Public service broadcasting and us

The only time I appeared on television was way back in 1976, as a representative of the Merseyside Anti-Fascist Committee. I helped to organise a programme on “racialism”, as racism was termed then, which purported to ask the question: “has the existence over 50 years of black communities in Liverpool led to a decline in racial conflict?”

Whatever the opinions of those taking part, the question was answered with a resounding no by the civil unrest in Toxteth five years later, provoked by long standing tensions between the police and the local black community.

Our programme was an episode in the Open Door series produced by the BBC’s Community Programme Unit. Open Door was designed to encourage “participatory democracy” and was initiated by David Attenborough, then BBC Director of Programmes, and TV producer Rowan Ayers.

The idea was for community groups to make their own programmes voicing their concerns, activities, achievements, etc. Many of its broadcasts met with critical acclaim and the Open Door series lasted for a decade. Budget cuts would lead to the winding up of the CPU in 2002.

I am not aware of any other big broadcasting organisation on planet earth that has facilitated community organisations making their own programmes and voicing their concerns. It certainly would never happen under dictatorial regimes, and neither would it have been done by commercially-driven media outlets like those in the USA. So is there something in the concept of public service broadcasting, the much touted raison d’etre of the BBC, that socialists should find commendable?

I tend to go by the idea that if the right wing hate something, then maybe it’s worth defending. Norman Tebbit’s denunciation of the BBC as the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation was one of many examples of a veritable hatred of the organisation. This is prevalent today in the rage against BBC presenters who have the nerve to question people like Rupert Lowe and Lee Anderson.

A return of the Tories will probably see a further weakening of the BBC similar to the death by a thousand cuts approach adopted when they were last in office, such as the freezing of the license fee imposed by the far from cultured Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries in 2022. Should ever Faragists get a role in government then it’s certainly game over for the BBC.

The attack on the BBC comes not only from within these shores. The dastardly Trump is out to sue them for $10 billion. The Trump regime has almost stripped the last vestiges of public service broadcasting from the US media landscape. The right on this side of the Atlantic hope TV and radio in Britain will resemble what they now have in America.

Ironic

Right-wing hatred of the BBC is ironic since it was originally set up as a very conservative institution. John Reith, a Scottish Presbyterian, established it as a broadcasting monopoly in the mid 1920s, claiming it would operate as an independent public service broadcaster. Reith’s concept of this ruled out the organisation acting as a direct propaganda instrument of the state as in Stalin’s Russia. Reith had also visited the USA and was appalled by the inane output the plethora of commercial stations churned out there.

It was decreed the BBC would operate to “inform, educate and entertain”, which meant essentially imparting conservative bourgeois cultural values with little regard to the tastes of the mass of the population. Two of its three stations — the Home Service (current affairs and drama) and The Third Programme (classical music) — catered for the upper and middle classes, whilst the Light Programme was what was deemed suitable for the plebs. If the audience didn’t like it, they could turn their sets off. Indeed actually not listening for a time was encouraged! No need to worry about ratings if you were a monopoly.

The notion of independence from government quickly fell by the wayside during the 1926 General Strike. With no newspapers being printed, radio was the main source of information. Airtime was denied for representatives of the TUC and Labour Party, because Reith knew that if he didn’t toe the government line the BBC would be taken over directly by the state.

During the following thirty years the BBC was deferential towards governments of the day, which were mostly Conservative ones. The advent of commercial television in the mid 1950s, ending the BBC monopoly in that medium, started to change that.

ITV companies were also obliged to operate under a “public service” remit, though. If the BBC was showing a current affairs programme like Panorama, for instance, then ITV had to do something similar instead of a comedy or drama. So the 8pm alternative on Monday night was World in Action, a hard hitting investigative programme which lasted for 35 years and was particularly instrumental in exposing travesties in the criminal justice system such as the case of the Birmingham Six.

Competition

Competition from ITV forced the BBC to up its game, with big changes initiated by a new Director General, Hugh Greene, who headed the organisation throughout the sixties. Under Greene programming was encouraged to reflect the social changes and attitudes of the sixties. There was “anti-establishment” satire like That Was The Week That Was, gritty dramas like Z Cars and plays tackling social issues, the most famous being “Cathy Come Home”, dealing with homelessness.

Here we can mark the start of the BBC becoming the pet hate of the right in British politics. Leading this early charge was Mary Whitehouse, self appointed leader of the National Viewers and Listeners Association. An “evangelical Christian and moral crusader”, Whitehouse was particularly incensed by sexual content and “bad language” in BBC content and regarded Greene as “the devil incarnate”. For his part, Greene had a painting of her in his office which he threw darts at.

Particularly notable in this period was “The Big Flame”, a play by Jim Allen, which imagined the takeover of the Liverpool docks by its workforce. Whitehouse denounced the play as “a blueprint for the communist takeover of the docks” and demanded the government review the BBC charter.

Autocratic regimes have unsurprisingly had difficulty understanding why the British state can’t control the media. In 1980, ATV broadcast the drama documentary Death of a Princess about a Saudi royal and her lover, both executed for “adultery”. (She was shot, he got beheaded.) The Thatcher government condemned the programme because it upset their cosy relationship with the Saudi regime. Coincidentally, ATV lost its ITV licence two years later.

Separately, the Thatcher government was to take issue with the BBC on numerous occasions, such as its reporting of the Falklands and Northern Ireland. Thatcher even contemplated privately suing the BBC over a satirical item on the Today programme.

Independence

It is therefore quite inaccurate to regard the BBC as a broadcasting organisation totally subservient to the British government of the day. It has a degree of independence which can challenge government actions regardless of which government is in office. The “dodgy dossier” in the Blair years is another case in point.

Attacks on the BBC have blunted the questioning edge of its journalistic endeavours. Recent exposures of the Post Office and privatised water industry scandals have come from ITV and Channel 4 respectively. Yet all these organisations have varying degrees of journalistic integrity.

The direction the right wing want to take the media instead is signposted by the presence of GB News and Talk TV, blatant right wing propaganda channels. We also have the ironically termed social media, awash as it is with fascist and racist sewage and so a significant cause of the growth of the far right in the last decade.

Socialist have justifiable criticisms of public service broadcasting (BBC, ITV, and Channel 4), but they are more likely to prove reliable sources of information than their alternatives.

There’s zero discussion on the left of how the media would function in a socialist society. The right naturally paint a picture of total state censorship and control and that would certainly be the case in the unlikely eventuality of the likes of George Galloway coming to power. It is therefore up to us to counter that conception and argue that media under socialism would represent genuine freedom of expression.

Participatory democracy ought to be part of that, with working-class organisations and communities enabled to make their own programmes and have their voices heard.