British Broadcasting Corporation

The British Broadcasting Corporation, which is usually known more simply as the BBC, is the world's largest broadcasting corporation.

Origins and history

The BBC was the first national state broadcasting organisation. Founded on 18 October 1922] as the British Broadcasting Company Ltd, it was subsequently granted a Royal Charter and was made a publicly funded corporation in 1927. The corporation produces programmes and information services, broadcasting globally on television, radio, and the Internet. The stated mission of the BBC is "to inform, educate and entertain" (as laid down by Parliament in the BBC Charter); its motto is "Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation".

The BBC is a quasi-autonomous public corporation as a public service broadcaster. The Corporation is run by the BBC Trust; and is, per its charter, supposed to be "free from both political and commercial influence and answers only to its viewers and listeners".

The BBC's domestic programming is primarily funded by levying television licence fees (under the Wireless Telegraphy Act 1949), although money is also raised through commercial activities such as sale of merchandise and programming. The BBC World Service, however, is funded through a grant-in-aid by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. As part of the BBC Charter, the Corporation cannot show commercial advertising on any services in the United Kingdom (television, radio, or internet). Outside the United Kingdom the BBC broadcasts commercially funded channels such as BBC America, BBC Canada, and BBC World News. In order to justify the licence fee, the BBC is expected to produce a number of high-rating shows in addition to programmes that commercial broadcasters would not normally broadcast.

Increasingly pro-business journalism

In 1977 the Annan Committee on the future of broadcasting criticised the BBC and ITV for 'not represent[ing] adequately the industrial and commercial life of the country,' and referred to an 'ignorance among production staff [i.e. journalists and producers] of the vigorous competitive life at all levels in industry, and the fascinating social structure and manufacturing processes which go to make industry work'. In 1982 Martin Adeney was appointed the BBC's first Industrial Editor, responsible for a team of three correspondents covering economics, business, industry and labour.

Under John Birt

The BBC's then Economics Editor Peter Jay on the Money Programme.

In the late 1980s the Economics Unit was established 'under the keen eye of John Birt, then Deputy Director-General.' The Unit, was headed by the Corporation's Economics Editor, first by Daniel Jeffries, and then by Birt's friend Peter Jay who was appointed in 1990. In addition to creating the Economics Unit, which handled business news, Birt also invested in daily business programming. Under his leadership the BBC launched Business Breakfast, Working Lunch, Moneybox and the Money Programme.

The Economics and Business Centre

In 1999 the BBC unveiled plans to create an Economics and Business Centre to house 100 journalists reporting for TV, radio and online. Broadcast magazine reported that the new Centre would be, ‘Based alongside the BBC's London newsgathering operation,’ and would ‘bring together the BBC's financial and business specialists for the first time.’ This effectively merged the Economics Unit, which had overseen news, with the specialist business programmes. The Economics and Business Centre would expand substantially under Birt's successor Greg Dyke:

In the first years of the 2000s budgets, staffing levels and output hours increased by around 30%. In addition to the much stronger newsgathering presence the key enhancements were the addition of a business slot on Today at 0720, launching The Bottom Line on Radio 4, doubling the length of Wake up to Money, launching Weekend Business on Five, extending N24 slots through the evening and doubling the length of Working Lunch on a Friday. Against this has to be set the disappearance of Business Breakfast on BBC1 and the Financial World Tonight on Radio 4.

In contrast to Martin Adeney's three man team of correspondents, the BBC described the Economics and Business Centre in 2007 as: 'a 24-hour, tri-media operation of around 160 journalists and support staff producing 11 hours of business programming every weekday and full online and text services.

Greg Dyke and Jeff Randall

On 6 November 2000, the new Director-General Greg Dyke gave a speech to the Confederation of British Industry's national conference in Birmingham declaring that the BBC’s coverage of business needed to be improved. Dyke said he was ‘frustrated’ when interviewers assumed that ‘profits are easy to achieve and are automatically against the consumer's interests’.

The BBC's former Business Editor Jeff Randall with 'fascinating entrepreneur' Rupert Murdoch.

