2. Are the public purposes in the current Charter the right ones?

[Guest]

The current Charter states that "The BBC exists to serve the public interest" and that its main object is the promotion of the following Public Purposes:

• sustaining citizenship and civil society;
• promoting education and learning;
• stimulating creativity and cultural excellence;
• representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities;
• bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK; and
• promoting its other purposes, helping to deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services and, in addition, taking a leading role in the switchover to digital television.

In ff's spirit of dealing with the more straightforward/easier DCMS questions first, personally I don't have too much of a problem with the above list.

On the last bullet point, I think the BBC got a bit shafted over carrying the cost of the digital switchover, but that was just the way the political cookie crumbled at the last Licence Fee negotiation, and it's probably not worth re-opening it now, and the future spend is containable as far as I am aware. The "helping to deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies" however could grow into a never-ending chasm of wasteful spending, and I do have a beef with the current profligacy of BBC's Future Media and Technology division, but that is probably an issue about the lack of proper management and engineering strategy rather than a problem with the principle of that particular public purpose per se.

Russ

[aeolium]

Why should it be the BBC's (or any public broadcaster's) business to "sustain citizenship and civil society"? That is the job of government and the society itself. If a deeply unpopular measure of a government provoked a riot or widespread tax boycott for instance, it would not be the role of the BBC to intervene to "sustain civil society" but to provide information to people as fully and as accurately as to what was happening and why.

Should the BBC be "promoting education and learning"? Once again the primary role here is that of society, through its educational institutions. The BBC's job here should be to expand and supplement formal education with news and information about all aspects of society including history, the arts, science, law, the economy etc.

The other purposes (apart from the last) are so generalised as to be worthless. "Stimulating creativity and cultural excellence" does not even require creativity and cultural excellence in the programmes that the BBC make, provided they stimulate these things. So, R3's Breakfast programme might "stimulate cultural excellence" by driving an infuriated listener away to learn an instrument, read a classic. "Representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities" could be interpreted fairly narrowly, e.g. by having ethnic newsreaders or having regionally-based soap operas, but what about communities of interest and for instance minority opinions - like the minority opinion (at least, it may be minority) which is opposed to the fundamental economic consensus operating in society? Minority opinions like this are never heard on the current BBC perhaps because they might conflict with the public purpose of sustaining civil society.

Back to the drawing-board, I'm afraid.

[french frank]

I tend to agree with aeolium here: managers, and particularly the Trust, get really hung-up on examining every service for how well it fulfils each Purpose as a measure of 'Performance'. True, a station like Radio 3 plays less of a role in 'Sustaining citizenship and civil society' which appears to mean keeping the public informed/educated about news and current affairs, so every service has to do its bit in varying degrees.

I half detect, behind this necessity to do these 'public things', a frequent excuse for trying to increase audiences (boost ratings?): the bigger your audience, the more efficiently you're delivering the public purposes. This has been said in as many words (not the 'boosting ratings' bit!).

So what should the public responsibilities of the BBC be? Some points are buried in the Charter already, but seem to be ignored.

1. To deliver international, national and local news in an accurate, balanced and impartial way.

2. To be mindful of the BBC's position in the ecology of UK broadcasting (I mean, not using public funds to replicate/compete with what commercial services are already providing).

3. To provide a range of 'distinctive' () mainstream popular entertainment to suit all ages and a broad range of tastes.

4. To provide high quality specialist services to smaller audiences (that includes the Welsh and Gaelic language services, which, per listener hour, are a lot more expensive than Radio 3) where these are not being provided to a satisfactory standard by other broadcasters.

5. To provide programming for all sectors of UK society and to represent them generally in a fair and balanced way.

What else?

[aeolium]

I think those are generally better aims in that they are more about doing things - making programmes - than lofty ambitions with words like "sustaining", "stimulating", "promoting", "representing".

I would want something about articulating a plurality of opinions and cultures. Too often the BBC seems to want to unify, to provide general, bland, please-everyone programming, whereas I think it ought to recognise the many different communities and cultures that make up the country. This doesn't necessarily mean that the programming has to be solely for a particular community but that it at least reflects and gives an insight into it (perhaps this is a part of point 5).

I think following on from that there ought to be a key responsibility for the BBC to inform about the history and culture of other societies, not just our own. The BBC does this at present to a certain extent but imo is still predominantly insular - the World Service being a kind of ghetto devoted mainly to information about elsewhere (even though not intended for a home audience). This is particularly the case I find with conflict reporting; the population here remains woefully ignorant about the historical and cultural background to the societies where conflict has arisen. That for me is a failure of public service broadcasting.

Balance is a difficult one where reporting news. It is essential for political reporting but there are areas, for instance in history and science, where there may be an overwhelmingly strong evidential consensus and "balanced" reporting is simply inappropriate - Steve Jones has reported his dissatisfaction with some aspects of the BBC's reporting of climate change science, especially where undue coverage has been given to climate change sceptics who were not scientists.

[french frank]

I would want something about articulating a plurality of opinions and cultures. Too often the BBC seems to want to unify, to provide general, bland, please-everyone programming, whereas I think it ought to recognise the many different communities and cultures that make up the country. This doesn't necessarily mean that the programming has to be solely for a particular community but that it at least reflects and gives an insight into it (perhaps this is a part of point 5).

Yes, I think they want 'snappy' purposes that can be expressed in a few words, but what you say would overlap with my point 5.

I think following on from that there ought to be a key responsibility for the BBC to inform about the history and culture of other societies, not just our own. The BBC does this at present to a certain extent but imo is still predominantly insular - the World Service being a kind of ghetto devoted mainly to information about elsewhere (even though not intended for a home audience). This is particularly the case I find with conflict reporting; the population here remains woefully ignorant about the historical and cultural background to the societies where conflict has arisen. That for me is a failure of public service broadcasting.

Clearly that kind of situation deals with unfolding events and can't be tackled as part of the general Eucation/School' responsibility of the state.

I used the words balanced, impartial and fair and they would have different interpretations in different contexts. Is it 'fair' for the Lib Dems to have less coverage than the major parties? Yes, in the sense that fewer people voted/would vote for them so that would be a form of 'balance'; but it is fair that the liberal view should be given clearly and accurately, and in an impartial way. The same would apply to other issues of importance and concern to the public.

When the BBC says that it should be 'impartial but not neutral', I would think that it meant presenting both sides of the argument as comprehensively as possible, but making it clear that scientific opinion was overwhelmingly 'one-sided'. Not being 'neutral' over such an issue which involves 'expert opinion' is different form being impartial in matters of 'public opinion' because in the end public opinion is what decides the issue in party politics. (That could open a can of worms, but ne'er mind!)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Excellent ideas and suggestions from the two of you: many thanks both.

[french frank]

Tacking this on to the Public Purposes discussion:

6. How have the BBC’s commercial activities during the current Charter fitted with the BBC’s public purposes and have they achieved an adequate return for licence fee payers? What should be the aims, scope and scale of such activities beyond 2016?

Probably not a lot that we can say since not many people know much about the BBC's 'commercial activities' (aka BBC Worldwide?). I thought that bit of the BBC was just intent on making money which can be ploughed back into public services, but surely that means providing MORE rather than subsidising existing services?

Should the profits of BBC Worldwide subsidise the cost of services to licence fee payers?

BBC Worldwide delivers solid performance in challenging economic climate

Headline profit up 1% to £156m
Headline sales up 3% to £1,116m
£176m invested in content in 2012/13