Tag Archives: British Broadcasting Corporation

What is public service broadcasting?

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Public Service BroadcastingAs a pro­fessor with a back­ground in pub­lic ser­vice broad­cast­ing (PSB), I’m often asked — What exactly is pub­lic ser­vice broadcasting?

Take a pop­u­lar pro­gramme like Neigh­bours. From 1986 to 2008 it appeared on the BBC and was an import­ant piece of PSB, pop­u­lar with view­ers, and val­ued for its air­ing of gritty but uni­ver­sal human themes played out in an Anti­podean setting.

Alas, in Feb­ru­ary of last year it moved to Five, and became a piece of com­mer­cial, schedule-filling tat that appealed to the low­est com­mon denom­in­ator. Con­tinue read­ing →

When to keep your mouth shut

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A tale to sour the lin­gen­ber­ries on your meat­balls (yes, Scand­inavian story com­ing up). From the Guard­ian News Blog:

The Tele­graph reports that aca­dem­ics in Den­mark found the fur­niture chain [Ikea] was nam­ing its cheaper products after Dan­ish towns. Con­tinue read­ing →

Arguing against Nick Davies

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Flat Earth News by Nick DaviesBritish writer Nick Dav­ies is an inspir­a­tion to a lot of young journ­al­ists, and rightly so (you can read more of his writ­ing on social issues here). But now he has moved from cov­er­ing drugs and crim­inal justice to report on journ­al­ism. And in doing so, he com­mis­sioned some research to back up his cri­ti­cisms and ana­lysis. Con­tinue read­ing →

Democracy and the BBC: more preached than practised

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Oné of my favour­ite quotes on demo­cracy (dis­owned by its ori­gin­ator alas), comes from Brit­ish edu­cator Derry Han­nam:

Learn­ing about demo­cracy and cit­izen­ship in school is a bit like read­ing hol­i­day bro­chures in prison.

Why do I trawl that quote up?

Well, BBC Director-General Mark Thompson, in an inter­est­ing and wide-ranging speech address­ing the trust gap in pub­lic life, comes up with a key goal for the BBC:

to trans­form the way we con­nect Brit­ish demo­cracy – and all its many demo­cratic insti­tu­tions – to the public.

I don’t know about you, but I’m more con­cerned about Britain’s undemo­cratic insti­tu­tions. The BBC, for example.

Until the BBC takes demo­crat­ising itself ser­i­ously, I for one find it hard to take Thompson’s mes­sage seriously.

It’s a pity really. The BBC’s own gov­ernance makes a mock­ery of the val­ues it is charged with pro­mot­ing. Discuss…

And — thanks to the Tele­graph — you’ll have a chance to ask him just that this after­noon at 1530 GMT (Wed­nes­day, 16 Janu­ary, 2008) when he joins them for an online chat.