The future of the BBC

I like to keep tabs with what's going on with the BBC--the British Broadcasting Corporation--and this has been a big year for "Auntie Beeb". The UK government last month published a white paper on the BBC that basically guarantees its future as a public service broadcaster for the next 10 years (although with some significant changes. There's a lot of debate just now about what the license fee should be set at and just how commercialized the BBC should be allowed to get. But the Corporation's not about to be privatized . . . yet.

I must admit: I love the BBC. I particularly love the fact that, thanks to UK public funding, the BBC puts so much of its material on the web--for free. But I fear that with every time I get some wonderful new piece of information - in text, audio, or video - from the BBC's enormous free web archive, I (and millions like me) annoy numerous commercial operators who would like to charge fees for similar services, but who are unable to do so because of the BBC's dominant presence. I worry that the government, pushed on by the increasingly powerful commercial lobby, will continue to try to undermine the BBC's funding and its editorial independence.

Some background. Of course, the BBC has often had an antagonistic relationship with British governments over years. Margaret Thatcher and her "rottweiler press secretary" Bernard Ingham hated the BBC in the '80s, especially in light of its relatively balanced news coverage of the Falklands/Malvinas conflict and the IRA campaign (Click here to see how Peter Snow covered the Falklands for BBC Newsnight in 1982; and Gavin Esler's piece on the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA)). Thatcher's ideological opposition to public service broadcasting also led her to push hard for commercialization of the corporation in the 1980s - though the 1986 Peacock Report rejected that strategy and helped preserve the license fee funding model. (See this piece by Jean Seaton in British Journalism Review for some more context).

The BBC survived - somehow - the era of director-general John Birt and succeeded in having its charter renewed again in 1996. However, the Blair government itself became a source of opposition to the BBC, especially with the Iraq War. Blair attempted to use the Hutton Inquiry (into the suspicious death of a UK weapons inspector, Dr. David Kelly) as a stick with which to beat the BBC into quiesence. Again, Lady Luck was on the Beeb's side, and an outporing of public support for the corporation over the duplicitous government persuaded the Blair administration to back off (especially after the resignation of communications director Alastair Campbell).

Another source of attack has been the growing power of the commercial media in Britain. the private press has always been lukewarm about the BBC. But the proliferation of new over-the-air, cable, and satellite channels brings with it new battalions of media lobbyists committed to the U.S. commercial model and fundamentally opposed to the notion of public-financed broadcasting. In particular, the BBC's massive presence on the Web has drawn fire from commercial operations complaining about their inability to compete against this free treasure trove of news and information (and this has led to occasional calls for the elimination of the BBC's web presence. More broadly, commercial pressure groups have attacked the BBC and its license fee financing system. (To get a flavor of the debate see the following selection of articles from The Guardian and The Observer, tracking pro and con arguments: pro-license fee; BBC's excessive commercialism; BBC web operations; Channel 4 attack; anti-BBC.)

Despite the opposition, the BBC remains strong, and it's even getting more "cool" again. Most importantly, it still has strong public support - that's what has saved its bacon a number of times during disputes with the government - but the corporation amasses enemies all over the place. As a British Journalism Review editorial reminded us at the height of the Andrew Gilligan/David Kelly affair: "Among journalists who work for rival news media, the BBC has never had a great number of friends." And, to paraphrase Elrond's reminder to Gandalf in "The Fellowship of the Ring": The BBC's list of allies grows thin.

But Auntie Beeb battles on regardless. British governments setting out to hobble the BBC for one reason or another have usually pulled back from the brink. (Incidentally, for a quickie guide to BBC-government controversies down the years, check out this Answers.com page, titled "BBC Controversy".) And the BBC's commercial opposition has failed - so far - to land a telling blow. The BBC is to get its funding renewed for another 10 years, taking the current system potentially to 2016. And the BBC continues to argue for its unique position in British society - and indeed, it is working to expand that role, most prominently in cyberspace (see the Beeb's own arguments in its Future of the BBC report.)

But here's what really worries me. The question arises as to how the BBC would fare if it came under sustained assault from the much more conservative global and especially U.S. political-business establishment. As the BBC expands its reach - geographically, around the globe, and rhetorically, through providing a broader range of opinion both from within its walls and from greater interactivity with its audiences - it is open to the threat of retaliation not only from domestic commercial media in the UK but also, increasingly, from global (mostly U.S.-owned) transnational media corporations. This is a potentially fatal development for the hard-earned integrity and political/economic independence of the BBC. It is not unreasonable to speculate that if the BBC continues to extend its reach into the U.S. market, becoming dependent on U.S. revenue and coming to be perceived as “domestic” U.S medium, this could have a deleterious impact not only on its “alternative status” in the States, but also on its independence from American political forces. In others words, if the BBC moves from being considered an alternative news outlet to being a mainstream outlet it risks being drawn into the same political-economic pressures that have so successfully constrained U.S. news media in recent years.

That would be very bad.