Reality check for the BBC - it can't be the only public service source of news

Roy Greenslade
30 Jul 2008

There cannot be any doubt that the BBC's news output is trusted by the overwhelming majority of the British people and a large proportion of people across the world. That fact was underlined in the aftermath of the Gilligan/Kelly affair when polls showed that people preferred to believe the BBC's interpretation of the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq rather than the Government's.

Statistics also show that the BBC's online news service is far and away the most popular news source in Britain, with 3.6 billion page impressions a month over the past year, 12 million British users and 33 million global users.

I tend to trust the BBC too. I have a high regard for its editors and journalists. I respect the thought that has gone into the guidelines that seek to ensure the output is as truthful, fair and balanced as possible.

But even with the best of intentions, I am aware that truth-telling is virtually impossible. We should always strive to achieve it, of course, while recognising that it is unattainable. This is not a bad admission. It is reality. It means therefore that I do not see the BBC as the oracle. It has flaws. For example, I recently viewed a Norwegian TV documentary that called into question BBC TV News reports of a famine in Niger in 2005. The interviewees cast the country's food shortage in an entirely new light, suggesting that the reports of a famine were wholly mistaken. Yet I know the reporter concerned to be diligent, experienced and compassionate. She had told the truth as she found it. Other people, confronted by similar facts, saw the truth differently.

I mention this simply to illustrate that we should do all we can to avoid creating a situation in which we rely for our news on a single provider. However good the BBC may be, we must ensure that there is competition.

Sadly, the BBC does not seem to agree. In a recent submission to the broadcasting regulator, the BBC contested Ofcom's desire to maintain plurality in the provision of public service broadcasting within Britain, arguing that the new market place allows people to access a far more diverse range of content from around the globe. So there is no need for home-grown rivals to produce public service material. The BBC does the job well enough already.

I fundamentally disagree with this line of argument. It is clear that online media enables people to read and view content from any location they choose. But that does not negate the fact that most TV viewers living within Britain choose to view the world through the prism of British broadcasters. Similarly, they prefer their online news content to be British too.

Plurality remains essential. Despite the BBC's mammoth news output, Jon Snow's Channel 4 News is a wonderful programme, regularly offering a different insight into the day's events. We would be much poorer without it. Dispatches on Channel 4 often gives BBC's Panorama a run for its money. Channel 4 documentaries are often fascinating, such as Robert Baer's series on suicide bombing, and there are little public service gems to admire every week.

These programmes do not get mass audiences, of course, but then the BBC's more serious output rarely wins high ratings. That is beside the point. The loss of public service broadcasting plurality would rob concerned citizens, society's crucial opinion-formers, of information.

Now we appear to be on the verge of losing another public service plank because Ofcom is going to allow ITV to reduce its regional news bulletins. According to a leaked Ofcom document, the contents of which have not been disputed, ITV will be free to cut regional news by a fifth and current affairs by a third.

This could be seen as a natural consequence of the creation of a monolithic ITV network, but the effect of a reduction gives the BBC a greater grip on regional TV at a time when it is also terrifying regional and local newspapers by encroaching on to their burgeoning online turf.

The newspapers' trade body, the Newspaper Society (NS), has been holding a series of meetings with the BBC Trust, BBC executives, ministers and top civil servants to protest at the BBC's proposal to strengthen its local news websites across 60 areas of Britain.

The NS director, David Newell, while conceding that he represents commercial organisations, makes out a good and very practical case for the protection of plurality.

He argues that there is "public value and importance in ensuring that independent, non-government subsidised local news and information networks are maintained".

Well, he would say that, wouldn't he? But his following sentence is the crucial one: "Our member companies employ the journalists which are the foundation of the newsgathering process in all nations and regions of the UK. The BBC, along with other media organisations, are reliant on that process and much of their local and regional news output is derivative of it and is 'lifted' from it free of any charge."

In other words, plurality is fundamental to the provision of news. Surely the BBC understands that?