New Attempts to Curb BBC News Delivery

A new twist to the battle between commercial newspaper publishers and the BBC has appeared in the call by the Newspaper Publishers Association to block the BBC from extending its iPhone news applications, which provide news free on a mobile phone.

Arguing that the launch of free news and sport applications by the BBC would damage the commercial market for news application, the NPA called on the BBC Trust to stop this development pending a ‘Public Value Test’ given the ‘unique and narrow commercial space’ provided by Apple’s iPhone Apps to commercial news providers.

Claiming that the BBC was preparing to muscle into a developing market and ‘trample over the aspirations of commercial news providers’, David Newell for the NPA echoed Rupert Murdoch and argued that the corporation’s on-line presence was a key obstacle to the development of paid-for models for online content provision.

Some time ago the NPA was successful in blocking an attempt by the BBC to launch a network of local news sites, claiming that this would impinge on their own plans in this area.

Critics of the NPA would point out that the only result of this has been to block improvements to local coverage that would undoubtedly have resulted from the BBC’s move into this area.

We are still waiting for the services to appear from local commercial providers. It seems however that it will be a very long wait.

BBC news is already provided free via several applications that can be downloaded at no cost  from the iTunes store, and free news feeds are available from most BBC web sites

The Difficult Future of Regional TV news.

Regional TV news – a critical part of Public Service Broadcasting, is facing a crisis according to OfCom figures.

In late September the media regulator warned that providing regional news programmes on ITV could cost broadcasters up to £64m per year by 2012.

They argue that this will make the provision of local news on ITV unsustainable by 2012

Publication of Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report in June indicated government support for a series of independent consortia consisting of local media as an alternative to the BBC in the UK’s regions and nations.

Despite the work done by the Scottish Broadcasting Commission earlier in the previous year, Carter’s report seemed woefully ill-informed about the work already done by this commission.

Now it appears that three pilot projects are to be launched in England, Wales and Scotland – with STV and a collection of Scottish Newspapers expressing interest in bidding for one of the pilots.

At present however this is complicated by the legal action between ITV and STV where the latter is being sued by the former to the tune of £38m.

OfCom have argued such pilots could be financed by top-slicing the licence fee – something opposed both by the BBC and the BBC Trust.

BBC Trust to journalists: ‘Don’t Blog what you wouldn’t say’

One of the lesser known aspects of the new BBC draft editorial guidelines appears to take their definition of impartiality even further than previously understood, in their new advice that “Nothing should be written by [BBC] journalists and presenters that would not be said on-air.”

According to the guidance: “Our audiences should not be able to tell from BBC programmes or other BBC output the personal prejudices of our journalists and presenters on such matters.” .

“This applies as much to online content as it does to news bulletins”.

This is an issue that is sure to result in comment during the consultation on the guidelines as while this point of view will be what some viewers will want others may  question  whether this is taking the guidelines too far in that the audience are able to tell the difference between personal opinion – when it is served up as personal opinion – and ‘impartial’ news reports broadcast on behalf of the BBC by these individual journalists in their capacity as newsreaders or reporters.

Meanwhile the Government continues to support it’s own guidelines on departmental use of Twitter – guidelines which  at a word count of almost 5,500, would be equivalent to more than 250 tweets. Suggesting that departmental users should tweet no less than two times per day, with a maximum of ten daily tweets, it suggests that departments should steer clear of ‘self-promotion’.  In supporting Departments to follow usual Twitter etiquette that ‘followers’ should be ‘followed back’ it cautions that at all costs however, it is necessary to avoid the image of ‘big brother’ following people for the wrong reasons. And we know what the Daily Mail would say about that.

Setting the standards at the Beeb

The public are being asked to set the standards within the BBC on issues such as impartiality, how war, religion and politics are covered, and on matters that might cause harm and offence to listeners. These and other editorial guidelines have been put out to public consultation for the first time – normally they are decided behind closed doors every five years.