He added: ‘We need to understand what profits are for, that companies have a duty to make them and investment can't happen without them. The BBC under my leadership will take business more seriously. I am totally committed to taking business centre stage in the BBC.’ He justified the change by saying: 'Globalization has inevitably made national politics less important and the world of international business more so. We need to reflect that in our reporting and our programmes.'

As part of this process Dyke announced a series of changes at the BBC, most notable of which was the creation of the new position of Business Editor. Up until then the BBC had only employed an Economics Editor to cover business stories, who at that stage was Birt's friend and collaborator Peter Jay, who had been an influential figure in the neoliberal restructuring of broadcasting. Dyke announced that the new business editor would be Jeff Randall, who was then editor of the Sunday Business, and that he would join the BBC in March 2001. Randall was a controversial appointment because of his outspoken right-wing views. In 2006 Greg Dyke told PR Week: ‘Here is a bloke who believes that George W Bush is too left wing. The BBC newsroom is basically a liberal institution. He was a revelation.’ Randall was reportedly given the job because of a highly critical he authored for the Sunday Business in May 2000. The article is reproduced in full below:

Running through the corporation, from top to bottom, like the word Blackpool through a stick of rock, is a liberal agenda, set by patronising, middle-class, guilt-ridden do-gooders who dominate its corridors.

The worst examples can be heard daily on Radio 4. If this were your only source of news and information, you would inevitably conclude that happily married Anglo-Saxon, heterosexual, law-abiding taxpayers are a dying breed on these islands.

No doubt, someone from the BBC will dub me a homophobic racist for saying so - a charge I reject - but Radio 4's programming displays an obsessive obsequiousness to the interests and concerns of social and ethnic minorities, the unemployed, and those who enjoy denigrating conventional values.

The BBC should, of course, cater for all sections of Britain. And that includes financially secure, hard-working citizens (ie, the vast majority) who are proud of their country, content with their lot, and do not regard the Union Jack as a symbol of evil. Politically correct Radio 4 gives far too much credence to the claims of professional gripers who want compensation, usually in the form of government hand-outs, simply for being less well-off than they would like.

By contrast, the flagship station's coverage of business matters is almost non-existent. The Financial World Tonight was shunted off to the graveyard slot of 11.15pm on Radio 5 long ago. Business is rarely covered in Radio 4 news bulletins, unless it is a story about a beastly multinational making workers redundant or fat-cat directors collecting outrageous salaries. It is as if this country's executive class, whose taxes underpin the BBC's funding, does not exist.

The BBC's new director general, Greg Dyke, made a personal fortune from business. It's about time he looked at the corporation's institutionalised bias against free-enterprise wealth-creators - and did something about it.

Randall later told the Guardian: ‘Greg Dyke called me up and said: “You can be one of those geezers sitting on the sidelines carping, bitching and whinging, or you can come here and do something about it. Have you got the balls to do that?”’ A few days after his appointment was announced, Randall told The Times: ‘I have certain attitudes forged by my working for fascinating entrepreneurs like Rupert Murdoch and the Barclay family. Those attitudes probably aren't typical of the BBC, but the Director-General said this week that he wanted the BBC to look at business in a different light. If this, my job and the new department, is to succeed, my attitude must prevail - because the old attitude has not succeeded.’ Randall saw part of his job as encouraging the BBC to see stories from the perspective of business, rather than from the perspective of consumers. He told the academic Raymond Boyle:

The BBC had to recruit from outside, with a brief to increase the quality and the quantity of business broadcasting while also addressing attitudinal change in the Corporation. It simply followed a consumerist line, prices up bad, profits up bad with no attempt to understand the world through the eyes of business. The BBC was culturally and structurally biased against business. It never had a Business Editor and it kidded itself that it did business because it had an Economics Editor. I had to convince people there that business sits on the crossroads of commerce and finance, and that economics sits on the crossroads of politics and the economy.

