More thoughts on the BBC
Sep. 14th, 2009 12:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnny9fingersSo I've been pondering over the past few weeks, then yesterday I read this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/sep/13/bbc-worldwide-division-sell
And I've come to the conclusion that the BBC shouldn't even consider selling off its worldwide arm, or privatising it in any way. At the moment, the BBC is a public service, answerable to its Board of Governors, Parliament, and by extension the voting public: ultimately we can censure the BBC by voting in a Government with a mandate to either reform it or abolish it altogether. But when this happens (as seems possible with the tremendous ideological shift of the last three decades) this act of cultural vandalism will be considerably more violent to the English logosphere than the dissolution of the monasteries, or the damage to the actual sum of the general education of the English polity that the abolition of the Grammar Schools entailed.
As I may have mentioned, the BBC is the premier news organisation in the world. Its standards of journalism are matched only in very specific areas by very dedicated teams in the rest of the media: what is commonplace in terms of integrity in the BBC is the ideal, or at least best practise, for the rest of the industry. And, in some ways alas, just to show how accountable the BBC is, after the Hutton_Inquiry, despite being in almost all respects correct, the then DG resigned. But we all know that Hutton was essentially a cover-up and the dossier was 'sexed-up': after all, the chickens came home to roost and there were no weapons of mass destruction....and our Intelligence Agencies aren't quite that stupid.
Some reform is obviously needed. The pay-rates for technical folk and management should conform to the Civil Service scale. It works for other independent semi-public bodies (I can think of the Rutherford Laboratory as an academic institution following a similar rate)....and I can see no reason why the DG shouldn't be on the same sort of money as the highest paid Civil Servants. I don't think the DG should be paid more than the Cabinet Secretary, for example. If the incumbent wants the silly money he should go to a silly job working for silly folk in the private sector. Folk should be proud to work for the BBC. I might favour an automatic 'K', but that's another matter.
But to break it all up would be an act of cultural vandalism akin to burning the Library of Alexandria, or sacking Rome. And should it ever happen I will hound the folk that did it to their graves, yea unto the seventh generation. And I will not be alone.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/sep/13/bbc-worldwide-division-sell
And I've come to the conclusion that the BBC shouldn't even consider selling off its worldwide arm, or privatising it in any way. At the moment, the BBC is a public service, answerable to its Board of Governors, Parliament, and by extension the voting public: ultimately we can censure the BBC by voting in a Government with a mandate to either reform it or abolish it altogether. But when this happens (as seems possible with the tremendous ideological shift of the last three decades) this act of cultural vandalism will be considerably more violent to the English logosphere than the dissolution of the monasteries, or the damage to the actual sum of the general education of the English polity that the abolition of the Grammar Schools entailed.
As I may have mentioned, the BBC is the premier news organisation in the world. Its standards of journalism are matched only in very specific areas by very dedicated teams in the rest of the media: what is commonplace in terms of integrity in the BBC is the ideal, or at least best practise, for the rest of the industry. And, in some ways alas, just to show how accountable the BBC is, after the Hutton_Inquiry, despite being in almost all respects correct, the then DG resigned. But we all know that Hutton was essentially a cover-up and the dossier was 'sexed-up': after all, the chickens came home to roost and there were no weapons of mass destruction....and our Intelligence Agencies aren't quite that stupid.
Some reform is obviously needed. The pay-rates for technical folk and management should conform to the Civil Service scale. It works for other independent semi-public bodies (I can think of the Rutherford Laboratory as an academic institution following a similar rate)....and I can see no reason why the DG shouldn't be on the same sort of money as the highest paid Civil Servants. I don't think the DG should be paid more than the Cabinet Secretary, for example. If the incumbent wants the silly money he should go to a silly job working for silly folk in the private sector. Folk should be proud to work for the BBC. I might favour an automatic 'K', but that's another matter.
But to break it all up would be an act of cultural vandalism akin to burning the Library of Alexandria, or sacking Rome. And should it ever happen I will hound the folk that did it to their graves, yea unto the seventh generation. And I will not be alone.
