The BBC, the public sector, and universal service

There was once a time, long ago, when every year the population of the UK became more united as income inequalities fell and the public sector grew. The six decade period from the start of the BBC (in 1922), to the wobbles of the Callaghan government of the late 1970s, encapsulates that period. After then we heard more and more talk of ‘letting tall flowers grow taller’, and later of ‘talent’. That talk began in 1976, ironically, in Oxford’s ‘working class’ Ruskin College. It was accelerated by Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph in the 1980s, but it was not only politicians who were steering the ship of state starboard (rightwards). There were many others, often still with access to significant wealth, who thought things had gone too far in the wrong direction, that the UK had become the ‘sick man of Europe’, that we needed to get a grip. They believed that we needed fewer gritty dramas, fewer programmes on our TV screens about poverty, homelessness and inequality (even as homelessness, poverty and inequality rose) and more gentle programmes about Life on Earth, the Living Planet, footage of weird and wonderful animals and planets from faraway lands, and more historical epics of our own imagined costume drama past.

We needed cheering up by our state broadcaster, less doom and gloom, more Strictly Come Dancing and Bake Off. The latter was later poached by Channel 4, who also had a sweet tooth for the housing programmes that the new BBC so often created. We needed as many programmes as possible about aspiration, about doing up houses, buying houses, selling houses, especially once the share of those who could ever afford a mortgage began to fall during the 1990s. We eventually had a different housing programme for each social class from Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen’s ‘Changing Rooms’, for those only able to do up a room, through to Phil Spencer and Kirstie Allsop’s ‘Location Location Location’ (then ‘Love it or list it’, and ‘Relocation Relocation’) to Kevin McCloud’s ‘Grand Designs’, and up to Jean Johansson’s ‘A Home/Place in the Sun’.

It became clear that the new mantra was saccharine for the many and highbrow for the few. To placate a minority, Adam Curtis could continue to produce multiple BBC series such as ‘Century of Self’, one of which over two decades ago, in 2002 smirked at how New Labour was created by focus group experts watching the conversation of ‘Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering.’ Oh so knowing, oh so divisive.

The BBC motto of ‘Inform, Educate, Entertain’ had been reinterpreted – in the new era of equality of opportunity (not outcome), the ‘clever ones among us’, the ‘grown-ups in the room’, came to believe that everyone had to realise their potential to make Britain great again. But they increasingly believed that unlike them, most people lacked great potential, and so needed to be made to understand, to be informed, on what was realistic. People were told that the economy worked like the budget of a housewife; that they needed to be educated to know that inequality is inevitable and we have to reward top talent appropriately, including top talent at the BBC.

Imaginary Friends

It is not just the presenters of house-porn who you may feel you now know, so too with news journalists. The presenters of the Today Programme can easily become new imaginary friends. There is imaginary Justin, slick but clever, with an interesting back story and an odd obsession with rugby. A bit of a maverick, he graduated from the LSE. In contrast, imaginary ‘mate’ Amol (Downing, Cambridge) is a geezer, like Justin he steers the line, questioning but not too questioning. Imaginary dinner guest, Mishal (Murrey Edward, Cambridge) is calmer, talking in a quizzical way as if she senses that perhaps something is not quite right, but also believes that nothing much can or will be done (she recently retired from the role). Then there is the chap you can imagine standing next to on a football terrace, both of you trying to pretend this comes naturally, Nick (University College, Oxford) is like tigger, he still has that boundless energy which he first showed at the Oxford Union. Emma Barnett (University of Nottingham) was not exacted a ‘diversity hire’ given her exclusive private schooling. While cheery imagined chum Martha (St Anne’s, Oxford) is perhaps best placed to remember different times. Martha is not on the program that often. The times have changed. There are now sometimes two women on ‘Today’; Oxford and Cambridge are no longer balanced with two apiece; but the superciliousness remains.

It was possible to have a high quality universal service BBC in the 1950s to 1970s because we were a solidarity society then. Younger people working within the BBC then were less likely to be socially separated from society than they are now – they had to be very technically able to cope with what was then new technology. No one thinks they are separated from society of course. And someone battling within the BBC will not see themselves as part of an establishment. However, there are now signs of a turn for the better beginning, including in the BBC. The ‘Gary Lineker weekend’ which illustrated the limits to censorship (at least for someone not officially on the payroll). Within the last couple of years we may have seen the most sustained fall in income inequalities to have occurred for many years. Wealth inequalities are also now falling as wealth fell when inflation rose (and because the poor have no wealth to lose). But the BBC reacts slowly.

Take another example of where we current sit. A BBC journalist, John Simpson, in March 2023 was embroiled in a small twitter spat on the issue of BBC impartiality. He ended up, in effect, telling his interlocuter to take a running jump.

