More than a century ago, public broadcasting institutions were established, driven by three noble goals: to educate, to inform, and to entertain. In these same countries, between financial cuts and crises of legitimacy, these large organizations must redefine themselves, or even justify their existence. In this four-part series, The duty profiles various public media outlets in the United States and Europe. Today: the British Broadcasting Corporation’s news service (BBC News).
In Nashville (1975), by the filmmaker Robert Altman, Geraldine Chaplin plays a British journalist who repeatedly emphasizes: ” I’m from the BBC. “This introduction does not always have its effect, but the joke testifies to the prestige emanating from the great British public media, the one in which many of its artisans wrap themselves.
From a North American, or journalistic, point of view, there is reason to be envious of such a flagship, founded in 1922 and becoming a public corporation in 1926. Its annual budget sometimes approaches 9 billion Canadian dollars, money coming from the British state and from a system of royalties where citizens are directly called upon to contribute. It has more than 20,000 employees, and about 5,000 of them are journalists.
The media offering is particularly attractive: nearly ten TV channels, five major radio stations (many others cover regions of the United Kingdom and foreign countries), four symphony orchestras, not to mention the famous BBC World Service, which broadcasts in more than forty languages.
Known for its rigor, supported by an impressive number of foreign correspondents, the BBC news service is the stuff of dreams for many communication specialists. In the United States as in Canada, many radio and television artisans (those of NPR and PBS in the United States, and of CBC/Radio-Canada in our countries) wanted to reproduce the essence of this institution. They have never been able to equal it, as politicians have refused to give them the means to do so.
The prestige of BBC News leaves a definite mark on those who listen. Aimé-Jules Bizimana, co-author of the essay Public media service in the digital age. Radio-Canada, BBC, France Télévisions: shared experiences (PUQ), recalls his youth in Burundi and his fascination with the world of media. “With Radio France Internationale, the BBC was a reference, but I didn’t listen to it with the same critical mind as I do today,” says the professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the Université du Québec en Outaouais. International surveys confirm this: the level of trust in the BBC is still very high. For our book, I interviewed commanders in the American army—I specify: American—who said they listened to the BBC to find out what was really happening on the ground during the second Gulf War in 2003…” According to the Reuters Institute, nearly 400 million people around the world get their news from the BBC every week.
The BBC (almost) everywhere at once
This international respectability is accompanied by the loyalty of the British towards the BBC, even if the latter is weakening like everywhere else (omnipresence of digital platforms, fragmentation of audiences, budget cuts, etc.), not to mention the turmoil specific to this country, including the psychodrama of Brexit – an exit from the European Union that a majority of citizens regret today…
Dan Martin, a researcher at the University of Leeds’ School of Media, is part of this new audience that the BBC is trying to win over. The postdoctoral fellow is taking part in a research project on the digital evolution of different public television stations with other European colleagues, notably in Belgium and Denmark. “I belong to the millennial generation, I trust the BBC, but certainly not absolute trust. I also frequent social networks, and I see that the BBC is not managing, on Facebook for example, to attract new users.”
Unlike what it does in Canada, Meta does not impose a news block on this platform and on Instagram in the United Kingdom. Which does not mean that all is well, according to Dan Martin. “The BBC’s research and development department is impressive, but it persists in believing that its real competitors are the other British channels [comme ITV ou Channel 4]. It still has a global resonance, but Google and Meta are waiting for them with bated breath…” Not to mention the arrival of the Al Jazeera news channel in 1996, which has since become the most watched in the Arab world.
In its current form, the BBC resembles a sprawling empire, present throughout the United Kingdom, even if many criticise it for viewing the world from its London headquarters. And the institution continues to claim to be impervious to political pressure. “Regardless of the government in power and the prime minister in power, relationships are often complicated, and “We put people chosen by the government at its head,” laments Jamie Medhurst, professor of film and media at Aberystwyth University in Wales. That was the way it was in Harold Wilson’s time. [premier ministre entre 1964 et 1970, et entre 1974 et 1976]and it’s been worse for the last ten years.”
Jamie Medhurst is still waiting for Cardiff, the capital of his part of the country, to feel a real desire from the BBC to properly inform the people of the region, to stop being ” London-centric “, as he saw during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, or during the last general election. He says it is not only in the political interest of the BBC, but of the country as a whole. “No one should forget that the United Kingdom is made up of four nations, including Scotland with its independence aspirations. Not getting close to local populations, by informing them better, seems to me to be a risky bet for the BBC. It has long considered itself “global”, but its resources are not infinite…”
X-ray of a crown jewel
In just a few years, Tom Mills has become a must-read when it comes to analysing, or criticising, the BBC. Both a “sociologist and a socialist”, and chair of the Media Reform Coalition chair, he is known for his essay The BBC: Myth of a Public Service (Verso), first published in 2016 and reissued in 2020. The fascinating book sometimes gives the impression that the public broadcaster’s headquarters is a replica british of Versailles during the time of the French monarchy: there are many behind-the-scenes games there…
Like the other people contacted for this article, Tom Mills also admires the BBC’s striking force and symbolic power… while retaining his critical spirit. According to him, there are many governance flaws, and there is no real impermeability between political power and the public channel; tensions are often high, or sometimes rare because ideological complicity eases them.
In his essay, Tom Mills looked at the BBC’s economic coverage, which he said revealed the influence of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and the power of the City, the financial heart of London. “A lot of the executives or editors shared neoliberal convictions, came from these backgrounds, and were therefore not very favourable to unions,” recalls the essayist. In addition, the BBC tends to recruit “Oxbridge”, graduates of Oxford and Cambridge universities, an elitist system that is reproduced not only among journalists, but also among judges, lawyers, politicians, in short all those who have a certain power. When you earn more than 250,000 pounds a year [444 000 $CAN] “For a job at the BBC, you don’t see the world in the same way as if you’re at the bottom of the ladder.”
According to him, the neoliberal current has left a deep imprint, not only within the BBC, but also within British society. In short, one of the biggest lies he peddles is the belief that there is a strong link between precarity and creativity, as if being on an ejection seat would stimulate your imagination more at work…
The BBC: The Myth of a Public Service sometimes reads like a historian’s work, detailing the turbulence of the public service during the Second World War, before diving into its resolutely digital future. In between, the author enjoys describing wanderings that he considers unspeakable.
The BBC’s media coverage of Jeremy Corbyn (leader of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020) has, according to him, reached a peak of bad faith. “Their standards of professionalism seemed to have disappeared,” laments Tom Mills. “They made him into a kind of Satan, when he is just a classic socialist, vegetarian, cyclist, nothing threatening. But they decided that he had to be ejected from public life. The lack of intellectual curiosity about Jeremy Corbyn was striking.”
Reading his book, loyalty to the BBC may be shaken. Tom Mills is keen to reassure us. “The BBC’s international coverage is much more balanced. When I listen to the World Service, I see how aware it is of the UK’s true place in the world. When I listen to Radio 4 or watch BBC One, I see a pompous tone, a nationalism softas well as a nostalgia for the colonial era.” Enough to fuel many discussions at tea time…
The BBC did not respond to requests for an interview. Duty.
To visit the BBC News website: https://www.bbc.com/news
To listen The BBC Newshourthe major daily national and international news bulletin broadcast seven days a week: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p002vsnk