23 Feb 11 | Uncategorized
BBC director general Mark Thompson was a bit wimpish during the Newsnight debate [watch here] about the future of newspapers, when it was put to him that BBC online news was “distorting the market”. The corporation is unnecessarily defensive on this issue.
The BBC is distorting the market only if you buy into the idea that news must always be a “market” whose terms of trade are defined by commercial organisations like the FT, News Internatonal, the Guardian and Associated Newspapers. Whenever such organisations get the chance, of course they will complain that free BBC content is cramping their ability to make profits out of online news.
If, on the other hand, we talk about ‘funding models’, we see a different picture. The BBC has a funding model which is very successful and the big commercial organisations have one which, thanks to big cultural and technological changes, is currently less so. The BBC model — non-commercial news provision funded by what is effectively a hypothecated tax — is a triumphantly brilliant idea which has served this country extremely well for many decades.
BBC output is high-quality, trustworthy, independent, accessible and fantastically popular. (Yes, they get things wrong sometimes, but producing a news service is not like running the Faberge egg factory: perfection is not an option.) More than that, the BBC provides a benchmark for all the other journalism we see; by its example and reach, it keeps journalism (relatively) virtuous in this country.
If commercial organisations have trouble making money on the internet, let them go away and find a solution. That their funding model doesn’t work is no reason to go smashing up one that does.
Brian Cathcart teaches journalism at Kingston University. He tweets at @BrianCathcart
04 Feb 11 | Uncategorized
At a parliamentary briefing this week on the World Service cuts (five language services to close, end of radio programmes in seven languages, 650 jobs lost), MPs were puzzled about the logic of the government’s actions. Why was the World Service being so brutally diminished when the government is actually increasing its foreign aid spending? Surely Bush House should qualify for some of that funding? There can be no doubt that World Service programmes contribute substantially towards the goals of international development: increasing access to information and freedom of expression around the world, essential for the foundation and health of any democracy. Well, it turns out that the Foreign Office (which has always funded the World Service till now) actually counts £25m of its grant-in-aid to the World Service towards meeting the government’s development goals. At the briefing in Westminster Hall, the former diplomat Lord Hannay declared it was a “con trick” — the World Service helps the government meet its target without entailing any further spending and without actually receiving development funding for its significant contribution. When you consider that the cuts over the next three years are totalling £46m and destroying Bush House’s position as the world’s single largest international broadcaster, receiving £25m would have averted the catastrophic blow that has just been delivered. Bush House has as much claim to international aid as the British Council (which received £40m in international development funding last year via the Foreign Office). The government urgently needs to rethink its strategy and at the very least justify why the Pope is deemed worthy of foreign aid, yet one of our greatest cultural institutions is disqualified: £1.85m of the development budget was spent on the papal visit last year.
27 Oct 10 | News and features
What does the future hold for the World Service? Adrienne van Heteren writes from within an institution still seen as beacon of trustworthiness around the world
A strange atmosphere is hanging Bush House, the London home of the BBC World Service. It is not merely the melancholy of autumn but the sense that we are living at a real end of an era, symbolically affirmed by the pending closure of Beaumont House, for many years the World Service’s base for trainees journalists from all over the world.
I remember my very short stay there and the interesting meetings I had over breakfast with a young trainee journalist of the Burmese service. He had always known that he wanted to work for the World Service. He had an exceptional sense of wanting to serve his country for the better. He knew the risks, but he was fully committed.
The World Service is being briefed about the cuts now. We are told that they present exciting challenges. I’m not unwilling to follow the logic that change means stability. But it is autumn at Bush House. Leaves are falling and winter is coming. I am not so sure if there is anything anybody can do now. The government and the BBC have agreed a fixed deal for six years, until the end of the concession period in 2016. There will be significant cuts. The World Service budget will be paid for by the BBC as from 2014 and no longer by the Foreign Office (FCO) until the end of the concession period. After that: who knows?
Someone in India asks: is this the end of the World Service? I look around at my colleagues in the room and I think that a lot of people in World Service instinctively feel that they were somehow better protected under the FCO umbrella.
Of course it is not the end, we are told. In two years we will all move to a building that departing deputy director general of the BBC Mark Byford describes as the biggest and most modern media centre in the world. I think that is fantastic, but it does not really improve my mood.
