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Chilling effect on BBC journalism of licence freeze: a warning to Leveson Inquiry
Nicholas Jones
DATELINE: 25/1/12
Mark Thompson, the BBC's director general, spent two and a half hours in front of the Leveson Inquiry on media ethics but to my great disappointment he did not offer an opinion on the government's six-year freeze of the licence fee, by far the greatest restraint on the quality and quantity of BBC journalism. There could hardly have been a clearer example of the chilling effect of government interference and the threat to the plurality of the British news media – two of the key issues which Lord Justice Leveson has been asked to address.
When invited to comment on his relationship with politicians, Thompson insisted that he always tried to keep them at arm's length. But throughout his oral evidence (23.1.2012) he did not address the impact of the hurried and largely secret negotiations which he had to conduct on the BBC's behalf in October 2010 when the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government froze the licence fee for six years and effectively reduced the BBC's spending power by 20 per cent.
Instead of exploiting the platform he had been given and dealing head on with the repercussions of the biggest setback to the BBC's independence and vitality for a generation, the director general retreated to the safer ground of his role as the Corporation's editor in chief.
The only moment he got close to squaring up to the arguments advanced in Opposition by the Prime Minister David Cameron and the Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt about the need to rein in "the bloated BBC" (see David Cameron's signed article, Sun, 3.11.2008) was when he was asked by Lord Justice Leveson whether the BBC's reach was weakening the plurality of the press by undermining the viability of local and regional newspapers.
Thompson replied that the BBC's local and regional news services had not grown in recent years; local radio was started in the 1960s and completed in the 1970s; the regional services had been going for fifty to sixty years; and, in addition, there were "relatively modest websites" serving the geographical areas of local radio stations.
He believed the deterioration in the viability of local and regional newspapers had "nothing to do" with the BBC. "I don't think it adds up to a crisis of plurality...people are not substituting buying a newspaper by using a BBC website...I have yet to see any evidence of a substitution effect on the local and regional press."
Except for a short foray into the difficulties surrounding the aftermath of Lord Hutton's inquiry into the BBC's reporting of the Blair government's dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and the clash over the timing of the Panorama investigation into allegations of corruption over FIFA's handling of the world cup, Thompson steered clear of the BBC's often fraught relationship with the government.
He did not comment on the Conservatives' pre-election pledge to freeze the licence fee and the prompt delivery of that promise within five months of the general election, an undertaking which had been campaigned for by newspapers such as the Sun and the News of the World and which in my opinion became a critical factor in reconnecting Cameron to the political and commercial agenda of the Murdoch press.
By contrast when giving his evidence Lord Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, was far more robust about the need for an arm's length relationship and, as I saw it, he made it clear by implication that knowing what we know now he would have given the coalition a run for its money if ministers had held a pistol to his head and tried to enforce anything as draconian as a fundamental reshaping of the BBC's finances.
Lord Patten had said previously that he did not believe the BBC could have got a better licence fee settlement than the six-year deal but I would like to think that he would have made a stand given all that has subsequently emerged about the extent of the covert relationship between the Murdoch press and Conservative ministers and the forced abandoning at the very last minute of News Corporation's bid for total control of BSkyB.
Would Lord Patten have gone along with the coalition government's blatant demolition of the licence fee principle and the requirement that in future licence fee money should be used to shoulder the burden of the World Service, rather than the taxpayer at large, and also fund S4C and the local television stations which Jeremy Hunt has proposed?
Lord Patten's digs at Cameron gave a hint of how he might respond if he had to face a similar set of circumstances in the future. He said that since his appointment in May last year he had met the Prime Minister only once but that probably would have been more frequently if he had been "a News International executive." As chairman of the BBC Trust he certainly saw no need to have "sleepovers" – a back-handed swipe at Rebekah Brooks' visit to Chequers, the Prime Minister's country residence.
While "not in favour of grovelling" before politicians, he welcomed the new approach Cameron was taking. "I think it does help that the Prime Minister and the other party leaders have agreed to publish, not necessarily an account, but the number of times they have meetings with the media...I think politicians will take from the events which the Leveson Inquiry is examining, a recognition that getting too close to the media could become a tar baby and could leave them looking bedraggled and dishevelled."
Lord Patten was also quite pointed in his assessment of the impact of the BBC's much-reduced income. He said that for the first time the BBC had become "a declining part of the broadcast economy"; never before had the BBC represented such a "small part in financial terms" of Britain's broadcasting industry.
