Blog Archives
The BBC deserves better than ‘five jobs’ Chris Patten
The BBC, perhaps the world’s greatest broadcaster, is much in the news these days. The trouble is that it’s for all the wrong reasons.
PATTEN PENDING
All the major countries began broadcasting at about the same time, so how, historically, it got to its hitherto august position in the world is hard to say. But undoubtedly the BBC’s founder, Lord Reith, had a lot to do with it. He set a bar for standards of truth and impartiality at an almost impossibly high level. Reith’s credo was to inform, educate and entertain. His stern, Scottish countenance, looking down from office walls all over the Beeb, struck terror into the hearts of those who were minded to transgress.
All countries felt the temptation to use broadcasting, once it was invented, as an arm of propaganda; none more so than the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. His guiding mantra was that if you told a lie often enough and loud enough it would assume, eventually, the attributes of truth. But while he was broadcasting his lies, half truths and sly innuendos, the majestic BBC ploughed on, keeping faith with its Reithian traditions.
Even during the darkest days of the war when defeat followed defeat it told it as it was. Sometimes Churchill was furious with it and berated the organisation for giving succour to the enemy and spreading doom and despondency. Despite his draconian wartime powers it was all to no avail. The result was that the world, and most of all the downtrodden peoples of occupied Europe, turned to the BBC for the ungarnered truth.
Round their forbidden radios all over Europe they huddled together in darkened rooms, fearful of the sound of approaching jackboots. But they were prepared to take those heart-stopping risks, so much did they crave the reassuring chimes of Big Ben and the sentient words which followed: ‘This is London. Here is the 9 o’clock news.’ It is true to say that the BBC in its single self kept the flame of hope burning throughout those terrible times. It became almost a ‘light unto the nations’.
In the years that followed, the BBC World Service became the most trusted broadcaster on the planet speaking truth unto power fearlessly. Even today among our enemies in the badlands of northern Waziristan in Pakistan, it is listened to in their own language with respect – even, dare one say it, with affection.
This then is the organisation which currently faces the worst crisis since it began its work 90 years ago. We should all feel alarmed.
I am a great believer in the maxim that the buck stops at the top. Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington took it over the Falklands and was much admired for it. In my view it was a great mistake to appoint a man who had five other jobs. It was an insult to a body of such august pedigree, and indeed size, as the BBC. A part timer for such a massive organisation? What were they thinking about.
What of the man himself, Chris Patten? This is a man who purports to have a keen appreciation of the working world we all operate in, offering his services left right and centre, but who has never held a non-political job in his life. He began his ascent of the ‘greasy pole’ straight after leaving Oxford.
One of our complaints about modern politicians is that too few of them have any real experience of life outside the Westminster bubble. That could not be said of previous generations, but it can be said of Patten. He’s as smooth and smarmy an operator as it is possible to imagine. Even now, when he has at last woken from his slumber, he is busy mouthing the smooth platitudes expected of such a man trying to extricate himself from trouble.
For all the multitude of jobs that Patten has had he has not made a success of a single one of them. So why does such a man keep on getting these lucrative sinecures? What made David Cameron appoint him to head up the troubled organisation? Do we have yet another example of the PM’s own lack of judgement? I suspect we do.
As for Patten’s judgement, he was the man who thought it proper to appoint Entwistle to the post of Director General and then, when the heat started to move in, hung him out to dry. Patten arrogantly and high-mindedly berated the Culture Secretary, whose remit covers the BBC, for sticking her genuinely worried nose in to his fiefdom. Now he admits that although he knew of the impending, devastating assault on poor Lord McAlpine’s reputation, he didn’t think it necessary to warn poor Entwistle of the coming storm so that the Director General could check his facts before going on air.
The BBC is at a watershed. Its current amateur level of journalistic rigour is truly astonishing. Especially for an organisation with a budget of some £4.4bn.
Its left-leaning stance makes a joke of impartiality. This desperately needs sorting out. But can a man as ineffective and compromised as Patten be the right man to do it? I think not.