Online services

The BBC’s Business & Money website which was launched in May 2002, seen here on 1 February 2003. The website’s main feature is a Money Box programme advising investors what they should do in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. It also features an article detailing Bill Gate’s views on ‘Third World development’ and a profile of Rupert Murdoch.

In September 2001 the BBC announced that it would launch a website dedicated to business and finance which would bring together news and features from the BBC's Economics and Business Centre. It recruited Guy Dresser of the Sunday Business to edit the new website. Dresser was quoted as saying: ‘I haven't started there yet, but it is an interesting project that shows the BBC's commitment to enhancing its business coverage.’ The website was located at bbc.co.uk/business, an address which previously redirected to BBC News Online’s Business News page. It was launched in May 2002, but after only a few months was merged with BBC News Online’s Business News page, then edited by Tim Weber. Dresser left in October 2003 to join thisismoney.co.uk, a personal finance website owned by Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail.

Key figures

Peter Jay, who was the BBC’s Economics Editor from 1990 to 2001, had been an important figure in the neoliberal reconfiguration of British media in the ‘80s and ‘90s. He had a strong influence on the Committee on Financing the BBC, better known as the 1985 Peacock Committee, which had been set up by the Thatcher government and was informed by the same neoliberal thinking. Earlier, during the 1970s, Jay, had developed a critique of television news and current affairs with his friend John Birt. Together they argued that television had a ‘bias against understanding’ and that television producers should recruit journalists with special expertise and develop a more analytical style. What became known as the ‘mission to explain’ formed the intellectual rationale for a series of changes to BBC editorial practices in News and Current Affairs under Birt.

As Economics Editor Jay kept a low profile. The Observer reported in June 2000 that, ‘colleagues complain that he has not been seen in his BBC office for years and that last time he appeared onscreen, for the Budget, he had to have a special briefing.’ That year Jay presented a a six-part BBC series on economic history called Road to Riches.

Jay’s successor Evan Davis had worked as an Economics Correspondent at the BBC since 1993 after a period working at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the London Business School. From 2005 he also fronted the BBC2 reality TV show Dragons’ Den, which features multi-millionaires and a host of hopeful entrepreneurs who pitch for their money.

The BBC's first Business Editor Jeff Randall, whose appointment is outlined above, was succeeded by Robert Peston who was then City Editor of the Sunday Telegraph. A ‘who’s who’ report compiled for Barack Obama by US intelligence in early 2009 listed Peston amongst the UK’s most influential commentators. Like his predecessor Peston has argued that the BBC should try and present stories more from the perspective of business. In his submission to the BBC's Independent Panel on Impartiality of BBC Business Coverage, he argued that:

[The BBC] almost never use the long-term language of the owner. And yet most of us are owners – if we save in a pension fund – of every substantial UK listed company and many overseas businesses. What happens to Vodafone, to HSBC or to GlaxoSmithKline matters to all of us. And even if we think that the banks are ripping us off or that Tesco is unfairly crushing suppliers, the dividends they generate will sustain most of us in retirement.

Industrial conflict

The General Strike 1926

John Reith confided to his diary: "The Cabinet decision is really a negative one. They want to be able to say that they did not commandeer us, but they know they can trust us not to be really impartial." Reith is also quoted as saying: “since the BBC was a national institution, and since the government in this crisis was acting for the people...the BBC was for the government in the crisis too.”

John Pilger contrasts the actual implementation of a policy on impartiality with the literal meaning. He states:

The BBC began in 1922, just before the corporate press began in America. Its founder was Lord John Reith, who believed that impartiality and objectivity were the essence of professionalism. In the same year the British establishment was under siege. The unions had called a general strike and the Tories were terrified that a revolution was on the way. The new BBC came to their rescue. In high secrecy, Lord Reith wrote anti-union speeches for the Tory Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and broadcast them to the nation, while refusing to allow the labor leaders to put their side until the strike was over. So, a pattern was set. Impartiality was a principle certainly: a principle to be suspended whenever the establishment was under threat. And that principle has been upheld ever since.

