What A Month For The BBC’s Reputation For Excellence – It Has Apologized To The Queen, Ofcom Slaps It With Its First-Ever Fine, It Cuts Off Tony Blair’s Final Minutes in Parliament, And Its Trustees Says It Is “Deeply Concerned” At Falling Standards

Philip M. Stone July 19, 2007

When a company’s board issues a public statement saying “significant failures of control and compliance” have compromised “values of accuracy and honesty” and that company is the world’s most prestigious public broadcaster, the BBC, then one has to ask how long it will take for some top jobs to go?

In the space of within a month, the BBC has:

• Apologized to the Queen for showing a false video to journalists promoting a program to be shown later this year covering a year in the Queen’s life. The promo showed the monarch  walking briskly in a hall clad in her robes of state with a voiceover explaining she had just stomped out of a portrait photography shoot with American Annie Leibovitz  because she was angry at being asked to remove her stately robes.  Annoyed she might have been, but she didn’t stomp out, and the video was actually of her walking to the shoot, not from it. If ever there was a red-handed showing video out of context then this was it.
• Received its first-ever fine -- £50,000 ($100,000, €73,000) -- from the Ofcom regulator for faking results of a telephone vote used on a children’s program.
• Cut off the most emotional minutes Parliament is likely to see for many moons as Tony Blair bid goodbye to the House of Commons and Parliamentarians on both sides of the House gave him a standing ovation. Blair’s goodbye ran four minutes longer than scheduled and so he got cut off.

While the BBC can claim it wasn’t really to blame for the Queen mistake since it was an independent film company that made the program and provided the promotional video, under the rule that the “buck stops here” it was the BBC that presented the video and the view, therefore, is that the BBC is to blame for not ensuring the highest editorial standards of those outside firms it uses.

For the Ofcom fine, it really was to blame and it is perhaps the biggest whopper. The reason the regulator got so angry as to levy its first fine against the public broadcaster – in all other complaints over the years it has slapped the BBC’s wrist but never took the license payers money – is because the BBC did not confess that a telephone vote on the popular “Blue Peter” program had not worked correctly so the results were faked, and not only that it later repeated that program. Ofcom was pointedly angry that it was only from public complaints that the affair came to light and it said the BBC people involved in the program should have said publicly what happened. The fine’s basic message: such dishonesty won’t be tolerated.

And as for Tony Blair’s debacle, his last day in Parliament was carried by BBC2. That was supposed to end at 1230 and then at 1235 the main BBC 1 channel was to go live with a Tony Blair special on his going to Buckingham Palace to resign. British media put the blame on Peter Horrocks, the head of television news. The Independent quoted one BBC source saying, “Instructions were: 'Cut away now, Horrocks has told us to be off air by 12.34. Cut away or we'll cut your feed.' He wanted us off air before his Blair special started on BBC1.” For that the BBC apologized with Helen Boarden, the BBC’s director of news, calling it a “cock-up” and a “wrong scheduling decision.”  (Translation: fiefdoms at work).

Now all of that was bad enough for the BBC Trust to be getting very antsy so last week it asked Director General Mark Thomson if there were more similar errors or dishonesty like the telephone voting swindles that everyone should know about and he was to report back on July 18. So Thomson sent out an all-points e-mail asking exactly that, and back came the shocking replies. He said that thus far the internal inquiry had found six new cases, including telethons, in which "a small number of production staff ... have passed themselves off as viewers and listeners". Even that bastion of international radio broadcasting, BBC World Service, has admitted that on some contests when it did have any right winners it faked the names of people it said had won.  Thomson added the obvious, “"We must now swiftly put our house in order."

The Trustees were not enthralled with the news. “The Director-General's interim report to the Trust about additional editorial failings shows further deeply disappointing evidence of insufficient understanding amongst certain staff of the standards of accuracy and honesty expected, and inadequate editorial controls to ensure compliance with those standards.

"We have made clear that we regard any deception or breach of faith with our audiences as being utterly unacceptable.”

Indeed, The Trust’s statement has to be one of the hardest-hitting statements by any company board directed to its workforce, centering on their basic work ethic. That this is happening to the BBC, the world’s most prestigious public broadcaster, is creating headlines around the world.

Consider this unusually tough language in the Trustees’ statement: "The immediate actions proposed, including a zero-tolerance approach and plans for extensive and mandatory training (all 16,500 programming staff are to be sent  on a "Safeguarding Trust" training course), are constructive and the Trust has agreed the Director-General's proposal that all BBC phone related and interactive online competitions be suspended immediately until compliance with all regulatory requirements can be assured.

"We are not ready to draw a line under the editorial failures reported to us today (translation: heads may yet roll and Thomson has also said some senior staff could yet be suspended).

"The Trust has requested detailed reports through its Editorial Standards Committee on all the editorial incidents, including those relating to the documentary program about HM The Queen.

"We have also requested information on any disciplinary action undertaken by the Director-General and a full explanation as to whether any of these matters should have come to light during the Director of Vision's initial audit following the Blue Peter episode.

"Finally, we have requested new performance and disciplinary measures be considered for breaches of editorial standards” (translation: break these rules and you’re out!).

This is not a happy corporate board, and quite rightly so. And the Trustees chairman will find it particularly embarrassing to do what he must do – “The Chairman is today writing to Buckingham Palace to apologize on behalf of the BBC Trust for the events surrounding the promotion of the documentary about HM The Queen."

Why has all this happened? There may be no easy answer but one could well be that the BBC for many years now has been culling experienced well-paid mature staff well versed in the BBC culture. And it could just well be that the new generation does not fully understand the BBC culture, the importance of being honest with the license payers, not  trying to hide things when the go wrong etc, and owning up to mistakes.  That’s is probably why the Trust statement puts so much emphasis on additional training to make clear to staff that any dishonesty in their programming activities  reflects right back on the entire company.

Washing a company’s laundry in public is never an enjoyable event for staff to live through – for the BBC it is a global embarrassment  -- but at least letting the world in on the tough language and actions management is now employing to clean up the act will hopefully turn today’s big negative into a positive for the future.

The goal is for everyone again to be able to say as they once did, “If you can’t trust the BBC then who can you trust?”

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