I was intrigued by the differences in the stance adopted by the Trust chairman and the director general. Lord Patten, in post for less than a year, had no say in his inheritance; he had taken over at a time when the management was implementing extensive reductions in programme output and large-scale job losses in order to meet a £1 billion a year reduction in the corporation's budget by 2017.
Although he offered no comment on the extent or necessity for the cutbacks, Lord Patten's body language suggested nonetheless that he would not have stood idly by if he had been faced with a sudden, take-it-or-leave-it edict from the government of the day.
For his part, Thompson seemed almost to be still in the process of coming to terms with the scale of the cutbacks which are slashing output and reducing the BBC's reach.
I could not help feeling that the untold story of precisely what happened in the negotiations of October 2010 would probably have confirmed my worst suspicions of the behind-the-scenes negotiating style of the corporatist BBC which took hold during eight years when John Birt was director general.
In getting so close to Tony Blair and the rest of the New Labour elite, Birt seemed to neuter the BBC as a free spirit; he somehow demolished that great tradition of independence, of director generals who spoke with real conviction about the incalculable value of the licence fee and the need to maintain it.
Birt cultivated a managerial culture complete with its corporate centre, stuffed with advisers and strategists. Birt and his cohorts preferred to deal directly but privately with the Blair government, adviser to adviser, strategist to strategist.
Mark Thompson was a product of the Birt era and I fear that when faced by the coalition's post election ambush and demands for a dramatic scaling back in the BBC's output, that corporate style of negotiating was found wanting.
Perhaps it is wishful thinking on my part but I hope I have not misunderstood the signals which Lord Patten was sending to British politicians via the Leveson Inquiry – that they should respect the BBC's charter and especially its financial independence.
www.nicholasjones.org.uk
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Read in full Nicholas Jones' chapter – "How did a British Prime Minister come to depend on an ex-editor of the News of the World? – in The Phone Hacking Scandal: Journalism on Trial, edited by Richard Lance Keeble and John Mair, to be published by Arima Publishing, Bury St Edmunds, in February 2012.Nicholas Jones 25.1.2012
Last modified: Wednesday, January 25, 2012
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Previous Leveson Inquiry stories
Co-ordinating Committee for Media Reform call for change
BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten rebukes David Cameron
Opinion: "Leveson: reasons to be wary of press promises"
Cameron's links with the Murdoch press: only superficial probing at Leveson
Press Freedom: a democratic rubric
Leveson Inquiry edges closer to Cameron
James Murdoch 'shown damning email'
Rupert Murdoch met David Cameron at Downing Street twice during BSkyB bid
The Leveson Inquiry: Should We Care?
Leveson Inquiry kicks off but ministers could still act
Ditch the PCC: CPBF backs inquiry into the ethics and culture of the press
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World Press Freedom Day
More reporters are currently imprisoned in Turkey than in any other country in the world. Only a matter of weeks ago lawyers failed to persuade a Turkish court to release a 76-year-old journalist from a Turkish internet news station.
World Press Freedom Day on Friday May 3, 2013 is being marked in Britain by a rally to highlight the dangers facing journalists in Turkey and in this podcast, Nicholas Jones speaks to Barry White, Organiser at the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, and Sam Bamford, the TUC's policy officer for Eastern Europe and Africa about the importance of a campaign to highlight international press freedom.
The World Press Freedom Day rally is being staged by the National Union of Journalists at the NUJ head office, Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1 on Thursday May 2, 6pm-8pm.
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The UK launch of a 'European Citizens' Initiative' calling for EU rules against concentration of media power will take place on Thursday March 21 from 11:00am – 12:30pm in Committee Room 4A at the House of Lords, London. Guest speakers will include actor and activist Hugh Grant (pictured), media consultant Claire Enders, Professor Steven Barnett, Barry McCall (President of the NUJ) and Marc Gruber (Director of the European Federation of Journalists).
A European Citizens' Initiative is an official petition, like a Downing Street petition. If it succeeds in gathering a million signatures across the EU, the Commission is obliged to respond.
This petition calls for the EU to act to protect media pluralism and press freedom.
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Previous stories
Leveson Inquiry
Co-ordinating Committee for Media Reform call for change
BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten rebukes David Cameron
Opinion: "Leveson: reasons to be wary of press promises"
Cameron's links with the Murdoch press: only superficial probing at Leveson
Press Freedom: a democratic rubric
Leveson Inquiry edges closer to Cameron
James Murdoch 'shown damning email'
Rupert Murdoch met David Cameron at Downing Street twice during BSkyB bid
The Leveson Inquiry: Should We Care?
Leveson Inquiry kicks off but ministers could still act
Ditch the PCC: CPBF backs inquiry into the ethics and culture of the press