The Miners' Strike 1984

British politician Tony Benn writes of the miners' strike at Orgreave:

It was the cavalry charges by the mounted police which triggered some stone-throwing by pickets. On that occasion though, BBC chiefs instructed the news bulletins to reverse the order of the film in order to suggest that the stones were thrown first and the cavalry charge came second.

Structure

Management

The BBC is a nominally autonomous corporation, independent from direct government intervention, with its activities being overseen by the BBC Trust, formerly the Board of Governors. General management of the organisation is in the hands of a Director-General, who is appointed by the Trust.

Executive Board

The Executive Board oversees the effective delivery of the corporation's objectives and obligations within a framework set by the BBC Trust, and is headed by the Director-General, Mark Thompson. In December 2006, Thompson announced the final appointments to the new Executive Board, consisting of ten directors from the different operations of the group, and five non-executive directors, appointed to provide independent and professional advice to the Executive Board. The members are:

• Mark Thompson (Board Chairman and Director-General)
• Mark Byford (Deputy Chairman and Deputy Director-General; Director, Journalism Group)
• Caroline Thomson (Chief Operating Officer)
• Jana Bennett OBE (Director, BBC Vision)
• Jenny Abramsky (Director, BBC Audio and Music)
• Erik Huggers (Director, Future Media and Technology)
• John Smith (Chief Executive, BBC Worldwide)
• Zarin Patel (Group Finance Director)
• Steve Kelly (Director, BBC People)
• Tim Davie (Director, Marketing, Communications and Audiences)
• Joe Godwin (Executive Producer, CBBC)

Non-executive directors

• Marcus Agius (Senior non-executive director), Chairman, Barclays
• Val Gooding Chief Executive of BUPA,
• Dr Mike Lynch OBE, co-founder and Chief Executive, Autonomy Corporation
• David Robbie, Group Finance Director, Rexam
• Dr Samir Shah OBE, Chief Executive, Juniper Communications
• Robert Webb QC, General Counsel, British Airways

Governors

The Board of Governors regulated the group from incorporation in 1927 until 31 December 2006, when the Board was replaced by the BBC Trust. The governors as of the dissolution of the Board were:

• Anthony Salz (Acting Chairman)
• Professor Ranjit Sondhi (National Governor for the English regions)
• Professor Fabian Monds (National Governor for Northern Ireland)
• Professor Merfyn Jones (National Governor for Wales)
• Jeremy Peat (National Governor for Scotland)
• Deborah Bull
• Baroness Deech
• Dermot Gleeson
• Angela Sarkis
• Richard Tait

BBC and 'impartiality'

Links to MI5

In 1985 The Observer published a story saying that "MI5 have been vetting BBC appointments, basing their operations in Room 105 in Broadcasting House". The report said:

The Observer has compiled detailed evidence of how the BBC vetting system, backed by MI5, has barred individuals from employment by the BBC or stopped their advancement in the organisation. In each case the victims were oblivious of their place on the blacklist - and therefore unable to challenge the often untrue or fanciful evidence against them. The man currently in charge of MI5 vetting is Brigadier Ronnie Stonham, formerly of the Signals Regiment, operating from Room 105 on the first floor of Broadcasting House.

Vulnerability to outside pressure

The Hutton Inquiry criticised the BBC for reporting the Government's 'sexing up' of the 'dodgy dossier' and the BBC developed a system for dealing with external complaints which has been criticised for being too vulnerable to powerful organisations. Complaints are first heard by BBC executives, who can then pass it to a special complaints unit called the ECU. A complainant can then appeal to the BBC Trust, which has an editorial standards committee, made up of trustees. A senior source from the BBC's flagship current affairs programme Panorama told the Guardian: 'The problem at both stages of this process is that there's no right of appeal for journalists. It was set up to make it easy for ordinary viewers to complain, but the process is being hijacked by multinational companies and lawyers.'

The Guardian reported that following a Panorama programme in which the BBC had discovered that the low price clothing retailer Primark had been using child labour in violation of its own ethical guidelines, the company had repeatedly complained to the BBC:

Primark sacked three of its Indian suppliers after the documentary found children stitching the fashion stores' clothes in Indian refugee camps.

