Infuriated by the BBC’s lack of coverage of its work, The European Scrutiny committee is at the centre of a discussion about the ‘limits’ of the corporation’s independence. Part 1 of this post was published on 17 April 2015.
“A serious mistake”
As part of its follow-up to the original 2013 Scrutiny inquiry, the Committee requested BBC Trustee Richard Ayre, and Trust Chairman, Rona Fairhead, to come before it on 14 January 2015. Lord Hall, the BBC Director-General, and James Harding, its Director of News and Current Affairs, appeared before it on 11 March. Once again, the same concerns as above were raised, although this time, on occasion, in a more aggressive fashion.
Thus at the 14 January hearing, Michael Connarty refers to “the BBC’s apparent refusal to cover in depth this Committee’s November 2013 scrutiny report” (Q29), asks: “Why was our report, in which we did a very thorough piece of investigation and evidence-taking as to how the process might be improved, practically ignored?” (Q30), and suggests that “maybe that is why the Government has completely refused to implement it. They can do things almost in secrecy because the media do not cover it” (Q31). Later in the same hearing, the Chairman complains that:
If the European Scrutiny Committee produces a report of that importance in November last year and it receives no coverage at all – I do not pay the slightest attention, if I may say so, to the question of whether other people looked at it; the question is whether the BBC looked at it, and that is what you are here to answer. They did not, and I find that very puzzling, because, as Michael Connarty indicated, it was the most radical review of the manner in which the European scrutiny system, which relates to the Government of the United Kingdom in relation to the European issue, was examined by the Committee with responsibility for that issue. It was not done, and therefore the question is not whether there was a breadth of opinion and voices; it is a question of whether or not the actual issue of the impartiality with regard to the subject matter was being properly presented by the BBC. The answer is emphatically that it was not. (Q57)
Ayre responds that “the decision over whether or not to report the findings of this Committee or any Committee is a matter entirely for programme makers in the BBC, for editors acting within the BBC’s editorial guidelines” and adds that the Trust was complying with the BBC Charter, “in the sense that the charter says that editorial decisions are for the BBC executive, and the Trust is explicitly excluded from involvement in editorial decisions” (Q57-8).
He then suggests to the Chairman that “I am sure you would recognise that the author of any report is arguably not best placed to determine whether that report should be featured in BBC news programmes, because everyone who writes a report thinks it is worth reporting”, which receives the tart response: “This is a Committee, not just of one person. This is a self-evident fact. It was a radical report. It was not reported. That is the point” (Q58). A point which he repeats, forcefully, at Q66 in the same session, asserting that for the BBC to “ignore” the report was a “serious mistake” and a “serious challenge to most of the evidence given today.”
Suffused with suspicion
Both hearings are, once again, suffused with suspicion that the BBC is institutionally biased towards the EU, and that this colours its coverage of the institution. Thus at Q45 in the 11 March hearing the Chairman observes of theToday programme:
Some of us know a little bit about what goes on in the European context, and we find it rather difficult to listen to a stream of people who are constantly being asked, ‘But isn’t this going to mean that if the United Kingdom was to leave the European Union, you’—for example, the vice-president of Ford—‘would regard it as a complete disaster area for the United Kingdom?’ Or, for example, someone such as Martin Sorrell is brought on, who is well known to have views of the kind that he tends to express very volubly. There is a clear indication to those of us who listen to it that there is some kind of a system and/or an accident that leads to those sort of people being asked on, whereas people who have a completely contrary view seem to get less of a bite of the cherry.
More specifically, at Q41 in the 14 January hearing, Clappison brings up the fact that Fairhead is not only Chairman of the BBC Trust but also a member of the HSBC board, whose Chairman is a member of Business for New Europe, which is campaigning for Britain to stay in the EU. In response to a question about whether this might be a problem in terms of her perceived impartiality as a Trust member on matters to do with BBC coverage of the EU, Fairhead responds that the Chairman had signed up on a personal basis, although Clappison begs to differ.
At Q41 in the 11 March hearing, Chris Kelly notes of the BBC’s new Europe Editor (Katya Adler) that “there has been some comment in the media regarding her previous roles as a moderator for a number of events organised by institutions of the EU”, and at Q57-8 the Chairman brings up the fact that Bill Bush, who used to be head of Analysis and Research at the BBC, went on to become Tony Blair’s head of research, and that a former “regular forNewsnight” (actually The Politics Show and On the Record), Paola Buonadonna, is now “the head of British Influence” (actually its media director).
