The BBC is in trouble. The Director-General has stepped down in the midst of a scandal about editorial standards, as happened in 2004 and 2012. So far so familiar. But this time it’s in a different kind of trouble. The corporation now finds itself in a global media environment dominated by digital platforms and an increasingly erratic US state. The fact that President Trump is threatening to sue it for a billion dollars only dramatises a much deeper problem: the BBC was created to convene and cater to national audiences in the age of television and radio.
American-owned platforms have displaced broadcast at the apex of the media system and the BBC’s national audiences are being folded into their global attention-harvesting operations. The BBC will either reform or fade into irrelevance.
The BBC will not save itself
But there is a problem. The BBC will not save itself. It was created to serve as the centre of gravity for an establishment consensus, which could then be beamed into homes throughout the United Kingdom and beyond. It was dedicated to this task in the last decades of the British Empire, through the postwar mixed economy, and throughout the era that began with Thatcher, was consolidated by Blair, and continues to this day. As the political economy of privatisation and deregulation founders the BBC is busy trying to make an accommodation with Reform.
If the ruling establishment decide that the future of the UK is to be one of intensifying racism and authoritarianism in defence of Thatcherism, the BBC will reflexively adapt to the new reality. This is the context in which Deborah Turness was drawing up ‘plans to address low trust issues with Reform voters’ over the summer, as reported by Adam Bienkov in the Byline Times. Nigel Farage, meanwhile, has made it clear that he wants to ‘slim down’ the ‘institutionally biased’ BBC and make it compete with ‘with everybody else’ by moving to a subscription model. Not so much turkeys voting for Christmas, as basting themselves and climbing in the oven.
The public needs to give the BBC a future
So it is up to us, the public that pays for public media, to find a viable future for the BBC. In an age of digital platforms we need a genre of content that can compete with algorithmically ordered sort-form video. Happily, there is one: participation in democratic deliberation about our current conditions, and about how we should change these conditions. Digital technology allows us to organise inquiry and discussion in ways that would once have been almost impossible. We can engage together in forms of representative deliberation that sharpen and improve our conversations with our friends and families, neighbours and fellow citizens.
At present the contents of political debate are decided off-camera and out of sight. The rich and the powerful decide what is and isn’t worth sharing with large audiences. The result is news and current affairs that are stultifying when they arenn’t outright misleading. We will only be able to reconvene large national audiences if we make the creation of public opinion a truly public affair.
What a reformed public media could look like
My co-authors and I have begun to set out what a reformed public media might look like in a report for the Common Wealth think tank: Our Mutual Friend: The BBC in the Digital Age. We take our cue from the current Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy. In 2020 Nandy said that she would ‘like to see us mutualise the BBC … This will mean a new structure for the BBC Board that focuses on genuine public representation and participation.’ In our report we set out what a mutualised BBC would look like. We argue that we should all be actively and directly involved in the operations and governance of the BBC, through a general right to direct funds towards projects we support, and through universal eligibility to serve on randomly selected bodies that will analyse, assess and organise information, and oversee the corporation’s professional staff.
The latest scandal has highlighted the extent to which the BBC is divided on key questions. There are other issues where consensus rules. When it comes to the fundamentals of statecraft all too often there is an eerie silence. We are still living with the consequences of the BBC’s failure to explain adequately the financial crisis of 2007-8. But across the whole of public business the public should play a central role in assembling information and making sense of its implications.
A consultation for the BBC 2027 Charter
The first step to a reformed BBC is to ensure that the consultation process for its 2027 Charter is truly open and takes into account all shades of opinion, and all proposals for the organisation’s future. The Media Reform Coalition have drafted a petition to the Culture Secretary, which calls on her to stay true to her cooperative principles and establish a series of citizens’ assemblies to discuss and publicise the issues in a way that reflects existing public opinion and helps us all improve our understanding. You can find out more about the petition and the charter renewal campaign at the Media Reform Coalition website.
The British Broadcasting Company Ltd was created in 1922. In 1927 the British Broadcasting Corporation replaced it. With your help 2027 will mark the birth of the British Digital Cooperative.