The independence of the BBC is guaranteed in its Royal Charter, which also sets out the five Public Purposes of the BBC. These are:

• sustaining citizenship and civil society;
• promoting education and learning;
• stimulating creativity and cultural excellence;
• representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities;
• bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK;

In carrying out the above, the BBC is also expected to deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services as well as taking a leading role in the switchover to digital television.

The BBC’s Editorial Values and Editorial Guidelines stem from this overall approach, and they apply to all BBC content whether it is made by the BBC itself or by an independent company working for it.

The BBC has asked that comments and ideas are submitted to them by 24th December 2009. The draft editorial guidelines can be found here, and details of how to contribute can be found here.

It would be a good initiative if students on the MAMJ course could give the BBC the benefits of their insights by that time – particularly with regard to the ethical issues that are raised in broadcasting.

The BBC and the ‘Myth of Impartiality’

The whole debate between ‘an independent BBC’ and the encroachments of a commercially based threat from the likes of Murdoch, is a false one according to a report on Friday’s independent radical media site MediaLens.

Basing themselves on a similar approach to Chomsky and Hermann in their work on manufacturing consent, they argue that while constituted in a different manner to the commercial media, the BBC continues to adopt a pro establishment view and is essentially regulated by a Trust who represent sectors of the British establishment, unlikely to ‘rock the boat’ in any politically meaningful way.

To quote the article at some length (the article is worth reading and can be found here):

“The Trust consists of twelve safe pairs of hands with extensive backgrounds in large corporate media organisations, advertising, banking, finance and industry. We are to believe that these individuals are independent of the government that appointed them, and of the elite corporate and other vested interests in which they are deeply embedded. We are to believe that they will uphold fair and balanced reporting which displays not a hint of bias towards state ideology or economic orthodoxy in a world of rampant corporate power.”

They argue that modern journalism acts to “narrow the range of thought”, thus serving the powerful interests that control the mass media. They do concede that it is not ‘Big Brother’ but argue it is certainly a form of Orwellian “Newspeak”.

Heady stuff. But it’s an argument that needs had. And which is rarely seen in the Media.

Now I wonder why that is?

BBC – safer under the Conservatives?

The BBC appear to be safer under the Conservatives than under Labour – or at least that seems to be the impression which Jeremy Hunt, Tory culture secretary, wished to give in a recent interview in the Guardian.

Interestingly he rejects the recent Murdoch-owned Sunday Times call for the BBC news website to be cut back although argues that the BBC should be careful about expanding its website out of areas that are strictly news.

He also strikes a populist note, pointing out that 47 BBC executives earn the same as, or more than, the prime minister’s £197,689 salary, and that this area would be under scrutiny following a change of Government.

Stressing that the BBC’s independence is sacrosanct, Hunt does not however argue where cuts should take place.

The previous day in a letter to the Guardian Labour Culture secretary Ben Bradshaw had argued that his attack on the BBC the previous week had been misunderstood.

The Guardian editorial had claimed Bradshaw, had signally failed to give the BBC the kind of political support it deserved.

Clearly Jeremy Hunt is trying to play down the links between Murdoch and the Conservative Party in the run up to the election. His public approach is a nuanced one, although the sincerity of his claims must be under doubt given the dreadful track record held by the Conservatives in their previous dealings with the media when in office.

His position has been strengthened somewhat by the recent intemperate attacks on the BBC Trust and the BBC by Labour’s culture secretary Ben Bradshaw.

However it will be interesting to see how Media is dealt with at the Conservative Party conference next week.

Strictly come Social Networking

According to Anthony Rose, the BBC’s controller of Vision and on-line, speaking at the launch of the Media Guardian’s Innovation awards, this weekend will see the addition of unspecified ‘social media’ applications to Strictly Come Dancing as part of a radical re-launch of all their on-line services. This radical re-launch is planned for March, and will be based on ‘what the next generation in social media will be’. Amongst the innovations will be the development of an open version of iPlayer which will allow third-party platforms to embed BBC content while it remains on the BBC site. This is seen as one element in BBC management’s attempts to prevent top-slicing the licence fee – by working in collaboration with commercial organisations they argue there is value going to the commercial sector – without the need for a funding cut to BBC resourcing.

