Behind The Headlines by BUNN NAGARA
The world’s biggest broadcaster faces funding cuts again, and more challenges to its professional standards.
THE British Broadcasting Corporation’s greatest strength is also a prominent weakness, thus its most profound contradiction.
This relates to its most vital ingredient: government funding, through direct grants and household licence fees. Downing Street has successfully pressured the BBC to freeze the £145.50 (RM707) annual fee for the next two years, although the BBC is entitled to seek a rise.
Result – the broadcaster is short of £72mil (RM349mil) in its budgetary plans. This will further burden expenses for next year’s move of sports, children’s and live radio shows to spanking new studios in Greater Manchester.
Sometimes the BBC can be its own worst adversary. In 2008, the BBC Trust censured bbc.co.uk for overspending nearly 50% of its original £74.2mil (RM360mil) budget.
Last year, BBC director-general Mark Thompson announced £400mil (RM1.9bil) in budget cuts over three years. The decision to avoid seeking a licence fee hike was timely, particularly given Britain’s troubled economy.
The scale of funding and job cuts is nothing if not massive for the world’s largest broadcaster, shedding some 8,000 jobs in recent years. BBC News alone has a budget of £350mil (RM1.7bil) with 3,500 staff, 57% of them journalists.
Now the government wants deeper cuts in direct funding besides a freeze in the licence fee. This is feared to hobble further the BBC’s popular World Service in particular, which is funded directly by the government.
As the world’s oldest public broadcaster, the BBC (the “Beeb”, or “Auntie”) is no stranger to government budget cuts, particularly by Conservative governments. There were Margaret Thatcher’s crippling cuts in 1979, John Major’s heady cuts in 1996 and now Cameron’s sweeping cuts are on the way.
This has less to do with Labour governments’ affinity with public broadcasting, but Conservatives’ lack of understanding of national branding through creditable international media as a world presence. There had been cuts in 2007 under Labour, but times were better then.
Problems with the Blair government surfaced when the BBC attempted to question its rationale for invading Iraq, the “Beeb’s” supposed independence notwithstanding. Blair then reportedly threatened to pull the licence fee.
Thus an ironic contradiction: the BBC World Service is renowned internationally for professional impartiality, yet the BBC habitually canvasses the government for more funds by citing its service to vital British interests abroad. These interests can seem humanitarian – in racist Rhodesia as in today’s Myanmar, the World Service has provided an alternative source of reportage contrary to official rhetoric.
A result has been the BBC’s global reputation for truth, accuracy and integrity, even if that can be oversold. The strength of this reputation is ultimately relative, deriving less from the intrinsic qualities of BBC content as with the more questionable content of competitors.
Over many years, the World Service’s chief competitor is said to be the Voice of America (VoA). Given VoA’s Cold War purpose and CIA links, a solid reputation for the BBC should come by default.
Meanwhile, Anglophiles have helped maintain the World Service’s reputation. But retaining the younger generation’s faith requires continuing investment.
In recent years, CNN International (CNNI) and al-Jazeera English (AJE) have given the World Service’s BBC World a run for its money. And money is what the BBC is short of now.
Still, the Trust’s 2008 criticisms of “poor financial accountability” and “lack of management control” could still be pertinent in the meagre allocations for the BBC’s popular online services. Funding cuts also tend to hit more innovative output disproportionately.
Among the BBC’s strengths are its focus on the public interest as a public service broadcaster. But despite its reputation for relative impartiality, its broader character still reflects implicit Western interests as evident in placing priority on Arabic and Persian (for Iranians) languages.
With a preoccupation with the “petrodollars” and “petropolitics” of West Asia, the BBC started a commercially funded Arabic television station in 1994, closing it in 1996 over differences with its Saudi distributor. Staff then left to join al-Jazeera, yet emphasis in the World Service was still on West Asia.
By 2005, plans to expand in Russia, South America, South Asia and West Asia saw £35mil (RM168mil) for its Arabic and Persian services alone. There was nothing of the kind for East Asia, whose booming economies included two of the world’s biggest in Japan and China.
With CNNI’s routine coverage of West Asia and AJE’s specialisation there, the BBC persisted in focusing on the region at the expense of adequate coverage even in places with little competition over headline issues.
North Korea and Myanmar occasionally make waves in East Asia, but Iran, oil politics, Arab intrigue and Israel hold sway in news priorities. BBC Burma is a small and low-cost unit, and the current battle over funding centres symbolically on its future.
One result of cuts is outsourcing production to external parties, which can make for questionable material as the controversy over a feature on Nigeria showed last April. Outsourced programmes do not share production or oversight procedures with standard BBC fare.
In Britain, broadcasting careers often start at the BBC for expertise before moving to private networks for the money. Abroad, the BBC has contributed expertise not only to AJE but also to Brunei when head of news gathering Chris Cramer was seconded there in 1974, before he moved to CNN in 1996 eventually to head CNNI, taking some of his former BBC colleagues with him.
Last week, BBC chairman Sir Michael Lyons haggled with Downing Street for more money, advocating the World Service as a “cost-effective” way for Britain to influence world opinion. He is probably right.
But the BBC cannot have both its reputation for impartiality and the government money needed to propagate it. Meanwhile, the brain drain to rival networks could worsen.
