The BBC must be independent in all matters concerning the fulfilment of its Mission and the promotion of the Public Purposes, particularly as regards editorial and creative decisions, the times and manner in which its output and services are supplied, and in the management of its affairs.
Contents
- World Service
- Interference by the British government
- 1926 General Strike
- 1932 - The Hashagen affair
- 1936 - Abdication
- 1937-84 - MI5 vetting
- 1938-45 - World War II
- 1950 - Party Manners
- 1954/5 - H Bomb coverage
- 1956 - Suez Crisis
- 1965 - The War Game
- 1969 - Influence of international media
- 1979-1994 - The Troubles
- 2014 - Coordinated coverage of police action
- Interference internationally
- Nazi Germany
- Russia
- Jamming of the foreign services
- See also
- Notes
- References
- Works Cited
- Primary Sources
- Further reading
- External links
Paragraph (1) is subject to any provision made by or under this Charter or the Framework Agreement or otherwise by law.
Article 3 [1] of the BBC Charter, 2016 [lower-alpha 1]
The BBC's independence is one of its core tenets; its editorial independence limited only by its mission of impartiality in the public interest. With the government, duly or not, advising on what the public interest is.
The BBC has, with the possible exception of World War II, long displayed a degree of independence that public broadcasting in other Western European countries came to only later. This generalisation by Goodwin [2] : 96 is echoed often, though the pecieved and actual degrees of independence are ofttimes debated.
Seaton writes that chairs of the governing body have frequently been chosen with the aim of aligning the BBC with certain agendas. She suggests that, while this approach may appear confrontational and potentially antagonistic and recent chairs have been too business oriented, not every controversial appointment turned out to be a bad one. She gives the negative example of Charles Hill, who she considers to be perceived as detrimental from a historical perspective, but states that subsequent appointments like Marmaduke Hussey and Christopher Bland while met with similar scepticism initially, proved to be great chairs. [3]
Of interest also, though contentious, is that internal reports (such as the Balen Report) aimed at checking its own standards of journalism, have been ruled as not subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000—and thus not subject to public release. [4] It marks a perhaps odd sort of independence from overt public scrutiny.
Taking account of the strategy and the budget it has set, the BBC will agree with the Foreign Secretary-
- (a) objectives, priorities and targets for the World Service;
- (b) the languages in which the World Service is to be provided
The various foreign services of the BBC have always been tied, in some manner, to the national interest. In the 2017 Agreement, that means the Foreign Secretary. Article 33.6 (right) is subject to the Mission and the Public Purposes of the BBC as defined in the Charter, but it supersedes Article 3 (independence). [1]
This policy has put the BBC at odds with a list of Governments including East Germany, the Soviet Union and China. Though it must be said that the external service committed to providing accurate news as early as World War II. [6] Though, Rawnsley for instance goes as far as to draw historic parallels to the state-owned broadcaster Voice of America that he describes as very much the 'voice' of the US government. [7]
‘Its greatest victory’, according to George Orwell, was its accurate news. ‘Even in India where the population are so hostile they would not listen to British propaganda and will hardly listen to a British entertainment program, they listen to BBC news because they believe it approximates to the truth’. [8]
In 1926, the General Council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) called a General Strike to prevent wage reductions and worsening conditions for 1.2 million locked-out coal miners. Labour Party politicians such as party leader Ramsay MacDonald and Philip Snowden criticised the BBC for being "biased" and "misleading the public" during the strike. [9]
Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was coached by John Reith during a national broadcast about the strike which he made from Reith's house. When Ramsay MacDonald asked to make a broadcast in reply, Reith supported the request. However, Baldwin was "quite against MacDonald broadcasting" and Reith refused the request. [10]
Baldwin's government blocked the BBC from broadcasting statements about the strike by the Labour Party and TUC leaders. When Philip Snowden, the former Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote to the Radio Times to complain about the BBC's treatment of the unions, Reith wrote that the BBC was not totally independent from the government, which had imposed some constraints on what the BBC could do. [9] Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury, wished to broadcast a "peace appeal" to call for an immediate end to the strike, renewal of government subsidies to the coal industry and no cuts in miners' wages. Reith denied his request because he believed such a speech would be used by Winston Churchill to take over the BBC. Churchill wanted to use the BBC as a government tool during the strike. [9] Reith wrote in his diary that the government "know they can trust us not to be really impartial". [11]
A post-strike analysis carried out by the BBC's Programme Correspondence Department reported that of those polled, 3,696 commended the BBC's coverage, whilst 176 were critical. [9]The Corporation feels that an incident so contrary to the spirit and intention of the Royal Charter should not pass without protest [...] The Governors venture to assume that it will not form a precedent.
