14 November 2012

The BBC fightback begins

In tomorrow's New Statesman, BBC director of television Roger Mosey and Joan Bakewell ride to the corporation's defence.

By George Eaton

After weeks of criticism of the BBC, there’s a growing sense that the corporation needs to be defended from those in the Conservative Party and on Fleet Street who are seeking to exploit the crisis to destroy it. In this week’s New Statesman, Roger Mosey, the BBC’s director of television, who led its coverage of the Olympics, calls for a “sense of proportion” after “a grisly weekend”. Mosey, who is one of those tipped to take over as director general, writes:

This shouldn’t be seen as luvvie-style moping about not liking it when the heat is on us. We hold others accountable, so there’s no argument that we should be accountable, too. But as a journalistic culture, we should apply ourselves to the difference between what’s serious wrongdoing in the sense of being criminal or wicked – and what’s just a “good” story with fallible human beings at the centre of it.

He adds that the ultimate test of the BBC is what audiences think about its programmes “rather than about the corporation itself”. Here, he says, there is reason for confidence. “Last weekend we broadcast moving coverage of Remembrance Sunday at the Cenotaph and in the Royal Albert Hall, and we’ll be bringing communities together again this weekend for Children in Need. It doesn’t feel that difficult to make the case for the BBC.”

Elsewhere in this week’s issue, Joan Bakewell, who began her career at the BBC in the 1950s, says that the BBC should “be left alone to regret, to mourn and to repair itself”. She writes:

[T]he BBC is a human institution: like any other, it is flawed. It may have been the aspiration of its first director general Lord Reith that it should be entirely perfect, but he was a puritanical control freak.

The BBC now needs a large dose of courage that enables it to look boldly on its structural failings and put some hefty remedies in place. It has a decades-long history of fine programmes that have made legends of its stars, educated the public, spawned heaps of imitators and won a unique reputation throughout the broadcasting world. It now needs to be left alone to regret, to mourn and to repair itself.

You can read these pieces in full, along with contributions on the BBC’s future from Jason Cowley, Tristram Hunt, Mehdi Hasan and Rachel Cooke in tomorrow’s issue.