I’ve a piece in the current issue of Standpoint on the disastrous rule of James Harding as the BBC’s Head of News. He was a former editor of the Times, who didn’t strike me as a bad man as editors go, if you can forget about the moment when he turned down the chance to break the MPs’ expenses scandal, one of the biggest stories of his career.
Since moving to the BBC, however, his seedy behaviour has become a threat to British culture. Harding is a sinecure-dispenser, who has stuffed his friends and associates into senior positions, without requiring them to compete in front of BBC boards. Open appointments stop cronyism, and are a useful protection against sexual harassment. (Creepy bosses cannot say to women ‘sleep with me and I’ll guarantee you a promotion’.) And Harding has circumvented them.
Please don’t tell me that all bosses in the private sector insist on having his or her“team” in place. Only the worst surround themselves with sycophants. Good managers and good editors do not behave like Harding, even when the rules of a private company allow them to.
The rules of the BBC should not allow Harding to behave as he does, particularly when the man who turned down the MPs’ expenses scandal manifests his aversion to investigative journalism by sacking all the reporters on Panorama and hammering the budgets of BBC radio news, where much of the corporation’s best journalism is made.
After I wrote the piece, I wondered if I had been too harsh on Harding. Any head of news would have to deal with horrendous financial restrictions at the BBC. He had published decent journalism at the Times, and my colleagues there held him in high regard. Surely, there were worse people in the world than James Harding.
There may be. But the BBC journalists who contacted me after I had published suggested I’d be hard pressed to find them. Here is the testimony of one correspondent. I won’t use his real name for reasons which should be obvious.
On morale in BBC News:
‘There’s so much unhappiness within BBC news at the moment. Your piece is an upsum of many conversations I’ve had or heard within newsrooms in Birmingham, London & Salford. I’ve always thought in the past that, despite its numerous imperfections, the BBC was a good place to work, because by and large it was fair and decent. The past 12 months have seen many changes. Good people have been side-lined, overlooked, even forced to leave.’
On Harding acting like Vladimir Putin promoting his favourites:
‘Cronyism, like nepotism, is almost impossible to avoid in any walk of life, but it has never been so blatant in my XX years with the BBC’
And on the fear in what should be fearless newsrooms:
‘Why not speak out? Mortgage, bills and middle age. It’s still a great place to work, most of the time, and as a loyalist it is hard to publicly criticise an organisation to which I owe so much. There’s also a genuine climate of fear, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. People are afraid to speak out. I often criticise editorial decisions and deployments from within and have been warned by friends higher up not to do so. Although, as you say, Radio News has been stupidly hacked back, it has worked to my advantage because I can get away with more than colleagues in TV, for whom one false word or mistake can end their careers.’
What an adviser to George W. Bush once dismissed as ‘the reality based community’ is growing smaller by the day. PRs outnumber reporters. Spin-doctors outnumber political correspondents. Russia, Rupert Murdoch and Iran launch propaganda channels to fill the gaps in the shrinking world of mainstream news. Only the BBC has the resources to remain a bastion of straight reporting.
It is a backhanded compliment to its honesty that the Right accuses it of liberal bias, the Scottish Nationalists accuse it of pro-union bias and the Left accuses it of pro-Tory bias. All of them are trying to shape BBC coverage because they know that viewers and listeners recognise that – with the well-known exceptions – BBC reporters try to tell the truth as best they can.
This may not sound like much. But in the modern world where PR and propaganda are everywhere on the rise, honest reporting is more necessary and precious than ever.
Tony Hall and the BBC’s HR department have already had to intervene to stop Harding firing reporters without due process. But the wretched man remains in post. If director-general won’t act, then the BBC Trust should, and ask whether it wants to see BBC News remain an essential public service. If it does, as I hope it does, it should then ask whether BBC News can survive with Harding in charge.
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