Saving the BBC from the Left
Published
by
Richard Kuper
JVL Introduction
In the latest issue of Tribune (click on the image below for details) Tom Mills asks how the left should respond to a BBC again under threat.
Being fed up to the back teeth with its appalling record on Corbyn, the Panorama Programme and more, must not blind us to the dangers.
As Mills concludes: “The BBC should be defended, but no one on the Left should be doing so without a plan to address the very serious problems around its governance, and a recognition that we need to radically rethink what public media could offer us in the digital age.”
This article was originally published by Tribune on Thu 20 Feb 2020. Read the original here.
Saving the BBC from the Left
The latest Tory threats against the BBC come after years of hollowing out the service by right-wing ideologues – if the Left is to defend it, we have to provide a vision of real public service broadcaster.
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If you want to see what they’re up to – look at the USA. It was a conscious and deliberate straetgy of the hard right in the US to create an ‘alternative’ view of the world. So we got Fox News. Murdoch. Times radio is about undermining the BBC as a news organisation thus leaving the ‘sexy’ bits to be sold off ….
An excellent analysis – as is Tom Mills’s book as a whole.
It is concerning that some on the ‘left’ are quite happy to see the BBC disappear as a public body and end up in the predatory hands of a Murdoch or equivalent. Like Lexit – it’s another temper-driven piece of self-harm. To preach the need to rebalance the ownership of assets towards the public interest whilst abandoning a major one to the market is – to say the least – an addled inconsistency. An image keeps coming to mind of that performer (? whoever) whose act consisted of singing a cowboy song whilst bashing himself semi-rhythmically on the head with a tin tray.
I don’t think that the following key rationale should be taken lightly :
“.. the BBC is much bigger than its news and current affairs journalism, and that to damn all its important cultural and educational output on the basis of its poor political reporting would be incredibly short-sighted.”
It’s not the whole story, as Tom Mills indicates, but even a cursory analysis would demonstrate that most programme variety – certainly in the field of radio – comes via the BBC (just tune a DAB radio to establish the fact). The country would be massively poorer without it.
The hard fact is that the market leads not to choice, but to competitive replication.
Thanks for this well argued and sane analysis.
You’ve convinced me.
But what person who cares about women’s rights and who agree that men can’t become women and lesbians don’t have penises can realistically vote for RLB who does?
How about democratic control of the BBC – same as any othre nationalised industry – elect the board -one third from the staff, one third from the licence payers and one third appointed from the government
Just a thought that came to me while reading near the end of this analysis. A subscription model for the BBC would (across a nexus of dynamics), end lending itself to furthering factionalised frames of reference, thinking and sentiment. I judge that the currently dominant forces in the UK Conservative Party recognise that they can negotiate and manipulate a factionalised field better than can the left. This idea rather borne out by what we saw in the years of Corbyn’s leadership. It proves very difficult, in a circumstance in which factionalism figures, to create the large-scale consensus which socialism defaults to seeking. I suppose I’m agreeing with the analysis offered by the author, while rather coming at it from a singular angle. We need to defend the potential of the BBC to speak to the possibility of well-grounded societal consensus. The right doesn’t need such consensus, as it proves adept (for another complex of reasons) at negotiating a factionalised societal field, rather than coming forward with its own putative consensus offering. That right wants to weaken and dismantle the BBC in order to further factionalise our societal field.
Scrapping the TV license will be a very popular policy… Labour should have proposed it itself years ago… because it is in fact a regressive poll tax.
The TV license has never been necessary as a way of maintaining independence. A guaranteed level of income based on GDP or similar would work just as well.
The Right has a few problems in this policy area… They hate to see a successful public service, but the BBC is very popular. Also, Private TV companies rely on one of two very unpopular things, either adverts during programs (god no !).. or subscriptions.. which nobody will actually want to pay, and which some people cannot afford.
The BBC was always a long way from perfect.. anyone over 50 will remember how stuffy and deferential it used it to be… a bit like the BBC’s Royal Corespondent still is lol.
Its not all black & white, private versus public. The private and semi-private companies broke through the servility of the BBC.. so a choice in a TV channels and pay masters (even profit making ones) has been beneficial.
But letting public funded television fall through our fingers, as has happened in France and some other countries, really isn’t an attractive alternative.
RLB’s ideas sound pretty good.. add to them, funding through general taxation, and the Left will have a very popular policy fit for the 21st century.