BRITAIN: British broadcaster crisis

The BBC's reputation has been badly damaged by a quick succession of scandals

The Straits Times
Tuesday, July 31, 2007

By Jonathan Eyal

Already labouring under a grave crisis of confidence, the BBC may now be prosecuted for bribing the mastermind of an alleged Bulgarian baby racket to get his story.

The investigative report, which led BBC1's Ten O'Clock News last Thursday, purported to expose Bulgarian criminals offering toddlers for sale for £40,000 (S$123,000) each in Bulgaria's resort city of Varna.

The undercover BBC News team filmed the "self-confessed" human trafficker showing off toddlers with a selling price, but the sting was stopped before any children were actually sold.

But last Friday, Commissioner Veselin Petrov, head of police in Varna, accused the BBC of entrapping "Harry," the alleged human trafficker, by offering him money.

This raised questions about the organisation's ethical standards, even though the BBC denies vehemently that it offered "Harry" any money and insisted that the Bulgarian law enforcement authorities were informed of the incident "well before our report went on air."

However, the latest shenanigans will tarnish further the BBC's carefully nurtured image as an honest producer with high ethical standards.

Long one of Britain's famous institutions, the broadcaster may now be losing much of its unrivalled home influence after a string of scandals involving fraud, corruption and cheating.

Seldom before has it suffered so many blows to its reputation, and in such quick succession.

Britons have long known the BBC affectionately as "Auntie" for, as with all such venerable ladies, one may not like what she says, but one instinctively knows she may be right.Indeed, the organisation's track record of high-quality programmes has usually shielded it from long-lasting damage.

The trouble began earlier this month when Mr Peter Fincham, the boss of BBC 1, Britain's top TV channel, offered journalists a preview of upcoming programmes.

One of the highlights was a documentary about Queen Elizabeth, which included a clip of the British monarch storming out of a shoot with a celebrity photographer.

"Definitely a memorable bit," said a triumphant Mr Fincham, promising that viewers will be able to see "the Queen losing it a bit and walking out in a huff."

All very exciting, to be sure -- but horribly wrong.For the clip of the monarch was an out-of-sequence manipulation; the event never took place.

During the subsequent inquest, Mr Fincham blamed a private production company to which the work had been contracted.

As the BBC issued a grovelling apology -- in itself unusual for an organisation which otherwise seldom admits guilt -- worse matters came to light.

Other producers owned up to using bogus participants in quizzes and phone-in programmes; one even transformed a local studio employee into an instant winner.

Faced with this avalanche of embarrassing revelations, the BBC ordered an inquiry which, once it reports in September, will surely result in the dismissal or retirement of offending employees.

But the BBC's problems go much deeper. It is funded by the state through a compulsory tax on anyone who owns a television set, regardless of what programmes they actually choose to view.

The subsidy is worth more than S$10 billion a year.Among the world's top industrialised nations, only Germany invests more on publicly funded broadcasting. The US spends almost nothing.

The original idea was to encourage high-quality programmes which, supposedly, no commercial organisation would consider.

But the BBC went much further. It chose to compete head-on with hundreds of private television channels and radio stations.

And it became pretty commercial in doing so. Books and magazines were launched on the back of its popular programmes.It also poured vast sums of money into a sleek website.

The decline in audience shares was not avoided.Half a century ago, 60 per cent of Britain's population regularly watched its BBC 1 flagship channel, while today the figure is more like 20 per cent.

But the broadcaster's eagerness to compete with its rivals by producing the same quiz shows and phone-ins has led to the current predicament.

The BBC is not short of supporters. Despite all the rows, the British government still sees it as the "most important instrument for winning hearts and minds abroad," as a former senior minister said.

Date Posted: 7/31/2007