Respected state broadcaster a thorn in the side of all political parties

FOR all its carefully-won reputation around the world as a model of probity and fairness, over the decades the BBC has managed to annoy British governments of pretty much every political persuasion.

With its slightly anomalous position of being both a state broadcaster funded by a compulsory licence fee and avowedly independent, the British Broadcasting Corporation, founded in 1922, has long been in a tricky position.

The corporation has been regularly lambasted by ministers for being, depending on the issue and the government’s view, a hotbed of radical leftism, or a hidebound conservative dinosaur.

This is in stark contrast with the BBC’s reputation abroad, where the measured, careful reporting of the World Service radio generally commands affection and respect.

“Every (British) politician wants to rein in the BBC, more than anything else at all,” said Rod Allen, head of the department of journalism at London’s City University.

“They can buy the proprietors of the newspapers with political favours and stuff like that, but the BBC is bigger than politicians, generally speaking, and they hate that fact, absolutely hate it,” he said.

Despite scathing criticism of the BBC’s role in the David Kelly affair from some Labour MPs, the corporation has weathered worse storms before, with the catalyst again usually being wars.

In 1956 the Conservative government of Anthony Eden was deeply unhappy with BBC reporting of the Suez crisis. Margaret Thatcher later complained reports about the 1981 Falklands War were tilted in favour of then-military foes Argentina, levelling similar complaints of anti-government bias about the bitter British miners’ strike of 1984. Later, BBC reports covering the 1991 Gulf conflict and then the 1999 Kosovo campaign led to the corporation being successively dubbed the “Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation” and then the “Belgrade Broadcasting Corporation”.

“This latest row is nothing different at all,” said Allen. “Whatever party is in power, the BBC offends them.”

Nonetheless, the fallout for the corporation could be significant in the long-term. Some influential Labour lawmakers have called for the BBC’s board of governors to be dissolved and for the corporation to be brought under the remit of the government’s main broadcasting regulator, the Office of Communications.

This would mean the BBC losing some of its unique status in being regulated the same way as commercial broadcasters, Mr Allen said.