Media Quotes of the Week: From the journalists who have more Twitter followers than their papers to why does anyone still pay for the Guardian?

From a survey by Newsworks: "The Daily Telegraph's football correspondent Henry Winter has 652,000 followers, more than the 427,000 people who follow the main Telegraph account. Likewise, The Times columnist Caitlin Moran's 490,000 followers on Twitter is nearly three times the 172,000 people who follow The Times."

Steve Dyson on HoldTheFrontPage on Newsquest's subbing hub in Newport: "For what it’s worth, my opinion is that the Welsh unit is not yet good enough at handling multiple weeklies’ pages – let alone those of prestigious daily titles like the Northern Echo, Bradford  Telegraph & Argus and The Press, York."

Glenn Greenwald on his new venture First Look Media , in the Guardian: "I think I see us as a model not the model. There are different ways that journalism can innovate and get better. But I hope that some of the things that we do will inspire people to work out how to do journalism the way that they want. And to be fearless."

Les Hinton ‏@leshinton on Twitter: "Surprised at muted Fleet St follows of @guardian story on UK Yahoo webcam spying. It’s extraordinary. People really care."

Jeremy Clarkson on Piers Morgan in the Sunday Times [£]: "He’s trying to argue his CNN show failed because the Americans didn’t take kindly to his misguided attempt to spark a debate on gun control. Nonsense. His show failed because the viewers hated him. Everyone hates him. And that’s a big problem when you are trying to play the fame game. You can upset some of the people some of the time and survive — thrive even. But if you upset all of the people all of the time, you will fail. And he has. And I couldn’t help but notice that as the news broke, it stopped raining and the sun came out."

Piers Morgan ‏@piersmorgan on Twitter: "Dear old @JeremyClarkson warned I wouldn't like what he's written about me tomorrow. I just read it, and LOVED IT! Quite fabulously bitchy."

Dame Colette Bowe, outgoing chair of Ofcom, quoted in the Sunday Times [£]: “I would say I do not think the press should be subject to statutory regulation in any form whatsoever. I would regard that as a grave error for this country and this society.”

The New York Times runs a correction 161 years after it ran the story that inspired the Oscar-winning film '12 Years A Slave': "An article on Jan. 20, 1853, recounting the story of Solomon Northup, whose memoir “12 Years a Slave” became a movie 160 years later that won the best picture Oscar at the 86th Academy Awards on Sunday night, misspelled his surname as Northrop. And the headline misspelled it as Northrup. The errors came to light on Monday after a Twitter user pointed out the article in The Times archives.”

Grey Cardigan on TheSpinAlley: "I know I’m always banging on about this, but the stupidity of recent generations of newspaper managements in pursuing an imaginary digital revenue source at the expense of their print products which still, to this day, make 90%-plus of the profits, is simply baffling. Why would you strangle the golden goose? Why not do the sensible thing and maintain the quality of your core product while exploring digital options? What happens when that core title goes under? How many people will be flocking to the Lancashire Evening Post website when there is no more Lancashire Evening Post? It just doesn’t make sense."

News UK chief Mike Darcey speaking at the Digital Media Strategies conference , as quoted by the Guardian: "Chasing online advertising  revenue at scale requires a deep, free online proposition and this in turn undermines the incentive for people to pay for print editions. The Guardian web proposition is so good I wonder why anyone continues to buy the Guardian edition in print at all. They must be very wealthy people."

Guardian Media Group chief excutive Andrew Miller, also at the Digital Media Strategies conference, as quoted by journalism.co.uk : "If we could do a paywall of course we’d do it. We’d love to, but that horse has bolted."

[£] =paywall

BBC bosses and Parly select committees: The merry-go-round that never stops, by John Mair

George Entwistle faces select committee

John Mair, in a new book Is The BBC In Crisis?,  traces the recent history of the BBC and its appearances in front of parliamentary committees. He argues the side show has become the main show – a modern day spectacle.

The BBC has become the spectacle not the spectator at its own feast thanks to television and the rise of select committees in parliament. Far from simply reporting the story, the Corporation has too often become the story with month after month of BBC VVIPs appearing blinking in front of MPs and cameras.

This month, the Culture Select Committee, next the Public Accounts Committee, next the Foreign Affairs Committee. The merry-go-round simply never stops. It is a public spectacle or gladiatorial contest with no seeming end in sight. Watching the Beeb squirm is a spectacle sport of our times.

In 2013, BBC executives appeared before select committees a total of sixteen times (Patten 2013). Back in the Dark Ages – a decade ago in 2004 – there was just one annual trip from Portland Place to Westminster. The chairman of the BBC governors and the director-general would simply appear and amplify on the Corporation’s annual report for the select committee on culture, media and sport.

The then-Chairman, Gerald Kaufman MP, a former journalist and no slouch at self publicity, press released their conclusions in advance: After thorough discussion, the Committee has agreed a unanimous report. We do not believe that the status quo is an option for the BBC. Our recommendations are aimed at assisting the development of proposals that will take a strong and independent BBC, but also an accountable, open and efficient BBC, into what is an uncertain future for broadcasting.  The current review of the BBC’s royal charter is possibly the most significant in the Corporation’s history (Culture, Media and Sport Committee 2004).

This all has a familiar ring to it in 2014. Back then, parliament itself would debate royal commission reports such as Annan in 1977 and Peacock in 1986 into the BBC, broadcasting and the licence fee plus their many early-day motions to let MPs praise or damn the Corporation for perceived triumphs or misdemeanours but, by and large, the two Estates remained separate.

No more. The road from W1 to SWI has become a well-travelled one and not always in peace. Director-General Mark Thompson did not cover himself in glory when threatening to shoot the Salford BBC baby at birth if no increase in the licence fee in front of a select committee in 2005. That was just the beginning of the nightmare. Think of poorly prepared then-D-G George Entwistle struggling to account for the Savile affair to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee (in the Thatcher Room of Portcullis House!) on 23 October 2012. It was a lamb and slaughter as the Guardian reported.

Asked how many cases of sexual harassment the corporation knew about, he stumbled before answering there were ‘between five and 10 serious allegations’ relating to the Savile period. Later he changed that to ‘between eight and 10’. This was not the sure-footed response needed to impress a committee that wrung a ‘most humble day of life’ apology out of Rupert Murdoch a year ago. It made it easy for Tory MP Philip Davies, no BBC loyalist, to land a blow. He accused Entwistle of a ‘lamentable lack of knowledge’ about the allegations of child abuse by now well-aired across every media outlet including the BBC. 

Davies quizzed him about what he knew about an alleged ‘paedophile ring at the BBC’ and wanted to know who was responsible for bussing vulnerable schoolgirls to Savile shows. ‘I don’t know,’ Entwistle said, explaining the Corporation was trying to piece together documentation in relation to this. Asked who allowed underage children to go backstage with Savile, Entwistle responded: ‘We are trying to answer the questions in the same way’ (O’Carroll 2012).

Entwistle’s time as D-G lasted just another three weeks after that. Think of BBC Trust Chairman Lord Patten of Barnes losing his temper with Philip Davies MP calling his question about his daily routine ‘impertinent’ and asking: ‘Do you want to know my toilet habits?’ on 26 November 2012 and
think of the worst spectacle of them all – the Six Not So Wise Men (and one woman) lined up, uncomfortably cheek by jowl and passing several bucks about executive pay-offs in front of the Public Accounts Committee on 9 September 2013. Live on the BBC’s Parliamentary Channel, the BBC News Channel and many other non-BBC outlets. 

