|
||||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
| FEATURES | BY TIM GOPSILL |
 BBC Director-General: Greg Dyke  Media baron: Rupert Murdoch |
If you think the row between the government and the BBC is just about one BBC story that upset Downing Street, you would be wrong. It is just a skirmish in a long-running war that is currently in a critical phase. It’s the battle for the BBC, and it’s getting bitter. The BBC is a public service – but unlike other public services, it is not state-controlled. The government doesn’t own the BBC. Its money doesn’t come from government funds, but from the licence fee we all pay. You and I own the BBC. But the government does set the rules by which it operates, and they are due for review in 2006. The licence fee itself could be scrapped or reduced, forcing the BBC to take advertising or subscriptions, or to cut back its programming. You might have noticed that attacks on the BBC don’t come just from government and politicians, but from some newspapers too. It’s fine when politicians go for the broadcasters – it shows they are a healthy distance apart. It’s well and good that the BBC’s news operations are being prised open to the public gaze. It should be accountable. But when some of the newspapers start slanting their stories just to get at the BBC, as the Sun and The Times have been doing, you have to ask, why? The reason is clear enough. Their owner doesn’t like it, because he’s a competitor. Rupert Murdoch, one of the world’s most powerful media tycoons, also controls Sky TV, and he wants the BBC out of the way. Murdoch was born in Australia, inheriting his first newspaper from his dad at the age of 21. He built his empire there by buying up and then closing rival newspapers. In Britain he bought first the News of the World, then the Sun, turning them into cheerleaders for Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. In return he was allowed to buy The Times and News of the World without going through the proper legal tests, and to launch the Sky satellite service free of all the regulations that bind other broadcasters. In America, where he already owns some major newspapers, Murdoch wanted to buy the 20th Century Fox movie studios and a chain of TV stations and merge them into a TV production and broadcasting network. Only one problem: to own a TV network you have to be American. It was no problem for Murdoch. He simply dumped his mother country and became a US citizen. There is no such restriction here in Britain. The only hurdle he has faced is the law that prevents big newspaper owners from controlling commercial TV. But that law is being changed. The Communications Act that went through Parliament this summer would allow Murdoch to buy Channel Five and many people are worried that he could merge that with Sky to knock out ITV and become the second national force in TV. ITV is in serious trouble. This is largely due to the incompetence of its management, but Murdoch put the boot in by bidding up the price of televising football. But Murdoch has the protection of the government; that’s the real problem. In 1995 Tony Blair did a deal with him: in return for cynically switching his papers, overnight, to support the Labour Party, Murdoch could have a clear legal run at whatever he wanted. And what he wants next is to knock out the BBC as a competitor to Sky. He wants an end to the licence fee and, an end to the BBC’s commercial operations. He wants to force it into a niche “quality” market, catering only for the minority middle class interests, like public broadcasting in America. But that’s not what the BBC is for. It’s remit is to cater for everybody and its strength is in the huge range of programming it offers. And it is genuinely popular. Despite the proliferation of commercial channels the BBC still gets the highest ratings. One recent opinion poll show that six times as many people trusted it as trust the government. Another showed that a big majority of people, asked what TV channel they could have if they could only have one, plumped for BBC1. Yes, it’s a public service, like health or education, and if the government wants to worsen it or open it up to competition we should react as we do when they want to close down schools or privatise health services. We defend it. n Tim Gopsill is co-chair, Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom and editor of the Journalist, magazine published by the NUJ. |
|