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This response to Philip Stephens appeared in the FT:
The BBC's success story has a public service plot By Mark Thompson Published: June 21 2006 03:00
Philip Stephens (Comment, June 20) is right to emphasise that broadcast journalism is going through a revolution: greater convenience, an explosion in choice, more audience participation, more opinionated news, rapidly changing ways in which people access news. He is completely wrong to assert that by responding to the challenges of this rapidly changing digital landscape and striving to remain relevant to all audiences, the BBC is somehow "losing the public service plot". Nothing could be further from the truth.
In a fast changing world of on-demand, podcasts, user-generated content, the BBC recognises fully that the values of its journalism - truth and accuracy, serving the public interest, impartiality, independence and accountability - must remain at the heart of all that it does. Eighty per cent of the British public consume BBC journalism every week. For audiences we are far and away the most trusted and impartial news broadcaster both in the UK and around the world. Our audiences emphasise that news and regional news are the bedrock of what they value from the BBC. They demand high-quality, trusted journalism that is reliable and accurate. But they also want us to be more modern, dynamic and accessible.
Of course the BBC must be committed to connecting to all audience groups with its journalism. That is our responsibility as a universal publicly funded broadcaster. That means our output must be both engaging and relevant in tone for different audiences whether it is on Today or the Asian Network, Newsnight or Newsbeat, BBC Three News or local radio. But all our journalism must be rooted in our values and in an agenda, not just of what is interesting, but what is important.
We are not "unremittingly defensive" about our journalism. Indeed in the past two years we have spearheaded a greater willingness to admit mistakes, overhauled our complaints system and next week will launch an editors' blog on our website to engage with audiences about our decisions and dilemmas. This greater openness is vital to maintaining the trust of our audiences.
On becoming director-general in 2004, I established, for the first time at the BBC, a journalism board where all the senior leaders come together to ensure oversight and co-ordination of all the BBC's journalism at UK, global and local levels. It is chaired by Mark Byford, deputy director-general, as head of the BBC's journalism. It has led to a greater sense of editorial planning, grip, leadership and oversight.
In relation to Mr Stephens' comment that "quality, depth and judgement have been sacrificed to showbiz trivia and hyperbole", I would only observe that in the past 24 hours the BBC led its Ten O'Clock News on North Korea and the US's warning not to test one of its long-range ballistic missiles; Newsnight led with an examination of allegations of the abuse of human rights by the US military in Iraq; and as I write this article, our website and Five Live are leading on lapses in vetting records for teachers. Showbiz trivia?
Mr Stephens may, as a member of the independent panel on the impartiality of our coverage of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, be frustrated that I and my colleagues in BBC management did not agree with every one of his recommendations. However, we have responded constructively to the report and accepted many of the proposals from the panel including establishing a West Bank correspondent, greater cross-trailing of our website from radio and television and a rolling plan for current affairs coverage.
However, we rejected the idea of a senior "guiding hand" on Middle East coverage as a panacea for editorial consistency - not only because it would add another layer of management but because we feel that we already have a robust editorial structure in place. The Neil Report, examining BBC journalism two years ago, emphasised that "as BBC News has 10 times as many journalists as on a national newspaper, broadcasting 120 hours of output a day, editors are the day-to-day custodians of the BBC's journalistic values". Editors, while maintaining the editorial distinctiveness of their programmes, report through a departmental structure with ultimate oversight from the BBC's journalism board to ensure quality, consistency and clarity of purpose.
As editor-in-chief, I am confident this is the right approach and, far from "losing the public service plot", we are more determined than ever to fulfil our public purpose mission to sustain citizenship and support a national and global debate through high-quality, impartial and independent journalism. Our audiences demand nothing less.
The writer is director-general of the BBC
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