THE LIME GROVE CONSPIRATORS

BBC current affairs journalists have attacked what they see

they who are guilty of distorting television coverage

WHEN THE BBC's own journal publishes explicit attacks on the chairman and the deputy director-general in successive weeks, it is evidence either of anarchy or of an admirable spirit of editorial independ- ence. Which of those views you take is likely to indicate your position on the issues that inspired the articles. Essentially That is certainly what fretful BBC cur- rent affairs journalists have been indulging in, frustrated as they are by the unfamiliar editorial disciplines that John Birt, the deputy director-general, is imposing on them. When they shortly move out of Lime Grove, their historic but distinctly unstate- ly home, it will' symbolise the end of independence for this effectively self- governing unit: always disputatious, re- sponsible for some first-class programmes but as many first-class rows. The unhappy journalists have used their press contacts to whip up a storm of criticism of Birt's methods, not just in the Listener but in more substantial prints such as the Observer, whose editor weighed into Birt in a speech at a dinner where the poor man was present, then gave space on his leader page to another Panorama refugee to peddle the Lime Grove line. The ITV network devoted a World in Action prog- ramme to the theme, concluding that the BBC had succumbed to pressure from the Conservative Party to weaken its former commitment to challenging journalism. `Has BBC journalism lost its spirit of inquiry?' asked the headline on one of the Listener pieces, and the article left no doubt how we were expected to reply. Morale is low, we are told, and good people are leaving. (No doubt they will be replaced by people with just as high an opinion of themselves.) The fuss is exaggerated because, while the row over current affairs coverage is a significant symptom of the BBC's new direction, it is only a symptom and by no means the entire story. Checkland's and Brit's house — cleaning stems from the realisation that the corporation is living on borrowed time and will continue to be in mortal peril at least while this Government remains in office — and probably beyond, for Labour has long itched to curb the broadcasters, though by different means.

It was only by chance that the Peacock Committee's 1986 report did not recom- mend that the BBC should accept advertis- ing, as some members of the Cabinet had hoped when it was appointed. Instead, the committee was swayed by the dubious argu- ment, deployed by apprehensive ITV ex- ecutives as well as BBC propagandists, that there would be 'not enough advertising to go round' if the BBC were to enter the market. (The notion that there is a finite supply of adver- tising, unresponsive to the number and range of media outlets, could be used to challenge the launch of any newspaper or magazine. If a com- pany advertises in the Guardian, Times and Telegraph, that does not mean it will not also advertise in the Indepen- dent when it comes along, provided the price is competitive.) To be required to take advertising would have meant the swift end of the BBC in any recognisable form. There are still those who would welcome such an outcome: indeed it was recommended in a leading article in this journal two weeks ago. As it is, the corporation has been required to make do with a fixed licence revenue, rising only to stay level with inflation, and is being encouraged to raise extra money from marketing its products. This stringen- cy has meant, for instance, abandoning its former ambition to get involved in satellite television and even its financially more modest but equally vainglorious bid to launch a world television news service comparable with its external radio service. To its credit, the Government has refused to stump up for such grandiose cultural imperialism.

Alongside financial self-discipline, the BBC has been encouraged to exert more stringent editorial control, and this is what has provoked the squeals from Lime Grove. The orthodox view there is that John Birt has been put in as a representa- tive of the Downing Street Thought Police, to excise material hostile to the Govern- ment and its philosophy. This is ludicrous. Birt has no political history. When he ran Weekend World, London Weekend's little- watched Sunday lunchtime programme, it was fronted by two figures of the Left, albeit the centre Left: Peter Jay and Brian Walden.

Apart from that, Birt is known mainly for a series of articles he wrote with Peter Jay in the Times in 1975, advocating more thorough analysis in television journalism and less reliance on the tabloid-style dramatic story. This approach was naturally derided by the television establishment because it questioned the way they were doing things.

These critics and their heirs are still at Lime Grove. Much of their spleen is being vented on Samir Shah, a young man Brit brought from LWT who — horror! requires producers to put detailed plans for programmes on paper before they begin making them. This is denounced as a Stalinist attempt to impose a centralised vision on the output and as an assault on the freedom of journalists to 'go out and report what they find'. How, we are asked, would the late, great James Cameron have been able to make his committed program- mes under such a regime?

The argument is ludicrous and fraudu- lent. Cameron did not make news and current affairs programmes, but highly personalised documentaries informed by his wealth of experience and judgment. Half-baked sub-Cameron journalism has for years been the bane of newspapers and television. No television reporter lumbered with camera crews ever just wanders off and 'finds' stories: they work out their movements in advance based on what they want to film and whom they want to interview, and that will depend on the kind of programme they plan to make. Any effective editor would expect to play a role in that decision. Bin is right in wanting to see less advocacy from reporters, whatever the view they are advocating. That kind of bad reporting has grown insidiously in the BBC in recent years, especially in de- spatches from America.