That single session did the Corporation much harm. One exchange between Margaret Hodge MP, the Chair, and Lucy Adams, the BBC Director of HR, illustrates the sheer bad temper and combative nature of the event:

Chair: Just to be clear on that, because I am not having any more lies this afternoon, may I ask the NAO whether that document – the 7 October document, of which we were all given a copy – was also passed to the witnesses? Did they know what we were talking about?....

Lucy Adams: Yes, it was submitted by the Trust; it wasn’t a document that I had seen. I apologise to the committee that I wasn’t able to identify that document at the time. There was no attempt deliberately to mislead the committee. I immediately clarified upon parliament’s return that I recognised the document as one to which I had contributed. In the committee meeting, I was clear that I couldn’t with absolute certainty recall that document, but I was also clear that I was involved in advising Mark on the terms for Mark Byford. I have never sought to deny my involvement in that (Public Accounts Committee 2013).

The spectacle will be televised

Ironically, the BBC has created the transmission mechanism for its own appearance at the spectacle. Not just the massive News empire that is a relic of John Birt as Director-General with its big set piece built radio and television news programmes but the BBC News Channel, created in 1998 as BBC News 24, providing wall-to-wall news, twenty four hours a day seven days a week. That outlet is simply a sausage machine with a voracious appetite for content and stories. BBC bosses making a not very good fist of it in parliament live (and in later packages) is manna from heaven for them.

But worse there is the BBC Parliamentary Channel and Democracy Live both set up by the Corporation to try to bridge the democratic deficit between citizens and legislators. BBC Parliament – a channel run by the Corporation since 1998 – does what it says on the label. It features wall-to-wall UK Parliament, the Houses of Commons and Lords, the three devolved assemblies, the European Parliament, the London Assembly and all select committee sessions live and recorded. So too Democracy Live, the BBC News Online website launched at a cost of £3 million in 2009, streaming all parliamentary output live to the internet continually. 

There is now no hiding place in cyberspace for any politician or witness who appears in front of a parliamentary committee anywhere in the UK or Europe. It is a political anorak’s dream.

So, parliaments of various sorts in the last decade have become the focus of the spectacle called accountability and transparency and the BBC has played its part in transmitting that spectacle and sometimes being the stars, albeit unwitting, of it all.

How did we get to where we are?

Select committees of parliament are newish boys on the Westminster block. They have existed only since 1980. Their purpose mainly is to shadow all government departments, interrogate their decisions and spending and report appropriately. They are, or should be, the legislature’s check on the executive.

Initially, they were anodyne and toothless but they soon found their range, especially when the Blair government took office in 1997 with its huge parliamentary majority. There was no real role in the chamber for backbench MPs so they might as well join a select committee and make a name for themselves/cause trouble on that. Committee rooms were a rare backbench platform. They could be a route to the ministerial red box (and car) for wannabe ministers but more often they were the refuge of the never-will-be-ministers, or hose who once were but never will be again..

Select committees realised their power lay as much in ‘naming and shaming’ institutions and people as in carefully drafted and considered reports which would only gather dust on secretaries of state’s shelves. The power of the press release and the spectacle of a live televised hearing were much more attractive than hours spent in line-by-line drafting of reports. Rather than long-term strategic questions they moved towards the simple headline-grabbing tactical ones.

In 2014, we have reached the position where some select committees are like the BBC’s own Newsnight in redux but slower. An event or news story happens – in broadcasting, to the police, to the banks – and often within a week the representatives of that institution find themselves in front of the parliamentary watchdogs answering difficult questions. It has rapidly become part of the warp
and weave of British public life. Newsnight does the story that night, select committees do it the week after

Along with the rise of the select committee as spectacle there has also been the rise of the select committee chairs (and some members) as stars. Give them a spotlight and they will find themselves under it. Keith Vaz MP is no shrinking violet. His Home Affairs Select Committee has become a publicity platform for this former minister in and out of parliament. Police misbehaving? They will be called to face his committee. Bulgarian migrants ‘swamping’ the UK? Vaz will be there at Luton airport to greet them-even if they are in single figures. No stone is left unturned by the Vaz PR machine.

Margaret Hodge MP is another ex-minister turned tormentor (of ministers and others). Her Public Accounts Committee has a wide remit on all government and public spending. She has used that to the full and most clinically in the last three years on the £3.65 billion of TV licence payers’ money
funnelled to the BBC. John Whittingdale MP was a Conservative Party spokesman on broadcasting in Opposition. Ministerial office was not to be his. Instead, he has turned his Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee into a running show on media matters; the de facto Parliamentary Media Show.

Newsnight in redux? The CMS select committee

The CMS select committee has become a televised Star Chamber. Most notably when it summoned Rupert Murdoch, the media uber mogul, to explain and justify phone hacking to them on 19 July 2011 after the closure of his News of the World. Murdoch’s opening gambit then was a master stroke in dissembling. ‘I would just like to say one sentence. This is the most humble day of my life.’ This
did not prevent him from being closely examined by the rottweiler of that committee, Tom Watson MP.

Mr Watson: Mr Murdoch senior, good afternoon, sir. You have repeatedly stated that News Corp has zero tolerance to wrongdoing by employees. Is that right?

Rupert Murdoch: Yes.

Mr Watson: In October 2010, did you still believe it to be true when you made your Thatcher speech and you said: ‘Let me be clear: we will vigorously pursue the truth—and we will not tolerate wrongdoing’?

Rupert Murdoch: Yes.

Mr Watson: So if you were not lying then, somebody lied to you. Who was it?

Rupert Murdoch: I don’t know. That is what the police are investigating, and we are helping them with.

Mr Watson: But you acknowledge that you were misled.

Rupert Murdoch: Clearly (Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee 2011).

On the other side of the committee and the House, Louise Mensch MP was much gentler than Bruiser Watson:

Louise Mensch: Mr Rupert Murdoch, you are the Chairman and Chief Executive of News Corp. You are the head of the global company. The buck stops with you. Given these allegations, indeed, when you opened the session, you said that this was the most humiliating day of your life.

Chair: Humble.

Louise Mensch: Oh, I’m sorry – humble. I beg your pardon. That was a mistake. You said that it was the most humble day of your life. You feel humbled by these events. You are ultimately in charge of the company. Given your shock at these things being laid out before you and the fact that you didn’t know anything about them, have you instructed your editors around the world to engage in a root-and-branch review of their own newsrooms to be sure that this isn’t being replicated in other News
Corps papers around the globe? If not, will you do so?

Rupert Murdoch: No, but I am more than prepared to do (Culture, Mediaand Sport Select Committee 2011).

Through the CMS Select Committee, Watson became the scourge of News International and, as a result, rose to Deputy Chair of the Labour Party. He later fell. Mensch decided parliament was too boring and small for her and retreated to the USA.

The CMS Select Committee has regularly turned its attention to the BBC in the last three years, as a search of Hansard reveals:

1. The BBC licence fee settlement, 15 December 2010: Mark Thompson, Director-General, and Sir Michael Lyons, then-Chairman of the BBC Trust, gave evidence.

2. The BBC Digital Media Initiative, 15 February 2011: Mark Thompson, Director-General, Erik Huggers, Director of Future Media and Technology, BBC, and Anthony Fry, Trustee, BBC Trust gave evidence.

3. The BBC Licence Fee Settlement and Annual Report and Accounts 2009- 10, 19 May 2011: Committee report into this – as this had done for the previous decade.

4. One-off evidence session with outgoing BBC Director-General, 19 June 2012: Mark Thompson gave evidence of his achievements over the previous eight years and any setbacks, staff remuneration and the future of the BBC.

