for diverse, democratic and accountable media
CPBF response to DG Tony Hall speech about the future vision for the BBC, Science Museum, London, 7 September
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The CPBF welcomes the commitment to developing the BBC’s presence on the internet, to the production of high quality drama and to producing news services that more fully reflect the reality of devolution. This statement is, however, driven by the knowledge of imminent cuts in BBC services and by a desire to placate critics in the industry prior to the drafting of the new BBC Charter in 2016. The BBC is under immense pressure from government and media corporations to cut back on its activities.
According to Tony Hall, the BBC is to ‘set aside licence fee funding to invest in a service that reports on Councils, courts and public services. And we would make available our regional video and local audio for immediate use on the internet services of local and regional news organisations.’ This is using licence fee money to subsidise the profits of large regional media organisations which have reduced staffing and spending to bolster profits. There is no evidence that the BBC is the cause of this reduction, so it is wrong that the BBC should be required to put this right.
What impact will this spending have on the provision of news and journalism in BBC television and radio in the nations and regions if the UK? Will it be at the expense of jobs in those areas, and consequently of services to the public?
The proposal amounts to a first step in the process of outsourcing news services to the private sector. Just as the introduction of independent production quota’s has led to recent proposals to put all BBC production out to tender, so this proposal opens up the same prospects for BBC news.
Will the BBC be required to subsidise Sky’s foreign news service in the future? The proposal can also be seen as the first step on the road of making functions of the BBC open to privatisation, under the rubric of making chunks of the licence fee ‘contestable’.
The BBC is required to be impartial. Local newspapers are not. What are the long term implications for the protection and development of BBC impartiality of this announcement? It is very unclear. The BBC should reconsider this proposal, which has the appearance, at best of being ill thought out, and at worse, of being an uncalled for concession to its critics in the private sector.
The proposal to spend licence fee money on expanding the World Service programming to Russia and North Korea imposes what appears to be government directed expenditure on the BBC at a time when domestic services are to be cut and should also be reconsidered.
The issues surrounding the future of the BBC are complex, and the government should commit to a further period of public consultation or at least 4 months, after it publishes its proposals for the BBC Charter in the spring of 2016.
ends
DATELINE: 7 September, 2015
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