This is not the time to knock the BBC, but it should carry more news from Europe
STEPHEN GLOVER
fter the Hutton inquiry all fair-minded people should rally to the BBC. It is true that over the years the Corporation has sometimes displayed a bias in favour of New Labour. I remember, for example, how after Peter Mandelson was ejected from the Cabinet for a second time, BBC2's Newsnight brought together various New Labour figures to discuss the event in a sympathetic way. It is also true that the BBC has weakened its raison d'être by its continual dumbing-down. Nonetheless, at a time when the Corporation's very future is in jeopardy and the morale of its staff is low, a spirit of solidarity is in order.
So it is with some trepidation that I pick up a report published by the Centre for Policy Studies which lands a number of well-aimed blows on the BBC. Kathy Gyngell and David Keighley have periodically monitored BBC coverage of the European Union over five years. With heroic endurance they have tracked some 2,000 hours of BBC television and radio programmes. Their conclusion in An Outbreak of Narcolepsy' is not that the BBC is automatically pro-European — though it may well be — but that it ignores what is happening in Europe to a remarkable extent.
According to the Cabinet Office website, 'almost half of all major UK laws start off in Europe'. In some areas of policy, such as agriculture, all legislation originates in Brussels. And yet, as Gyngell and Keighley argue very convincingly, the BBC's output does not begin to reflect the importance of the European Union in the lives of ordinary Britons. They say that the proportion of total airtime devoted by the main BBC television news programmes to the European elections in June 1999 was only 2.6 per cent. A major speech by Tony Blair on his vision for a more integrated Europe was virtually ignored by the BBC, while a speech by William Hague ploughing a very different furrow was also scarcely reported.
Possibly the 1999 European elections received even less attention from the BBC than they otherwise would because of the war in Kosovo being fought at that time, which had 20 times as much coverage, according to Gyngell and Keighley. But they show that the lack of interest in European affairs has persisted through important summits and the process of
creating a new European constitution. Between September 2002 and June 2003, a period of significant political development in Europe. only 5 per cent of the coverage of the Today programme was given over to Europe. In comparison, home affairs accounted for nearly 50 per cent of Today's airtime and world affairs 33 per cent. Gyngell and Keighley argue that broadsheet newspapers do not display the same degree of indifference to European matters. For example, of the 34 stories covered by the quality press before the Seville summit in 2002, only eight were dealt with by the Today programme. Newsnight betrays no greater interest in the EU, though it was one of its presenters, Jeremy Paxman, who sneeringly described the low turnout in the 1999 European elections as 'an outbreak of narcolepsy'.
Why does the BBC provide relatively skimpy coverage of Europe? Of course, much of what takes place in Brussels and Strasbourg is complex and boring, but one might say the same about a lot of the goings-on at Westminster, which the BBC nonetheless reports faithfully. It is one of the skills of a good journalist to bring alive, and make relevant, something which might appear at first sight difficult to understand. Perhaps (though Gyngell and Keighley do not argue this) the BBC's indifference is part of a conspiracy: the encroaching powers of Europe are not fully reported for fear of alerting ordinary people to what is going on. But a good European should surely want as much coverage of the EU as possible because the consequence of ignoring what happens there is boredom and indifference, which can easily turn to antagonism. The BBC may simply not have adapted itself to the much greater role that Brussels now plays in our lives. It is reporting a Westminster-centred world that no longer reflects the realities of political power.
My fear is that the BBC, which is understandably pretty chippy at the moment, will simply dismiss 'An Outbreak of Narcolepsy' as coming from a right-of-centre thinktank which may have an anti-European agenda. But the evidence provided by Gyngell and Keighley is incontrovertible and should be taken on its merits. I don't know whether their suggestion that the BBC should have a European Union editor is a good one, but it is certain that the BBC should think more carefully about how to cover Europe. It does, after all, have a mission 'to inform, educate and entertain' which it is hardly fulfilling at the moment. It is astonishing that so few of us should know what is really going on in Europe. That, in large measure, is the fault of the BBC.
Adelegation of workers and peasants from the Daily Telegraph recently went to Ofcom to express their opposition to Richard Desmond buying the Telegraph Group from Hollinger International. At the end of last week Mr Desmond announced that he was withdrawing from the race to buy the newspapers. It would be nice to attribute this wonderful development to the group of journalists. After all, in 1981 senior journalists at the Observer helped to stave off Rupert Murdoch's interest in the paper. Ofcom would undoubtedly have made trouble for Mr Desmond had he made the winning bid, and he may not have fancied all the attendant bad publicity. But there is no reason to doubt his verdict that the sums being offered for the Telegraph Group are higher than he is willing to pay.
Gannett, the American newspaper group, has also pulled out of the bidding for the same reason, though some say there is a minuscule chance it may come back. Two weeks ago I suggested that Gannett was a leading bidder, and might snatch the Telegraph Group from under the noses of British rivals who had been more written about. I must apologise for having invited readers to read a column that turns out to have no basis at all. What a waste of time.
The truth is that in an auction of this sort almost all the players tell fibs about what they are doing. They tell journalists that they are bidding more — or less — than they really are in order to mislead the rival bidders. For this reason I treat everything I read in the newspapers about the bids for the Telegraph Group with a pinch of salt. It is very difficult to disentangle fact from fiction. With Gannett in mind, I should refrain from predicting the outcome. That said, I cannot resist saying that my reason tells me that of the remaining players — the Daily Mail and General Trust, the Barclay brothers, Axel Springer, the Israeli billionaire Haim Saban and the venture capital groups Apax and 3i — the most likely winners are DMGT or the Barclays. If I were a betting man, I might put an outside bet on Axel Springer.
Previous page