There are also

Ben Bradshaw becomes bizarre

In a bizarre turn of phrase in his speech to the Labour conference, Culture secretary Ben Bradshaw told delegates that the BBC ‘must be more sensitive to views of public who pay for it’

Yet this is the same culture secretary who told Broadcast magazine last week that he was minded to abolish the BBC Trust – the body put in place only three years ago by Labour to do exactly this – monitor the BBC’s actions on behalf of the licence fee payer.

He also threatened to take this action before the terms of the present BBC Charter runs out. A sound bite to conference arguing for the people to have more say is very tempting for politicians. However, when it is linked to proposals that would prevent the people themselves having more say, then it is either muddled or dishonest. Of course perhaps Mr Bradshaw believes that it is the party in power who have the ability to interpret what the people want – and therefore the right to interfere from that position. Now that isn’t muddled thinking – it’s simply dangerous and undemocratic.

Labour may scrap BBC Trust before Charter Review

According to a report from Broadcast Magazine The row between the BBC Trust and the government has now intensified to the extent that  Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw has suggested he could scrap the Trust before the next Charter Review.

Bradshaw had already raised the Trust’s hackles with his speech to the Royal Television Society’s biennial convention in Cambridge, in which he claimed the governing body’s dual role as ‘regulator and cheerleader’ was unsustainable.

The BBC Trust answered that it should not be judged on its performance until the next Charter Review, ‘many years down the line’, and BBC sources said the governing body was safe until then.

However, Bradshaw later told Broadcast that the Trust was not necessarily safeguarded until the 2017 review, and that it could be changed at the next licence fee settlement, in 2013, instead.

He said he had held talks with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, who agreed that the BBC’s governance system should be changed, and indicated he would seek the BBC’s backing in scrapping the Trust before the Charter Review.

Bradshaw, who is a former BBC reporter, was reluctant to say whether the government would push the change through without BBC agreement.

His comments followed a heated exchange with BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons, in the Q&A session after Bradshaw’s speech, in which Lyons challenged the government for not talking more about licence fee payers and asking the public whether they would like the licence fee returned to them.

Lyons, who was visibly angered, said: ‘It is money which you raised for one purpose and now want to use for a different purpose. It’s about honest taxation.’

However, other leading industry figures welcomed Bradshaw’s statement. Former Endemol executive Peter Bazalgette said it was ‘the most considered and elegant speech from a Culture Secretary since Chris Smith’.”

This claim from Bradshaw comes hot on the heels of James Murdoch’s intemperate attack on the notion of Public Service Broadcasting, claiming that “The only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit ” and is in line with increasing moves by Labour and Offcom to allow top slicing of the licence fee – albeit starting with the un-used portion of the fee originally ring-fenced for help with the digital switchover. Some critics of this approach believe that it is essentially a back door method of undermining the BBC and preparing the way for increasing access to the British market of News International.

STV to opt in for increasing opt outs?

The importance of local news to the Scottish TV viewer was stressed in an article in this week’s Sunday Herald (27th September). Earlier attempts by the BBC to launch a local web news network had been rejected by the BBC Trust – due to complaints by the Press that this encroached on their area. Sceptics of the complaints by the Press have till now looked in vain for their offerings – although it certainly scuppered any chances of a decent service from the BBC. More recently in the Government’s Digital Britain report it was suggested that there should be 3 independently funded news consortia set up – one in each of the nations. Latest developments seem to suggest that a serious possibility has arisen for a joint proposal from STV DC Thompson, the Johson Press and the Herald and Times Group to bid for one of the pilot news consortia. Importantly this seems to include an increased element of local reporting through opt outs. Sceptics had suggested that for troubled STV their recent proposal for a new ‘Scottish Six’ was partly about saving money by pulling staff out of Aberdeen and focussing on a Glasgow led production – albeit with the increased opt outs promised. Scottish Television have not yet officially confirmed that it will be part of any bidding for one of the pilots, but given the channel’s troubles it looks increasingly likely. In the longer term whether it is the way to ensure a stable and plural news environment in Scotland is less certain.

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