With the argument being conducted on this kind of level it was absolutely inevitable that the College of Journalism would once again be dragged in, and sure enough, at Q52, the Chairman avers:
I am interested very much in who does the training: the ‘quis custos question. If a trainer comes from a background where their education and training have drilled into them that moving towards integration is a good idea, that will be transmitted to the journalists in the training sessions you are referring to. Of course, that can lead to ignorance, because the complexity of the European issue is such that it requires some serious training and education.
He then goes on to explain that:
The important point that I am trying to make is about the impression that can be gained from people who seem to move seamlessly into arenas where they have a lot of influence but, at the same time, clearly do not come from the kind of background that some others feel represents the Euro-realist view. They might give a particular impression or perception … When people who were employed by the BBC appear to have attitudes that carry them into areas of the kind that I have described, perhaps there is an indication, a consciousness, that there is a form of … institutional mindset … which will cause some concern. (Q58)
At Q26 in the 11 March hearing, Rees-Mogg notes that the BBC has received €30 million funding from the EU in recent years. He goes on to point out that:
Article 9.2 of the regulations regarding the structural funds, from which the BBC has received money, states: ‘The Commission and the Member States shall ensure that assistance from the Funds is consistent with the activities, policies and priorities of the Community’. Further, the money received in 2009 and 2011 under an international heading was received on the basis of support for media capacity in the area of EU integration.
He then asks Hall and Harding whether this “undermines your reputation if you accept money from the European Union that comes with a clear requirement that you support, in the way I have outlined, the institutions of the European Union … It seems to me that it undermines the absolute guarantee of independence that the BBC ought to have, and it is rather tainted money.” Hall and Harding were obviously not prepared for such a question, and provided a written response a few days later.
This reveals not a fiendish EU plot to smuggle pro-EU propaganda into the UK via the BBC but that the funds were received not by the BBC but by BBC Media Action (BBC World Service Trust until December 2011). It was not used to support the creation of content on the BBC’s UK public services but was a legitimate source of funding for work in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe by BBC Media Action, a company limited by guarantee and a registered charity set up by the BBC and reporting to a Board of Trustees the majority of whom are independent of the BBC. It has its own constitution, which is separate from the BBC public service Charter. (Further details may be found here).
Declarations of independence
Even from the limited examples given above, it should be abundantly clear that the Committee felt entitled to deliver strictures, and in no uncertain terms, on matters of BBC editorial judgement – and not simply on the BBC’s alleged ‘refusal’ to cover the 2013 scrutiny report. This raises the very serious issue of threats to the BBC’s independence, and, thankfully, brought forth from the BBC a number of ringing declarations of that independence. Thus at Q23 in the 14 January session, James Harding stated:
The reason why we prize that independence so dearly is that if the public are going to trust the BBC to be independent and to cover politicians impartially, it has got to be clear that journalists, editors and the people who run a news organisation as important as the BBC are not asked by politicians to come and account for what they do and, in effect, do the bidding of those politicians. There is a danger here that you misread what the issue is for us. It is felt very strongly, and it is about a reluctance to come and account for editorial news judgments.
The Chairman retorts at Q24 that the BBC wouldn’t have any money if Parliament didn’t authorise it, which provokes the stinging response from Harding that “you wouldn’t have anything worth paying for if it weren’t independent.” And in a written response following his appearance, Harding states: “I do not think it would be at all right for our approach to the coverage of controversial issues, domestic or international, to be open to formal challenge by politicians, either individually or as a Committee other than through the processes laid down under the BBC Charter and Agreement for any individual complainant. As mentioned in the oral evidence session, that independence is guaranteed under Article 6 (1).”
