THE VOICE OF THE BOURBONS
an arrogant unwillingness to learn as the BBC's besetting sin
THERE are times when the people who manage the BBC remind me of the Bour- bons: they have forgotten nothing and they have learned nothing. They cannot forget the days, long since gone, when the BBC had an unrivalled reputation for broadcast- ing in the public interest, when it was renowned for its high editorial standards, objectivity and fair play, and when it enjoyed the general esteem which these virtues merited. They don't understand why they no longer receive the respect they have forfeited by their slithering standards. Equally, they never seem to learn any lessons, above all the lesson — so impor- tant for the media as a whole — that arrogance does not pay.
Arrogance in the face of criticism has long been a BBC characteristic. It is never an amiable trait, even when an institution has something to be arrogant about, as the BBC undoubtedly had at one time, up till say the early 1960s. That was the decade when its reputation began, very slowly at first, to part company from its perform- ance. When Mary Whitehouse first began to express public anxieties about the moral slippage on television in 1964, the Chair- man of the ITA received her courteously and gave serious attention to her com- plaints, accepting that she probably spoke for a great many people. The BBC, by contrast, refused at first even to answer her letters: their attitude was a disdainful 'Who does she think she is?' This tactic, needless to say, did not pay. The BBC had a great deal more trouble, as a result, from the expanding Viewers and Listeners' Associa- tion than the commercial stations, and in the end was obliged to take heed of the pertinacious lady. In fact Mrs Whitehouse was the first to dent the BBC's hitherto undamaged image. It would have been so much more sensible to have exercised a little civility and self-criticism.
Yet here we are, more than 20 years later, with the BBC now far more vulner- able from every point of view, yet its management seems to have learned no- thing at all. Its rejection of the Conserva- tive Party criticism in toto (except for one token pseudo-admission) takes one's breath away with its folly. It is no use the BBC trying to pretend that the particular episode under review upset only Nofman Tebbit and party professionals. The BBC's handling of the Libyan raid annoyed a great many people, and it is only one of the ways in which the BBC has angered the public recently. The accusations are not of anti-Conservative bias as a rule but of a more fundamental anti-government bias, a hatred of authority in any form, a persis- tent denigration (often mendacious) of anything Britain has ever done or is doing, a destructive nihilism and, not least, a growing tendency to bring all these atti- tudes into plays and series and documentaries of every kind. The criticism can be summed up briefly: there is too much slanting on BBC programmes.
These complaints cannot be brushed aside as though they do not exist. I believe most of them have an element of justifica- tion, but even if all were unreasonable or mistaken, the BBC would still have to examine its conscience and behaviour. It is a state broadcasting service, operating under a highly privileged charter, and paid for in effect by a poll tax levied on British households. If it forfeits the confidence of a substantial section of the nation, as it clearly has done, then it should take steps to regain that confidence. Any commercial firm would take this for granted. It might not believe that the customer is always right but it assumes that the customer has a point. Only the BBC insists on its substan- tive infallibility.
Having produced its pert and self- satisfied document in reply to the Tebbit complaint, the BBC seems to think, or hope, that the business is now over. Not at all. Tebbit himself will rightly not be prepared to let the matter rest, or be deterred from making further well- documented complaints as and when necessary. He will not be the only one either. He has come under criticism from some Wet Tory MPs (and journalistic ditto) for taking on the BBC. But these people were mostly those who strongly disapproved of the Libyan raid in the first place, and so naturally thought the BBC coverage was fine. On the other hand, most Conservatives, and a great many non-Conservatives too, are delighted that a powerful voice has been raised against BBC practices. The publicity the affair has received will cause viewers to watch the BBC more carefully, with an eye to bias, and in my view the Corporation is going to find it much more difficult, in future, to get away with unbalanced broadcasts. Tebbit has achieved something important: he has alerted the public to the problem of BBC standards.
The BBC's new chairman understands all this perfectly well, and grasps that it must be publicly seen to be making an effort to get back its old, more objective presentation of events. But he is not going to find it easy to impress this on manage- ment. One reason why the Bourbons came a cropper was that they lacked the will to force their underlings to behave sensibly. Behind the arrogance of the BBC manage- ment lies weakness. It now seems to be an accepted fact that no one at the production level ever gets punished for errors of judgment or even breaches of specific BBC rules. The Real Lives business was a shocking example of this breakdown of discipline. In recent years, the BBC has had to fork out prodigious sums in libel damages and costs, but no one, so far as I know, has ever been punished for getting the BBC into these messes.
Isolated in their bunker, the BBC mana- gers are much more afraid of their produc- tion people than of the outside public or the Governors. So they subscribe to the propositions which are destroying the Cor- poration: 'The reporter is always right,' The producer can do no wrong.' It is these axioms which prevent internal reform. But the alternative to reform, as the tale of the Bourbons showed, is revolution — in the shape of government action. Margaret Thatcher is now presiding over consulta- tions which will ultimately produce a new legislative framework for British broad- casting after the next election. Dukey Hussey is, as it were, the Monsieur Necker of the BBC ancien regime, its last chance to behave sensibly before the day of wrath comes.
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