As I look at a few Afghan guests in my office, brave people, who have no clue how what is being said on a screen above their heads will affect them. I remember my recent meeting with young Afghan journalist trainees, their plans, their enthusiasm and their common desire to be part of that World Service family of quality journalism, because they felt it vital for their country. So young and with such a desire to belong to something so old.
I strongly feel that we will all start to regret some of these changes later, much later when we can see that it is gone. Like closing a library with precious books because not enough people read them. The World Service is for many in the world that beacon of light in the night, that voice of reason, that clear stream of information among all the state propaganda.
As a foreigner — and with all due respect for Brits — sometimes a thought crosses my mind: perhaps the World Service should not be owned by the British. Because really it belongs to all the people of the world. And that is why I have to ask the question: What is going to happen with whatever is left of the World Service after 2016?
There are no easy answers. But once an institution is dismantled, its gone and you won’t get it back.
Adrienne van Heteren works for the BBC World Service Trust. This article is written in her personal capacity
26 Oct 10 | Uncategorized
This article appears in Media Guardian
The gathered clan laughed nervously when Lord Saatchi, their host, declared that Britons now spent more on Sky TV subscriptions than they did on bread. When the other man on the stage smiled, the audience relaxed. To understand Rupert Murdoch‘s grip on British public life it is instructive to see the body language when the elite comes together. I counted at least five Conservative cabinet ministers among the great and good in the ornate surroundings of Lancaster House for the inaugural Margaret Thatcher lecture on Thursday.
The timing was equally pertinent. Murdoch’s speech, entitled Free Markets and Free Minds, came the day after the Comprehensive Spending Review that sought not just to tackle the budget deficit but to complete Thatcher’s unfinished business of reducing the size of the state and unleashing the private sector.
Concerns over Thatcher’s health could not mask a celebratory mood among News Corporation executives who, in just a matter of days, have seen the BBC’s budget cut by 16% and Ofcom denuded of staff.
Murdoch, even now, continues to portray himself as the rebel with a cause. “I am something of a parvenu,” he said. At each step of the way, he had taken on vested interests – whether trade unions at Wapping or other “institutions hungry for power at the expense of ordinary citizens”. He argued that technological change was leading to a new “democracy … from the bottom up”. A free society, he said, “required an independent press: turbulent, inquiring, bustling and free. That’s why our journalism is hard-driving and questioning of authority. And so are our journalists.”
Such a laudable commitment to free expression sits uneasily with his company’s dealings in countries with dubious civil liberties records, notably China, where his business interests invariably trump journalistic inquiry.
Murdoch suggested that traditional mediated journalism remained the only serious constraint on elites. “It would certainly serve the interests of the powerful if professional journalists were muted – or replaced as navigators in our society by bloggers and bloviators.” Bloggers could play a “social” role but this had little to do with uncovering facts. In saying this, Murdoch was doing more than justifying the Times’ and Sunday Times’ internet paywall. He appeared to be echoing the views of the New Yorker columnist Malcolm Gladwell, and others who argue that social media and blogs are not speaking truth to power in the way their advocates proclaim.
When tackling the most controversial areas, Murdoch moved from unequivocal statement to hints. The words “Andy” and “Coulson” came immediately to mind when he stated: “Often I have cause to celebrate editorial endeavour. Occasionally I have cause for regret. Let me be clear: we will vigorously pursue the truth – and we will not tolerate wrongdoing.” One News Corp executive suggested afterwards that this was the closest Murdoch had come, and would come, to apologising for the phone-hacking affair.
The official line is that no senior figure knew about the practice at the News of the World. Coulson, who is now director of communications in Downing Street, resigned as the editor when the paper’s former royal editor, Clive Goodman, was jailed in January 2007. Intriguingly, a senior Murdoch executive told me after the speech: “If Coulson hadn’t quit, he would have been fired”. If that is the case, why do they continue to insist publicly that Coulson had done nothing wrong and had fallen on his sword only to protect the reputation of the company?
The other unspoken drama in the room was Murdoch’s bid to take full control of BSkyB and the campaign of resistance by an alliance of newspaper editors and the BBC, who are urging Vince Cable to block the deal.
Murdoch said the energy of the iconoclastic and unconventional should not be curbed, adding: “When the upstart is too successful, somehow the old interests surface, and restrictions on growth are proposed or imposed. That’s an issue for my company.”
The assembled ministers will have taken note. Just as the Labour government kowtowed at every turn, so the coalition – and Cable in particular – will be scrutinised closely by News Corp to ensure that it does the decent thing.
