10 Informed Spotlight


Is it payback time for the BBC?


its chief political interrogator has not been forgoten. Trough back channels, the


Johnson’s government has made it known that it intends to “whack” the corporation. Ian Burrell looks at a broadcaster in peril


In a memorable moment from the election campaign, the BBC journalist Andrew Neil looked into the camera and challenged Boris Johnson to answer “a question of trust” by appearing on his show. “We have been asking him for weeks now to give us a date, a time, a venue. As of now, none has been forthcoming,” he said. “It’s not too late. We have an interview prepared, oven-ready as Mr Johnson likes to say.”


Neil’s chutzpah failed to provoke the


future Prime Minister into giving an interview. But now that Johnson is inside Downing Street he is giving the BBC his full atention – and the grandstanding of


government has let it be known that it was “immensely annoyed” with the BBC’s election coverage, and especially Neil’s throwing down of the gauntlet. Scores are being setled. Te coming months will see the BBC facing an onslaught from which it may not recover in its current form. In a front-page story in the Sunday Times, we were told by what Conservativehome’s Paul Goodman described as “a scarcely- disguised Downing Street source that ” the BBC was about to be “whacked”. Days later “another source” said the Prime Minister was less gung-ho about the destruction of the BBC. On 5 February the government announced a review of the BBC’s funding which could mean that the licence fee is scrapped in 2027. It will consider decriminalising non-payment of the licence fee from 2022, a step that would cost the BBC at least £200m. “None of this was in their manifesto,” complained one source. Shortly aſter the review concludes, the BBC must take responsibility for funding free licences for the over-75s at a minimum cost of £250m (for those on pension credit), and possibly £750m (for all over-75s). Before it takes those mighty blows, the BBC will in April risk undermining public support for the licence fee by raising the annual charge by 2 per cent to £157.50. It is in this dire context that the BBC must find its new leader, aſter the sudden decision by director-general Tony Hall to step down in the summer. “Tese are very dangerous times for the BBC,” says Suzanne Franks, professor of journalism at City University and a former BBC broadcaster. “It is going to need a very skilled leadership to steer it through this now.”


So bad is the crisis that John Mair, a publisher and former BBC producer, has commissioned a book titled Is the BBC in Peril? (And Should It Be?). He answers both those questions in the affirmative


Mat Kenyon


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