Whose BBC?

In its 100-year history, the BBC has never been far from crisis. Michael Prescott’s leaked BBC memo, alleging serious and systemic editorial failures, is only the latest scandal to inflame searching debate about the BBC’s future. In the weeks since the director-general and BBC’s CEO of news both resigned, with a $5bn Donald Trump lawsuit and once-in-a-generation review of the BBC’s charter thrown in the mix, how has this debate taken shape?

The BBC’s most vocal opponents – an alliance of politicians, media personalities and former BBC grandees – claim the scandal proves an unshakeable left-liberal bias, a bloated Beeb bureaucracy and an incontrovertible need to end the TV licence fee. Meanwhile, the BBC’s most vocal defenders – another alliance of politicians, media personalities and former BBC grandees – have warned against a ‘baby with the bathwater’ reaction. They highlight the BBC’s near-universal audience (reaching 94 per cent of the British public), its global reputation as an impartial news source, and the significant public value of its ad-free, free-to-air TV, radio and online services (all at a cost of just 48p a day).

These arguments are not unique to this latest scandal. Nor are they without merit. The BBC is the centrepiece of the UK’s media, but it faces growing distrust over how it reports major matters of national debate. Competition from streaming services and online platforms is an existential threat, but the BBC’s contribution to our national culture – not least its investment in Britain’s creative industries – will never be matched by the likes of Netflix or Amazon. The licence fee is outdated, punitive, regressive and in dire need of replacing. Yet collective public investment in media that is independent, publicly accountable, and serves the needs and interests of all is a foundation of modern British society and democracy – one that is more important now than ever before.

The fundamental problem is that we finance the BBC as a national public service broadcaster, but the British public has no say in how the BBC is run or governed. The BBC has launched its ‘Our BBC’ campaign, but it is not – nor has it ever been – ‘our BBC’ in any meaningful sense. The government of the day holds exclusive power to appoint key figures to the BBC Board, controls its funding, and sets the terms of the royal charter, which all expose the BBC to routine political interference. Ofcom’s regulation of the BBC is more focused on its market impact than on how well it is fulfilling its public mission, leading to limited scrutiny of decisions that harm BBC audiences – like the catastrophic cuts to BBC local radio.

Even MPs are denied real power to hold the BBC to account or to shape its constitution on behalf of their constituents. The dramatic fallout from Prescott’s leaked memo (which Prescott himself has now rowed back on) was not driven by organic public outrage or formal accountability. This top-level bloodletting was manufactured through an assault by the right-wing press and dubious scheming within the BBC Board. Some of the proposals to fix the BBC’s alleged shortcomings – like introducing a deputy director-general or creating an ‘independent’ appointments process – reveal a dangerous obsession over who sits at the table, while tens of millions of people remain locked out of the building.

Our media landscape is dominated – and often hijacked – by big tech platforms, powerful private interests and malign influencers who revel in polarising public debate. Tackling the many deep divisions and inequalities that distort public life requires an institution in which we all hold a common stake, and which empowers the public to collectively understand, debate and decide on what kind of country we want to live in. The BBC is the best candidate for this role, but it requires fundamental change to replace creaking, elitist 20^th-century structures with a democratic model fit for the digital age.

One solution would be to transform the BBC into a mutual – an idea first proposed in 2020 by Lisa Nandy, who has just launched the official review of the BBC’s royal charter. Whereas co-operative businesses and building societies operate as voluntary organisations or shareholder democracies, a mutual BBC would belong to every UK citizen as ‘members’, with guaranteed rights and powers as active and direct participants in how the BBC works. This would include, for example: replacing the BBC board with a council of randomly selected members, representative of the population, to hold the BBC to account; public panels that collaborate with BBC staff to better inform how it reports on major news stories; and giving members control over a portion of their BBC funding, enabling them to directly commission the kinds of content they want the BBC to produce.

For over a century the BBC has informed, educated and entertained generations of British audiences, but the BBC’s democratic deficit is the greatest threat to its future. There is a serious risk that, when given this historic opportunity at the charter review, the government and the BBC’s defenders shy away from real democratic reform, and opt instead to tinker at the edges of its existing failed structures. This will leave the BBC exposed to the same antidemocratic forces it is supposed to counter, facing a bleak future of dwindling audiences, collapsing funding and eventual irrelevance. If the BBC is going to survive and thrive, the charter review may be the last opportunity we have to transform it into a truly democratic institution that’s by – and not just for – the public.

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