It is the second BBC inquiry into allegations by Primark that footage within the programme had been faked. On the first occasion Primark accused Panorama of setting up footage of children in a refugee camp, but the claim has since been withdrawn by the company.

The latest inquiry involves allegations made by Primark last year that another part of the documentary had been staged. The Guardian understands that the allegation was backed by a small number of witnesses, from sweatshop owners and child workers but such witnesses were apparently found to be not sufficiently reliable. The ECU found that there had been procedural breaches in editorial guidelines in relation to some footage.

The Alagiah affair

In July 2009 the BBC required its newsreader George Alagiah to resign as patron of the Fairtrade Foundation UK. Hugh Muir, writing in the the Guardian, commented:

George is extremely upset about this and fought the decision, but to no avail. He believes his role and profile helps developing-world farmers get a decent price for their produce, but the Beeb is adamant that enough's enough, as the role leaves Alagiah conflicted. So Jeremy Clarkson can take the Murdoch shilling for penning articles in the Sunday Times. John Humphrys can write commentaries for YouGov. But Alagiah can't be a figurehead for a movement connecting British shoppers with farmers in the developing world.

Indeed, the BBC appears to be selective as to which of its staff's external affiliations it opposes.

The Independent commented on the Alagiah affair as follows:

But what of other news men? Evan Davis is on the policy advisory board of the Social Market Foundation, a Blairite think tank, but the BBC says that's fine, as the SMF doesn't advocate any particular policies. Oh, right.

Also, Jeremy Paxman is a fellow of the British American Project (BAP), which he says is: "A marvellous way of meeting a varied cross-section of transatlantic friends." Journalist John Pilger has written:

The BAP rarely gets publicity, which may have something to do with the high proportion of journalists who are alumni. Prominent BAP journalists are David Lipsey, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, and assorted Murdochites. The BBC is well represented. On the popular Today program, James Naughtie, whose broadcasting has long reflected his own transatlantic interests, has been an alumnus since 1989. Today's newest voice, Evan Davis, formerly the BBC's zealous economics editor, is a member. And at the top of the BAP Web site home page is a photograph of the famous BBC broadcaster Jeremy Paxman and his endorsement. "A marvelous way of meeting a varied cross-section of transatlantic friends," says he.

Disaster and Emergency Committee appeal for Gaza

In January 2009 the BBC refused to air the Gaza humanitarian aid appeal on grounds that doing so could compromise its "impartiality in the context of an ongoing news story".

In a joint letter to BBC director general Mark Thompson, Jeremy Dear and Gerry Morrissey, the general secretaries of the National Union of Journalists and Bectu respectively, called on the corporation to change its mind and broadcast the appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee.

Complaints to the BBC over its refusal to broadcast the DEC appeal reached 15,500 on 26 January 2009.

Dear and Morrissey wrote in their letter that the BBC's decision could be seen not as a commitment to impartiality but as a pro-Israel move:

The justifications given for the decision – "question marks about the delivery of aid in a volatile situation" and risks of compromising its "impartiality in the context of an ongoing news story" – appear to us cowardly and in danger of being seen as politically motivated and biased in favour of Israel.

We, above all, understand the BBC's need to maintain editorial impartiality and we also understand the pressure journalists and the BBC come under from those who accuse the BBC of bias in reporting the Middle East.

That said, we agree with those senior BBC journalists who say this is a decision taken as a result of timidity by BBC management in the face of such pressures – [former Middle East correspondent] Tim Llewellyn described this as "institutional cowardice".

Far from avoiding the compromise of the BBC's impartiality, this move has breached those same BBC rules by showing a bias in favour of Israel at the expense of 1.5 million Palestinian civilians suffering an acute humanitarian crisis.

Make Poverty History

The BBC has written at length about its decision to support the 2005 humanitarian campaign, Make Poverty History, in the context of the corporation's claim to impartiality.