It is difficult to overstate the importance of the BBC to Britain’s cultural life, political history, economic standing and global reputation. It has 21,000 employees, broadcasts to 453 million people around the world and its output across radio and television amounts to more than 100,000 hours of news, current affairs, arts and entertainment every year.
By any measure, it is a huge and hugely significant institution. And, like most state-funded organisations of its nature – the NHS, the British Army, the Civil Service, for example – its size, scale and reach mean that it has areas of inefficiency, inertia, and, yes, incompetence. Nevertheless, in an era of fake news and misinformation, the BBC is still the most trusted news source, at home and abroad. What’s more, you can get Strictly Come Dancing, Wimbledon, Desert Island Discs, Sara Cox and the Proms, all for £3.36 a week.
This is not special pleading on behalf of the corporation; it is merely to add a minor context to its mistakes, and to resist the moral panic caused by the defenestration of the two presenters of its hit TV show MasterChef. I don’t care for, or about, Gregg Wallace and John Torode, and I know enough about them now, from Wallace’s towel drop and his inveterate handsyness to Torode’s use of an “extremely offensive racist term”, not to mourn their departure from our screens.
What is of much more concern is the succour that the MasterChef debacle gives the BBC’s commercial and political enemies. Watching Director-General Tim Davie’s response to the independent report into the 83 complaints made about Wallace’s behaviour was to see a man with his back firmly against the wall, having to explain, apologise and reassure all at the same time.
Mr Davie is paid £547,000 a year to run the BBC. It is a substantial salary, but it is a fraction of what business leaders in the private sector could command for a job of commensurate responsibility. Notwithstanding, he leads an organisation which has made a series of serious errors recently, and the public is right to demand accountability.
But it is not the “catastrophic failure” that Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy called it, and each one of the missteps is of a very different nature. The live-streaming of punk duo Bob Vylan’s offensive chants at Glastonbury, the broadcasting of a documentary on Gaza that turned out to be narrated by the son of a Hamas official and the permissive culture around Masterchef that allowed Wallace’s behaviour to go unchecked for years have all put Davie under pressure in recent weeks, but the question is whether these mistakes are endemic or not.
My belief is that they are more the result of the sheer scope of the BBC’s output and the difficulty of complete oversight, bad decision-making by individuals and the institutional inertia that besets many public bodies.
Both MasterChef and the Gaza documentary are the work of independent production companies. Of course, when it comes to Wallace and Torode, an organisation which harboured Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris and Huw Edwards cannot complain if its opponents point to an egregious indulgence of its stars. We are right to expect more from the BBC, but I think the response to this latest offence has been honourable, honest and transparent.
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Wallace was sacked, Torode too, three staffers have been asked to “step back” from their roles after Glastonbury, and there was an admission of collective responsibility over the Gaza documentary.
Contrast this with the other instruments of state, like politics or the church, when wrongdoing has been exposed. Individuals and corporate bodies have been dragged kicking and screaming towards resolution and reparation. And what about the hypocrisy of elements in the media who lambast the BBC over its failures but turn a blind eye to the criminal activities in their midst for years?
So, best not buy into the narrative, aired at every turn by those who seek to diminish it, that the BBC is a rotten organisation, and these incidents exemplify its inherent weaknesses. The opposite is, in fact, true. The BBC is an admirable institution that, imperfect though it may be, overwhelmingly enriches the life of the nation. And as far as MasterChef is concerned, good riddance to a couple of bad eggs.
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