public on the back of scrapping the licence fee which is a regressive poll tax.
But the public won’t like the price being demanded by Johnson, the replacement of the license fee by advertising.
The left could be very popular by demanding that the BBC is funded from general taxation.. scrapping the license fee and keeping the BBC advert free.
The programming on the BBC is often world-leading, but we hate the BBC News due to it’s relatively sophisticated and effective bias.
Currently, with the license fee, the BBC is not independent, so the license is not essential for independence.
The BBC has stuffed itself full of hard right Tory commentators. The board that runs the BBC goes through significant changes each time the government changes from blue to pink to blue, but is always staunchly pro-establishment, pro-war etc.
But it needn’t be like that
The left has missed a trick not saying it would get rid of the licence fee, it would have tipped the balance in the 2017 election.
All the small bills that working people face each month put stress into their lives, but as it is it could be the Tories who ease the burden for them and take the glory for putting this £15 back into their pockets.
Because Labour never scrapped the license fee, Johnson has the opportunity to do this in his own particular way… designing any new structures so as to remove any remnants of democratic accountability and pave the way for privatisation or abolition.
Difficult to know where the balance of advantage lies but I suspect that the writer of this article is correct.
To leave our broadcasting entirely to Murdoch etc. would be a terrible mistake. The BBC needs to be totally reformed, which can only happen under a decent government, but to lose the benefits of public broadcasting, and only produce programmes that advertisers, (with audience numbers as the priority) would fund is a dreadful prospect. The institution is currenly sick, as well as its disgusting political bias the quality of much of the BBC’s entertainment programmes has plummeted because of choosing to compete with commercial TV’s viewing figures. But to abolish public broadcasting would mean the end of any decent creative output of often minority interest, not geared to profit or advertisers, which only the BBC would choose to produce, and which have set really high standards throughout its history.
Murdoch wants to kill it off, we’ll really lose out if he gets his way. There must be real reform possible eventually.
I have visited and lived in countries where the standard of TV programmes is appalling. I refer to English speaking ones such as the US ,Australia and New Zealand. Despite its many faults the BBC is in a different class. I cannot accept rubbish with wall to wall adverts .The idea of Right Wing extremist propaganda is anathema. The Tories wants rid of the BBC because it hates the very idea of anything “public” . Alas ,the BBC has allowed itself to be cowed by recent governments. The Tories have packed the governance to be packed to the gunnels with their placemen and women. The license fee is very good value for money when you consider the breadth of service provided. If the BBC goes anyone wishing to enjoy good quality TV programmes will have to pay considerably more than £159 per annum . The BBC can be saved given a government which is not ideologically opposed to public service broadcasting.
It is sad how manyleft wingers have joined the scrap the BBC bandwagon. By being so one sided in the 2019 General Ellection, rubbishing Jeremy Corbyn and lauding Boris Johnson throughout the campaign, the BBC destroyed the support of the very people who should now be standing up to defend it. The alternative is so much worse.