WEDNESDAY 25 JULY 2007 ________________ Present Corbett of Castle Vale, L. Eccles of Moulton, B. Fowler, L. (Chairman) Hastings of Scarisbrick, L. Howe of Idlicote, B. Inglewood, L. King of Bridgwater, L. Manchester, Bp. Maxton, L. McIntosh of Hudnall, B. ________________ Witnesses: Ms Helen Boaden, Director of BBC News, Mr Nigel Chapman, Director of the BBC World Service, and Ms Sian Kevill, Managing Director, BBC World, examined. Q325 Chairman: You are very welcome. You know, I think, that the Communications Committee have launched an inquiry into Media Ownership and the News. What we are looking at is essentially the impact of the concentration of media ownership on the balance and diversity of opinion, but we are also looking at a whole range of associated points – how and why have the agendas of news providers changed, how has the process of news gathering changed. It is with that in mind that we would like to open our questioning today. We have got very full biographies of you all, most of which doubtless you will deny, but we know exactly who you are so I will not ask you to introduce yourselves. We were going to meet previously but we were very glad that Alan Johnston was released. Perhaps I could turn to events which are not quite so happy for the BBC and the reputation of the BBC. Do you think you have suffered a blow because of what has been happening with these radio phone-in shows? Ms Boaden: Radio and television, yes, I do think we have suffered a blow. I think the way we are trying to deal with it should mitigate that blow, but undoubtedly a lot of our staunchest supporters – and I talk about family and friends here – are shocked and disappointed. They expected more from the BBC and for whatever reason they feel let down. That is the kind of thing you have to build up over a period of time to renew the trust. Up to now our trust ratings have been higher than anybody else’s and it will be interesting to see in the long term, depending on how we respond to this current crisis, whether that trust is restored, but I do not think we can dodge the fact that people feel let down. Q326 Chairman: What do you think the causes were? What do you believe the root problems were? Ms Boaden: I think they are probably multi-faceted. As you know, we are doing an investigation into each one of the specifics and I am not going to pre-judge those because clearly disciplinary action may be involved and it would be very unfair on an individual to talk about those things. However, somewhere in some parts of the BBC “the show must go on” became the cultural norm at any cost. It is very interesting to read the Ofcom report on the Blue Peter phone-in fiasco, which I did, because I wanted to see if there were lessons for News in it, and actually I think there are. Although this was entirely about the phone-in programme and a relatively young researcher, what surprised me was that when she did her strategy, using a child as the winner who was not a real child because the phone lines had gone down, this was her planned contingency. This was not something sparked off; this was a little girl thinking, “If it all goes wrong this is what I will do”, and I think the lesson there is that if you manage any kind of team you have to make enough space for junior people to be able to ask awkward, difficult questions or rather simple and naïve questions, and if they are not coming forward you have to think through all the things that could go wrong so that someone does not find themselves in that position. You have to create a culture where people can say, “If it goes wrong what do I do?”, not, “If it goes wrong I will just do this thing that is not actually truthful”. It was very revealing, and I said to my team, “This is the lesson we 2 have to take from the Blue Peter incident, that we have to create a managerial culture where boundaries and values are perfectly clear but where there is enough scope for rather inexperienced people to be able to ask questions about process and procedure if things go wrong”. Q327 Chairman: In our inquiry we are dealing with the provision of news. We do not want to go into all the detail of the phone-in competitions unless it is relevant, but just let me ask a question on journalism. We all heard this morning that the Managing Director of GMTV has resigned following an investigation by BBC’s Panorama. It is a bit ironic, is it not, that similar things were happening in the BBC? Ms Boaden: If you saw that Panorama programme, we were very tough on Blue Peter, very, very tough. It was one of the case studies and I was extremely happy with that programme because we did not spare anybody. In fact, there was some debate in other parts of the BBC that perhaps we had been over-harsh on Blue Peter. I do not think we were harsh at all on them. I think we dealt with them fairly in the way that we dealt with each of these cases, so in terms of a piece of journalism at that point the only case we knew of was the Blue Peter case and it absolutely had a central part in Panorama. Q328 Chairman: You have half answered my question, but what would be the process if Panorama came to you and said, “We have got wide suspicions that the BBC is cutting corners in this particular area”? Would you say, “Fine. You go in and investigate it”? Ms Boaden: You would have to put it in terms of public interest, “Is this a minor infringement or is this something absolutely scandalous?”. If you remember, we did throughout the Hutton experience report on ourselves very freely and fairly and with great discomfort to parts of BBC management. The John Ware Panorama and the way the BBC handled the Hutton investigation was extremely uncomfortable for some members of senior 3 management at that time, so I think that is proof that we are capable of examining our own failures with the same scrutiny and rigour that we would examine anybody else’s. Q329 Chairman: So if evidence was picked up by Panorama or any other BBC investigative programme that something was going wrong in the BBC, you would expect them to investigate it? Ms Boaden: I would expect them to investigate it. Clearly I would have to decide then if I were, as it were, editorial director or manager, because you have to have clear lines. What happened during the Hutton experience, when that Panorama was going on, was that the managerial structure was kept entirely separate from the editorial processes. That is what you have to do if you are examining yourself, but yes, clearly, if there was a scandal within the BBC that it was in the public interest to reveal and our people got it first, I think it would be obligatory on us to at least investigate and see if there was a programme in it. Mr Chapman: Can I just make a point about transparency and culture, which is what you are driving at, I think, is that we have to make sure that our producers and our editors understand that in live television and radio, and we do thousands of hours of live television and radio, things do go wrong and there is no loss of face to say to audiences, “Right: we need to change what we are going to do now. That particular facet of the programme in which we were going to bring you in in five minutes we are going to have to delay or postpone until next week”, because that sense of transparency is the right thing to do and it is also in a culture where audiences increasingly understand how media works and they are often the creators of content themselves, so they do understand this in a way that I think perhaps audiences did not before, and if you can bring that about then that temptation to cut corners, to keep the show on at any cost, will be watered down. I think Helen is right: that is the tension that we have discovered in the last few weeks. 4 Q330 Chairman: The point I am really getting at is that we had the Editor of The Times here last week and we asked him about the newspaper’s policy on reporting BSkyB, a part of the News Corps company, and I think his reply was basically that he would that as he would regard any other company, and I think what I am asking you is, if you found or suspected that there was something going wrong in the BBC World Service, and Nigel Chapman is sitting next to you, you would feel no compunction in ordering an investigation into that? Ms Boaden: Yes, I would have no compunction if it was in the public interest to do that. If anyone saw the way we reported last week’s horrible time for the BBC, the six cases coming out and Mark Thompson, we led the Ten O’Clock News on it and we were open, tough and challenging of the BBC.