When it comes to discussing the record of the BBC in the mainstream media, there appear to be about three default positions one can take. The first is to state that the BBC’s aggressively left-wing, anti-establishment slant represents active bias, which deserves to be condemned. The second is that, on the contrary, the BBC is scrupulously impartial, a great British institution, and deserves to be defended. The third is that the BBC is indeed aggressively anti-establishment and liberal-left in its orientation, but that this is a good thing for our democracy, since it serves as an essential watchdog against potential abuses by the powerful. Illustrating just what a truism the “left-wing” framing has become - and the extent to which it sets the agenda in mainstream debate - is a cartoon on page 8 of this week’s edition of Private Eye, in which a TV repair man stands beside an obviously tilted TV, the words “BBC” emblazoned across the screen, with the caption, “I think I’ve found the problem… It leans to the left”.
A recent piece in the Media Guardian is rather illuminating on the extent to which reality bears this out. According to the article,
Two of the BBC’s most senior news and current affairs executives attacked the corporation's plans yesterday for a Comic Relief-style day of programming on environmental issues, saying it was not the broadcaster's job to preach to viewers.
The event, understood to have been 18 months in development, would see stars such as Ricky Gervais and Jonathan Ross take part in a “consciousness raising” event, provisionally titled Planet Relief, early next year.
But, speaking at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival yesterday, Newsnight's editor, Peter Barron, and the BBC’s head of television news, Peter Horrocks, attacked the plan, which also seems to contradict the corporation's guidelines. Asked whether the BBC should campaign on issues such as climate change, Mr Horrocks said: “I absolutely don’t think we should do that because it's not impartial. It's not our job to lead people and proselytise about it.” Mr Barron said: “It is absolutely not the BBC’s job to save the planet. I think there are a lot of people who think that, but it must be stopped.”
Planet Relief appears to contradict BBC guidelines on impartiality. In June a BBC-endorsed report set out 12 principles on impartiality, warning that the broadcaster “has many public purposes of both ambition and merit - but joining campaigns to save the planet is not one of them”.
Evidently the pressure these remarks put on the corporation paid off. As the article continues,
A BBC spokeswoman said: “This idea is still in development and the intention would be to debate the issue and in no way campaign on a single point of view.”
The implications of this for any potential event put on by the BBC are disturbing, to say the least. If sentiments such as “we need to rein in our greenhouse gas emissions to the level necessary for preventing runaway climate change” can be considered to be a “single point of view”, then it would now appear to be off the BBC’s agenda - essentially neutering the entire project.
I decided to write to Horrocks and Barron to see what they would have to say on this matter. I wrote:
Dear sirs,
I was most intrigued to read in the Media Guardian of your no-nonsense remarks on the BBC’s potential involvement in a “consciousness raising” day of programming on climate change. As you so rightly object, “It is absolutely not the BBC’s job to save the planet”; and such a project is, of course, “not impartial”.
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,2156758,00.html
Since you evidently hold both the defining purpose of the BBC and the ethic of impartiality in such high regard, I hope you will soon be extending the same outspoken condemnation to other BBC broadcasts.
Comic Relief, for instance. Clearly it is not the BBC’s job to give aid to those suffering extreme poverty - there are aid agencies, after all - and such programmes are, of course, far from impartial, completely excluding the views of those who believe the poor should be left to suffer and die from hunger and disease; and also of those who regard the poor and starving as the deserving recipients of divine retribution.
Then again, perhaps a programme like Crimewatch is more worthy of your immediate attention. For it is obviously not the BBC’s job to catch criminals - that’s for the police - and to help do so is hardly impartial, since it excludes the views of, say, the criminal underclass for whom the law is simply an irrelevance.
So, in the knowledge that you are both principled individuals not afraid to make your voices heard, I am confident we shall soon be hearing of your valiant efforts to get wholly inappropriate programmes like Comic Relief and Crimewatch axed forever. I, for one, wish you the best of luck.
Yours sincerely,
Tim Holmes
Horrocks, alas, never replied; but I received a prompt response from Peter Barron, who wrote:
Thanks Tim,
I sense the irony in your email, but the issue of impartiality does need
to be taken into account in every programme we do, Comic Relief and
Crime Watch included. Where there are questions of political controversy
as to how best to respond to issues like climate change the BBC must be
careful not to align itself to a particular cause.Yours sincerely
Peter Barron
I replied in turn:
Dear Peter,
I am glad you share my concerns about impartiality in all areas of the BBC’s output. Will you then be declaring that programmes such as Comic Relief and Crime Watch “must be stopped” also? As I have pointed out, there are grounds for controversy surrounding the issues these programmes address which are at least as credible as the “political controversy” surrounding climate change to which you refer. I think that’s a fair comment - though if there are grounds to consider the political controversy surrounding climate change more credible, I'd be glad to hear of them.
Many thanks,
Tim Holmes
I received this is response:
Dear Tim,
I was asked at Edinburgh about the BBC campaigning on green issues, and
gave my view that it is not the BBC’s job to save the planet. That’s
because the issue of how to respond to climate change - and indeed the
extent and causes of climate change - is a matter of controversy. Every
programme made by the BBC must follow the guidelines on impartiality,
and that includes Comic Relief and Crimewatch.Best wishes
Peter
This response was perhaps the most incredible. I replied again:
Dear Peter,
You write that “the issue of how to respond to climate change - and indeed the extent and causes of climate change - is a matter of controversy.”
Quite so - just as the causes of extreme poverty are controversial, as I have suggested: some people of a religious persuasion, to repeat, take the view that the root cause of poverty and destitution is divine punishment for past sins, and that the poor may therefore be rightfully abandoned. Why should we exclude this entirely valid point of view in events like Comic Relief?
In any case, I am surely preaching to the converted. You have twice confirmed that programmes like Comic Relief should indeed conform to standards of impartiality, and hence, by your own logic, should be scrapped. I am glad you support this point of view, and shall proudly be citing it in my further campaign efforts on this issue.
As we know, any claims to impartiality are meaningless if we do not give as much time to religious fanatics as we do to aid agencies; to Holocaust deniers as we do to serious historians; to the flat-earth society as we do to NASA; and to the scientifically illiterate as we do to climate scientists.
All the best,
Tim Holmes
Barron’s point about impartiality seems, superficially, to make sense - until one examines the assumptions behind it. Implicit in the idea of impartiality and “balance”, that other buzzword of broadcast journalism, is the recognised legitimacy of both sides in the debate - which is why you don’t see David Irving making primetime documentaries on the Nazis, for example. But public legitimacy is, of course, a function of power. As Mark Lynas puts it, “The reality, as most journalists will tell you after a couple of drinks, is that “fairness” largely consists of balancing out and accommodating the most powerful lobbies and the loudest voices.” Those with the best funding, the slickest P.R. departments, and the most ready access to the media (particularly the corporate media) inevitably have an inherent advantage over the rest of us - as do those peddling a message the powerful want heard.
If the remarks of Horrocks and Barron (not to mention the BBC’s subsequent response) are anything to go by, the results are pretty predictable. In the teeth of a near-total consensus on anthropogenic climate change among scientists, in the public sphere the appearance of a genuine controversy still persists. Whether outlets like the BBC will be able to shake themselves awake before it’s too late will depend very much on people like you and me, and the pressure we bring to bear on them.