As was said of Charles I, the hopeless king who lost his head so magnificently: ‘Nothing in his life so became him as the manner of his leaving it.’ “Never mind,” Mr Patten declares, “heads may well have to roll in the BBC too.” He should start with his own.
He’d be doing us all a great favour and just for once we’d have something to truly thank him for.
Prince of hypocrites
So, Hugh Grant’s at it again! His supporters’ club must be dwindling by the minute. But none of it would matter too much were it not for the fact that he insists on lecturing us on matters which have a distinct whiff of humbug about it.
Nothing irritates the British public so much as hypocrisy. While Grant’s latest antics seem only a short step from the broom cupboard episode of poor Boris Becker, at least Becker showed genuine humility at how he had let himself and his fans down. But the self-obsessed, narcissistic Hugh Grant shows none. What’s more, Becker has demonstrated over the year a touching regard for his child, shock as it was and totally unplanned for, and knowing as he did what opprobrium that incident brought down on his otherwise lustrous head. He has nonetheless shown himself to be a marvellous father and totally, in my eyes, redeemed himself for that moment of madness.
Forgive my scepticism in Grant’s case (notwithstanding a few fine words from him), but looking at his track record I shall be very surprised if fine words translate into reality ten years down the line. Yet I hope, for his child’s sake, that I am proved wrong.
Grant has had a lot to say recently about press intrusion, and it does worry me tremendously that this inquiry into the Press Complaints Commission has so many people on it that seem ill disposed towards the press (including people who, for want of a better term, have been caught out at one time or another: Keith Vaz is one who immediately springs to mind). The political establishment will find it difficult to forgive the humiliations of being exposed as venal and self serving in the expenses scandal. It is a running sore which some politicos believe cries out for vengeance. I hope the majority are public spirited and big enough to acknowledge that the press were doing no more than their job – indeed their duty – in bringing it to the attention of the public.
But let me be quite clear about one thing. We are talking about the most vibrant and fearless national press in the whole world; an institution of which we should all be proud. And while in pursuit of stories, some of its people have been over zealous and crossed the line in to criminality, we have perfectly good laws which could have dealt with these matters, if only the Met had been doing its job.
It cannot be repeated too often that it was the press which blew the whistle on itself over phone hacking. I never subscribed to the venerable (in age) News of the World, but how I grieve for its demise. It’s a bit like that old saying ‘the death of any man diminishes us all’. Well, the death of the NoW has diminished us. It was offered up as a sacrificial lamb in the hope that it would silence the baying hounds, when in truth it should have been James Murdoch and his band of miscreants who were offered up. The paper had by then been cleaned up (Rebekah Brooks excepted), but as usual it was the ‘poor bloody infantry’ that was laid on the altar.
While watching BBC2 recently, who popped up lamenting the invasion of people’s privacy? Yes, you’ve guessed it: our old friend Hugh. It was truly nauseating listening to him. Equally vociferous in the cause of muzzling the press has been Max Moseley (caught out by the News of the World). For all its sometimes sanctimoniousness, and often own hypocrisy as well sleaziness, the News of the World could still boast a proud record of expose. How many, many were the stories down the years – which the public had every right to know about – did it break in its 168 years of publishing? Sad, sad that it has gone. Even the sleaziness – or most of it – can be forgiven. Experience has shown that an element of tittilation is required to spice up sales. I would argue that it is a small price to pay to help in the battle for survival. Sad, sad that it has gone.
It is uniquely difficult in today’s high speed, digital world to maintain a financially viable press, and many regional papers are having tremendous difficulty competing for readers’ attention. Many are closing. They will never return. We risk, at our peril, taking away their necessary freedoms (which in any case are subject to strict laws of defamation).
When I was in the States recently, I had an object lesson in how very good our press is by comparison. Theirs was boring, parochial and expensive. The BBC’s founder, Lord Reith, spelled out what he saw was the Corporation’s duty to the public: it was “to inform, educate and entertain.” Our press does that in bucket fulls. Let’s keep it that way.
The Last Foundling 