— John Whitley, chair of the BBC, in a letter to the Cabinet Secretary [12]
In 1932, the BBC had planned a series of interviews for a progamme on 'risky exploits' called Hazard with two German officers from the Great War: U-boot captain Ernst Hashagen and Zeppelin commander Joachim Briehaupt . After a first radio interview with Briehaupt had spawned public criticisms, the following talks with Hashagen were cancelled on advice of the government. After cabinet discussion, Postmaster General Kingsley Wood had approached John Reith who didn't initially agree with the government's 'view that the talk should be cancelled', leaving the decision to John Whitley, the chair of the BBC at the time--who then agreed to drop the broadcast. Whitley, MPs, as well as the press all voiced disagreement. [12] [ non-primary source needed ] The press at the time especially was fiercely critical of the government writing on the 'Muzzling of the BBC' [13] and that 'one can hardly imagine a sillier or more petty intervention by the Government in the business of the B.B.C.' [14]
The crisis spawned by the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936 is said to have been the first time the Government seriously considered taking over the broadcast of the BBC. [15] [ better source needed ]
The British policy of appeasement regarding fascist Italy and Germany eventually lead to the Phoney War; the period between the British declaration of war on 3 September 1939 and the German invasion of France, 10 May 1940. Starting with a speech given by Neville Chamberlain on 27 September 1938 in the days prior to the conference on the Munich Agreement, the BBC, at the request of the government, began broadcasting regular programmes in German. First to project the British position and later as propaganda against Nazi rule, believed at the time to have weak support. [16]
While the BBC would continue to claim independence from the government throughout the war years, [6] : 25 in what was a war of national survival, there were inevitable compromises. The period increasingly had the government direct the BBC in propaganda efforts, with almost weekly government missives regarding the general media campaign. [16] However, through its consistent and trustworthy reporting both domestically and internationally, the BBC gradually gained more liberties in the choices of its programming again. The service aired comedy shows like It’s That Man Again, which ridiculed the bureaucratic controls of the war, or talks like those of J. B. Priestley which challenged official views and championed the public’s experience of the war. Crucially, while being anti-Nazi, it was not anti-German. [3] This lead Hugh Greene, who had joined the BBC German service in October 1940, to be able to set up new, independent and trusted media in Germany after the war. [17]
In 1950, having aired the political comedy Party Manners on stage, radio and, once, on television already, a repeat showing of it was stopped. The play was about a Labour minister dealing with nuclear energy. The Attlee government that had its parliamentary majority reduced in the 1950 election advised the BBC that it found the play 'offensive'. Chair Ernest Simon agreed to drop the play from the program, which earned violent criticism from the press, the BBC's General Advisory Council as well as in the House of Lords.
