British Broadcasting Corporation

Founded: 1927

Type of organization: Radio and television association

Significance: The BBC, accountable to the British government, has practiced censorship as policy; the BBC has also earned wide respect for its news service

After a variety of commercial experiments in the years after World War I, British broadcasting effectively began in 1922 with the establishment of the British Broadcasting Company, a private corporation. Almost immediately questions were raised regarding the issue of the responsibility of such a corporation to the general public. A parliamentary committee conducted an investigation and in 1925 recommended that the company be dissolved and a public corporation responsible to parliament be established.

In 1927 the British Broadcasting Corporation came into existence, and John Reith, general manager of the original company, became the director general, a position he held until 1938, when he left to enter politics. Reith, known as the father of the BBC, developed and expanded broadcasting throughout the United Kingdom and in 1932 established the BBC’s World Service, the most listened-to shortwave broadcast service in the world. In contrast to the Voice of America, its nearest competitor, with 90 million listeners, the World Service claims some 140 million listeners tuning in to its weekly broadcasts from London. Its standard programming includes music and book reviews as well as domestic and world news, presented in English and in forty-three languages. Almost from its inception the World Service has maintained an international reputation for truth and impartiality that is generally considered unassailable. In 1936 the BBC developed the first regular television service in the United Kingdom, and in 1967 the first color television service in Europe.

Governance of the BBC

As a public corporation, the BBC is prohibited by its royal charter from advertising and from broadcasting sponsored programming. Financed by license fees remitted annually by owners of radio and television receivers, the BBC provides its subscribers with four radio program choices and two television channels. For more than thirty years the corporation maintained a monopoly of broadcast services in Great Britain until the establishment of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) in 1954. Although the BBC had become a venerable and respected institution in British life, growing public protest to what was perceived as an unresponsiveness to changes in public taste made broadcast choice and diversity an issue whose time had come. The IBA offered the first commercial television channel to the British public, and by 1974, the government had licensed several commercial radio stations, ending the BBC’s radio monopoly as well. In 1982 the government sanctioned the introduction of a second commercial television channel.

In its daily operations, the control of BBC programming rests in the hands of the producers, whose decisions and choices are guided by a series of restrictive codes. These codes include a 1973 mandate from the board of governors on taste and standards in the BBC and another in 1979 offering guidance on the portrayal of violence. There is also a list of topics that are not to be discussed, which include the royal family and the Church of England. These and other prohibited items first appeared in the notorious Green Book, or more formally the Policy Guide for Writers and Producers, introduced by Reith in the early days of his directorship. The Green Book governed BBC programming until it was finally withdrawn in 1963. It generally prohibited anything that might be considered crude or sexually suggestive. References either oblique or direct to homosexuality, excessive drinking, women’s underwear, and religion were banned. Even politics, generally considered a mainstay of media humor, good-natured and otherwise, was severely restricted. Mild critical comment on the government was occasionally acceptable, but personal ridicule of a particular politician was not. Despite the demise of the Green Book, many of its basic principles and tenets remained in effect.

BBC producers are directly responsible to the director general and the board of governors for following these edicts. The director and the board are in turn ultimately responsible to the Home Secretary, who has the power, presumably in extreme cases, of revoking the BBC’s operating license and (with parliamentary review and approval) abolishing its royal charter. Section thirteen of the charter provides the Home Office with the right to prohibit arbitrarily the broadcasting of any material deemed unsuitable, even in situations where the issue of what is suitable is not defined by the restrictive codes. In 1964 the BBC Board of Governors, in an attempt to clarify its role as the guardian of the national culture, defined its responsibility as one that would safeguard the presentation of programs that would “not offend against good taste or decency, or be likely to encourage crime or disorder, or be offensive to public feeling.” Matters such as “taste” are subjectively defined and generally unclear; potential penalties for infractions are less equivocal. Broadcasters who might persist in a basic right to freedom of expression or “artistic license” are liable for criminal prosecution on statutory charges of “conspiracy to corrupt public morals” or “conspiracy to outrage public decency.” In the most extreme cases, section nineteen of the charter provides the Home Office with the power to dispatch troops to seize control of the BBC on the behalf of the crown and “the public interest.”

Politics and Foreign Policy

Although generally compliant with government restrictions on programming that raises questions concerning “good taste” and “decency,” the BBC has provoked the greatest controversy in its handling of politics and foreign policy. In the 1982 military conflict between Great Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands, the BBC uncharacteristically refused to stay within the limits of government-prescribed coverage, and were duly reprimanded by the Tory government’s media committee.

In the prolonged conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, however, the BBC has, under legal duress, adhered closely to government restrictions on domestic broadcasting. Official censorship of any coverage of that prolonged conflict is based on two laws passed in the late 1970’s. The Prevention of Terrorism Act (1976) requires British subjects to provide legal authorities with any information that might lead to the prevention of a terrorist act or lead to the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in terrorist activities. Television journalists who interview members of the Irish Provisional Army or who have pursued leads from informants are required by law to cooperate with authorities and provide all information related to such investigations. The 1978 Emergency Provisions Act governing Northern Ireland provides a form of prior restraint, impeding investigative journalism by forbidding the collecting and recording (either audio or video) for television or radio broadcast of any information concerning the military, courts and court officials, police or prison officials that might be used by terrorists. In October, 1988, government censorship went even further. Home Secretary Douglas Hurd officially banned all interviews by the BBC and the IBA with any representatives of Northern Ireland political groups that appeared on a government list of subversive organizations.

In 1996 a proposed restructuring of the BBC that would include consolidation of the World Service with domestic operations was met by strong objections around the world. South African archbishop Desmond Tutu voiced his objections to any changes in the news operation, citing the potential loss of the objectivity and impartiality that has distinguished the BBC’s reporting of international news from the reporting of other networks. The Dalai Lama, exiled from Tibet following China’s occupation of that country, protested the “dismemberment” of the World Service. In a controversial decision, BBC top management did not permit the Tibetan spiritual leader’s views to air on the World Service.

Bibliography

Two books by Asa Briggs, A History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom: The Birth of Broadcasting (vol. 1, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1961, 1995) and A History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom: The BBC: The First Fifty Years (vol. 2, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1985), offer sound and eminently readable detail of the BBC’s early years, but are a bit more laudatory than objective. Roger Milner’s Reith: The B.B.C. Years (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1983) objectively balances the puritanical conservatism of the first director general with his very solid accomplishments, particularly in the years prior to World War II. The BBC’s alternating struggle and compliance with government censorship is effectively detailed in Tom O’Malley’s Closedown?: The BBC and Government Broadcasting Policy, 1979-1992 (London: Pluto Press, 1994).