BBC: Tangling public service
by Peter Preston Posted Wed, Dec 31 2008
Here’s a new dilemma running out of control: What, exactly, does public service broadcasting amount to? We have an American definition because the Public Broadcasting System encapsulates it. We can probably sort out rules of thumb from India to Australia. But consider the tangle—the BBC— beginning to tie knots in British understanding.
The BBC collects $6 billion a year in license fees (which are, effectively, a tax for all those owning a TV or radio). That cash, guaranteed presently until 2013, buys you comedy shows, pop, drama, classical orchestras, serious news, investigations—indeed, everything under the sun. A full public service serving, well, the public. But why, other broadcasters now demand in these credit-crunched times, should our own news bulletins, our documentaries, our Beethoven and Brahms, not attract some of that money, too? We are required, as part of our entry fee to broadcast via terrestrial TV, to give undertakings about the cultural balance of what we provide. One broadcaster, Channel Four, is allowed to take advertising but also obliged to tick many specifically worthy public boxes because it’s another legally designated public service company. Another, the purely commercial ITV, is required to support 500 or so regional news journalists. Why not hand them a slice of BBC revenue carved off the top, otherwise known as top slicing?
That debate has been raging for months already and shows no sign of early resolution. But give it an extra twist before you stick over any quavering answer. For who says that public service begins or ends with a button on your TV? The BBC already spends over $212 million of license fee money on its Web sites, sending news and videos around the world. In that process, inescapably, it competes with British newspapers great and small—some reaching for salience in global markets, some merely happy to keep news flowing to local towns and villages.
When the BBC pushes to collect money from advertising in the U.S. or Europe, for instance, it elbows the Telegraph, Times and Guardian aside. When it announces a dramatic upgrading of video news on its 65 local news Web sites, it causes a competitive grief to local newspapers in exactly the same line of service struggling to make sense of a lousy economy. Why, then, should broadcasting itself be left as the only media area where top slicing could conceivably apply? Why not slice away a few million more to help local papers keep the public informed about things it has a right to know but won’t as the cutbacks continue?
That’s the argument raised recently by the state regulator Ofcom and it automatically lands slap in the middle of a hot pot of debate for the BBC’s governing Trust, as well as Ofcom, to try to sort out.
Ridiculous? Observe, indeed, how the concept rolls merrily along. Begin by funding one giant state corporation devoted to quality, neutrality and all things nice. End by slicing the cash far thinner and giving it to commercial broadcasters who want their news programs paid for and local papers who can’t afford to be left out of the action. In one sense, this is perfectly consistent. The cash goes to worthy things in print or on screen. In another sense, though, it’s a bad headache waiting to happen.
Why, on a channel free to make money from selling advertisements, should the tax payer have to step in to fund expensive things like news, leaving the channel’s owners free to concentrate on game shows and celebrity specials? Why should that same taxpayer be asked to support a local paper he doesn’t read? And how is an editor to balance popular content, which has to pay its way against less popular content that wins a state check (probably after due deliberation by a slicing authority of great and good public dignitaries)? The scope for bureaucratic leaning and meddling is just too big while the gains from any such arrangement are pitifully small.
Nevertheless, don’t simply dismiss the arguments with a shrug. They are the work of well-intentioned, thoughtful journalists struggling to come to terms with economic hard times and earnest regulators (such as Ofcom) who want a plurality of voices to survive. They are seriously wrong answers to a mountain of problems; answers that chip away at freedom and give the manipulators far too much new scope to interfere.
A better answer would more clearly limit what the BBC can subsidize as it marches on from Web sites and podcasts towards mobile phones: so far and no further. It would also remind editors—and, more importantly, their bosses—that journalism doesn’t exist for their benefit alone but because voters, viewers, readers and listeners in a democracy need it. In short, that it is a duty, not an optional extra. The alternative route, after all, is deeply disheartening: we’ll do the pap and the tat unchecked, you stump millions so we can add the worthwhile bits.
That doesn’t sound like any kind of public service. Just greed and desperation running out of control.
Peter Preston
Global Journalist columnist Peter Preston is editorial director of the Guardian Media Group and was the chairman of IPI from 1995 to 1997.