“A TEAM of assistant gravediggers” has been appointed to help John Whittingdale, secretary of state for culture, media and sport, to “bury the BBC that we love”. So warned the former chairman of the BBC Trust, Chris Patten.
Last month, Whittingdale presented a Green Paper to parliament proposing the BBC should become smaller and less competitive and other drastic “reforms”.
The Green Paper is a consultation paper by which the government solicits public opinion before it decides a major policy issue. No conclusions are given; only the options are set out. But, while doing so, the government barely conceals its own intentions.
The UK government has hardly concealed its intentions.
The Conservatives had campaigned long against what they called a leftist bias in the BBC and Whittingdale himself earned notoriety as its staunch critic.
The crisis is not without lessons for similar institutions elsewhere especially in South Asia. All over the world, the public broadcaster enjoys a certain prestige and also incurs suspicion of subservience to the government of the day. True, the BBC’s record is not unblemished; whether on bias, accuracy, credibility or taste. But its achievements and reputation far outweigh those lapses.
The BBC operates under a royal charter which invests it with a juridical personality, as well as a licence and an agreement with the minister concerned. Both are subject to renewal every 10 years. This gives the government of the day a powerful weapon. Such arrangements cannot exist in a vacuum. They rest on the support of public opinion. Hence the consultation paper.
Almost unique to the BBC is the application of the concept of trusteeship. The director general is a powerful figure as chairman of a board of management; CEO as well as editor-in-chief. But above him are the governors.
The Annan report on the Future of Broadcasting described them as “the trustees of the public interest, and therefore they cannot, or should not, identify themselves too closely with the day-to-day decisions taken in the corporation or they would never be able to call for a change of policy in the public interest. But they are also the board of the corporation itself and have the final responsibility for the management of the BBC.”
The importance of this institution cannot be overstated. The governors protect the DG from public pressure but also pull him up for flaws. They are a guarantee of autonomy.
The report added: “The governors have to ensure that the BBC’s services are conducted in the general public interest. They must candidly tell the professional broadcasters why they agree with certain public criticisms.
“At the same time, they have to defend the broadcasters from pressure groups who want to use the BBC services to further their own aims and to tell the public, and indeed the government, why they are not prepared to interfere with the editorial independence of the broadcasters or admonish them when they have been exercising their editorial freedom responsibly. There can therefore be no doubt who takes the strategic decisions on the BBC’s policies. The buck stops at the governors.”
In January 2007, the governors were replaced with trustees proper in a trust.
In 1977, after the Emergency was lifted the government of India set up a working group on broadcasting and TV headed by the late B.G. Verghese. This writer was a member. Its report recommended that the trusteeship concept be adopted. It was rejected by the minister for information and broadcasting, L.K. Advani.
India enacted a tepid version in the Prasar Bharati Act 1990. But it was brought into force only in 1997.
What is lacking is a political culture in which autonomy is respected. In 1985, one minister boasted: “If I want to interfere I can interfere in an autonomous corporation.” He was not wrong as experience since has demonstrated.
Therein lies the relevance of the BBC model and the crisis which has beset it. The Tories have distrusted it for long because of its role during the Suez and Falkland wars.
Margaret Thatcher said in the House of Commons in 1982 that “there are times when it seems that we and the Argentines are being treated almost as equals”. Richard Francis, MD of BBC Radio, responded: “The BBC needs no lessons in patriotism.”
All this is now under threat. Whittingdale would review as to how the BBC is financed, its output and if tougher oversight is required by a new regulatory body, replacing the much-criticised BBC Trust. The BBC said in a statement it would fight them, as “a creative and economic powerhouse for Britain”.
The Green Paper, the BBC said, “would appear to herald a much diminished, less popular BBC. That would be bad for Britain and would not be the BBC that the public has known and loved for over 90 years”.
The writer is an author and a lawyer based in Mumbai.
Published in Dawn, August 22nd, 2015
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