Tories vs. a recipe for marshmallow brownies
In the aftermath of last night’s Top Gear, I thought it pertinent to travel back in time to the middle of May, to discuss the impact that the government has on our national broadcaster. This article is just long enough to help you forget about Chris Evans.
The government, with the publication of its original White Paper for the British Broadcasting Corporation, made the claim that the BBC had intentions of imperialism and to monopolise the media industry in the United Kingdom. The committee responsible for the White Paper therefore posited that the BBC ought to scale itself back in order to perform more in line with the level of production expected by a publicly owned entity. The middle classes, myself included, were outraged at the prospect of losing eleven thousand recipes as the facade of this downscaling, but there’s actually much more to it than that. Is this all about how to braise a chicken, or is it really something more sinister?
I want to start with some simple economics. How much does it really cost to publish a recipe from a new television programme? It's fundamentally unlikely that recipes are added at a particularly expedient rate to the BBC website. It’s maintaining them that is the true cost, and that cost is likely to be meagre at best, especially for a national organisation. Cutting the BBC’s ability to offer free, reliable information on quality family cooking is both doing the country a disservice and making a blatantly political move for no reason other than to metaphorically punch Tony Hall in the face. Of course, it’s now been revealed that the recipes will simply move and suffer a cut in number, but it still doesn’t seem like a justified move. There’s just no clear reasoning as to why this needs to happen. If you wanted to save the BBC some money, there’s much better ways you could do it – ways we will discuss later.
Unfortunately, the recipes kerfuffle has managed to overshadow the dubious choice to abolish the ‘BBC Trust’, a body independent of the BBC previously entrusted with overseeing its moral fortitude and general direction, as well as appointing board members (with the help of the Queen, to add an air of authenticity) in a way so to avoid vested interest. Replacing it with Ofcom seems impartial enough until you realise that this is stretching an already stretched regulator that just doesn’t do a good job. Even worse, there’s one job Ofcom can’t fulfil – appointing board members. From now on, half of the BBC’s board will be made up of hand-picked Tory thralls.
The truth is that cutting the limbs off national treasures like the BBC and putting government puppets on their executive board is a decision that is nought but politically motivated. It has no grounding in economic or liberal fact. The BBC does not have imperial ambitions, and even if it did, would it be so wrong? The BBC is a master of impartiality, and recipes are the least likely part of their website to be politically charged. The national broadcaster, and a major publisher of impartial news, deserves to have a place in how our country carries itself.
Moreover, it’s inherently wrong to push the media closer to marketization, as the government seems to want to do. They will chalk it up to not wanting a publically funded organisation to gain a large advantage over the private sector, (as John Whittingdale says, “the BBC can, by virtue of its size and scale, potentially have a negative impact on the media market, crowding out investment and deterring new entrants”) but the sad truth is that private sector has profit motives that encourage sensational behaviour and misrepresentation of the truth & the real world in search of more hits. Just compare BBC News to the Sun, and immediately the distinction is obvious. One is free from forced sensationalism and the influence of a certain media mogul. The other is not. However, we see ourselves being drawn yet closer to placing the Tories as the figurehead of the BBC. That’s not fair in any case, especially given the allowances they offer to the ‘mediaocracy’ (a term coined by Owen Jones to represent the right wing media’s establishment politics).
Furthermore, the government’s proposed solutions do not go nearly far enough to solving the BBC’s deepest problems. While the new White Paper forces the BBC to declare any members of staff receiving payment over 450,000 a year, we already know the biggest offenders, such as Chris Evans, or Graham Norton, who receives around two and a half million pounds annually. If you were wondering, that’s an awful lot of money.
More often than not, the reason why people take issue with national industry gaining too much power is that doing so implies an extension of government power over the peoples’ freedom. Is this the case with the BBC? The answer is quite simply no. The BBC is being curtailed because it isn’t Tory enough. This comes despite the fact that it is not nearly as liberal left leaning as it may seem. It frightens me that more people didn’t boil over with rage when the Conservative administration opted to fill BBC meeting rooms with Tory sycophants. It’s inexcusable, and it is on so many levels more unfair than the meagre likelihood of the BBC crowding out its competitors. The BBC can be an impartial, ideologically absent broadcaster that acts in the public interest, but it seems as though that’s not a role it can fulfil under Tory control.
The government, with the publication of its original White Paper for the British Broadcasting Corporation, made the claim that the BBC had intentions of imperialism and to monopolise the media industry in the United Kingdom. The committee responsible for the White Paper therefore posited that the BBC ought to scale itself back in order to perform more in line with the level of production expected by a publicly owned entity. The middle classes, myself included, were outraged at the prospect of losing eleven thousand recipes as the facade of this downscaling, but there’s actually much more to it than that. Is this all about how to braise a chicken, or is it really something more sinister?
I want to start with some simple economics. How much does it really cost to publish a recipe from a new television programme? It's fundamentally unlikely that recipes are added at a particularly expedient rate to the BBC website. It’s maintaining them that is the true cost, and that cost is likely to be meagre at best, especially for a national organisation. Cutting the BBC’s ability to offer free, reliable information on quality family cooking is both doing the country a disservice and making a blatantly political move for no reason other than to metaphorically punch Tony Hall in the face. Of course, it’s now been revealed that the recipes will simply move and suffer a cut in number, but it still doesn’t seem like a justified move. There’s just no clear reasoning as to why this needs to happen. If you wanted to save the BBC some money, there’s much better ways you could do it – ways we will discuss later.
Unfortunately, the recipes kerfuffle has managed to overshadow the dubious choice to abolish the ‘BBC Trust’, a body independent of the BBC previously entrusted with overseeing its moral fortitude and general direction, as well as appointing board members (with the help of the Queen, to add an air of authenticity) in a way so to avoid vested interest. Replacing it with Ofcom seems impartial enough until you realise that this is stretching an already stretched regulator that just doesn’t do a good job. Even worse, there’s one job Ofcom can’t fulfil – appointing board members. From now on, half of the BBC’s board will be made up of hand-picked Tory thralls.
Moreover, it’s inherently wrong to push the media closer to marketization, as the government seems to want to do. They will chalk it up to not wanting a publically funded organisation to gain a large advantage over the private sector, (as John Whittingdale says, “the BBC can, by virtue of its size and scale, potentially have a negative impact on the media market, crowding out investment and deterring new entrants”) but the sad truth is that private sector has profit motives that encourage sensational behaviour and misrepresentation of the truth & the real world in search of more hits. Just compare BBC News to the Sun, and immediately the distinction is obvious. One is free from forced sensationalism and the influence of a certain media mogul. The other is not. However, we see ourselves being drawn yet closer to placing the Tories as the figurehead of the BBC. That’s not fair in any case, especially given the allowances they offer to the ‘mediaocracy’ (a term coined by Owen Jones to represent the right wing media’s establishment politics).
More often than not, the reason why people take issue with national industry gaining too much power is that doing so implies an extension of government power over the peoples’ freedom. Is this the case with the BBC? The answer is quite simply no. The BBC is being curtailed because it isn’t Tory enough. This comes despite the fact that it is not nearly as liberal left leaning as it may seem. It frightens me that more people didn’t boil over with rage when the Conservative administration opted to fill BBC meeting rooms with Tory sycophants. It’s inexcusable, and it is on so many levels more unfair than the meagre likelihood of the BBC crowding out its competitors. The BBC can be an impartial, ideologically absent broadcaster that acts in the public interest, but it seems as though that’s not a role it can fulfil under Tory control.
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