I have frequently found myself talking to reform-minded individuals in the Middle East. Many like the idea of democracy. They admire it. Personally they are liberal, progressive, secular.
And yet the closer they are to power — or when holding office — the more they concede that the time is not yet ripe. Their work is too important, and the people are too easily led, too poorly educated, too radical, too sectarian.
Speaking yesterday at the BBC, I had that feeling of Middle Eastern déjà vu. I was talking trust at the College of Journalism, and the Q&A moved into the pulse-racing area of BBC governance.
I’d argued that the BBC’s polling on trust was symptomatic of its top down, authoritarian governance. Authority framed the questions, people’s opinions were then duly weighed. It was a kind of 19C plebiscitarianism.
What about contesting some of the things at the heart of the BBC? Wasn’t teaching people to organise, campaign and disagree, one of the ways of sustaining civil society which is enshrined in the current BBC charter?
Home Affairs ed Mark Easton, a former colleague, and one of the sharpest BBC journos around, voiced a widely held scepticism about allowing any kind of democratic decision-making into the Beeb. It would destroy it, he said.
My argument is that the contest is the process, and that the BBC could exercise a leadership role in British public life by stepping modestly towards democracy within its governance. An elected trust? Or perhaps even an elected Director-General?
I had the chance to raise this with BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons recently, as he took soundings on the future of the corporation.
My two cents? I see it going one these ways:
1) The public gets let in to bring more direct democractic accountability over resources and priorities, and so legitimacy to the licence fee
2) Or the market gets let in to share the benefits and make the BBC into a genuine global media leader.
The Dewey–eyed romantic in me would like the first to happen. The realist sees the second. Perhaps real innovation would mean having both.
> 1) The public gets let in to bring more direct democractic accountability over resources and priorities, and so legitimacy to the licence fee
Isn’t that the Audience Councils for England, Scotland, Wales and sunny Northern Ireland — expanded from the previous Broadcasting Councils, and now embedded in the BBC Charter settlement — councils’ bringing a wide range of licence fee payers’ perspectives to bear on the work of the Trust, and hence on the BBC’s services in the UK.
“… identification of audience priorities for BBC services (based on feedback and research within their respective nation) and the assessment of the BBC’s performance against its service licences, Public Purposes and annual Statement of Programme Policies.”
It’s not the only way that the public are listened to (by the Trust or the day-to-day Executive), nor the only way that the public influence the course that the BBC sets, but seems like one of the ways.
And I guess it’s not absolute democracy — but it’s an intentional and listened to method of feeding audience perception and desire into the services that are funded by everyone’s licence fee.
@Alan — There are plenty of ways the BBC solicits public opinion and input but none of them equate to democracy.
Their nearest analogue is the kind of consultative despotism practised in some Gulf states.
Surely we can do better!
So name one organisation — commercial, public sector or charity — larger than 1000 people that looks democratic? (Cunningly, Parliament is <1000!)
Does City University London practice absolute democracy? Student Councils?
I know in the post above you’ve consigned (1) to the romantic notion bin, but how might you go about introducing more (informed) democratic say?
Give Scotland a referendum on a Scottish Six? Allow the NI audience to vote on whether to pour the sports budget into GAA, Football, or both? I do fancy a balloon debate (Big Brother style) to choose the next Blue Peter presenter!
That’s a great argument for not starting…I’d say the BBC is just one big, fat multi-billion pound example of the UK quango-cracy. Or, more politely, in an excellent position to occupy a leadership role in the governance reform of UK public life.
Quango-cracy benefits=low corruption, ‘Great and Good’ managed inclusivity.
Drawbacks=alienating, elitist, enervating effect on public life.
I didn’t become an academic to draw conclusions!
Or to offer suggestions :)
An elected trust/or D-G is at least a start. The issues then are the politics. And political devolution might address that from outside the British Broadcasting Corporation…
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Giving licence fee payers a share in the governance of the BBC wouldn’t change much. The BBC is not a government department — it doesn’t need to be “democratic” in this way. It’s not the NHS — its a creative, media organisation.
Licence fee payers don’t care that much about governance and seem to be happy with what they currently have got. What they do care about is content, programmes, creativity. They need to be given a share in the BBC’s creativity, not its governance. They need to be let in so that they are a part of the creative process, not the governance.
@Nick Democracy is the point of democracy.
It doesn’t ‘do’ much for the UK as a whole, but I haven’t heard many people advancing that as an argument for dispensing with it. Reforming it, maybe…