In the 14 January session, apropos Lord Hall’s initial refusals to appear before the Committee, Ayre remarks:
Long before I became a trustee, I used to work at the BBC 15 years ago. I was a BBC journalist. At one stage, 20 years ago, I was the controller of editorial policy for the BBC. If I had been asked for my advice by the DG of the day, Lord Birt, on whether he should appear before a Select Committee four months before a general election in which the subject area of that Committee was likely to be a matter of extreme contention, I would have advised him that it was a real threat to the BBC’s independence. At a time when freedom of expression, the press, the media and speech has much occupied this nation and our neighbour nations in recent days, I can entirely understand why he might have reached that view. I would be astonished were the director-general to take a different view, had he been summoned before the Treasury Committee to talk about the BBC’s editorial coverage of the economy or the Home Affairs Committee to talk about the BBC’s coverage of immigration or crime. All of those are key issues in an election campaign. I submit that audiences would not be pleased to think that the editor-in-chief of the BBC was subjected to questioning by MPs on these editorial issues in the run-up to one of the most contentious elections we have lived through. (Q17)
Hall’s initial refusals to appear before the Committee led to another lengthy correspondence, consisting of ten letters sent between 29 January 2014 and 28 January 2015. Hall’s reluctance also had to do with safeguarding not simply the BBC’s independence but also public perceptions of that independence. Thus in a letter of 3 March 2014, he stated:
I hope you will understand that the BBC’s editorial independence as guaranteed by the BBC Charter is something very highly valued by the British public. The fact that Parliament does not, through any of its formal structures, seek to question the BBC on its editorial approach to issues, I am sure reinforces the confidence of the public that the BBC is genuinely independent from political pressure. As Editor-in-Chief of the BBC, I believe that an appearance to be questioned on our coverage of highly contested political issues by way of a formal Select Committee hearing could undermine that critical perception, and for that reason, I am afraid I must decline to offer to appear.
In a later letter, of 20 January 2015, he actually cited the questioning of Ayre and Fairhead, discussed earlier, as illustrating the reason for his unwillingness to be questioned by the Committee, namely “the risk that we are seen by the British public and overseas to be being questioned by politicians on editorial judgements made by our journalists in our coverage of Europe and the European Scrutiny process”, and noted that the Committee “did on occasion seek to question the decisions made by programme editors in their coverage of individual stories”, citing as one particular example Connarty’s remarks, quoted above, about the BBC’s non-coverage of the 2013 scrutiny report.
Accountability to Parliament
Altogether unsurprisingly, the Scrutiny Reform Follow-Up and Legacy Report,which was published on 25 March 2015, was extremely critical of the BBC. In particular it claimed that Lord Hall did not seem to “appreciate fully the limitations on the BBC editorial independence imposed by Article 6 of the Charter, the Framework Agreement and the general law”, and that James Harding’s defence of the BBC’s independence, quoted above, was of concern to the Committee “because such editorial judgements are constrained by the limitations of the Charter, the Framework Agreement and the general law.” Once more, the Committee was piqued by lack of BBC coverage of its own affairs, mentioning yet again “our seminal report” of 2013, and complaining of the hearing involving Hall and Harding that “apart from a broadcast on BBC Parliament after the session and a short summary of the proceedings on the BBC website, there was to our knowledge no news commentary, analysis or interviews on any of the mainstream programmes of the BBC of the proceedings.”
They continued: “We regard these failures as inexplicable, and in our view they could be construed as a breach of the BBC’s duties under its Charter and Framework Agreement, and particularly in respect of its public purposes.” More generally, they expressed themselves “deeply concerned about the manner in which the BBC treats EU issues” and complained that “our witnesses seemed to be more intent on defending and asserting their own opinions, mindset and interpretation of the obligations under the Charter and Framework Agreement than in whether they had in fact discharged them.” The Committee concluded that:
In the light of the evidence we have taken over the past two years from the BBC, and given the statements made by the Chairman of the BBC Trust, Rona Fairhead, indicating that even she, as Chairman of the Trust, wishes to see reform of governance, that our criticisms of the way the BBC treats EU issues, and the approach by its leaders to the Committee, particularly the initial refusal to give oral evidence, shows that accountability to Parliament must be a key factor to be considered as part of the review of the BBC Charter in 2016, as should be strict adherence to the aims set out by the BBC in its response to the Wilson Review.
What did Lord Wilson say?
This refers to the review of BBC news coverage of the EU undertaken for the Corporation by Lord Wilson of Dinton and published in 2005. Its criticisms are frequently cited by the Committee as a means of pointing up what it regards as the BBC’s current failures and shortcomings in this area. Had all of Wilson’s recommendations been acted upon, it seems to be saying, the Committee would have been satisfied. But, as I have suggested, what the Committee appears to desire above all else is more voices critical of the EU on the BBC. The only problem is that it is extremely hard to find that particular prescription in the Wilson report.
In the next part of this article I will examine what the report actually said, and use that as the basis for a critique of current BBC coverage of the EU – one that is different from that of the European Scrutiny Committee in many respects. But not in all. In its less self-regarding and ‘Euro-realist’ (to use the Chairman’s terms) moments, the Committee does actually make a number of useful points which are not dissimilar to certain of Wilson’s, as I will attempt to demonstrate.
This post originally appeared on the Open Democracy, Our Beeb, website and is reproduced with permission and thanks.
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