A discussion on Twitter

The rest of the discussion on Twitter

Today, a young successful reporter or producer at the BBC, say one in their early 40s who had purchased a home in Fulham a couple of years ago, could now find themselves in a tricky economic position with tens of (if not hundreds of) thousands of pounds of negative equity were we to enter recession. Their extended family may have already all chipped in earlier to pay the private school fees that ensured they could attend the right university. Their grandparents may have provided the deposit for the house purchase. But their BBC salary is falling in real terms. They may have to consider sending their children to a state school in London; and skiing could be off the agenda this coming winter. But all that is just not the same as seeing your contempories forced to fight in two world wars because of the foolhardy politics of your parents’ generation, and joining a corporation which then tried to embody the words ‘nation shall speak truth unto nation” rather than repeatedly and often unthinkingly talking down the China and Russia, as the BBC so often does today.

The young and the BBC

Things went wrong for the BBC because the countries of the UK fell apart socially, politically and economically, between the late 1970s and today. You cannot have a universal broadcaster that is trusted (and good) if you don’t live in a state that is actually trying to hold things together. Much the same can be said of the NHS and, like the BBC, it too is worth saving as a universal service but that can only be done if economic inequities fall. The more shattered the (fictional UK-land) nation becomes, the more papering over the cracks has been required. More new myths are created, more talking up of our (British) creativity. The young, however, increasingly tend not to watch the BBC, getting their information and news from elsewhere. Increasing proportions of BBC fodder, as a result, is prepared for the old as they are the audience. But it also, by a roundabout route, the BBC still generates much of what the young will learn about the world.

Until British society becomes less segregated, it is very likely that people working in the higher paid jobs at the BBC will continue to believe that they are impartial. In practice, however, they have a narrow definition of impartiality that boils down to what a few people, who are doing very well for themselves, think is reasonable. In more equitable states, the media questions its own impartiality and role far more thoroughly, and hence more effectively. This is not just a problem for the BBC, it also affects all our newspapers, and TV news channels.

We think we know where we are with the Murdoch and Rothermere family’s press empires, but the BBC and Guardian are not that different. Papers like the Guardian and broadcasters like the BBC just as clearly reflect the sensibilities of the upper reaches of our very unequal society. We see this in the views that are discussed amongst those at the top. There is debate, but it is a debate between the few who have succeeded in an unfair race.

The Today Programme became a fascinating daily invite into the inner thinking of the Conservative party – view it like that and its stance is not at all annoying. ‘Today’ is not alone in this, the majority of our Newspapers are the same and even our most independent and popular podcasts. When Tony Blair’s former Director of Communications and Strategy (Alastair Campbell) and former Conservative cabinet minister Rory Stewart debate on ‘The Rest is Politics’, ask yourself: who is this a debate between? When you hear Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland discuss the student uprisings in France in 1968 on ‘The Rest is History’, ask why do they take the stances they do? Could it be more about them than about what they are discussing? Similarly with Ed Balls and George Osbourne who, from September 2023 onwards, began to chummy up with their economics podcast. So, is impartially really the space between these three pairs of men?

A more balanced Today programme, balanced say to the Western European norm, would sound revolutionary to current UK ears. But it would be nice to have just one British newspaper or broadcaster that was as left wing as Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany had been in terms of her policies between 2005 and 2021. In Europe her politics are normal – but in the UK they would be viewed as advocating far too high levels of state spending. Both Germany and France now enjoy economic inequalities almost as low as those seen in Nordic countries.

Tomorrow’s World

Until Britain is again a society in which the wealth of your parents does not so strongly determine your future chances of working in the media, we will not have an impartial media. BBC training schemes may try to encourage a diversity of faces, and there is more of a diversity of sound now too (as ‘colourful’ regional accents are occasionally viewed as an asset). But for those not based around Salford, the London rents are simply too high without parental beneficence. It is not that the BBC is failing, it is just that it reflects our society (which is failing). However, the UK need not continue to fail so badly. All other European countries that are compared by our Social Mobility Commission have far greater social mobility than we do by the time people are age 40 – so saying it is impossible for us to change is silly. It is very hard for us to remain this unequal – that takes a lot of work, especially cultural work like that of the BBC. And, of course, although no country on earth has an unbiased media that is not still heavily skewed towards repeating the views of life’s winners, few rich countries are now as economically unequal as the UK.

There are many current positive signs that the polarization of British society, which took place between the 1970s and the 2020s, could be ending. However, if we do begin to change, it may well take a couple of generations for that change to be truly noticeable. Progress may move at the speed of one retired journalist, editor and producer, one at a time. Or our journalist, producers and commissioners, could become a little braver and realise that the times are a changing again.

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