We need a People’s BBC

JVL Introduction

Like most readers of this blog, there have no doubt been many times when you’ve come away fuming with rage after watching or listening to some biased and prejudiced BBC programme.

As Debs Grayson says here, the BBC is deeply flawed. But it also plays a crucial role in UK public life, providing a range of cultural programming, children’s content, educational resources and support for minority languages that would never be provided by the market.

Because of that we need  an alternative vision and the Media Reform Coalition has articulated just that in its recent Manifesto for a People’s Media.

This openDemocracy article outlines briefly what this would mean in practice – devolved, supportive, collaborative, independent, progressively funded, and more.

Media Reform Coalition/openDemocracy are organising a free live event tomorrow, Thursday 27th Jan at 5pm GMT – please join in by clicking here: What will be left of the BBC in 2028?

See also John Booth’s Defend the BBC despite its faults posted here a few days ago.

This article was originally published by openDemocracy on Wed 26 Jan 2022. Read the original here.

The UK government is right, the BBC is broken. Here’s how we fix it

We need a People’s BBC – free from government whims – with increased devolution, audience-elected senior roles, and a sliding-scale licence fee

 

The widespread debate following the UK government’s decision to freeze the BBC licence fee has exposed just how many friends have deserted the institution in recent years.

While its defenders claim, against the odds, that the BBC is a beacon for impartiality and high journalistic standards, the clamour of the past few days has revealed a great deal of deep-seated dissatisfaction. This comes in many forms: those saying the BBC is irrelevant in the Netflix era; those who think it pushes an unpatriotic woke agenda; those who generally don’t like anything publicly funded; and those who see it is far too close to government and incapable of holding power to account [and those who saw it play a major role in demonising the Corbyn-led Labour Party – JVL]. What is clear is that the BBC is losing public support, just as it is facing the most hostile government it has ever encountered.

The BBC is a deeply flawed institution and its political coverage – always overly aligned with powerful interests – has become increasingly indefensible. But it also plays a crucial role in UK public life, providing a range of cultural programming, children’s content, educational resources and support for minority languages that would never be provided by the market. And in the current environment, a less powerful or even non-existent BBC would only place more power in the hands of Rupert Murdoch, Mark Zuckerberg and GB News. How this plays out over the next few years will depend, in part, on whether we are able to articulate and fight for a positive vision of a different kind of BBC – a ‘People’s BBC’ that is truly democratic and accountable to the public it serves.

Articulating this vision for public broadcasting, and for our media system more generally, has been the central work of The BBC and Beyond, the campaign I have been coordinating for the past year as part of the Media Reform Coalition. We spent 2021 running public events (attended by around 30,000 people) and holding conversations and workshops with dozens of individuals and organisations to understand how they imagined a media system that could face the challenges of the future.

From these conversations, we wrote a Manifesto for a People’s Media, containing a comprehensive vision of a ‘media commons’ – a system with the public interest, community empowerment and collective care at its heart. This media commons would contain a transformed People’s BBC and Channel 4, as well as a thriving ecology of independent media organisations supported by significant new public resources. What would unite all of the different kinds of organisations in the media commons would be their commitment to core values – values of being independent, democratic, accountable and for everyone.

Related story

What will be left of the BBC in 2028?

open Democracy | 19 January 2022

The UK’s culture secretary wants to appease right-wingers by abolishing the licence fee. Will the market now rule all broadcasting? And would that be that a bad thing?

Supportive and collaborative

So what would a People’s BBC look like in practice? First off, it would be significantly more devolved than today. Programme-making and editorial functions – including how money is distributed – would sit with the nations and regions. They might pool resources to create the most expensive kind of programming, such as high-end dramas, but most of the content would be commissioned and produced by one of the BBC’s devolved segments.

Under this devolved structure, the BBC would be better placed to make programmes that fully represent the concerns and experiences of the whole country, while also creating new avenues for citizens to participate. A People’s BBC would have a fundamentally different kind of relationship with the wider public than today.

Rather than just interacting with the BBC as passive audiences, most people would be involved in some way in creating it. They would participate in making decisions about how it was run – whether by electing decision-makers to represent them on regional boards, being part of public processes for commissioning programmes, or sitting on a panel to oversee the coverage of controversial issues in their area.

A People’s BBC would have a supportive and collaborative relationship with independent media, with editors looking to participatory newsrooms, media co-ops and community radio stations to find their stories. The BBC would provide training and secure working conditions, creating a workforce that is more representative of wider society. These workers would be empowered through a conscience clause to refuse unethical assignments and to ensure a strong voice for their unions and worker representation on BBC boards.

The government would no longer be able to make senior appointments, and the BBC’s current Royal Charter – which gives the government of the day huge power over the corporation when it is renewed every ten years – would be replaced with a proper statutory framework. Its funding would also be determined by a fully independent body, protected from government pressure or threats of withholding money.

Rather than being funded through the flat-tax TV licence, there would be a progressive licence pegged to household council bands so that wealthier people contribute more

A new regulator dedicated to public service media, with senior positions elected by audiences rather than appointed by the government, would increase accountability. This regulator would work with the public to understand what they consider to be harmful and what they see as meaningful redress. And a People’s BBC would be accessible and universal. Rather than being funded through the flat-tax TV licence, there would be a progressive licence pegged to household council bands so that wealthier people contribute more. And affordable full-fibre broadband would be guaranteed to all homes so everyone could benefit from streaming services and participate using digital platforms.

