Agenda politics
- 11 Jun 07, 04:55 PM
Here's an interesting thought: "BBC news is not free to pursue its own agenda". It's from Emily Bell in this morning's MediaGuardian.
She takes a tricky route to this conclusion, involving several hand-brake turns. Her starting point: John Humphrys' grilling of C4 chief executive Andy Duncan on Today.
Somehow, it's not on for the BBC to ask whether C4 is fulfilling its public service remit. Or as Emily Bell puts it: "If the question on the C4 story is really 'are you still a public service broadcaster?' then it surely can't be asked in this way by the only other public service broadcaster in Britain."
Well, it would be nuts to argue that C4's public service remit wasn't on everyone's agenda at the time; its own deputy chairman Lord Puttnam put it there . And his - and John Humphrys' - was a reasonable question to ask after the rows over that Diana programme and Big Brother competitor Emily Parr's expulsion; she was the one who used the 'n' word.
Emily Bell's reasoning is complicated, but seems to come down to this: "Where your remit and funding comes directly from the ability to deliver impartial information this is particularly important. So it is surprising how the BBC's coverage of its own stories, or indeed the woes of its competitors, is not always being handled with impeccable impartiality."
One of her examples is the BBC's alleged failure to examine the row over the Panorama wi-fi programme. There was, she claims "no inquest". It's a tough claim to uphold.
BBC's Newswatch - broadcast on News 24 and BBC One - carried out just the kind of "inquest" Emily Bell seems to have had in mind. The BBC News website carried the counter view to the original programme and 'Have Your Say' gave space to viewers to display both expertise and scepticism.
Here at the BBC College of Journalism, we commissioned Martin Moore of the Media Standards Trust to give journalists an outside view of the issues raised; his external blog on the theme is here.
But the most difficult of Emily Bell's arguments either to follow or to endorse is the idea that the BBC should be different from other news organisations in that it shouldn't do original journalism ... because if it does, it can't be impartial about news from all other sources or about other broadcasting organisations: "When stories which lead news bulletins start 'the BBC has uncovered...', how can we trust the news values attributed to it if we think the agenda is not strictly impartial?"
This argument can only hold if you assume that out there is an objective thing called "The Agenda" that can, should a news organisation choose, be purely pursued - and if any news organisation should so choose, it's the BBC. But of course, uncovering new information - one of the most fundamental tasks of journalism - implies "an agenda" rather than "The Agenda" ... and therefore the BBC shouldn't do it. It should instead suck on its pipe while deciding whether Trevor McDonald's programme or the Reuters news wire has the better story with which to lead the Ten O'Clock TV bulletin.
But there is, of course, no such thing as "The Agenda". There's the impartial examination of the many agendas we confront daily - and in the end, that impartial and fair and balanced examination is, of course, an agenda in itself. It's also probably the closest thing to something the BBC can call its own.
Which brings us back to where we started - and the question Emily Bell ducks. If "the BBC is not free to pursue its own agenda", whose must it pursue?
Kevin Marsh is editor of the BBC College of Journalism
