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Magazine Issue 5&6 - Winter 1997
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| Zircon Revisited BBC Meeting: July 1997 by Tony Gosling It’s not every day you get a call from the top echelons of the BBC inviting you to attend a review of news values. I’m sure you can understand my cynicism... would my views really make an iota of difference... but I was getting my travel paid and a free meal so I took them up on the offer. Richard Ayre, deputy head of News and Current Affairs set up the meeting ostensibly to get news priorities right for the new government. There would be six top editors from the BBC there who would discuss all aspects of news coverage with six of us from outside. I was introduced to a rapid succession of top editors... the hidden faces behind the news: The World Tonight... Breakfast News... The BBC Social Affairs Editor was there as was Sian Kevill, deputy head of political programmes. I worked my way around the BBC people until I found some smarm-free conversation. More with ITV it’s true- but media people take sycophancy to nightmarish depths. There was an Italian woman from the Consumers’ Association who seemed to think the BBC was the world’s perfect broadcaster, well it could seem that way to someone brought up on Italian TV. Another of the guests was from the T.U.C., the dinner was taking place at the height of the British Airways dispute with cabin staff so she was ready to call the BBC to account for never explaining the context of industrial disputes. Other guests included a jovial top police officer from Thames Valley and a woman from the Human Embryology and fertility clinic. We criticised the BBC’s use of ‘experts’ which each of us in our fields knew were far from objective, we discussed coverage of Northern Ireland and I questioned the fact that none of the locally produced and insightful material is shown on BBC networks. Maybe surprisingly there was universal support amongst the guests for interviews to be shown with all sides including armed groups in the Troubles. I insisted on putting forward the point that young people that I knew increasingly see the BBC as State Broadcasting, and with some pretty substantial justification. That the corporation was far too controlled, particularly in its news and documentary coverage, by the Foreign Office and by Downing Street. I know this because a friend worked as a temp for several months in the TV newsroom and explained to my horror that she was putting calls through regularly from top government officials and passing messages on to the editors about the best angle to take on sensitive news stories. Richard Ayre dismissed my comments about political interference with the BBC as alarmist and assured us all that they guarded their independence fiercely. He was lying through his teeth, so I decided to throw the most reprehensible example of political censorship at the BBC I knew of at them. Alisdair Milne, the last Director General to stand up for independence and the public interest at the BBC was sacked, I said, for supporting a politically embarrassing programme. A programme in Duncan Campbell’s Secret Society series revealed that £500 million of public money had been spent by UK Military Intelligence on a spy satellite without the knowledge of parliament. This was the Zircon programme and as the transmission date approached, I explained, pressure from many angles was brought to bear on Alisdair to drop it. He felt, quite rightly, that the programme did not compromise national security and refused to cover up for the ineptitude of the intelligence services. Special Branch turned up at one stage at the offices of BBC Scotland and emptied the contents of an entire production office into several transit vans as part of the Political pressure on the BBC. Meanwhile Alisdair, who’d had a hand in such ground-breaking programmes as Tonight and That Was The Week That Was, refused to budge. So, I explained, he was sacked. After a short uncomfortable silence Richard Ayre challenged me; he reminded us all that at the time newspapers reported he had resigned of his own accord. I replied: “I have read his Autobiography and Alisdair explains quite clearly that he was called into the Chairman’s office and told he had no choice but to sign a pre-prepared resignation”. There was another short silence before Richard made light of his deception. “Actually Tony I have to tell you”, he sounded slightly more human now, “The events you refer to happened right here around this table, and I was there at the time. Alisdair was sitting right where you are now Tony, and he’d just finished his soup”. When Alisdair returned from his audience with BBC Chairman (politically appointed) Marmaduke Hussey in the adjoining office his chair was gone and his place had been cleared away. Ever since that particular travesty of ‘Public Service’ at the BBC the British press has been in decline. From my 3 year stint at ‘Auntie’ I have seen corporate ideology creeping, bit-by-bit, into every corner of the corporation. So if even the top editors at the BBC are denying political interference to our faces God only knows what goes on when there’s no concerned members of the public around to prick their consciences. In a world where the truth is whatever the editors say it is are the BBC likely to have listened to me? And it is more than a little worrying that the editor of the editors should deceive so readily. Tony Gosling can be contacted via : http://www.tlio.demon.co.uk/index.htm Read about Alisdair Milne on the Zircon programme scandal: http://www.tlio.demon.co.uk/milne.htm That whole obscene episode in the winter of 1986 not only illustrates to what extent the BBC is no longer ‘ours’ but raises serious questions about the influence of entirely unaccountable military intelligence groups over our perceptions. |