The result of these changes would be a BBC that was widely trusted and embedded in people’s lives, and whose future was secured because there was such widespread support for paying for it collectively. And it would be a BBC that could actively support the huge societal transitions needed to deal with global challenges like pandemics and the climate crisis – rather standing in the way of the shifts that are needed, as it often does today. This might seem utopian, but the barriers to creating a People’s BBC are entirely about political will.

What we know for sure is that the next five years leading up to the charter renewal in 2027 will be a huge battle for the institution. Without an inspiring vision of how it could be transformed and democratised, it is hard to see how the necessary counter power could be built within civil society to take on this fight.

A public media system that can empower communities, challenge powerful interests, and help a divided society talk to one another, could be transformative. We need a People’s BBC.

What will be left of the BBC in 2028?

The UK’s culture secretary wants to appease right-wingers by abolishing the licence fee. Will the market now rule all broadcasting? And would that be a bad thing? Join us for this free live event on Thursday 27 January at 5pm UK time.

 

Comments (8)

  • Jack T says:

    The BBC is without doubt the jewel in the crown of British broadcasting, giving us programs without incessantly trying to sell us gold, cremations or alarm systems etc. Where it falls down is on news and political discussion shows where more often than not there is a right wing bias, using either Tory or right wing Labour spokespeople and presenters. The BBC must be protected from the both the Tory Party, who believe it is not right wing enough, and an incompetent and overpaid management who forget that celebrities need the BBC and not the other way around.

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  • Graeme Atkinson says:

    We need to defend the real existing BBC, the one that the Tories are attacking, not some “fantasy island” one.

    Anything else is a diversion from the task in hand.

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  • Cormac Kelly says:

    Time to abolish the BBC. Its sole purpose is to prop up the establishment. Lord Reith like Churchill was a great admirer of Mussolini. Reith denied the TUC an opportunity to state its case in the General Strike of 1926.
    New staff were vetted by MI5. Miners were abused in the strike of1980s. The way it portrayed the events of Orgreave is quite criminal. The smearing of Corbyn. No more chances. Flush this dreadful organisation into the sewer of history.

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  • Terry Rees says:

    Terry R
    At the age of nearly eighty I can say that I grew up politically and socially with a strong loyalty to the BBC. But there clearly is a problem with the issue of bias. This bias seems to be discernibly single- issue based rather than consistently ideological. Both Left and Right claim bias against themselves at one time or another. This bias occurs largely through the apparent inability of tv editors, and journalists to separate reporting from comment. I was quite shocked at the apparent bias against Jeremy Corbyn during that awful period of media and political (even within the Labour Party ) ‘shark attacks’ on both the person of Corbyn and what he stood for. I cannot claim that it was intentional by the BBC, but probably due to the modern tendency for everyone in the media desiring to be a ‘Personality’ . Journalistic and presentation discipline thus evaporates. If my memory serves me correctly an internal BBC enquiry eventually found a senior political journalist guilty of misrepresenting Corbyn. Finally, I switched channels and found ITV to be refreshingly different and far more professionally disciplined.
    So, yes we do need a public broadcasting corporation, just not this one. This article points in the right direction for me.

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  • Stephen Richards says:

    Another direct tax (aka License Fee) & if you refuse to pay the ‘Liberal Left’ will put you in jail. The BBC is a political organisation & its chairman, Richard Sharp, donated £470K to the Tory Party just prior to his appointment, giving proof to another of the ‘Big Lies’ that the BBC is impartial; objective & independent. It’s charter suggests that its purpose is to inform, educate & entertain (Lord Reith) but its funding depends on gov’t patronage & by definition becomes its representative.
    I would describe myself politically as a Socialist with a fear of powerful gov’t & big business. Local gov’t appears to be as corrupt as Central gov’t & powerful business interest groups are taking control of ‘independent media (see Rupert Murdoch). I take issue with many of the issues raised by Debs Grayson as powerful interest groups compete for a subsidised national PSB monopoly; be careful what you wish for.

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  • Brian Burden says:

    At the moment the Beeb is between a rock and a hard place – under attack from the right and the left. It has always been conservative with a small “c” though until recently it has made room for some sparky left-wingers. The problem is that the anti-Beeb, lobby is using claims of bias as a stalking horse for commercialising the service, so that these claims will not go away however far the Beeb leans to the right. I agree the Beeb let the nation down over Corbyn, as did the Guardian.

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  • Teresa Grover says:

    As already said by Terry R. That blatant bias against Mr.Corbyn was SCREAMING from the screen, the Kuenssberg & others was SO upsetting, so wrong, so hurtful I stopped believing anything the BBC news had to say. Even now I cannot believe its news items.
    The Tories want to remove the BBC, how strange, considering how far up the TORY governments backside the BBC reporters crawled up…..
    It was a very very shameful time, a silence, a ban on videos when Mr.Corbyn was at a rally or meeting, thousands apon thousands travelled to see him, but it was only recorded by private phones & videos.
    Unlike the Tory visits which were doctored to to make us believe big crowds where attending to see an abominable PM.
    Continue with the DRAMAS & DOCUMENTARIES but leave the NEWS to REAL JOURNALISTS.

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  • Doug says:

    Think only of what the BBC should be
    Everything worth having has been corrupted, first challenge is to clean out the stables then how you prevent it all happening again
    JC has the integrity and the power to inspire millions, in the current climate a new party could be viable, offering a stark choice between the past and the future

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