THE British Broadcasting Corporation’s greatest strength is also a prominent weakness, thus its most profound contradiction.
This relates to its most vital ingredient: government funding, through direct grants and household licence fees. Downing Street has successfully pressured the BBC to freeze the £145.50 (RM707) annual fee for the next two years, although the BBC is entitled to seek a rise.
Result – the broadcaster is short of £72mil (RM349mil) in its budgetary plans. This will further burden expenses for next year’s move of sports, children’s and live radio shows to spanking new studios in Greater Manchester.
Sometimes the BBC can be its own worst adversary. In 2008, the BBC Trust censured bbc.co.uk for overspending nearly 50% of its original £74.2mil (RM360mil) budget.
Last year, BBC director-general Mark Thompson announced £400mil (RM1.9bil) in budget cuts over three years. The decision to avoid seeking a licence fee hike was timely, particularly given Britain’s troubled economy.
The scale of funding and job cuts is nothing if not massive for the world’s largest broadcaster, shedding some 8,000 jobs in recent years. BBC News alone has a budget of £350mil (RM1.7bil) with 3,500 staff, 57% of them journalists.
Now the government wants deeper cuts in direct funding besides a freeze in the licence fee. This is feared to hobble further the BBC’s popular World Service in particular, which is funded directly by the government.
As the world’s oldest public broadcaster, the BBC (the “Beeb”, or “Auntie”) is no stranger to government budget cuts, particularly by Conservative governments. There were Margaret Thatcher’s crippling cuts in 1979, John Major’s heady cuts in 1996 and now Cameron’s sweeping cuts are on the way.
This has less to do with Labour governments’ affinity with public broadcasting, but Conservatives’ lack of understanding of national branding through creditable international media as a world presence. There had been cuts in 2007 under Labour, but times were better then.
Problems with the Blair government surfaced when the BBC attempted to question its rationale for invading Iraq, the “Beeb’s” supposed independence notwithstanding. Blair then reportedly threatened to pull the licence fee.
Thus an ironic contradiction: the BBC World Service is renowned internationally for professional impartiality, yet the BBC habitually canvasses the government for more funds by citing its service to vital British interests abroad. These interests can seem humanitarian – in racist Rhodesia as in today’s Myanmar, the World Service has provided an alternative source of reportage contrary to official rhetoric.
A result has been the BBC’s global reputation for truth, accuracy and integrity, even if that can be oversold. The strength of this reputation is ultimately relative, deriving less from the intrinsic qualities of BBC content as with the more questionable content of competitors.
Over many years, the World Service’s chief competitor is said to be the Voice of America (VoA). Given VoA’s Cold War purpose and CIA links, a solid reputation for the BBC should come by default.
Meanwhile, Anglophiles have helped maintain the World Service’s reputation. But retaining the younger generation’s faith requires continuing investment.
In recent years, CNN International (CNNI) and al-Jazeera English (AJE) have given the World Service’s BBC World a run for its money. And money is what the BBC is short of now.
Still, the Trust’s 2008 criticisms of “poor financial accountability” and “lack of management control” could still be pertinent in the meagre allocations for the BBC’s popular online services. Funding cuts also tend to hit more innovative output disproportionately.
Among the BBC’s strengths are its focus on the public interest as a public service broadcaster. But despite its reputation for relative impartiality, its broader character still reflects implicit Western interests as evident in placing priority on Arabic and Persian (for Iranians) languages.
With a preoccupation with the “petrodollars” and “petropolitics” of West Asia, the BBC started a commercially funded Arabic television station in 1994, closing it in 1996 over differences with its Saudi distributor. Staff then left to join al-Jazeera, yet emphasis in the World Service was still on West Asia.
By 2005, plans to expand in Russia, South America, South Asia and West Asia saw £35mil (RM168mil) for its Arabic and Persian services alone. There was nothing of the kind for East Asia, whose booming economies included two of the world’s biggest in Japan and China.
With CNNI’s routine coverage of West Asia and AJE’s specialisation there, the BBC persisted in focusing on the region at the expense of adequate coverage even in places with little competition over headline issues.
North Korea and Myanmar occasionally make waves in East Asia, but Iran, oil politics, Arab intrigue and Israel hold sway in news priorities. BBC Burma is a small and low-cost unit, and the current battle over funding centres symbolically on its future.
One result of cuts is outsourcing production to external parties, which can make for questionable material as the controversy over a feature on Nigeria showed last April. Outsourced programmes do not share production or oversight procedures with standard BBC fare.
In Britain, broadcasting careers often start at the BBC for expertise before moving to private networks for the money. Abroad, the BBC has contributed expertise not only to AJE but also to Brunei when head of news gathering Chris Cramer was seconded there in 1974, before he moved to CNN in 1996 eventually to head CNNI, taking some of his former BBC colleagues with him.
Last week, BBC chairman Sir Michael Lyons haggled with Downing Street for more money, advocating the World Service as a “cost-effective” way for Britain to influence world opinion. He is probably right.
But the BBC cannot have both its reputation for impartiality and the government money needed to propagate it. Meanwhile, the brain drain to rival networks could worsen.
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