Re: [A-List] Colin Leys on the BBC after the Hutton Inquiry

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Colin Leys writes:

Instead, what is much more likely is permanent and probably irreversible
damage to the BBC and public service broadcasting generally. November's
ruling by the BBC governors that their journalists will no longer be allowed
to write freelance articles for newspapers is a significant straw in the
wind.

----

MK: In what way? Is their BBC salary insufficient? How does having some
already well-paid correspondent (who would want to read the diary of a
nobody, after all?) vent their personal views for a grossly inflated
supplementary salary (John Humphrys was on £100k-a-year for his Sunday Times
articles, which were in fact the product of an anonymous freelancer who was
graciously given £40k) contribute to democracy? If anything it reveals the
personal predilections of the correspondent, who is supposed to be treading
a fine line of impartiality when wearing his/her BBC hat? A reading of John
Sergeant's memoirs will highlight just how much attention is devoted to that
"impartiality", although of course it is a nonsense. Nevertheless it is that
same devotion to "impartiality" that often lands the BBC in hot water, as in
this case.

Leys continues:

The policy was clearly prompted by the government's honing in on Andrew
Gilligan's article in The Mail on Sunday on 31 May, which made the
allegation that the notorious '45 minutes' claim had been inserted into the
government's dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction by Campbell.
Gilligan had not fingered Campbell in the earlier Today programme report
that started the row that culminated in Kelly's death. And in fact the
45-minute claim had been inserted at the last minute by the JIC, albeit
under heavy prompting from Number 10.

-----

MK: Gilligan also wrote regularly for the Spectator (like the MoS, a very
right wing outlet, whose publication of George Galloway's column in its
Scottish edition was itself opportunistic commercially and politically -- 
sticking it to Tony). He was quite chummy with certain characters in
Conservative Party circles, having previously been close to New Labour. This
suggests opportunism on Gilligan's part, as well as the nature of much
opposition in Britain today -- not a principled, coherent rejection of the
government's policies and the advocacy of a principled, coherent
alternative, but a narcissistic populism in which "sticking it to Tony" any
which way you can is as good as it gets. Given that New Labour's position is
unassailable and is likely to continue to be so for the foreseeable future,
not least because of the lack of a credible alternative, the only outlet for
dissent is in the sort of poujadist mass protest of the fuel strikes of
autumn 2000 or lone campaigners like Richard Taylor in Kidderminster,
fighting to prevent local NHS closures. For the "official opposition" is
just as tied to the mainstream as the governing party -- another legacy of
Thatcherism and the policy of Cold War liberalism pursued by the US over
decades. People can readily sense the futility of mainstream political
activity, other than as a vehicle of personal advancement.

Gilligan appears to have been a willing and able participant in this world,
and his only fault seems to have been that he crossed swords with a powerful
adversary and that his superiors, most of whom are also adept at the game,
put their own careers above standing up for a subordinate and/or the wider
principle of public service broadcasting. Those with any shred of honour
were compelled to resign.

Leys continues:

The significance of the new policy is that the BBC is clearing the decks for
a fight for its life. The corporation's charter is up for review, along with
its claim to the more than £2 billion annual revenue raised by the TV
licence fee. The BBC knows that New Labour and its friends in the commercial
media, including Murdoch, want to clip its wings. In its struggle to prevent
this happening it can no longer afford to risk having its reputation for
objective reporting compromised by letting well-known BBC reporters write
articles in the press unchecked by its own internal editing processes.

------

MK: This ought to be no surprise, for reasons elaborated above. The real
problem with the BBC, however, was the institution of Birtist "two-ways", in
which studio anchor goes "live" to on-site reporter for some unscripted
umming and erring. It was this that started the entire saga of "Hutton",
because Gilligan, unlike the vast majority of his peer group, had something
interesting to say. That Birt could stand up in the House of Lords last week
and attack BBC editorial standards for this shows exactly what sort of
"revolution" Birt was supposed to have completed. For how can editors be
held responsible for the content of a live feed? Only if the journalist
feeding the anchor is thoroughly "briefed" beforehand -- i.e.,
indoctrinated. Gilligan's flirtations with punk Thatcherites should have
been warning enough, but since he was not flirting with socialists his
behaviour was tolerated, perhaps even encouraged -- after all, it is
conceivable that, one day, the Conservatives will be back in office.

Leys continues:

What is amazing is that so few senior figures in the Labour Party have
spoken up for the prior claims of democracy - for high-quality, objective
media as a political right, as indispensable to democracy as the right to
hold public meetings (which the media have largely replaced). If this case
had been made as forcefully as it should have been, a strong public service
media regime would now be seen by everyone to be as important as elections,
the judiciary and Parliament itself.

So, the left needs to take up the fight for the BBC's charter and licence
fee as an urgent issue of principle. But we should not get drawn into the
minutiae of the debate. What we should assert ­- and challenge the
government to refute if it dares - is the core principle at stake: that
genuine democracy needs publicly-owned, publicly-accountable and regulated
media. The media should serve democracy first, and profit-making a clear
second. With unprecedented competition for readers, audiences and viewers
driving down journalistic standards in all the media, what happens to public
service broadcasting is of critical importance to British democracy, or what
is left of it.

-----

MK: I recall Mark Jones's words when confronted with this sort of stuff -- 
Leys' special pleading is a brake on revolution, because it perpetuates the
imagined idyll of a just and fair capitalism, just as it does the essential
integrity of the British state, which once upon a time was also just and
fair, and even could be again. This is a more general complaint about the
content of Red Pepper, which, for all its worthy breastbeating and
encouragement, achieves little by way of exposing the rotten core of the
status quo. Admittedly Harold Wilson was a much better prime minister than
any of his successors, but even he was a staunch defender of the very
apparatus that worked to bring him down.

Nevertheless, the question of what the left should do concerning the BBC is
more difficult than it seems. It's easy to find fault with Leys' argument
but there remains the difficulty of determining what it is that we should
do. There is no question that it is an important terrain of struggle, riven
with contradiction. It, or an institution like it, is essential for the
legitimation of "democracy" as that is practised in Britain. Essentially
supportive of the status quo (thus occasionally out of step with the
hegemonic bloc when the latter is driving forward change, as under Thatcher
up to John Birt's ascension c.1987), it is nevertheless accommodating of
alternative perspectives in order to justify its public service remit and
thereby remain close to the state interest, in just the same way that the
Guardian publishes John Pilger and Paul Foot alongside its more
"respectable" contributors.

It is remarkable that, despite the best efforts of Birt and his cronies,
there remains within the BBC enough desire for independence that it was able
to get itself into this situation. Nevertheless, in so doing, it may have
demonstrated that, despite the best efforts of Birt and his cronies, the
attacks of Norman Tebbit and Alastair Campbell and the Murdoch and Black and
Rothermere press empires, it is intrinsically "untrustworthy", and thus
incapable of "reform" and more suited to wholesale scrapping.

There is no question that we should be concerned about what the government
plans for the BBC. Any change is most likely going to be reactionary,
however couched it will be in the "language of the marketplace" (bullshit)
or some other mealy-mouthed rationalisations. Thus we ought to be vigilant
and ready to attack the government on this. Much is at stake. It would be
wrong, however, to romanticise, as Leys seems to, the "true democracy" that
the BBC is supposed to embody and safeguard. Much safer ground would be to
attack New Labour's control freakery, up to and including fascism, thereby
exposing the ways in which the government infringes much of what it claims
to be protecting. We should be exposing the sham of democracy, and the
pitiful lack of opposition to this state of affairs from what remains of the
Labour "left", which could once be counted upon to say something about the
state of the news media.

The fact of the matter is that only socialist revolution will result in a
news media able to convey a semblance of truth as a matter of course. Until
then the old social democratic solutions of greater state
regulation/ownership/support for "alternative" and "dissenting" perspectives
remain captive to precisely what is happening now -- that the organs of
state come under control of those intent upon using that control to serve
the interests of capital. It does not matter whether those exercising that
control are called Labour or Conservative -- the days of social democracy
are long gone. Instead we have factions of capital battling it out over
whether or not we go to Europe or cosy up to the US. Whatever we do "the
market" reigns supreme, so while Murdoch waits to pounce with the blessing
of the US political class, Bertelsmann represents the European interest
waiting to do battle should it ever get to that stage.

In the immediate future the task is to ensure that the BBC is not hammered
into submission by this government, but that it remains intact up to and
beyond charter renewal in 2006. Campaigning for the reinstatement of Greg
Dyke as DG would win the support of BBC staff, who loathed Birtism and all
its works. Gavyn Davies also showed admirable independence, although he can
afford it. Meanwhile stronger regulation of ITV, C4 and C5 is also worth
arguing for, fully cognisant of the limitations of this particular tactic.
Particularly important, and I think much missed by the left, is some sort of
organised and sustained critique of the social darwinism and sexism
masquerading as entertainment that now infests much television and printed
media. It's difficult to recall the days when people like "Pat" Hewitt,
Harriet Harman and Tessa Jowell were advancing feminist arguments against
patriarchal and exploitative media, but the evidence is out there to be
exploited.

The Curran scheme outlined by Leys, meanwhile, is unworkable. It holds the
same hostages to fortune as any other involving state regulation/ownership.
The state of tv advertising is such that the revenues to be collected from
this activity are unlikely to be sufficient to fund even half of what Curran
thinks is practicable. And the fact remains that the modern capitalist state
cannot be trusted to look after the public interest, and surely the Hutton
inquiry should put to bed any misguided notions that "independent" bodies
appointed by the state are anything more than an oxymoron.

Salaam's points are well made, but it's hard to see the cooperative option
being taken up unless it was a rump left over from those parts that had been
hived off (and the hiving off of these would also undermine the case for the
licence fee, and thus the mutuality of the reformed institution). And the
introduction of direct elections for the director positions is no guarantee
of the public interest -- it would soon descend into a party political
charade and thereby further guarantee the propagation of the conventional
wisdom, perhaps even moreso than at present, since at least the current lot
have to pretend to be impartial.

The best we can do in the meantime is to work to expose the authoritarianism
of the government and the pathetic state of the mainstream opposition.
Campaign to reinstate Dyke and for the protection of the BBC from government
intereference in its charter renewal process as a matter of course, but
simultaneously recognise the need for a much more thoroughgoing,
comprehensive and ongoing critique of the news and entertainment media as
part of the ideological struggle. It is the lack of such a thing that has
exposed us all -- if the BBC really is the last hope for democracy, then we
are all deeply in the shit.

Michael Keaney