Examination of Witnesses (Questions 440
- 449)
WEDNESDAY 25 JULY 2007
Ms Helen Boaden, Mr Nigel Chapman and Ms Sian Kevill
Q440 Lord King of Bridgwater:
Did you know what Gavin Davis said on this issue, because funnily
enough Gavin Davis said something to the previous Committee which
was almost identical to what Janet Daley is quoted as saying,
and this was on reflection, having left the BBC, not, of course,
as a Conservative supporter. Obviously, every Conservative and
certainly every Conservative MP bases half his constituency support
on saying the BBC is impossibly biased when they get stories that
they do not like, but the interesting thing was that Gavin Davis
said this. He said that he thought the problem was that there
is a certain type of person, put it this way, who is attracted
towards new media and working in the new media and there is a
sort of consensus view formed, a sort of club attitude, to these
things and he thought it was a sort of soft left attitude and
I think he was a bit self-critical that he had not addressed it
during his time as Chairman, and he particularly said it about
the BBC. It is interesting because you do not hear it said about
Sky, you do not hear it said about other programmes and you do
not hear it said about ITN very much.
Ms Boaden: It is something we do take seriously.
It is one of the reasons the impartiality report was commissioned.
It was a joint Trust/managerial report to interrogate these kinds
of concerns and if they are true, and I would argue that it is
a much more complex picture than that, to make sure that we are
as rigorous as we can be with ourselves. Complacency of any sort
is not to be admired or encouraged, from whichever direction.
That is the point.
Q441 Chairman:
Does it worry you, just to follow Lord King's point? All parties
have their reservations about the BBC, as Campbell's diaries fully
illustrate, but certainly a sure way of getting a round of applause
at a Conservative conference is to have a go at the BBC. Does
that in any way worry you that that should be the perception?
After all, we are in Opposition; we are not even in Government.
Ms Boaden: Of course it worries me. Perceptions
like that always worry me, although I can assure you that there
are many Labour Party events where I suspect the same to happen.
That is not to say that we are perfect because both are criticising
us. You want people to perceive you as you see yourselves, as
trying very hard to be independent and impartial, but perception
is a complex thing. Very often when you interrogate perceptions
in the BBC it is not what people actually consume from us; it
is what they read about us in the newspapers. A number of canards
about the BBC, when you interrogate where people's attitudes come
from, and this includes people in political circles, are not about
what we have actually broadcast; they are about the way it was
reported in the papers very often. It must happen to MPs all the
time. It must happen to yourselves, I am sure, and that is a very
difficult thing to change. What I would come back to is that consistently
over many years trust in the BBC by the people out there has remained
extraordinarily high, so although they may be irritated by us
and occasionally annoyed, and at the moment I suspect rather disappointed,
at heart they do trust us.
Q442 Lord Inglewood:
These remarks have got me thinking that frequently when the BBC
reports things about this part of Parliament you see a rather
dramatic lurid photograph of people in red robes and white fur
trimmings. You have not seen many of them around here today, have
you?
Ms Boaden: No.
Q443 Lord Inglewood:
Or on many other days of being here.
Ms Boaden: No. I think it is a fair point. I
think getting over the working of government is genuinely quite
difficult because process does not work well on television. Radio
often gives a much better picture and, of course, we have got
The Parliamentary Channel which, for those of us who like it,
is a revelation very often.
Q444 Lord King of Bridgwater:
Why do you not use the picture of the House at Question Time,
which, I have to say from my Other House experience, is much fuller
in the House of Lords than it is in the House of Commons, and
use that instead of the everlasting picture of people in ermine?
Ms Boaden: I shall pass that on.
Q445 Lord King of Bridgwater:
Thank you very much. I would not want it in any way to influence
your editorial judgment.
Ms Boaden: I shall say I was bullied into it.
Q446 Chairman:
The trouble is, of course, that the red cloaks are such a good
picture.
Ms Boaden: They are a wonderful picture; that
is exactly right.
Q447 Chairman:
And that is one of the troubles of television news.
Ms Boaden: It is always a challenge; television
news should not always be about neat pictures, and that has been
from time immemorial, and if you talk to ITN and Sky they struggle
with the same thing, except very often we feel an obligation to
do stories that are difficult to do without pictures. If you think
about someone like Evan Davis, who does economics, the most difficult
and often the most abstract thing, I think there we have actually
cracked a very abstract thing on television because he does it
brilliantly, but often he does it because he uses words very well.
Q448 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
Which is why he is now on the Today programme.
Ms Boaden: He is on the Today programme
sometimes and he is enjoying it greatly.
Q449 Chairman:
You have been very patient and we have gone way over time but
thank you very much indeed, all of you, for coming and perhaps
if we have other points we can come back to you and there is some
information I think that we would like in any event in writing.
Ms Boaden: Can I just say how grateful I was
to you for allowing us to come at this date because there is very
little we would have not come for but we had to break the appointment
because of Alan and we do appreciate your patience.
Chairman: Okay. Thanks a lot.
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