As of 2024, the BBC on its website softly implies this relatively minor incident to be the only time the government interfered with anything to do with 'nuclear', closing their piece in the history section Editorial independence: the BBC and Government by quoting chair Simon to have not foreseen 'the "hurricane" of feeling his decision would stir'; and that "quite obviously no Chairman will ever dream of doing anything of the sort again". No other piece there is on nuclear energy or weapons. [18]
When Nesta Pain worked on a report on the H bomb in late 1954, pressure by the Churchill government had the then chairman of the Board of Governors of the BBC Alexander Cadogan reassure the Postmaster General that ‘the Corporation never had any plan for mounting a feature on the hydrogen bomb in the New Year as suggested in your letter’ by the 24 January 1955. The letter was written after a month of well documented directives that 'no programmes should be broadcast about atomic weapons'. [2] : 103
Internal memos of the BBC showed that the Director General was sanitizing the broadcast on behalf of the government by advising against the airing of "a sober, but nevertheless chilling account of the dangers of radiation" by Joseph Rotblat. [2] : 108
Although the British government pressured the BBC to support the war, the BBC continued to report on the Suez Crisis even-handedly. It came out of the crisis with its reputation for independence from the Government 'enhanced'—although Goodwin documents at least two cases of major governmental influence being exerted. [2] : 109–114 He, too, ironically noted the "minor local difficulty" of the chair of the BBC Board of Governors at the time also being the director of the Suez Canal Company. [2] : 109 The row had the government seriously consider taking over the service when then prime minister Anthony Eden wanted to ensure that only the government line—that the British and French only invaded Eqypt to keep peace and because its president Nasser was breaking international law—would reach the home (and international) audience. [15] [19]
Goodwin suggests that the 1954/5 conflict over coverage of the H bomb informed the BBC's initial decision not to air the documentary The War Game. He affirms Michael Tracey's critical view of the government's role in the controversy [lower-alpha 2] and adds that Norman Brook was the Cabinet Secretary and participant from the Government side in the Feb 15 1955 meeting with the BBC over the H Bomb. Brook, by now Chairman of the Board of Governors of the BBC, recommended that "the Government should have an opportunity of expressing a view about this", after Huw Wheldon had initially green lit the project. [2] : 114–115
Throughout the Troubles, UK broadcasters were regularly required to stop or postpone the broadcast of documentaries and other programmes relating to Ireland, [21] and government intimidation and restrictive laws had resulted in forms of self-censorship. [22] The Premiership of Margaret Thatcher then saw more direct governmental interference of media reporting on the conflict in her attempts to "try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend". [lower-alpha 3]
An INLA interview in July 1979 on BBC's Tonight caused a controversy involving Prime Minister Thatcher and was the last time such an interview was heard on British television. [22] Also, the 1979 Panorama film of the IRA on patrol in Carrickmore was seized by police under the Prevention of Terrorism Acts following an outcry in parliament and the press. [22] But one of the most prominent instances of this was the 1985 Real Lives documentary for the BBC, At the Edge of the Union. The programme featured extensive footage of Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness and the Democratic Unionist Party's Gregory Campbell discussing the Troubles, and following direct intervention by the government it was temporarily blocked from being aired. The incident led to a one-day strike by members of the National Union of Journalists, who walked out in protest that the BBC's independence was being undermined. [25]
On 19 October 1988 the British followed Ireland, who had kept Sinn Féin and other targeted groups off radio and television since 1972, [24] and passed voice restrictions of direct statements by representatives or supporters of eleven Irish political and military organisations. [22] [26] There had already been minimal coverage of Sinn Féin by the BBC prior. The ban then saw further decline in coverage of Sinn Féin and republican viewpoints. The delays and uncertainties caused by ambiguities, voice-overs and subtitles often lead to coverage and films being dropped entirely. [27] MPs protested the decision, and the Chair of the BBC, Marmaduke Hussey called the ban a "very dangerous precedent". [28]
In response to allegations that would never be found of substance, police searched the property of a famous rock star in 2014, having informed the BBC prior. [29] After police tipped off BBC journalist Dan Johnson, [30] BBC reporters were on the scene as police arrived, and a BBC helicopter covered the raid as it happened. [31] South Yorkshire Police initially denied leaking details of the property search—later confirming that they had been "working with a media outlet" about the investigation. [32]