5. The BBC’s response to the Jimmy Savile case, 23 October 2012: Director-General George Entwistle gave evidence about the two independent reviews; the safeguards and vetting procedures that would have been in place when Jimmy Savile was appointed by the BBC.

6. Priorities for the new Director-General of the BBC, 25 April 2013: On 2 April, Lord Hall started as the BBC’s new Director-General. The committee held an early evidence session three weeks later with him to consider his priorities for the next few months.

7. The select committee questions BBC Director-General Tony Hall and BBC Trust Chair Lord Patten on the BBC annual report, 22 October 2013.

So, at least seven separate inquiries and reports into the BBC in less than three years. Whittingdale’s committee is not done They are now holding a wide ranging inquiry into The Future of the BBC, ahead of its current royal charter ending in December 2016.

Accountable to the public?

Since 2011, the Public Accounts Committee and its investigative arm, the National Audit Office, have started to take a close interest in the BBC and BBC finances in at least three areas:

1. Evidence from the BBC on its efficiency savings programme, 21 November 2011.

2. BBC severance packages: Oral evidence, July and September 2013.

Two public hearings on executive severance packages resulting in a damning report on 16 December 2013 which made five tough recommendations

• The BBC should ensure that severance payments do not exceed what is absolutely necessary.

• The BBC should remind its staff that they are all individually responsible for protecting public money and challenging wasteful practices.

• To protect licence fee payers’ interests and its own reputation, the BBC should establish internal procedures that provide clear central oversight and effective scrutiny of severance payments.

• The BBC executive and the BBC Trust need to overhaul the way they conduct their business, and record and communicate decisions properly.

• Given its overarching responsibility for the stewardship of public money, the BBC Trust should be more willing to challenge practices and decisions where there is a risk that the interests of licence fee payers could be compromised.

• The BBC Trust and the BBC executive need to ensure that decision making is transparent and accountability taken seriously, based on a shared understanding of value for money, with tangible evidence of individuals taking public responsibility for their decisions.

3. Report on the BBC move to Salford, 16 October 2013.

My Lord … another committee

As if that’s not enough, the House of Lords also has its own wide-ranging Communications Committee with a remit that includes the BBC. Their inquires have included:

1. BBC charter inquiry: BBC Chairman and the D-G gave evidence 18 July 2005.

2. BBC Trust: Mark Thompson gives evidence, 26 April 2011.

3. What will be on the box? Lords question BBC and Channel Four, 27 November 2012.

As part of their inquiry into media convergence, the Lords Communications Committee put questions to two public service broadcasters (PSBs), the BBC and Channel 4.

And even more…

The Foreign Affairs Select Committee looked at and reported on the Implications of the BBC World Service Cuts, in April 2011. And in the House of Commons chamber itself … on 21 October 2013, MPs took part in a general debate on the future of the BBC. Parliamentary scrutiny has clearly come upon the BBC with a vengeance in the last decade.

Spectacle of gladiators at the Coliseum?

So the spectacle of the BBC big-wigs up before the parliamentary beaks has become everyday. But is spectacle the best metaphor for the position in which the BBC finds itself? Could it be that a better parallel might be ancient Rome and the Coliseum in which gladiators fought off all-comers including wild animals like lions. The gladiators or swordsmen had to impress the audience with their ability to fight for their lives. Their job was not just survival but to achieve popular acclaim through the skills used in that. Through fight after fight the gladiators could buy their freedom. Is that what faces the Corporation over the next two years in the struggle for charter renewal and a decent licence fee
settlement?

Just as in ancient Rome, what is happening in the Coliseum/parliament is there for the entertainment of an audience. In this case, licence fee payers informed and inflamed by a largely hostile anti-BBC national press. Leading the hate brigade, day after day, the soi disant voice of Middle England, the Daily Mail, a direct competitor to the Corporation in news and online provision (where MailOnline is trumping the BBC News Online into a cocked hat) and a vintage vehicle for BBC bashing. Two headlines on the PAC hearing and report on Executive pay offs in 2013 give a flavour: ‘Thompson was firing away like a Spanish man o’war entering Gibraltar harbour’ (Daily Mail, 10 September 2013).

And ‘Liars! MPs say BBC bosses lied to parliament about obscene pay-offs. There couldn’t be a more serious charge, but don’t expect any contrition’ (Daily Mail, 17 December 2013). Others in the ‘balanced ‘British press were equally shrill. For instance, ‘BBC chiefs deny “losing the plot” over £1million pay-off’ (Daily Express, 10 September 2013). And ‘Accusations fly as BBC bosses argue over payoffs’ (The Times, 10 September 2013). Newspapers feast on the spectacle of the ‘BBC in
the dock’ for commercial and journalistic reasons like sharks or lions circling the wounded beast. In an ideal world they would like to see no BBC in ‘their’ market places to lessen their descent into oblivion. Only the sheer quality and popularity of their programmes, their range and the trust it engenders ensures the BBC’ssurvival and that of the licence fee.

Egging on the crowds in this virtual Coliseum are rabble rousing politicians, usually Conservative. Home Secretary Theresa May – her intervention on local BBC Online News was noted earlier. Grant Shapps MP, the Conservative Party Chairman, called in October 2013 for the BBC licence fee to be ‘top-sliced’ next time round i.e. bid for and used by other public service broadcasters. His call did not fall on entirely fertile ground

The most persistent fly in the Corporation ointment is Rob Wilson, theMember of Parliament for Reading East. He has turned BBC bashing into his profession. No opportunity is missed to berate the national broadcaster. Unfortunately for them, he is the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Chancellor
George Osborne who will probably be as crucial in setting the next licence fee as he was the last. D-G Mark Thompson and then-Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt had to go to Osborne’s office after their lightning ‘negotiations’ in 2010 to get his approval before going public,

What next for the spectacle?

Old BBC hands when confronted with the current panoply of woes shrug their shoulders and say: ‘It will blow over, it always does.’ Alas, this time the issues and problems may be more deep-seated.
In June 2014, the Dame Janet Smith report into the activities of Jimmy Savile (and others) within
the BBC and the culture of the Corporation is due. That is literally a time bomb waiting to explode.

How many more times will the new BBC brahmins be called back to the Portcullis House gladiatorial arena? When and how will the spectacle end? Probably not until 31 December 2016 and then most likely in tears ...

• John Mair is a former BBC producer and director. Inter alia, he helped to invent Question Time. He has worked in the academe for the last eight years in Coventry, Kent, Northampton, Westminster and Brunel universities. He has also edited twelve ‘hackademic’ books with Professor Richard Lance Keeble.
• Is the BBC in Crisis? is edited by John Mair, Richard Tait and Richard Lance Keeble and published by Abramis. 
• See also,  Phil Harding: 'Turning up the temperature: The BBC and political pressure'
• See also, What should James Harding do at the BBC and what memos should he send himself, by David Lloyd.
• See also, Ray Snoddy Scandal-hit BBC is facing toughest land most unpredictable icence fee agreement negotiations

Media Quotes of the Week: From media has ball as Piers Morgan falls to Sky's Alex Crawford on bravery in journalism via Harman versus Mail

Robert Peston ‏@Peston on Twitter: "Can barely hear myself think amid din of schadenfreude in UK media at cancellation by CNN of fellow Gooner @piersmorgan's show"

Piers Morgan ‏@piersmorgan on Twitter: "Humbling to bring such happiness to so many people today. Coming 3rd, as I've always said, is not a trophy. #MorganOut #CNN"

Jeremy Clarkson ‏@JeremyClarkson on Twitter: "I understand that Nigerian TV is looking for a new chat show host. Anyone got any suggestions?"

The New York Times: "There have been times when the CNN host Piers Morgan didn’t seem to like America very much — and American audiences have been more than willing to return the favour."

Jonathan Freedland ‏@Freedland on Twitter: "Unfashionable I know, but reckon it was admirable @piersmorgan maintained his stance on guns even though it clearly didn't help his career."

Metro md Steve Auckland in the Guardian: "There are a lot of people rushing out of print to go online. But I'm quite happy to rush into print because there's a lot of money to be made out of print, and I'll take as much as possible. And you know what – the agencies are crying out for that message. Everyone I've talked to has said it's refreshing to hear somebody who is actually willing to innovate in print."

Harriet Harman in a statement: "In recent days I have been the subject of a politically-motivated smear campaign by the Daily Mail. They have accused me of being an apologist for child sex abuse, of supporting a vile paedophile organisation, of having a relaxed attitude to paedophilia and of watering down child pornography laws. These are horrific allegations and I strongly deny them all of them."

MP tom_watson ‏@tom_watson on Twitter: "Reducing it to a row between Harman and the Daily Mail misses the point: kids were abused by members of PIE and investigations thwarted."

anne mcelvoy ‏@annemcelvoy  on Twitter: "We're in for another "Labour versus the Mail" moral high-ground competitions. Those who like real news may prefer to look away."

SubScribe: "Does it matter? Or is it, as an old journo friend says, 'all showbiz'? Yes it does matter. Not because of its effect on the career of one politician or because it will make a jot of difference to any police investigation or to the treatment of any child. It matters because the bully has triumphed. And so will carry on bullying. And the victims are not only politicians and celebrities. The Mail does not discriminate. It is happy to pour its bile and innuendo over anyone."

Hazel Blears talking to the Hansard Society, as reported by Guido Fawkes: “Until political blogging ‘adds value’ to our political culture, by allowing new voices, ideas and legitimate protest and challenge, and until the mainstream media reports politics in a calmer, more responsible manner, it will continue to fuel a culture of cynicism and despair.”

Ray Snoddy on this blog from new book Is the BBC in Crisis?: "In the wake of current scandals facing the BBC, the up-coming licence fee negotiations, coinciding with the re-negotiation of a new ten-year royal charter, could be the most difficult and unpredictable there has ever been. The march of technology, the current political terrain and an unprecedented raft of scandals could all combine to create a perfect storm for the BBC. Certainly the BBC will never before have entered a licence fee round surrounded by the debris of such a number of internal embarrassments, many of them shrieking managerial incompetence."

Peter Preston in the Observer: "Lord Justice Laws's judgment, in short, doesn't just disappoint Miranda, Greenwald and the Guardian. It says, in effect, that any security service type – maybe after a chat with PM Tony Blair, once he's finished helping Rebekah with something – can present "compelling", if studiously vague, evidence and see passing dossiers, however dodgy, enjoy portentous protection. It can, seemingly, declare media workers potential "terrorists" in a schedule 7 trice. It balances the right to be informed (article 10 of the European convention) against the security right to be forcibly shut up – and declares no contest."

Culture Secretary Maria Miller at the Oxford Media Convention: "The internet isn’t a ‘Second Life’, it isn’t something where different rules apply, where different behaviour is acceptable – it isn’t the wild west.  To put it simply the rules that apply offline are the same rules that apply online."

Alex Crawford, speaking at the St.Bride's thanksgiving service for the Journalists' Charity:  “I'm often asked about bravery and the courage of foreign correspondents who travel to wars and disasters. To me bravery is taking on the establishment and the expenses department, as much as dictators abroad.

"Bravery is not - as some people seems to think - the defining quality of the war correspondent. Bravery comes in little acts achieved in every job or life, every day.

“Bravery in our profession is the editor who trusts his or her journalists in the field when everyone else is screaming otherwise. It's standing up to the accountants who say we can't afford to cover that genocide, or that natural disaster.

“Bravery is being prepared to go head to head with not only your own Government but that of several others by exposing the real extent of one nation's surveillance and snooping.

“Bravery is knowing you're guaranteed unpopularity but printing or broadcasting anyway because you KNOW it is the right thing to do."

Ray Snoddy: Scandal-hit BBC is facing its toughest and most unpredictable licence fee negotiations

Media correspondent Ray Snoddy argues in the wake of current scandals facing the BBC that the up-coming licence fee negotiations, coinciding with the re-negotiation of a new ten-year royal charter, could be the most difficult and unpredictable there has ever been.

He claims it would be 'crazy' to try to close down BBC Four and BBC Three, describing Four as "the best thing the BBC does" while Three provides a link with younger audiences.

Snoddy, contributing to a new book Is the BBC Crisis? also suggests the Irish may well have found the ‘least bad’ system for funding public service broadcasting.

There has been an unvarying pattern with BBC licence fee negotiations over the years. Once the vested interests and differing shades of political ideology have been stripped away it has usually come down to horse-trading over money.

The BBC asks for more than it expects to get and implies that the end of civilisation is nigh if its ‘entirely reasonable’ demands are not met. The government of the day lops off a noticeable percentage so that it can appear to be tough and, above all else, not seem to be a patsy of the BBC, or to pay the Corporation back for previous sleights.

Labour governments tend to be a little more generous because of a warmer emotional attachment to concepts of public service broadcasting. This always has to be tempered by an appreciation of the impact of what is essentially a poll tax on the poorer voters. In general, a deal is done, the BBC makes some short-term cuts and then somehow, as if by magic, the Corporation finds enough
money to continue expanding. 

The ‘magic’, of course, has included an increasing population, or more precisely, a growth in the creation of new households, each liable to pay the fee. Two licence fee campaigns, however, stand out from the general run. The first was the award in 1985 of a £58 licence fee accompanied by a fundamental review of the financing of the BBC under the chairmanship of the free market economist Professor Alan Peacock. 

While the then-Home Secretary Leon Brittan emphasised that the purpose of the Peacock Committee was to come up with options rather than recommendations, it was widely seen as Margaret Thatcher’s revenge on the Corporation. The BBC may have been given a relatively generous settlement for now, but that would certainly not be the end of the matter. Opening up the BBC to advertising and greater competition was the obvious longer-term solution.

Peacock, supported by another economist, Samuel Brittan, of the Financial Times, realised that advertising on the BBC would devastate the economics of commercial television. They, therefore, came to the ‘wrong’ political answer – that the licence fee was the ‘least bad’ system and that it should be indexed to inflation, though pensioners dependent on benefits should be exempt. It was a process that lasted 14 months and had the effect of putting to rest, at least for a generation, some of the more extreme theories about the financing of the BBC.

They included everything from abolishing the licence fee to privatising the Corporation or even breaking it up.

The 2010 licence fee settlement was ‘by far the most exciting so far’

Peacock clearly made an impact and in retrospect can be seen as rather forward looking. But in terms of sheer drama, the 2010 licence fee settlement was by far the most exciting so far, the most compressed in time there has ever been – a settlement where pragmatism and pressing financial realities largely swept aside ideology. 

Those close to the process say that George Osborne’s Treasury would have welcomed a ‘scale and scope’ investigation into everything the BBC does and into whether it provides value for money or not. There was the implication that the Chancellor of the Exchequer wanted to explore options for a much smaller BBC, reduced to a more tightly defined range of overt public service responsibilities.

All such-longer term thinking was thrown out of the window by the fast approaching Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), the attempt to cut the budget deficit by reducing public spending drastically. During the negotiations the BBC, and the then-Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, thought a plan to force the BBC to pay the free licence fees of the over-75s had been rejected. 

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, desperate to get the £600 million cost (and rising) off his departmental budget, had apparently persuaded Osborne and Prime Minister David Cameron to his point of view. There were implicit threats of resignations from the BBC Chairman Sir Michael Lyons and Director-General Mark Thompson in the face of what was seen as a crude threat to the BBC’s independence. 

Apart from the initial £600 million a year bill, in an ageing population, the BBC would face an open-ended call on its finances. The Lib-Dem media spokesman Don Foster played an important role in alerting his leader, Nick Clegg, to the scale of the possible crisis. The entire BBC Trust was on the verge of resigning en masse.

It was a gloomy Thompson who headed for home in Oxford by train on the evening of Monday 18 October 2010 believing the game was up and that the battle of the over-75s licence fees had been lost. And then the call came that something was changing in the mood of Downing Street and could he get back to London as soon as possible? Thompson got off the train at Slough, crossed platforms and returned to London and straight to Hunt’s office at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport for what turned out to be a night of negotiations. 

The pensioner’s plan was dropped but Thompson had to decide whether to enter last-minute negotiations of the sort that would give horse trading a bad name, or risk a prolonged ‘traditional’ round of licence fee negotiations that could have spread out across 2011 with unpredictable consequences.

Thompson and the BBC Trust choose the bird in the hand – a licence fee frozen until 2016 while at the same time taking over the BBC World Service, Monitoring services and most of the cost of the Welsh Fourth channel. In addition, the BBC would have to find £40 million for Hunt’s pet project – local television. There had been nothing like it before, but despite cost cuts of 16 per cent or £700 million and 2,000 job losses, Mark Thompson insisted that the deal was ‘the best of the available outcomes for the BBC and actually a pretty good outcome’.

How scandals created 'a perfect storm' for the BBC

In the wake of current scandals facing the BBC, the up-coming licence fee negotiations, coinciding with the re-negotiation of a new ten-year royal charter, could be the most difficult and unpredictable there has ever been. The march of technology, the current political terrain and an unprecedented raft of scandals could all combine to create a perfect storm for the BBC. 

Certainly the BBC will never before have entered a licence fee round surrounded by the debris of such a number of internal embarrassments, many of them shrieking managerial incompetence.

The Pollard inquiry into the Newsnight affair found executives functioning in silos and communicating poorly with each other. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) may have almost wilfully misunderstood the role of the BBC Trust – setting strategy rather than getting involved in the day-to-day operations of the organisation. 

But the PAC, under Margaret Hodge, did ruthlessly expose the fact that a number of departing senior executives left with more than their contractual entitlement, creating an impression of both waste and cronyism a the top of the organisation.

In terms of managerial competence the fiasco of the nearly £100 million wasted on the Digital Media Initiative is probably the most serious. Consultants Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) found that the system designed to share digital and audio content across the Corporation had shown serious weaknesses in project management. 

The BBC had also taken too long ‘to realise that the project was in serious trouble and was unlikely to deliver its objectives’. There will almost certainly be further embarrassments to come for the BBC from the inquiry into the activities of Jimmy Savile. Each of the scandals is very different but they appear to share several things in common – complacency, arrogance and a lack of openness. Naturally the political vultures have already been circling with the Conservative Party Chairman, Grant Shapps, warning that the BBC could lose exclusive rights to the licence fee unless it tacked what he described as a culture of secrecy, waste and unbalanced reporting. 

Culture Secretary Maria Miller suggested that without urgent action on governance, negotiations on a new royal charter could be brought forward. It is difficult to predict what influence the electoral timetable will have on the future of the BBC. If talks are brought forward to this year (2014) then the Lib-Dems could have a restraining influence on gut Tory desires for a smaller BBC that would represent a lesser interference with the workings of the media market.

Wait until after general election day on 7 May 2015 and the Conservatives could have free rein over the future of the BBC if they win an absolute majority. The need for a further round of Conservative-Lib-Dem Coalition cannot be ruled out entirely.

Calls for a smaller BBC

Meanwhile a couple of off-stage interventions have, deliberately or not, fed into the emerging Conservative agenda for a smaller BBC, or one that no longer has access to all the proceeds of the licence fee. In an interview on Radio 5 Live, the BBC’s most senior presenter, David Dimbleby, who ran unsuccessfully for the director-general’s job in 1987 and equally unsuccessfully for the chairmanship in 2004, outlined his vision for a very different Corporation. 

Dimbleby wondered whether the BBC had become too big and too powerful and asked if some licence fee money could not be used to help fund other commercial broadcasters so that a greater diversity of voices could be heard. BBC Four and BBC Two could be merged and then cut some of the gardening and cookery programmes. The corporation’s online presence could also be reduced to prevent the BBC crushing local newspapers.

At around the same time, Roger Mosey, former Editorial Director and Head of News at the BBC was making similar points in an article in The Times. The scale of BBC News and its dominance in the market made BBC executives uncomfortable, argued the executive who had recently taken up the post of Master of Selywn College, Cambridge. He added, in the Murdoch-owned newspaper which has campaigned for years for a smaller BBC, that two good TV channels might be better than four with resources spread too thinly. If implemented this would mean the closure of BBC Three and BBC Four. Mosey also advocated an element of ‘top-slicing’ the licence fee to give to other broadcasters.

Other ideas already circulating is one from Steve Morrison, the former Chief Executive of Granada, now Chairman of All3Media, the independent production company. Morrison believes the BBC should be allowed to hold on to all of its licence fee – but on one condition: that independent producers should have the right to compete for an extra 25 per cent of programme budgets.

ITV later went further by arguing that all BBC output, apart from news, should be contestable in return for keeping all of its licence fee. The independent sector is already guaranteed 25 per cent of BBC output and can already compete for an additional 25 per cent. If the Morrison idea were adopted, the BBC would have absolute control of only 25 per cent of its non-news output.

Technological change, and the fact that more and more homes have a wide range of devices able to receive high quality online video from the internet and from OTT (over the top) suppliers such as Netflix, could raise questions over the wisdom, and even practicality, of continuing to try to impose a compulsory licence fee to watch television up to the year 2026. 

What if more and more people say they do not watch live television and only use computers and tablets to watch recorded material and, therefore, believe they should be exempt from paying the licence fee? There will almost certainly be a fundamental examination of the scope, purpose and funding of the BBC in the next few years whether it takes the shape of a formal inquiry or not.

The best hope for the BBC is that all the scandals will finally be out of the way before then, and that a nearly new management under Director-General Tony Hall will have put in place structures to try to ensure nothing of the like happens again. In the meantime a few concluding thoughts might help.

Conclusions

First, the idea that the BBC is too large and powerful seems misplaced. By definition the frozen licence fee and the 2,000 lost jobs means that the Corporation will become smaller in absolute terms. Even more important the BBC will inevitably continue to become smaller in relative terms given the
growing competition in the market from satellite broadcaster BSkyB, the arrival of BT in the television market in a serious way and the impact of new players such as Netflix. 

It would also seem crazy to try to close down BBC Four and BBC Three. Four is the best thing the BBC does and Three provides a necessary link with younger audiences. People like cookery and gardening programmes and there seems no good reason to reduce their number if you want to justify a universal licence fee.

Top-slicing of the licence fee seems like a reasonable idea but actually isn’t. It was thoroughly considered last time in the context of Channel 4 and rejected. The problem revolves around issues such as what new programmes should be funded by such methods, where are they going to be shown and who should benefit?

Should money go to multi-millionaire independent producers or swell the profits of ITV or Richard Desmond’s Channel 5? It is obvious that as a society we can decide to have any shape or size of BBC
we want. But remember that public service broadcasters across European are  facing an increasing squeeze on their finances and if such institutions are  irreparably damaged or lost they will never return. The signs are that the public,  despite everything, is broadly satisfied by the current range of services provided  by the BBC, and within reason, can be persuaded to fund them. All hell breaks loose when the BBC announces the planned closure of even an obscure, minority music station.

But if the decision is to continue with the licence fee system, and it still looks like the ‘least bad’ way of funding public service broadcasting, then the issue of  who pays in the internet age should be clarified. The government could do worse than look at Ireland where the issue has been tackled and action taken.

The Irish have gone for a ‘public service broadcasting charge’ which is ‘device independent’ and does not rely on the television set. It also will apply to ‘occupiers’ rather than owners which should help to eliminate the free-rider  problem – the one-in-five Irish households who do not pay the licence fee at present. It could be part of a comprehensive licence fee and Royal Charter settlement that draws on the wisdom of Sir Alan Peacock – index the licence fee  while taking pensioners on benefit out of the equation.

• After studying at Queen’s University, in Belfast, Ray Snoddy worked on local and regional newspapers, before joining The Times in 1971. Five years later he moved to the Financial Times and reported on media issues before returning to The Times as media  editor in 1995. At present, Snoddy is a freelance journalist writing for a range of publications. 
• Is the BBC in Crisis? is edited by John Mair, Richard Tait and Richard Lance Keeble and published by Abramis on 1 March. 
• See also,  Phil Harding: 'Turning up the temperature: The BBC and political pressure'
• See also, What should James Harding do at the BBC and what memos should he send himself, by David Lloyd.

Media Quotes of the Week: Trebles all round at Private Eye to Brooks and Blair via Newsquest

Editor Ian Hislop, after  Private Eye announces an ABC of 224,162 copies for July to December 2013 , maintaining its position as the biggest selling UK news and current affairs magazine: “Thatcher’s death, Prince George’s birth, Rebekah Brooks’ trial – we’ve done well in a quiet year…”

The Co-ordinating Committee of Press Freedom Organisations, in a letter to David Cameron: "We note that the unprecedented pressure on the Guardian comes at a time when the British public is engaged in a fierce debate over media regulation. We believe the issues are linked, as together they create the impression that British authorities are seeking to constrain and control the work of the media."

Phil Harding on this blog, from new book Is the BBC in Crisis?: "While an editor might receive the most vigorous complaints about his or her programme they are never accompanied by a threat to cut the licence fee. That was what made the recent intervention by the current Conservative Party Chairman, Grant Shapps, in which he explicitly linked the future of the BBC licence fee to political coverage by the BBC’s Home Editor, Mark Easton, so remarkable and why it provoked such a storm (Ross 2013). Shapps was, in fact, the fourth front-bencher to pick on Easton for his reporting. While some think that is because of the controversial nature of Easton’s journalistic beat, others think the Conservatives are now calculatingly taking a page out of the Labour Party spinbook of dark arts, by singling out one individual journalist and then picking on them at every opportunity."

David Lloyd on this blog, from new book Is the BBC in Crisis?: Is the BBC in Crisis?: "The BBC has devoted hundreds, perhaps thousands, of hours of radio and television to the ‘Lord Rennard Affair’ on the justified ground that it goes to the heart of attitudes – even a possible schism – within the Liberal Democrat Party and its credibility and governance. But did anyone think to ask how it was that the mighty cohorts of BBC Westminster, numbers far in excess of any other parliamentary team, failed to break that story in the first place, but that was left to Channel 4 News?

Jeremy Clarkson ‏@JeremyClarkson on Twitter: "So Piers Morgan was interviewed under caution re phone hacking. But do remember people that he is innocent until a court decides otherwise."

 
Robert Booth ‏@Robert_Booth on Twitter: "Prince William to Guardian:' Why don't you put the notebook down and give us a hand with the sandbags?' I offered but was told no by minders."

John McDonnell MP, secretary of the NUJ Parliamentary Group, on the Newsquest dispute:
"The great strength of local newspapers is that the reporters, subs, and editors who put them together are rooted in their communities. The idea that they can be put together remotely from another country without this impacting on the quality of the product is absurd. The Newsquest staff who have been forced to take this action in defence of local journalism deserve our full support and solidarity."

Roy Greenslade on his MediaGuardian blog on the Newsquest strike: "There is a human cost to rational cost-cutting decisions taken at head office which, in Newsquest's case, means Virginia USA, home of its parent media conglomerate, Gannett. That is surely the reason, at least in part, for the reaction of the NUJ chapels. They just don't feel it fair for a company that has no interest in the fate of their newspapers beyond squeezing as much a profit as possible from them to treat staff so poorly."

Tim Walker ‏@ThatTimWalker on Twitter: "Please fellow journalists do not agree to the absurd conditions for covering @BRITAwards. I've even just been told what I should tweet. No."

Helena Kennedy in the Guardian: "Yesterday's Miranda judgment has worrying implications for press freedom, race relations and basic justice. We always hope our judiciary will be the restraining hand on this kind of state conduct, but too often the very mention of national security also has a chilling effect on the courts."

Rebekah Brooks email about advice from Tony Blair re-hacking scandal:

1. Form an independent unit that has a outside junior council, ken macdonald, a great and good type, a serious forensic criminal barrister, internal counsel, proper fact checkers etc in it. Get them to investigate me and others and publish a hutton style report.
2. Publish part one of the report at same time as the police closes its inquiry and clear you and accept short comings and new solutions and process and part two when any trials are over.
3. Keep strong and definitely sleeping pills. Need to have clear heads and remember no rash short term solutions as they only give you long term headaches.
4. It will pass. Tough up.

What should James Harding do at the BBC and what memos should he send himself ? By the former Channel 4 Head of News David Lloyd

James Harding: BBC Director of News

David Lloyd, former head of news and current affairs at Channel 4, ponders the thoughts that may have crossed James Harding’s mind (and the memos he may well have wanted to send to himself) over his first paper cup of BBC coffee – on starting the job of Director of News. This is an article headed: 'A clear case of journalistic underperformance: The house that Birt (and Hall) built' taken from 'Is the BBC in Crisis?' edited by John Mair, Richard Tait and Richard Lance Keeble, and published by Abramis on 1 March.

I would like to have had a camera at James Harding’s shoulder on his first morning in office, documenting his demeanour and teasing out any clues to his detailed prospectus as the incoming Director of BBC News. Did the former editor of The Times make straight for the galleys of the newsroom and gaze upon its sheer size to confirm him in his decision to enlist, or did that unwieldy behemoth, and every correspondent, stringer and freelance stretching out beyond it, lead him to ponder, yet again, how it could be that an output not noted for its enterprise – let alone boldness – had shunted his two predecessors sideways out of office in circumstances of some ignominy?

This was clearly his most immediate conundrum – how not to lose his head – but beyond the instinct of simple self-preservation, any experienced and intelligent outsider could surely spot a fundamental flaw of culture, identified by the solipsism of those who had inhabited it for any length of time – and the higher up the ladder, the more self-defensive and damaging it no doubt seemed to him.

Over his first paper cup of BBC coffee there was an opportunity to reflect on the sheer size of public funding that keeps this news and current affairs ship afloat. With his Murdochian hat on, he remembers, no doubt, that the newsroom was designed and paid for, out of public funds, twice, installed – first under a certain Tony Hall in an expensively extended Television Centre, before being located, presumably for keeps, at Broadcasting House. Certainly, anyone taking on this mantle would need to study recent broadcasting history, he  reflected, particularly if they were new to those media, and – so awesome was the task – perhaps even some illustrative historical parallels as well (vide Arrian: Life of Alexander, Loeb Classical Library for parallel English translation if – disgracefully – possessing no Ancient Greek).

When John Birt was appointed as Deputy Director-General to ‘sort out’ BBC journalism in the mid-1980s, he lit upon Tony Hall as his most likely and willing lieutenant – let us compare Alexander the Great accompanied by his faithful general Ptolemy looking to topple the 4th century BC Persian empire, which will fall not so much to superior intellect or tactics but from the sheer dysfunction and demoralisation of that empire.

Terminal rows with Thatcher’s government

It is customary now to regard what preceded Birt’s conquest as something of a barbarian ‘dark age’ but the more terminal rows with Mrs Thatcher’s government had tended to brew in departments other than the then separate BBC satrapies of News and Current Affairs. Indeed, while the News department, in either radio or TV, could hardly be described as the leading edge of broadcast journalism, (TV News had been headed by a succession of unlikely characters, not every one of them able to boast much news pedigree, and the senior figures in the newsroom tended to be long-servers from the days of Alexandra Palace, and almost exclusively male). In old-fashioned style, as on the newspapers of the day, the reporters – many of them notable mavericks – led the journalism, and to them was obeisance paid, yet the system could still deliver notable ‘coups’ such as Michael Buerk’s superb report on the Ethiopian famine in 1984 which not only prompted Bob Geldof’s Band Aid but set the tone for the North-South dialogue for a decade.

In short, there were parts of both news and current affairs that truly worked: on Radio 4, the Today programme, then as now, set the agenda for the day and was a ‘must hear’ among politicians and opinion-formers alike. Later at night on BBC 2 Newsnight was a new kid on the block but, with the recruitment of Peter Snow and John Tusa and the enlisting of Charles Wheeler and even Joan Bakewell to the colours, had succeeded in forging the first news and current affairs alloy, just in time for distinguished broadcast service in the 1982 Falklands War. Thus equipped, it was giving ITN’s News at Ten, then the acknowledged ‘news leader’, a proper run for its money.

At the same time, while the geographically and culturally distinct current affairs department was probably better known for its production skills than its original journalism, Panorama retained a high authority and reputation among the audience at large. Even so, Panorama was be shoehorned into a new purpose, discussing through documentary film the detail of contemporary policy, rather than follow the proper role of current affairs – to report narrative storylines or arguments that drive to a point of policy (it was only under the guidance of the now forgotten and maligned George Entwistle, when Head of TV Current Affairs, that Panorama was allowed to re-discover its proper role).

Hall himself had worked on both Today and Newsnight but they were not to be the blueprint for the original, agenda-setting pro-active news journalism that would speak of a national broadcaster’s obligation. For Birt himself had arrived, shrouded in the so-called ’mission to explain’, which was at best an elaboration of only one leg in the Reithian triptych to the overshadowing of the others (much education, some information, no entertainment). 

John Birt now set upon journalism of exposition, and – to a degree – of some analysis, which very quickly came to dominate the mainstream bulletins and, after those, the 24-hour news channel and, later, the news website.

But behind this expository approach lay a particular attitude to its intake of material – a journalism of ‘process’ rather than enquiry and initiative. As a result, some years into the pursuance of this mission it is common for the BBC’s only advancement of a running news story to lie not in further journalistic enquiry but in the excerpting of clips of interviews from the so-called ‘news programmes’ (those that include interviews, such as World at One on Radio 4, or the Andrew Marr Show on a Sunday morning). 

That is ‘process’ in action, from which in recent years, on a domestic agenda, only Robert Peston – an incomer from the Financial Times – has been immune.

News generated by the ‘power centres’

Not surprisingly, it took some time for this approach to settle with BBC journalists: at the time of the first Big Storm (the Michael Fish one) they were heard to a man complaining that they were being despatched not to report on the damage done but to discover when was the last time anything comparable had occurred. 

Over time this caricature came to sophisticate in favour of a more accurate description of the approach as it bedded down but this Birt-ist ‘makeover’ has never shed a preference for exposition of news stories generated by the ‘power centres’ of politics, government, business, finance or organised labour than for those discovered through the BBC’s own free-standing skill, ‘self-start’ initiative and resources. And therein has lain a major lacuna, of both coverage and ambition.

By now Harding has attempted a croissant and is resisting the temptation to compare its over-solid dough with the consistency of his directorate’s output; it occurs to him that, over time, many BBC bulletins on television or radio are not so different from illustrated or sound-described news diaries, aside – of course – from the truly unexpected occurrences of happenstance, at home or abroad, and that-even for a broadcast tyro-this must be surely be to underuse both media.

First Harding memo to self: ‘Newsgathering to be less mechanistic – needs restructure.’

Across the journalism profession as a whole his reasoning will be seen as in no sense idiosyncratic; some years into its conversion the average BBC news day has indeed taken on an undemanding rhythm of simple ‘process’, where too often the only means of advancing a running news story lies not in inquiry or lateral thinking of any kind but in excerpting brief interview clips garnered from those so-called ‘news programmes’ (those that contain interviews).

 It has to be of concern that enlarging a story is so dependent on the preparedness of people to speak on-the-record. And since the mainstream news is the epicentre of any broadcaster's journalism – the most watched and most influential part of its output – that is surely where the focus for change must lie. And that comes from someone who has devoted the majority of his career to Current Affairs!

Before long, word is out that their new director is in the canteen and now, bearing down on his table, is one of the brighter and bolder young journalists of his inheritance. ‘There is a rumour around,’ she smiles sweetly, ‘that you favour more “scoops” in the mainstream news coverage but, if I might suggest, this is a dangerous route, and a chimera: the audience wants to know what’s happened of importance, not what we journalists wish to foist upon them as significant – for how do the viewers or listeners know the journalist’s agenda? News has to begin from events of acknowledged importance, or the announcements of the powerful or influential, and it is for us to bring our informed analysis and explanation to bear.’

Like any experienced manager, Harding will keep his counsel but, no doubt, reflect on how deeply embedded this culture now sits at the BBC, and among its brightest and most ambitious practitioners – an attitude that you would be unlikely to encounter in any other newsroom, whether at Sky, ITN or indeed The Times. But isn’t the idea that you can truly strip news down to its purest essentials itself something of a chimera?

Second Harding memo to self: ‘Would like to see the audience research that supports this austere approach – need to set something fresh in motion.’

How long this Socratic dialogue can sustain is unclear; had I the opportunity, I would have made the following distinction, which Harding could probably make better than I, but could also quote just a few of the more dynamic broadcast examples which might elude him. And here goes:

Taken at its most basic, news itself can be described – in whatever medium or form it is presented – as a collection of items of information or ‘stories’ which document how the world is different today from the situation of yesterday, placed in an order of importance suggested by a mix of factors including the number of people affected, the proximity (sadly) of the news provider, the predictable or unexpected nature of the occurrence, and the recognised importance of the people involved.

Class, are you still with me, paying maximum attention?! Now, if you accept this description – or even if you don’t – it follows that those very ‘power centres’ or institutions of government, politics, finance, business etc. possess enormous leverage in being able to turn the news agenda, and it is how the journalist relates to this leverage that lies at the heart of the BBC’s post-Birt approach.

Two distinct traditions of journalism

One could argue that there are two distinct traditions of journalism in a free society – one passive, one active or, if you prefer, reactive and pro-active. The latter looks to respond to the actions or announcements of authority, assessing them fairly at the moment of that authority’s choosing; the former expects journalists to enquire of their own volition, assembling evidence from which to construct a storyline or argument, fairly and in the public interest. There is nothing incompatible or irreconcilable about these two traditions, they can and do co-exist in a single news programme or newspaper; what is unusual is to prefer the latter to the near-wholesale exclusion of the former. 

Certainly, The Times could not have survived or prospered for any length of time on such rigidity of input. An example: we all no doubt remember the murder of Jo Yeates, the young landscape architect student in Bristol in December 2010, for which a Dutch neighbour was finally convicted. Early in their inquiries the Avon and Somerset police would appear to have briefed journalists against her landlord, wrongly, as the prime suspect. This led the ITV news at ITN to run a report questioning the competence of the investigation, in which – of course – the police were given the opportunity to respond but which, in turn, had them banned from the police’s press conferences. A single example, but one of many available, of journalists using their instinct and trained method to important effect (vide David Mannion, then Editor-in-Chief, ITN, on Radio 4’s The Media Show at that time).

Now, is it conceivable, one must ask, that such a report – of justified, ‘selfstart’ journalism – fairly conducted and ‘duly impartial’ to the guidelines of the statutory broadcast regulator, Ofcom, could ever be likely, under the Corporation’s current mindset, to have any place in a BBC news bulletin or channel, except perhaps if an MP or someone else of authority were to criticise that investigation? Otherwise, the only opportunity for a news audience to see such a thing would be as a trailer for a forthcoming Panorama!

But I am not the only journalist, present or past, who would see such omissions of coverage as, at best, an undershoot, and, at worst, a betrayal of public funds. Another, more recent, example if you need: The BBC has devoted hundreds, perhaps thousands, of hours of radio and television to the ‘Lord Rennard Affair’ on the justified ground that it goes to the heart of attitudes – even a possible schism – within the Liberal Democrat Party and its credibility and governance. But did anyone think to ask how it was that the mighty cohorts of BBC Westminster, numbers far in excess of any other parliamentary team, failed to break that story in the first place, but that was left to Channel 4 News?

(Back in Channel 4 days we used to enjoy a joke that the Beeb’s favoured presenter ‘lead-in’ – ‘The BBC has learnt that ...’ was a coded euphemism for ‘Just how did C4 News discover that ...?’)

In Harding’s interview with the Director-General for the job (the kind you entertain when you are the only candidate and all internal competitors have somehow fallen away), it is likely that Hall urged him to consider pro-active journalism as more naturally the province of current affairs or hybrid programmes such as Newsnight, while Harding urged him to consider the weight of proper journalism being lost to the Corporation under the current approach.

Hall countered by asking Harding to reflect on the political damage likely to be done to the corporation by a return to the more eclectic news agenda of the 1980s, but Harding retorted that, as it was, the BBC had been no stranger to that recently!

Perhaps. But we are unlikely to find out, and even a well-framed Freedom of Information request is unlikely to yield this. One day the principals will have to be questioned. However, subsequent correspondence between them ought to be more discoverable, and it is to be expected that Harding raised the role of the Editorial Policy department, also introduced by John Birt and today serving as something of a ‘belt and braces’ advice service to editors in a quandary. It’s likely that Harding regarded this, from his own experience, as strictly unnecessary for any competent editor and may even have suggested that its very existence had led the BBC to appoint less able and authoritative editors. Perhaps a compromise was arrived at, whereby the functions of ‘Ed Pol’ were to be retained over time, but not as a separate directorate? That, at least, might save staff numbers.

Authority and range of Corporation’s international coverage 

Of course, one of the things that will have drawn Harding to the job in the first place (well, aside from the fact that he was out of work and available) was an admiration amounting to envy shared among his peers for the authority and range of the Corporation’s international coverage; some of its senior on-camera performers are major figures of global journalism and reporters down the line display enormous bravery and courage, especially in war zones. Yet he still has an instinct that, on more everyday, mundane assignments, BBC reporters tend to be less alert to the unexpected within their locations than their rivals at Sky, ITV or Channel 4; he puts this down to an over-oppressive newsgathering desk in London – fine as long as it retains a sense of strategy in the deployment of public funds, not so fine if it stifles reporters’ initiative, and the output with it.

There is also the canard that he picked up when first enquiring about the job that some of the more senior figures are almost beyond the control of production, travelling and reporting pretty much where they choose.

Third Harding memo to self: ‘Need meeting asap with X, Y and Z; sort out bad blood, can’t continue.’

It is now some months since Harding’s first foray into the BBC canteen when, one must assume, he had finally to be bundled out by security to forestall further, untimely dialogues but let us hope that, now he is beyond his ‘honeymoon’ phase, even for a novice – he can soon turn to the ‘value for public money’ equation and liberate the journalism under his command.

At least, the early signs of a coming ‘Journalism Spring’ are encouraging, as a whole new raft of editors and managers has been introduced, even at the risk of over-staffing and a top heavy management structure (cf. Broadcast Magazine, passim), whose experience lies – at least in part – outside the BBC and who will be less likely to prove out of their depth, shorn of ideas and bare of background, and cocooned in a ‘bubble’ if or when the next controversy strikes – as it inevitably will.

The public funding equation is crucial here and one must believe that Harding will address it, if for no other reason than from his background at News International, for consider the probable sums: True, the BBC faces a frozen licence fee but one that has risen exponentially over recent years, yet even that is not the only financial under-pinning for its journalism; its World Service radio and TV operation is now fully integrated with the domestic service available to a British audience, yet it is still funded directly by grant-in-aid from the Foreign Office. That, at any rate, is the current position at the time of writing (January 2014).

However, it’s important to point out that, from April 2014, perhaps seizing on this anomaly, the government will require the BBC to maintain its World Service coverage no longer out of grant-in-aid but from the licence fee.

 On the face of it, this could reduce the resources available to journalism as a whole, but in truth the funding horse has long since bolted, and the sizeable World Service infrastructure was built on many years of grant-in-aid. Now it is only its running costs which will have to be sustained on whatever share of the licence fee Harding can bid for but as the incumbent, he ought to be in a strong bargaining position, and it is other departments across the BBC which are most likely to feel the chill of a frozen licence fee.

Most urgent Harding memo of all to self: ‘Discover how Byzantine funding system actually works before going in to bat, and playing up new boy status; important not to start new job with staff-demoralising defeat.’

There is, also, the share of income from BBC Worldwide, reliant on the historic branding of the BBC, even if little Higher Education Funding Council money, arriving through the OU, actually reaches its journalism.

The precise figures are – admittedly – hard to nail down, or fillet from published totals, but I would nonetheless wager that the full resources available to the BBC’s journalism far outstrip the wealth of Araby or, more specifically, the market value of natural gas under Qatar which powers al-Jazeera, and certainly dwarf, for sheer dependability and consistency, the income of any broadcaster reliant on the vagaries of the commercial advertising market, in the UK or USA.

Of all news broadcasters with aspirations to be a world player, the BBC must surely be, far and away, the richest. And Harding’s challenge is to match the Corporation’s impact to its income. It will only develop into a crisis if it proves undeliverable. Or, rather, it may be that the next crisis of BBC journalism will not be political, stretching to Westminster or social media but will be internal, a struggle for the soul of its public mission between Harding and Hall, but one that will define Hall’s term as Director-General: is he Tony, Lord Hall, who ran the Royal Opera House with such distinction and took an instinctive and justified chance on Antonio Pappano or is he the faithful Ptolemy?

In the event of a stand-off or stasis between the two men, it would perhaps be for the BBC Trust – assuming it survives – to arbitrate, but I’m not sure I would advise anybody to hold their breath.

• David Lloyd is Visiting Professor of Journalism, City University London, and former Head of News and Current Affairs, Channel 4 TV.
• Is the BBC in Crisis? is edited by John Mair, Richard Tait and Richard Lance Keeble and published by Abramis on 1 March. 
• See also,  Phil Harding: 'Turning up the temperature: The BBC and political pressure'