The Hetherington Lecture Joan Bakewell Nov 19.2008 ……
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The Hetherington Lecture Joan Bakewell Nov 19.2008 ……. Ladies and gentlemen, Thank you for inviting me to give the 2009 Hetherington Memorial lecture, created to honour the memory of one of the most distinguished journalists and editors of his day. He was editor of the Guardian for 19 years until 1975, Controller of BBC Scotland for three years after that, and ended his career as research professor in Media Studies at Stirling University. While having nothing like his distinction and perspicacity, or his physical stamina as a hill-walker, I can claim connection with all three media institutions: I have for over 4 decades maintained a freelance’s working relationship as a broadcaster with the BBC and other television channels, I enjoyed 3 years as a columnist with the Guardian, and I was recently made an honorary fellow of Stirling University. It was with Professor Hetherington’s integrity and radicalism in mind that I chose to speak of the “Credibility Crunch – the media and morality.” 1 I chose that title shortly after I agreed to give the lecture and had at the back of my mind then, a lurking fear that perhaps by November times would have moved on and when the day came both the phrases and the subject matter might seem a little dated. Surely crunches would be a thing of the past: by now a tired journalistic cliché for a state of affairs that had come and gone. More particularly I thought that in terms of television, -which is what primarily concerns me here, - the period of unhappy scandals that had hit the headlines would surely have passed….. what Peter Fincham, briefly controller on BBC 1 - in this year’s Mactaggart lecture described as “a grim and unsavoury episode in television’s history – money taken from viewers on false pretences, competition winners faked, awards given to the wrong people – the interests and the votes of viewers ignored or over-ruled,” this unhappy time must surely have run its course. Especially as he went on “we should all feel remorse at this collective lapse of standards, inadequate systems, poor investigations, recriminations, apologies.” My title couldn’t be more timely. The recent Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand scandal demonstrates that a continuing moral crisis haunts the BBC. And Channel 4 and ITV too are having their own integrity questioned. 2 I wish to examine how an insidious falling away of moral integrity has crept into broadcasting to such an extent that its leaders seem unsure how to react and what criteria of behaviour and judgement to invoke. You know the sort of thing: comedy must be edgy, contemporary, ageing actors must not be insulted, and recorded phone calls must have their contributors consent. “It’s your BBC they say”, and then are surprised when 37,000 viewers say what they think. What a moral muddle. It wasn’t always so: I am in a better position than most to say it, as my own broadcasting career goes back to the 1960s, and so I have lived through the changing culture and known it at first hand. I want to offer some first hand evidence of what attitudes were once commonly held, how they enshrined a consensual set of moral values and how those values have fragmented under the pressure of proliferating channels and the intensifying rivalry for audiences. And all this premised on a neurotic dread of declining finances – commercial revenues or the licence fee – which threaten the overstretched ambitions of the media leadership. 3 My evidence starts in a book that I together with Professor Nicholas Garnham published in 1970. Over a period of 6 months we interviewed some 90 of the leaders in BBC television. Beginning with Lord Reith whom I interviewed, we took evidence from BBC’s and ITV’s founders, from engineers and executives, but primarily from programme makers. These were the makers of comedy _ Bill Cotton Junior and Ned Sherrin – of news and current affairs – Geoffrey Cox and Anthony Smith, - of arts programmes – Melvyn Bragg and Jonathan Miller – of drama Dennis Potter and David Mercer. These were individuals in the thick of it, having rows about programme content and scheduling, comedy complaining there was too much current affairs (they don’t do that anymore ) but while pushing at the boundaries, all sharing a common television culture and ethic. Nicholas Garnham and I quoted Coleridge to define what we saw as their higher purpose: “…to preserve the stores and to guard the treasures of past civilisation and thus to bind the present with the past; to perfect and add to the same and thus to connect the present with the future”. 4 It was irredeemably high minded….in fact it was Coleridge defining what he saw as the function of the clergy. When we cheekily called our book The New Priesthood - no one laughed: it was commonly agreed that beyond the laughter and jokes, the rows about shocking Wednesday plays, the satire of That was the Week and the cutting edge reporting of World in Action there was a shared understanding of common values, and a belief in television as a common good. The year was 1970. Here is Norman Collins, who in the late 40s was Controller of BBC Television, “If you have a total monopoly as the BBC had, there has to be someone in charge of that monopoly. At one time it happened to be me. I remember that, driving home late one night after I’d been going through a very much over-loaded tray of programme proposals all of which required decisions, the truth suddenly came to me. I realised that if I had given a reverse decision in pretty well every single case that had put before me, it would make just as much sense as the decisions which I had very carefully arrived at. In other words it lay in my decision and my decision alone, whether the work of any particular or writer should be seen on the screen at all. Now that was a moment in my 5 career – a moral decision on the basic iniquity of a monopoly.” Two comments about that: how simple life was when decisions were made by one man going through his in- tray. And second, his coming to what he calls a moral decision – not based on ratings or money or audiences. He went on to be a director a major ITV company - ATV - so perhaps such thoughts came later. We interviewed Lord Charles Hill who had been director of ITV’s controlling body – the ITA, Independent Television Authority. He subsequently became Chairman of the BBC. Here’s what he had to say: “In my authority days an arts programme was required of every programme company (there were 14 of them, each with its own independent franchises covering a particular part of the country) The authority didn’t say what kind of arts programme: it said it would not approve their schedules unless there was an arts programme…. the authority’s job is to see there is a public service attitude in a commercial service.” 6 He then went on to reflect on the attitude widespread among university graduate producers who were currently the powerhouse of BBC programme-making: “The majority of the great British public look to television for relaxation. Criticise them for it if you will, but the fact is undeniable. …And when the British public seeks relaxation, there is nothing to be ashamed of in seeking to please the largest number on BBC 1: it is excellence that matters in both programmes for the majority and those for the minority” The defensiveness of his remarks captures the mood of high-mindedness that held sway along what was a cultural media elite. It has been unthinkable for decades now that such a patronising, de haut en bas outlook should govern television’s attitude to its audience. Indeed the mood was changing even as Charles Hill spoke. The pioneering programme on which I worked in the late 60s, Late Night Line Up on BBC 2, was already mixing what then might have been called high art and low art; putting out nightly programmes that contained a mix of the serious and the fun: talk, rock music, jazz, poetry, comedy and cultural criticism. So I do not one of those who speak of a golden age, as though there were no good programmes made today. I am well aware there are good programmes made in a quantity that was impossible 7 before the present range of channels. But the 1960 and 70 were certainly a golden ago for producers who knew there was space on all three, and then four, channels for highly creative and challenging programmes. To give but one example. Between 1965 and 1972 the BBC’s Wednesday Play was riding high with a reputation for daring new ideas and styles. In a total of 8 years, on prime time BBC 1 there were 231 such plays. They caused trouble, they brought protests, and they had swearing. But they were made within a unique and shared concept of television that has gone. What I want to trace is where and why we lost the sense of shared values that once prevailed among us. One of the great strengths of the BBC has always been what’s now called its brand image. It earned universal acclaim by its wartime radio broadcasting, around the world, and the force of that reputation for integrity and truth-telling comes down to us whenever things go wrong in today’s BBC. Recent concerns about the decline of the World Service’s Russian service are a direct descendant of that reputation: if not the BBC, then who? The creation of ITV in the 1950s drew its staffing from BBC personnel who took with them the same rigour of outlook.