Had the Birt monitoring system been in place in 1984 it would have prevented the fiasco over the Panorama programme `Maggie's Militant Tendency', which cost the BBC £500,000 in libel settlements against two Conservative MPs it had branded as being of the loony Right. The most telling objection to the programme was not, as the conspiracy theorists would have it, that it criticised the Conservatives, but that it was an unconvincing piece of journalism, drawing conclusions that had not been supported by the research.

The World in Action programme that criticised the Birt set-up provided a further unwitting example of the kind of abuse he wants to correct. William Rees-Mogg, the former deputy chairman of the BBC, is a leading target of the Lime Grove faction who saw him as a one-man Militant Tendency on the board, determined to wipe out anti-establishment journalism. He disclosed in an article in the Indepen- dent that the World in Action people had spoken to him before the programme and asked if he was available for interview. He said yes, but in the event he was not called, presumably because what he wanted to say went against the programme's thesis.

The producer wrote an unconvincing reply, pointing out that you could not interview everyone. But since Rees-Mogg was implicitly criticised in the film, and was shown at least twice entering or leaving Broadcasting House, his view was central and should have been heard. Before read- ing his Independent article, I assumed he had been invited but had refused.

In place of a centralised editorial diktat, Lime Grove used to operate by a collective form of mutual approval, exchanged generously at convivial weekly departmen- tal buffet lunches and at programme re- view meetings covering all the television output. These, by most accounts, are a heady mixture of self-congratulation and settling inter-departmental scores. Sharp criticism is often counteracted by praise from other colleagues. Esprit de corps is paramount. When a member of the clique is under fire from on high (as Roger Bolton was for breaching guidelines over Northern Ireland in 1979) the whole department rallies round to prevent reprisals. Similarly today, when the chairman, Duke Hussey, has the effrontery to express in public even the most tentative criticism of recent stan- dards in news and current affairs, he is accused of being disloyal: apparently the duty of loyalty does not apply in the reverse direction.

People who remember Paul Fox's time as head of Lime Grove in the 1960s do not recall him as running a much tighter ship than his successors, although he had some famous rows with the likes of Jeremy Isaacs and Ian Trethowan. (Isaacs wanted to make Panorama, then a magazine prog- ramme, into a one-subject documentary, as it is today. Fox would not let him — and maybe some of the worst controversies of the 1980s would have been averted if the old format had been retained.) Fox's track record at Lime Grove en- couraged the anti-Birt faction to welcome his appointment as managing director of television to replace Bill Cotton — who has wielded little influence since his friend Alasdair Milne was fired as director- general early last year. Any thought, though, that Fox will be able or inclined to tame Birt is probably wide of the mark. A wise bird, he will probably want to draw a fence around Birt's current affairs empire and let him get on with it.

The reaction to Fox's return to the BBC highlights the absurdity of most of the fevered conspiracy theories about political designs on television. It was only three months earlier that Michael Grade's appointment to head Channel 4 — in which Fox played a decisive role — was being seen as a Thatcherite plot to increase viewing figures and fatten up the channel prior to floating it free of the ITV contrac- tors that own it. Fox, it was said, was Mrs Thatcher's favourite television mogul, and had done her bidding by fixing Grade's job. In fact he has spoken out against the flotation of Channel 4 and against govern- ment plans to auction ITV franchises to the highest bidder. Now the same conspiracy theorists see Mrs T's alleged favourite as a counterweight to John Birt, Mrs T's alleged plant.

What effect is all this steamy politick- ing having on what actually comes out of the box at the business end? Apart from news and current affairs programmes — watched by comparatively few people — the answer is very little. An intriguing table in the Independent last week showed that BBC programme schedules today scarcely differ from those of five years ago — before Grade, before Peacock, before Checkland and Hussey. The argument about the future of broadcasting has never primarily been about programmes, although the BBC and its apologists would prefer to fight on that subjective ground.

The truth is that all four national chan- nels show programmes that are enjoyed in varying degrees by their viewers. Those funded by the public do not differ notice- ably from those funded by advertisers. In five years' time, despite the onset of satellite television and the first of the franchise auctions, I suspect the output will scarcely be any different. The real argu- ment is not about programmes, but about legitimacy and control, about whether a publicly financed broadcasting organisa- tion, which certainly made sense when it was created, should in the 1990s be com- peting with a growing number of commer- cial stations that provide a comparable service at no public expense. Most of those would reel back from the suggestion of state involvement in the other main in- formation medium, the press.

These are the issues that the debate about broadcasting should seek to clarify. It does not, because sensational horror stories based on leaked memos and person- al vindictiveness are so much more fun and so much easier to understand.