Law enforcement tried to spin the incident as "extortion" in front of the Home Affairs Select Committee which was ridiculed by MPs. [33] Former Attorney General Dominic Grieve went as far as, asserting a "collusive relationship", stating that the decision to tip off the BBC "seems quite extraordinary." [34]
Much of the public as well as legal opinion did not see the state at fault in the matter, though, and the BBC was sued successfully for infringement of the right to privacy. £210,000 in damages were awarded in 2018. Journalists expressed worry at the precedent the ruling would set for future coverage of criminality. [29]
The Nazis tried to jam and forbid listening to all allied broadcasts. [6] : 244–248 Though when Hugh Greene flew to Sweden in 1942, his evaluation was: 'not discouraging' as long as speech were kept clean. [17] They deemed the BBC's German language service ("Londoner Rundfunk") established in the war the number one enemy broadcast. They heavily persecuted anyone who listened to it; and in areas like Poland even those who possessed radios capable of receiving the broadcast.[ citation needed ]
On 17 August 2007, it was reported that FM broadcast of the BBC's Russian-language service in Russia was to be dropped by order of the Russian government. The financial organisation Finam, which owned Bolshoye Radio, the last of three services to drop the BBC Russia broadcasts, said through its spokesman, Igor Ermachenkov, "Any media which is government-financed is propaganda – it's a fact, it's not negative". [35] A spokesman, for the BBC responded, "Although the BBC is funded by the UK government... a fundamental principle of its constitution and its regulatory regime is that it is editorially independent of the UK government". Reports put the development in the context of criticism of the Russian government for curbing media freedom ahead of the 2008 Russian presidential election and strained British-Russian relations. [35] Reporters Without Borders condemned the move as censorship. [36]
Ireland is a parliamentary, representative democratic republic and a member state of the European Union. While the head of state is the popularly elected President of Ireland, it is a largely ceremonial position, with real political power being vested in the Taoiseach, who is nominated by the Dáil and is the head of the government.
Sinn Féin is an Irish republican and democratic socialist political party in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
The BBC World Service is an international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC. It is the world's largest external broadcaster in terms of reception area, language selection and audience reach. It broadcasts radio news, speech and discussions in more than 40 languages to many parts of the world on analogue and digital shortwave platforms, internet streaming, podcasting, satellite, DAB, FM and MW relays. In 2015, the World Service reached an average of 210 million people a week. In November 2016, the BBC announced that it would start broadcasting in additional languages including Amharic and Igbo, in its biggest expansion since the 1940s.
Gerard Adams is an Irish republican politician who was the president of Sinn Féin between 13 November 1983 and 10 February 2018, and served as a Teachta Dála (TD) for Louth from 2011 to 2020. From 1983 to 1992 and from 1997 to 2011, he followed the policy of abstentionism as a Member of Parliament (MP) of the British Parliament for the Belfast West constituency.
The First Dáil was Dáil Éireann as it convened from 1919 to 1921. It was the first meeting of the unicameral parliament of the revolutionary Irish Republic. In the December 1918 election to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the Irish republican party Sinn Féin won a landslide victory in Ireland. In line with their manifesto, its MPs refused to take their seats, and on 21 January 1919 they founded a separate parliament in Dublin called Dáil Éireann. They declared Irish independence, ratifying the Proclamation of the Irish Republic that had been issued in the 1916 Easter Rising, and adopted a provisional constitution.
John Charles Walsham Reith, 1st Baron Reith, was a Scottish broadcasting executive who established the tradition of independent public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom. In 1922, he was employed by the BBC, then the British Broadcasting Company Ltd., as its general manager; in 1923 he became its managing director, and in 1927 he was employed as the Director-General of the British Broadcasting Corporation created under a royal charter. His concept of broadcasting as a way of educating the masses marked for a long time the BBC and similar organisations around the world. An engineer by profession, and standing at 6 feet 6 inches (1.98 m) tall, he was a larger-than-life figure who was a pioneer in his field.
