The BBC’s impartial future
In time, acceptance of the Serota review findings could change the internal culture of the BBC to make it more robust and defensible, believes Ray Snoddy
The media word of the week, if not the year is impartiality, with particular reference to the BBC.
The difficulty is that the word is notoriously difficult to define, increasingly so among the divided tribes of social media, and even more difficult to implement in any real world.
Add in the additional complexity of a government that is seeking compliance rather than any serious attempt to achieve the near impossible – true impartiality – and you have something very close to a problem without a solution.
Having said that, the BBC response to the Serota review following the Bashir – Princess Diana scandal of 25 years ago, and the much more recent disgrace of his appointment as religious affairs editor (followed by the wholly inadequate internal investigation of all of the above), is to be welcomed.
Something had to be done, not least to try and restore some semblance of trust among the BBC’s often unreasonably vociferous critics.
It has long been denied but obviously true that the BBC’s traditional response to criticism, whether justified or not, has been to deny, dissemble and hunker down in the hope that troubles go away.
As has been found by Sir Nicolas Serota and his experienced review members, there has also been a marked tendency towards “group think” and an equally noticeably lack of the openness that BBC journalists expect of other organisations and institutions.
The extent of acceptance in full of the recommendations of Serota and moving ahead with immediate implementation has apparently even surprised a government instinctively hostile to the Corporation for ideological reasons.
Apart from more internal training on impartiality, a strengthened editorial policy team and a contractural commitment to enforce editorial values and culture, two initiatives stand out and are important.
One is the rolling series of reviews of controversial areas of BBC coverage under the control of external investigators. The first will look at how the BBC covers UK public spending and taxation and the reviews will also look at the tone of BBC reporting with an eye towards identifying bias.
There is nothing absolutely new here because the BBC Trust called in external figures on a number of occasions to look at aspects of BBC reporting.
This is more formalised and objective and part of an ongoing rolling process.
A better system to protect whistleblowers in a organisation notorious for its reluctance to accept criticism, and few therefore were willing to jeopardise their careers by complaining, is also welcome.
It is possible that over time the entire package will start to change the internal culture of the BBC to make it at the same time more robust and defensible.
For many months there has been the ridiculous situation where the BBC’s reputation was being undermined by an almost pathological reluctance to attribute “problems in the supply chain” to anything to do with Brexit.
This was nothing to do with an edict from on high. There was no such edict. It happened because individual journalists were reluctant to put their head above the parapet in case it was chopped off.
It was a pusillanimous version of ‘group think’. Thankfully many BBC journalists have since become braver about identifying cause and effect.
The coverage of the BBC announcements have been both interesting and revealing.
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Arch critics of the BBC such as the Daily Mail and The Sun have in general welcomed the BBC pronouncements with the Mail saying the BBC plans was “enormously welcome”, as was the statement by the BBC chairman Richard Sharp that “an impartiality revolution” was on the way.
The most extraordinary coverage of all came from The Times. There was no mention of it at all.
There was room aplenty for two totally trivial BBC stories – that news presenter Huw Edwards would like to succeed to Piers Morgan’s Good Morning Britain chair and the BBC’s defence of director general Tim Davis’ dress code and in particular, his taste for dressing-down white trainers.
But for one of the most significant BBC developments for years, and one that might influence a final financial settlement on the next licence fee, there was no space – at least in my edition.
The only working hypothesis is that The Times was, as ever, reluctant to give space to a story that might reflect well on the Corporation but is enthusiastic about anything to the Corporation’s detriment.
There is much to criticise about the new BBC 10-point plan. The series of rolling reviews will be elephantine in their stately progress. The one on public spending is expect to launch in January and be completed by the summer.
Every person added to monitoring and policy functions will mean fewer people actually making programmes, at a time when the Corporation is likely to face increasing financial pressures despite comprehensive attempts to respond to government demands.
The most worrying aspect of all is that every journalist in the BBC could be looking forever over their shoulder, fearful of being accused of bias or partiality.
It could lead to more timid and safety first reporting.
Unfortunately it was something that had to be done to acknowledge the sins of the past and offer a more impartial future -whatever that means.