Philistines at the Gate - defend Aunty Beeb!

As I expect is the case for many people, the BBC has greatly enriched my life. I get much of my news from the excellent BBC website. Radio 4 is an education in and of itself, and is the source in one way or another of 80% of decent British comedy. The World Service sets the international standard for impartiality and rigour. Test Match Special takes sports commentary to the sublime level of a mixture of Shakespearean farce and Monty Python-esque surrealism. And so on and so forth; there’s no point listing all of the great services and programmes that the BBC produces – sufficient to say, as John Prescott pointed out recently, it costs “39p a day per household for 20 national BBC TV & radio channels, 48 regional radio stations, iplayer and online services”.

It is, however, under attack. This sniping began in the aftermath of the Ross/Brand affair and the subsequent example of the British public “in one of its periodical fits of morality”, to quote Macaulay, albeit a fit provoked by the gutter press, the ‘semi-Nazi comics’ that constitute the tabloid milieu. These attacks came to a head recently with James Murdoch’s boorish assault on the BBC in his speech to the Edinburgh TV festival.

Now, it is utterly transparent why much of the press wants to undermine public and political support for the BBC. The right-wing hacks of Fleet Street have long since auctioned their nicotine-stained, booze-soaked souls to the highest bidder. They are in the pockets of large media corporations that are direct commercial competitors to the BBC, most notably News International in the case of The Times and The Sun, but also The Daily Mail, which is owned by Northcliffe, who owns a string of local news outlets.

James Murdoch’s agenda is similarly blatant. The BBC is the last bulwark against News International’s domination of the British media, and so of course he wants to undermine it. However, just because the motives of Murdoch (junior and senior) and the right-wing press are self-interested does not necessarily make their arguments wrong (though they are). We need to examine why specifically they are specious nonsense.

Murdoch claims that ‘state-sponsored journalism’ and the BBC’s privileged position has a ‘chilling effect’ on competition and consumer choice, the implication being that the BBC’s suppression of competition kills off the commercial sector’s creative impulses and the diversity of the media.

The use of the sinister sounding phrase ‘state sponsored journalism’ is pure scare-mongering, implying that the BBC is some kind of national dinner-lady ladling out pro-government gruel to the masses. Its independence is protected by its status as an autonomous corporation, and, although arguments about its neutrality rage, the fact that some leftists think that it is a bulwark of the establishment and Peter Hitchens thinks that it’s a Bolshevik conspiracy suggests to me that accusations of bias are usually products of the imagination of the critic in question. Undoubtedly there are blind spots – the News Quiz often sounds like a group meeting of Aging Lefties’ Anonymous, and its coverage of the Royals is sickeningly fawning – but the very fact that one can find such contradictory examples of partiality suggests that there is no systematic bias at work, and certainly not a pro-government one.

However, the real flaw in the arguments of Murdoch and his cronies in the press, the real reason that their whining ultimately amounts to an unconvincing mask for their real, self-interested agenda, is that the BBC certainly does not suppress a pluralistic and quality media – in fact, it does the opposite – it saves us from the inane group-think that markets without public agencies and regulations are liable to produce.

For, what is the BBC but a venerable custodian of our critical, literate intellectual culture? When broadcasting is exposed to the full blast of the market, it merely results in a levelling-down populism designed to appeal to a homogenised, ‘focus-grouped’ mediocrity. Surely the mind-numbingly piss-poor nature of the output of ITV in the past twenty years is evidence enough of this. Only a BBC well-funded and allowed to innovate and appeal to niche interests and minority pursuits can protect us from a future that consists of the jack-boot of inanity and crass insensibility stamping on a human face – forever, to paraphrase Orwell.

Take, for example, Radio 4. Radio 4 is one of the last outlets in the UK broadcasting decent, well-researched investigative journalism, serious, balanced news reporting, and high-minded cultural programming. Would ‘In Our Time’, a programme in which Melvyn Bragg picks the minds of world-experts on subjects ranging from Jonathan Swift to Charles Darwin, from metaphysical poetry to experimental physics, exist in a completely marketised British media? Would journalists genuinely interested in getting to the truth and standing up to corporate behemoths get a fair hearing in a world where Rupert Murdoch sat as judge, jury and executioner on every single issue? If we do not stand up for the idea that the BBC exists to make programmes that enrich our national culture, teach us to think more deeply, and challenge us to do and be better, and that it deserves the freedom to do this in a way that allows innovation and originality, even eccentricity, to flourish, then we might as well settle for a future in which the high-point of British cultural identity and vigour is oogling at page three of The Sun.

Of course, the big media ogres are not without political backing. Who is at the vanguard of this cynical attack on the BBC and the Reithian ideals that it stands for? Could it possibly be the Conservative Party? David Cameron lazily reheats tabloid assaults on the Beeb, and Tory ‘Culture’ policy largely consists of attacking the licence fee. Under a Tory government out and out privatisation is surely not far away. The political right-wing has no interest in an impartial BBC appealing to our better interests and exposing the realities of our political culture. A tame media machine knocking out dumbed-down nonsense to the punters will do it just fine. Of course, there is also the more overt political aspect; David Cameron would probably do unspeakable and frankly unprintable things to Rupert Murdoch for the support of The Sun.

So, unless we are prepared to stand up and take political action to protect the BBC, then there is a grave danger that Northcliffe and Murdoch, aided by the toadying barbarianism of Druggy Dave and the Notting Hill mob, will have their wicked way and steal the jewel in the crown of Britain’s intellectual life. This is not just a crusade for intellectual excellence; it is not just something that should worry the Radio 4 listeners among us. The BBC’s protection from market forces allows it to innovate in such a way that tends to promote excellence across the board; it results in the making of programmes that end up being both excellent, and, in the end, popular. This is because creativity needs long-term faith and commitment. Take, for example, Only Fools and Horses, or Blackadder. Both series had poor first series, but were rescued by commissioners who saw promise in these early efforts. Both shows, of course, went onto to be phenomenal popular and critical smashes. The market cannot accommodate such long-term commitment. It is a creature of the short-run. It is for this reason, among many, that the BBC is worth defending. I for one will be on the front line of the defence when the next Tory government begins its inevitable assault on Aunty Beeb on behalf of its corporate cronies.