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It was created as a separate legal entity on 3 May 1921, under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The new autonomous Northern Ireland was formed from six of the nine counties of Ulster: four counties with unionist majorities – Antrim, Armagh, Down, and Derry/Londonderry – and two counties with slight Irish nationalist majorities – Fermanagh and Tyrone – in the 1918 General Election. The remaining three Ulster counties with larger nationalist majorities were not included. In large part unionists, at least in the north-east, supported its creation while nationalists were opposed.
The Reith Lectures is a series of annual BBC radio lectures given by leading figures of the day. They are commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on Radio 4 and the World Service. The lectures were inaugurated in 1948 to mark the historic contribution made to public service broadcasting by Lord Reith, the corporation's first director-general.
Irish republicanism is the political movement for the unity and independence of Ireland under a republic. Irish republicans view British rule in any part of Ireland as inherently illegitimate. An ideology since the 17th century, various methods have been employed to achieve the republic, including rebellions and paramilitary campaigns. Although the makeup of republicanism has been multidenominational, its relation to catholicism increasingly became central.
The 1981 Irish hunger strike was the culmination of a five-year protest during the Troubles by Irish republican prisoners in Northern Ireland. The protest began as the blanket protest in 1976, when the British government withdrew Special Category Status for convicted paramilitary prisoners. In 1978, the dispute escalated into the dirty protest, where prisoners refused to leave their cells to wash and covered the walls of their cells with excrement. In 1980, seven prisoners participated in the first hunger strike, which ended after 53 days.
Armalite and ballot box was a political catchphrase used to define the strategy pursued by Irish republicans from 1981 up until the 1994 IRA ceasefire in which Sinn Féin ceased its policies of election boycott and abstentionism and instead contested elections in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, while the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) pursued an armed campaign to end Northern Ireland's status as part of the United Kingdom.
In Ireland, the state retains laws that allow for censorship, including specific laws covering films, advertisements, newspapers and magazines, as well as terrorism and pornography, among others. In the early years of the state, censorship was more widely enforced, particularly in areas that were perceived to be in contradiction of Catholic dogma, including abortion, sexuality and homosexuality. The church had banned many books and theories for centuries, listed in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
This article outlines, in chronological order, the various controversies surrounding or involving the BBC.
The Conscription Crisis of 1918 stemmed from a move by the British government to impose conscription in Ireland in April 1918 during the First World War. Vigorous opposition was led by trade unions, Irish nationalist parties and Roman Catholic bishops and priests. A conscription law was passed but was never put in effect; no one in Ireland was drafted into the British Army. The proposal and backlash galvanised support for political parties which advocated Irish separatism and influenced events in the lead-up to the Irish War of Independence.
Ógra Shinn Féin is the youth wing of the Irish political party Sinn Féin. Ógra Shinn Féin is active and organised throughout the island of Ireland.
Gerard Kelly is an Irish republican politician and former Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer who played a leading role in the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement on 10 April 1998. He is currently a member of Sinn Féin's Ard Chomhairle and a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for North Belfast.
Tommy McKearney is a former Irish volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army who took part in the 1980 hunger strike.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current state with its current name on New Year's Day 1927. The oldest and largest local and global broadcaster by stature and by number of employees, the BBC employs over 21,000 staff in total, of whom approximately 17,900 are in public-sector broadcasting.
Richard James Ayre was a member of the BBC Trust, the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation until its abolition in 2016. He is a former member for England of the Ofcom Content Board and chair of its Broadcast Review Committee. He was formerly a BBC journalist, first as a radio and television reporter in Belfast through the 1970s, before becoming the Home News Editor in London (1979–84), Head of BBC Westminster (1989–93), Controller of Editorial Policy (1993–96) and Deputy Chief Executive of BBC News (1996–2000).
From October 1988 to September 1994 the British government banned broadcasts of the voices of representatives from Sinn Féin and several Irish republican and loyalist groups on television and radio in the United Kingdom (UK). The restrictions, announced by the Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, on 19 October 1988, covered eleven organisations based in Northern Ireland. The ban followed a heightened period of violence in the course of the Troubles, and reflected the UK government's belief in a need to prevent Sinn Féin from using the media for political advantage.
we must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend