Will the Hutton Inquiry Harm the BBC?

Did anyone see the poll out last week that showed both Tony Blair's and the BBC's approval ratings were harmed by the Hutton inquiry and the associated scandal?

Does anyone agree with me in thinking that this will probably cause an internal row over whether the BBC needs to be so brash, brazen, bold and youthful?

After all...Andrew Gilligan didn't only report the news (or his version of it)...he actually ended up making news...that's hardly high-quality journalism.

Not sure what you mean by your first statement, as the BBC are not subject to 'approval ratings' in the way Blair is. In any event, I really do feel that the government are more likely to suffer the backlash of this event than the BBC.

Surely it provides for cheap on the doorstep news, thereby filling up the schedules with low cost reportage, and therefore is good for the BBC's programming budget?

So all in all, the enquiry is probably a good thing for the BBC, rather than having to send out reporters to cover more distant matters.

Interesting that it would seem that the BBC haven't lost any viewing figures for its news output. Surely if people had lost trust in the BBC they wouldn't watch their coverage of the Hutton Inquiry.

I think the government will come out worse than the BBC just because of the whole spin thing and the fact that people didn't really seem to trust them in the first place.

What I mean is two articles that appeared in the Daily Telegraph last week:

The first article:

Blair suffers poll blow as majority of Labour voters blame Government over Kelly death
(Filed: 24/08/2003)

(excerpts)

Trust in the Prime Minister has been hit by WMD affair, reports Colin Brown

More than half the Labour voters who gave Tony Blair a second landslide victory in 2001 have turned against the Government over Dr David Kelly's death, according to an ICM opinion poll for The Telegraph.

Andrew Gilligan, the BBC defence correspondent at the centre of the row, also came in for criticism. A total of 38 per cent of those questioned said he should resign, and the percentage was higher among women (43 per cent) than men (33 per cent). More Labour voters (48 per cent) thought he should resign than Tories (32 per cent) and Liberal Democrats (44 per cent).

Nearly a quarter of the voters polled (23 per cent) said Greg Dyke - the BBC's director general, who went to the board of governors to defend the Gilligan story that was based on interviews with Dr Kelly - should quit for his role in the affair.

Trust in the BBC has also been damaged. Thirty-six per cent of all voters surveyed said they would now trust the BBC less, and that proportion rose to 40 per cent among women. However, a majority - 52 per cent - said their trust in the BBC had not changed, and the overwhelming majority of voters - 78 per cent - said there should be no change in the BBC's status as a public broadcasting service funded by the compulsory licence fee. That finding will be another shot across the Government's bows before it embarks on the review of the BBC charter at the end of the year.

The second article:

Will the BBC be smiling for long?
(Filed: 29/08/2003)

(excerpts)

The following day [after the Edinburgh festival], Lord Bragg predicted that the corporation could be facing a crisis.

"There's a lot of angry noise out there, and it's anti-BBC," the grand fromage of high-brow broadcasting told a festival seminar about the forthcoming debate over the corporation's charter review.

When the moaning starts, the corporation can usually rely on the support of influential friends. Not now, Lord Bragg suggested. He said that he had found "very, very little support" in the Houses of Commons and Lords for BBC television, though more for its radio output and much more for the World Service.

The BBC could no longer "take it for granted that it is the sole repository of the licence fee. Those days are gone," he said. A lot of BBC4, the digital arts and culture channel with high ambitions but low audiences, should be on BBC2 and even BBC1, he felt.

And with ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 increasingly wanting someone else to pay for their public service programmes, Lord Bragg predicted a "definite attempt" to separate the BBC from some of the £2.7 billion it gets each year from the £116 licence fee. He could even envisage a future, he added, in which his own series, ITV's South Bank Show, would lay claim to a share of the licence fee.

[...]

While he insisted that governments have never liked the BBC, what has surprised him more has been the widespread disaffection among backbenchers. Lord Bragg said he had spoken to "a heck of a lot of them" who were angry with the BBC because they felt that they were not getting access to the media to discuss serious political issues. When they did get on television, they felt "rushed" by controversy-hungry presenters.

To cap it all, what politicians did see of BBC television didn't impress them. "I fear that politicians don't watch much TV, and they tend to watch on Saturday nights when BBC1 isn't at its best," said Lord Bragg.

Saturday night on BBC1 means Casualty, Fame Academy and The National Lottery - just the sort of programmes which, on their own, are hard to justify in terms of public service funding. The BBC has long insisted there is no viable alternative to the licence fee. But Lord Bragg says that fails to take account of politicians' addiction to tinkering.

[...]

The Hutton Inquiry has inevitably made things worse for the BBC, he added. "It has allowed opinions to polarise and dug up the roots of people's loyalties."

Jamie Cowling, a media specialist at the Institute of Public Policy Research, a think-tank that is influential with Labour, said there was little doubt that attitudes towards the corporation had hardened in the corridors of power.

"In the spring, civil servants suddenly all began referring to 'charter review' rather than 'charter renewal'," he said. "It happened from one week to the next. Very strange, but it's an indication that this isn't a foregone conclusion."

Even pre-Hutton, said Mr Cowling, there was growing scepticism towards the corporation within central government. That was, in part, due to frustration with its more populist programming. "But it is also a recognition that the broadcasting environment has changed," he said.

"I think the Government is still seriously committed to the goals of public service broadcasting. But the question they are asking now is whether the BBC is really the best institution to deliver it.

"Since coming to power, Labour has subjected just about every area of public sector life to ever more stringent measures of performance and value for money. Just ask the teachers. Now, it's the BBC's turn."

[...]

The issue of how the BBC is governed - exposed to a "particularly harsh light" by the Gilligan affair - "radiates out" into all the other areas where the corporation is criticised - that it is too big, too commercial and sometimes too downmarket, he said.

The licence fee, he believes, is the BBC's "Achilles heel": in order to justify making everyone pay the corporation feels it has to reach as many viewers as possible. This inevitably means having to chase ratings.

Mr Cowling notes that the BBC appears to have recognised it has an image problem and - with the obvious exception of Downing Street - has now launched a charm offensive. Last weekend, Mr Dyke even went so far as to call for the Government to rescue ITV. The question now is whether it's all too little and too late.

(end)

So, what I'm referring to is the interplay between the evolution of TV in Britain, the modernisation of the BBC away from its public broadcasting role, and the way politicians like to behave opportunistically.

In other words, a modern BBC is just reduced to PayPerVIew, so beloved of the Tory Party?

An Answer in a word - Probably.

I know the Tories don't exactly love the Beeb, but there is a good point here.

All this mass-appeal stuff on BBC1 does mean that the more traditional public broadcaster programming gets shifted to BBC2 and BBC4.

I think that there are now enough politicians and civil servants angry with the BBC that, in the coming months, we'll see the current image of the BBC (and a lot of its current management) canned.

And I'm not just preaching...taking on Number 10 is what Americans refer to as "hardball politics." BBC did it before (with Peter Snow questioning Margaret Thatcher's honesty on Newsnight during the 1982 Falklands War)...and look at what happened at the BBC between 1982 and 1985.

The ultimate lesson: public broadcasters should NOT play politics.

Hmm...

Why is it people think that popular programmes are not "public service" - is public service broadcasting purely minority "worthy" stuff? Surely it is in the public service to put popular programmes on a channel with a high quality news service - ensuring more viewers watch a decent news bulletin than would be the case if a lower rating show was on before? By definition a public service broadcaster has to reach the wider public (unlike the underfunded and low-rating US PBS system) - popular programmes combined with decent funding and editorial independence are the key to this.

It is worth remembering that the BBC has weathered these storms before... Remember "Real Lives", "Secret Society", the Nationwide Belgrano grilling etc. ? Sure - there are lessons to be learnt on both sides, and there are questions to be asked about the regulation of the BBC. The BBC, like any other organisation, can make mistakes - both big and small. However the role of a broadcaster that is not governed by purely commercial, or political interests, is key to the UK broadcasting model.

It is also worth remembering that the BBC has been pretty equally criticised by both the previous Tory and current Labour governments - surely this must mean they are doing something right?? (The job of an independent news media is to ask the difficult questions, and keep on asking them if they don't get satisfactory answers?)

I agree with you. But couldn't the portion of the BBC's budget allocated to producing wide-appeal programming be better spent? Very often, instead of making a series based on a new, untested concept they make a British version of something that's been done before elsewhere. Take Fame Academy, The Weakest Link, and all the Hollywood movies shown for instance.

British independent cinema is scarce on BBC1, yet Hollywood gets prime time.......does that make sense if supposed to showcase the best of British TV?



Yes, I agree with you completely here. And the BBC has never been faulted for doing this. But Andrew Gilligan didn't ask any questions. He made a few suppositions, dressed them up as facts with "evidence" from an "anonymous source," and used the BBC to get his own biased view across.

There is a fine line between questioning and investigating with journalistic integrity, and using shoddy, biased techniques to make a political statement.

And it's worth pointing out that, regardless how evil Number 10 is, if the BBC hadn't done the story in this way, David Kelly might be alive.

The BBC and Andrew Gilligan are not one and the same (thank god!). AG dosen't rate very highly with me at all - he is an awful broadcaster.

If you, like me have actually listened to the actual broadcast he made on that fateful morning on Radio 4, you will hear that he is absolutely appalling in front of a microphone. He was full of 'umms' and 'errs' and wasn't a very good speaker at all. I'm surprised anyone at all managed to comprehend what he was trying to say.

I do think however that the BBC governers were far too quick to jump to his defence. They should have been a little more restrained in standing by him, as we have seen since, the BBC have backtracked slightly in their unwavering support for him.

Andrew Gilligan is the centre of this mess, not the BBC as a whole, and this should be noted. People are all too quick to blame the BBC News machine, but when the fault lies soley with one rather transient reporter, then it is rather unfair to slam the BBC continually.

Yes, the role of the BBC is to ask the difficult questions - but not when one of their reporters has more or less 'sexed up' their own reporting.

At the risk of being picky, I'm fairly sure The Weakest Link was originated by the BBC (and then sold on to other countries).