BBC Commentary - agrégation Rouen

I will be posting here in the next few days detailed  comments concerning the commentary  some of you did on a speech by Tony Benn. Everyone should look carefully at this, even if they did not do the commentary, because questions of method will be front and centre. Here is that document again. 

Speech to Constituents on the Role of Broadcasting (18 October 1968)

                                                                               

(…) I want to talk about the role of the BBC as the prime national instrument in broadcasting. I am not proposing direct Government control of the mass media, to which I would be wholly opposed. Nor am I making, for the purpose of this argument, any complaint of political bias. Arguments about political balance are quite separate and ought to be conducted quite separately from any debate on the future of mass communications.

Broadcasting should be used, to the full, to help individual men and women to live useful and full lives. That is to say that, in its broadest sense, communications should serve the people and not become their master. But if it is to do so, it has to make available the sort of information and programmes which are really relevant to human needs. These needs include the need to be entertained, the need to be informed and the need to be educated. The original BBC charter recognized this.

Now, a new dimension has to be added to this basic requirement. This is the need for helping us to adjust to the enormous changes which are occurring in society, and which are far greater for this generation than for any generation that has ever gone before it. We therefore have to add a new criterion relating to the method. If the broadcasting organisations are to perform their task, they must allow us to meet our objectives by talking to each other. Availability of access to the mass media becomes an integral part of the operational requirement.

Looking back over the history of the BBC, the general level of information, education and culture has risen sharply. It has also given pleasure to millions of people by bringing them entertainment, sporting events, drama and music. Criticisms must be set in the balance against these formidable achievements and a record of service to the public which is widely recognised and appreciated.

However, in recent years, this objectivity has been replaced by a growing tendency to personalise news presentation. The news reader has almost become a commentator; the gap between news and comment has greatly narrowed. This tendency to personalisation, carrying with it editorial powers exercised by individual commentators, has even more serious implications for other types of programmes.

The BBC retains, either on the staff or on contract, a whole host of commentators who, being quite free to comment, carry with them some inevitable suggestion of BBC authority. True, the BBC, through its board of Governors, has no collective view on public matters and very rarely issues a statement of any kind. But listeners and viewers have come to expect from certain well-known broadcasters a particular line of thought which is peculiar to them, but which, though the power of the medium, inevitably shapes public thinking.

Nobody wants to go back to the earlier tradition. Quite the reverse. What is wrong is that availability of access is still too restricted in that it is almost limited to a few hundred broadcasters, chosen by the BBC.

First, in respect of the choice of subjects: Britain has thousands of problems which would merit the attention of the broadcasting authorities. Certain ones are regularly picked out for treatment. They include the most important, but do not by any means cover all those that are important. The choice is supposedly influenced by the interests of the mass audience and it is here that the influence of the programme ratings begins to be felt. It would be surprising if the sort of subjects that are guaranteed to get a large audience in the popular newspapers were not effective on the radio or TV. This is exactly what is happening.

Second, in respect of the presentation of the subject. Here too, the influence of the ratings is very strong and so is the pressure of time. Important subjects are skimped, important discussions are telescoped and conflicts are artificially sharpened. The result is inevitably to make for triviality and superficiality, over-simplifying what is immensely complicated and sensationalizing almost everything that is touched on.

Third, by choice of people. Any BBC producer soon learns that a certain sort of person will give him just what he wants (…)

 

Tony Benn, 18 October 1968 in: Benn, Tony, Office Without Power: Diaries 1968-72, Arrow Books, London, 1989 (1988), pp. 107-109.