CAN WE TRUST THE BBC? by Robin Aitken
Continuum £14.99

“SCRAPTHE BBC!”: Ten Years to Set Broadcasters Free by Richard D North
Social Affairs Unit £15.95

Two books waging war on the BBC. One wishes to see the corporation demolished altogether, the other believes that it can be reformed, given a spot of open-heart surgery. In both cases the writers are, I think it’s fair to say, right of centre. And it is their wholly justifiable disaffection with the BBC’s own ideological bias that provides the spleen, contempt and bile in which these two polemics are drenched. Sooner or later Auntie’s senior executives will surely grasp the fact that the BBC’s interminable, shameless political correctness will do for it in the end. The case in favour of state broadcasting looks more fragile and tenuous by the year — so why give your enemies more fuel?

Of the two, Richard D North’s book has the more honest title. The title of Aitken’s short diatribe implies that it is entirely possible that the author might reach the conclusion that “um . . . yes, actually, I think you probably can trust the BBC”. This, however, is not the conclusion reached by Aitken, a BBC staffer for a quarter of a century and, apparently, just about the only right-winger in the village. He thinks we can’t trust it.

There seems to be the whiff of a little personal bitterness emanating from one or two chapters and his textual criticism of one particular Panorama programme that offended him (Robin’s a Roman Catholic and the programme stuck the boot into his church) would do credit to Derrida for painfully obsessive detail. All this being said, his central thrust — that the BBC has a liberal-left bias which the executives refuse to acknowledge — strikes me as unequivocally correct. The problem is that the whole business is rather more finely nuanced than Aitken makes it and he poisons his case by both overstatement and conveniently ignoring examples which run counter to his thesis: in other words, he is as partisan as the institution he attacks. So, for instance, he fails to mention that he himself was taken on by the Today programme as a reporter precisely because he had a right-wing perspective. And in his long — and generally correct — exposition of pro-European bias within the corporation, he fails to mention that the very programme for which he worked consistently ran pieces that exposed the Euro-federalist agenda. I know about this because — in both cases — I was the programme editor concerned.

His main problem, however, is that, like the BBC, he cleaves to the intellectually incoherent argument of “impartiality” (rather than diversity of opinion) for broadcasters. He does not seem to grasp that all journalists have opinions and it doesn’t really matter if they are right, left or centre so long as there is a profusion of all three across the output. Of course, in the BBC, there is a profusion of just one of those perspectives. But we might agree with Aitken that it is impossible for the BBC to insist upon the impartiality of its broadcasters when, as he points out, John Kampfner (for example) turns up as a lunchtime left-wing pundit on one programme and reappears at suppertime as the “objective” presenter of another. But the issue here isn’t about Kampfner; it’s about the impossibility of impartiality.

And this is where North, by contrast, gets it dead right — indeed, the only place in this staggeringly self-congratulatory book (there’s a lengthy appendix detailing the glittering career and astonishing prescience of one Richard D North — something he could have spared us because he also makes reference to it on almost every bloody page) where he gets it right. North argues against the redundant concept of impartiality and instead for a diversity of opinion and journalistic “fair-mindedness”. This strikes me as absolutely right and it is a mystery why so few media commentators sign up to the notion. The BBC persists in the Reithian concept of broadcasters being above the political fray — and thus is left in the absurd position of insisting this concept still holds true.

North, however, is too flip, too cavalier, in dismissing the benefits of public-service broadcasting, as exemplified by the Today programme and Newsnight. It won’t matter to the nation if such programmes are abolished altogether, he argues, because people can get the same sort of stuff from DVDs, online, subscription channels and so on. Can they indeed? Where, exactly? The licence fee apportions far, far more money to these two excellent programmes than a commercial station could afford, allowing a depth, breadth and intelligence of reportage.

Incidentally, both books fling little gobbets of spite at the chief presenters of the Today programme, John Humphrys and Jim Naughtie. There is more than a little envy at work here, I suspect; a fair few journalists I know resent the affection, respect and indeed money doled out to these two unforgivably high-achieving monkeys. And yet Jim’n’John are the perfect example of diversity at work. Politically and philosophically, they could not be more different; one revels in — and understands — the chicanery of Westminster, the other kicks against it. One is a soft-left social liberal, the other a blue-collar maverick with agreeably reactionary impulses. One is prolix, the other terse. And having spoken to both of them recently, and known them for the best part of 20 years, I couldn’t tell you precisely which way they would vote, next time around. Now, what more could you want, in terms of balance?

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