I support the BBC. I believe in public broadcasting. I believe that market provision of journalism and culture produces systematic failures that the BBC, at its best, corrects.
I also believe that the BBC, as currently constituted, is making the arguments against it easier than they should be.
The Case For
The BBC's case rests on market failure arguments that are more compelling than ever. Commercial news media, facing collapsing advertising revenue, is retreating from local journalism, investigative reporting, and the kind of careful, considered analysis that democratic citizenship requires.
The BBC fills some of these gaps. Its local radio services, its investigative journalism capacity, and its willingness to commission programming that no commercial broadcaster would touch — these are genuine contributions.
What Needs to Change
The BBC's digital strategy has been improvised rather than designed. Its online presence competes directly with the commercial news publishers whose advertising revenue it cannot replace — undermining the ecosystem rather than complementing it.
Its editorial culture has developed a groupthink problem. The instinctive assumptions of the organisation — about politics, culture, and social questions — are broadly those of the educated metropolitan professional class from which it primarily recruits.
The Existential Stakes
The BBC needs to make the case for itself more effectively than it has been doing. Defensive management, reactive communications, and a reluctance to acknowledge genuine criticisms are not strategies for survival.
