AUNTIE REALLY SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER

APPOINTING a hardline new Culture Secretary to take on the BBC. Enforcement of the TV licence fee to end, with no more fines for non-payment. Perhaps even privatisation, a sell-off looming for our national broadcaster...

Rumours are rife in the TV world, as the Conservatives return to power with a thumping majority – and an apparent grudge against the Beeb for what they perceive as its biased election campaign coverage.

There’s no doubt that Boris Johnson’s new administration is very cross with the BBC – and our other nationally-owned broadcaster, Channel Four.

Enmities came to a head when, frustrated by the Prime Minister’s refusal to submit to an interview during the election campaign, Andrew Neil delivered a petulant challenge on air. After grilling the Brexit Party’s Nigel Farage, he turned to face directly into the lens and solemnly intoned: ‘It’s not too late. We have an interview prepared... questions of trust; questions we’d like to put to Mr Johnson so you can hear his replies. But we can’t. Because he won’t sit down with us.’

The PM’s senior adviser, Dominic Cummings, was said to be furious – just as he was with C4 News for ‘empty chairing’ Johnson on the set of a leaders’ debate about climate change by replacing him with a block of melting ice. The situation appears to be bordering on open warfare – in which case I’d advise all concerned to take a step back and remember that it’s normal for governments and independent broadcasters to be at loggerheads.

Tony Blair’s press secretary Alastair Campbell declared war on the BBC during the debate over the ‘dodgy dossier’ on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

Margaret Thatcher attempted to pack the board at Broadcasting House with sympathetic governors following the Corporation’s repeated questioning of her during the Falklands War and miners’ strike.

I can assure readers that relations between Downing Street and Auntie have been at a much lower ebb than they are today.

But that’s not to say that BBC bosses did everything right during the election campaign. On the contrary.

I’m a huge fan of Mr Neil’s intellectually rigorous style and have been for 40 years, ever since I oversaw his selection as an unknown presenter on a London Weekend Television current affairs show. I am not a fan, however, of the way journalists such as Neil hijacked the airwaves, using humiliation tactics in a bid to force the Prime Minister to face their questions. This was a serious abuse of one’s position, and I have written to Ofcom requesting an urgent review to ensure it does not happen again.

It feels like a watershed moment. Neil’s monologue was seen by around three million viewers and viewed an estimated four million times more via social media. In the end it clearly did no harm to the Tory campaign, and I’m sure that Neil wouldn’t be arrogant enough to imagine that an interview, however forceful, could have changed this election result either.

The issue here is impartiality, and broadcasters have a statutory duty to respect that. It is not their job to use the airwaves to cajole and try to coerce politicians into interviews – or to shame them publicly if they exercise their right to refuse. British

viewers do not want to see blatantly biased political reporting on mainstream television such as the americans get with the Right-wing Fox News. But I fear that’s the way we are going. It’s fair enough to mock politicians who don’t turn up on entertainment shows such as have I Got News For You. Former Labour deputy leader Roy hattersley was once replaced with a tub of lard. that’s satire and I have no problem with it.

But a leaders’ debate is very different. the implication of that empty chair on Channel 4 was that Johnson was avoiding the issue. that is not a point for broadcasters to make, but for other politicians to opine.

In this campaign, in any event, it certainly wasn’t true of either the PM or the Leader of the Opposition. For the first time in British tV history, we’ve seen the leaders of the two main political parties going head-tohead in US-style debates on prime-time television.

Johnson simply chose to do some interviews and not others. that is his right.

and following their victory, senior tories have stayed away from BBC Radio 4’s today programme too. they are said to regard it as a ‘total waste of time’, a show aimed at ‘a Remain bubble’. that’s their choice to make. It’s a free country. (and I can’t deny that – in the new digital world – the today programme, which once enjoyed a unique status in British political debate, is losing its impact.)

I would expect the producers to exert pressure behind the scenes to get interviews. that’s their right too. But where the BBC and C4 have overstepped the mark is by taking their grievances into the public domain, and misusing their privilege as public service broadcasters to make what amounted to political statements.

Politicians are not at the beck and call of broadcasters. Producers can beg and plead for interviews, and exert every pressure short of blackmail – but they do not have a divine right to demand attendance.

and when they are snubbed, channels broadcasting on the publicly-owned airwaves must never resort to taunts. that is overtly political behaviour, and it puts the whole basis of our precious broadcasting impartiality at risk.