Dangers are mounting for BBC that won't listen to critics

Roy Greenslade
1 Jul 2009

Does the BBC have a death wish? I dislike lining up with the corporation's knee-jerk critics, but I have to admit that I am rapidly becoming an exasperated supporter of Britain's, and the world's, most renowned public service broadcaster.

It is so hard to defend some of the BBC's recent actions. First off, there is the matter of expenses (and salaries). Second, there is the staffing, and cost, of broadcasting the Glastonbury festival. Third, there is the contentious statement by the director-general, Mark Thompson, about the licence fee.

There seems to be a broad acceptance that despite some eye-popping oddities - the £500 in part-payment for a handbag lost by Jana Bennett, the director of vision, and the £1400 for two years' subscription to Sky TV by Ashley Highfield, the former director of future media and technology - there were no real surprises to match the outlandish expenses claims of many MPs.

Most newspaper journalists, even those usually antagonistic towards the BBC, have clearly taken the view that there is little to complain about. What upsets me, however, is that the BBC dragged its heels for so long before revealing its executives' expenses. The corporation's manoeuvres to avoid complying with freedom of information requests were a disgrace.

Senior staff now realise that they were, in the words of one spokeswoman, "too slow to move" and "too conservative." In fact, they were wholly obstructive for a long period to justifiable inquiries into how the public's money is spent.

I understand that the Freedom of Information Act has been what one executive has called "a difficult journey" for an organisation that has to balance its duty towards its staff with its duty towards licence-fee payers. Executives were understandably alarmed at the idea of their detailed expenses appearing in the public domain.

They probably wanted to avoid the widespread hostile reaction to the revelations about MPs. That is no excuse, I'm afraid. It was a big challenge for the corporation, and it flunked it because it took far too long to come clean.

It is a further example of the way in which the BBC is too slow to react to events. There have been so many such cases in the past couple of years, such as the infamous delay in sorting out the dodgy trailer in the Crowngate "Queen in a huff" saga in 2007 and the failure to deal swiftly with the Ross-Brand affair last October.

(Indeed, the whole business of the failure to act sensibly and quickly in the immediate aftermath of that Iraq war "sexed-up dossier" scandal in 2003 shows that its sloth pre-dates Thompson's era).

For a media institution, it appears unusually lacking in media savvy. It allows negative stories to get up a head of steam in newspapers and on other broadcasting outlets before taking action. The fact that Thompson and his aides have tended, eventually, to make the correct decisions is beside the point. The horse has then bolted, and the BBC has been left looking as though it has responded to an agenda set by rival media organisations rather than having acted in a principled manner of its own volition.

I am somewhat relaxed about the salaries of senior BBC staff. They are high compared to most newspaper equivalents, though some national newspaper editors earn much more than Thompson and several columnists are paid far more than most BBC executives. But I doubt whether the great British public feel the same way. The combination of high salaries and generous expense accounts is a public relations problem with the potential to transform support and apathy into active hostility. The BBC Trust should seriously consider measures that will lead to what we might call "downward adjustments" in the overall packages on offer to senior staff.

I concede that the BBC's critics are always on the lookout for opportunities to denigrate the corporation.

That's clearly the case with the Glastonbury stories that have poured scorn on the fact that more than 400 staff were required to cover the event at a reputed (though unverified) cost of £1.5 million.

Some context first. Glastonbury is a major British cultural event, and the BBC is its official broadcasting partner. Its music is the mainstay of the BBC's radio networks, especially Radio 1, with 60 hours of output and, incidentally, 57 hours of video on its websites. It also provided 111 hours of TV coverage on BBCs 2,3, 4 and the red button. The radio audience alone totalled a record 16 million.

Now for the staffing. According to the official BBC figures, about 125 of its full-time staff were supported by 150 freelancers and 130 short-term contractors (such as riggers, technical specialists and security guards). Outside broadcasts inevitably involve lots of manpower that doesn't show up on screen or on air.

That said, the BBC is going to find itself coming under the closest scrutiny in the coming months. If it hopes to head off criticism, it needs to ensure that it can justify every bit of its expenditure and, perhaps, think about pro-active PR (not spinning, of course).

Finally, I disagree with Thompson's accusation that "ideologically focused" individuals, in Government and in Ofcom, are trying to undermine the corporation's funding by top-slicing the licence fee.

Though some senior politicians may well wish to humble the BBC, the overall political concern is surely about maintaining public service broadcasting plurality.

As I have written before, if commercial outlets cannot or will not fund such output because of stretched resources, an agreed (relatively small) portion of the licence fee should be made available.

Thompson must beware losing the support of the public his organisation affects to serve.