YES
Before I launch into this argument, I’d like you to consider how much the poorer we would be as a nation without the BBC, the host of iPlayer, the unparalleled World Service, Last Night of the Proms, proper investigative journalism and unbiased news. For have no doubt, the attacks against the BBC are a thinly veiled attempt to discredit this national icon and begin the process of dismantling it.
Yes, mistakes were made. Yes, it is right to be upset. Yes, people should take responsibility. No, it is not an excuse for people to stop paying their licence fee or demand cuts, and roar sound and fury because we expect the BBC to be perfect.
The BBC has torn itself apart over just two bad editorial decisions. Two. People have been ‘stepping aside’ left right and centre since it came to light, and it took very little haranguing from the right wing press to make it happen. The same right wing press who are apparently unaware of the irony inherent in the fact that very few people have accepted any kind responsibility over the proven conspiracy and law breaking that occurred in the Murdoch papers – despite the fact that people have been arrested. No laws were broken within this scandal, no conspiracy has been found. Several well-respected managers within the BBC volunteered to take the hit because to them, it is more important that the BBC remains respected and trusted, than they continue to have a job.
The simple truth that people struggle to recognise is that the BBC isn’t this cohort of Oxbridge graduates doing their best to insidiously drip feed the nation lies and force us to pay for it. It is comprised of tens of thousands of people of every political alignment, race and educational background. Each one does their best, each one has a public service mentality, earning far less and attracting much more criticism than they would in a private company.
The scrutiny the BBC is constantly under from everybody is astounding. James Murdoch even used his MacTaggart lecture to criticise the BBC. Yet even with all of this, it is so rare that there is any kind of newsworthy story circulating about them that it should be seen as a testament to how scrupulously they normally uphold their strict regulations and procedures.
Inquiries have been ordered, investigations are being made, the right wing press have had their pound of flesh. I think it’s time to let the BBC get back to doing what it does best – delivering high quality programming, whilst we sit back with a cup of tea to watch Natural World.
NO
The BBC has had its day. Jimmy Saville literally (not literally) put the nail in the coffin of trust in this national institution. My dad didn’t teach me much, if anything at all, but he did teach me that nothing is a mistake unless you do it twice. The BBC have constantly been in trouble over a variety of things. Just think of Jonathan Ross. From homophobic comments to questioning the prime minister of Great Britain if he ever masturbated over Margaret Thatcher, all whilst getting paid around £10,000 an episode, (paid by us).
The list goes on: there were the Richard Bacon cocaine headlines in 1998, the more recent Russell Brand saga where he claimed sexual relations with Andrew Sachs’ granddaughter and York’s very own Chancellor Greg Dyke who resigned as Director General following the Hutton Report in 2003 and an investigation into Tony Blair’s ‘honesty’.
Now we come to the current crisis. It started last year when Newsnight decided not to air an investigation into claims that Savile, a star BBC presenter from the 1960s to 1980s who had recently died, had sexually abused young people. When, in contrast, ITV did air its own programme on the allegations, it led to mounting questions about why the Newsnight programme was dropped, and whether there was a cover up. Director General George Entwistle resigned after events culminating in a report on child abuse going out on Newsnight, which led to Conservative peer Lord McAlpine being mistakenly implicated.
Since 2003, trust placed in the BBC has been slowly declining until finally it is in tatters. A recent statistic in a YouGov survey for The Sun, conducted after Entwistle’s departure, finds a 13-point reduction in the past fortnight in the proportion of people who trust BBC journalists to tell the truth.
For too many years the BBC has been put on a pedestal by the public and in the light of recent events it has been rightfully knocked off down onto the floor where it belongs. It is meant to be an impartial, honest and truthfully based organisation, providing news and entertainment, which is paid for by our taxes. I am not alone in thinking it does neither. The news is a sham, evidenced by the cover up of a child molesting TV presenter. And the entertainment? Eastenders and Cash in the Attic? I’d rather go to Willow and spend the night licking the floor.
The British public have had enough. They do not trust the BBC anymore and will not again for a very, very long time. A re-organisation and re-branding of this shameful corporation is very much needed.