The BBC Trust has just issued its report assessing “the impartiality of the BBC’s network news and factual coverage of the four nations of the United Kingdom.” (Yes, Northern Ireland is — and I’m being impartial here — a nation.)
Well, like all reports the interesting stuff is not in always in the answer provided, but in the nature of the question asked.
Scotland (pop. 5m), Wales (pop. 3m) and Northern Ireland (pop. 2m) all now have representative institutions that deal with stuff like health and education. Scotland, indeed, has always had its own legal system.
All of them have some democratic representation that would like to opt out of UK PLC. But the BBC’s main channel feeds them all network television news from London at 6pm and 10pm . They get their main national news — at 6.30pm — handed out in the same way that regions, like London (pop 6m.), get theirs.
Shouldn’t the BBC be running separate, nationally produced programmes that take London material on issues like defence and foreign affairs? It does exactly that on radio. But to ask that question is perceived to be the beginning of the process of unpicking the empire of the British Broadcasting Corporation.
Instead the Trust would like to redress the balance by hearing from BBC managers on how they plan to foist Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh news on English viewers.
It’s all very political, but not very democratic. Because unlike the Scottish Parliament and Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies, there is no representative input into the BBC. Its charter is with the crown, and it is presented to Parliament to accept or reject without the opportunity for MPs to change a line.
Lastly, there’s the niggling problem for all of us media-types that people don’t necessarily rush to embrace more news. I was a guest on a BBC Radio Wales phone-in this lunchtime, and the Welsh listeners who made it on air didn’t seem particularly thrilled at the prospect at being super-sized with a double helping of Welsh news.
But IMHO, problems like that are best sorted out not by appointed committees, polls and management fiats. They’re best dealt with by the kind of horse-trading and deal-making we associate with democratic politics.
It is interesting isn’t it that London is treated like a UK region, the East Midlands for example, and not as a Nation. I can’t see that people living in Bermondsey or Beautiful Bow would be particularly interested in the events in Gretna, Haverfordwest or Belfast town centre, unless they are particularly momentus, and vice versa. Isn’t the point about local news that it is local? It means a great deal to people who are close to it and nothing to people who are further away?
And not always that much to those close to it…