Charlotte Higgins will speak at Prospect's event "The Future of the BBC—2017 and Beyond?" on Wednesday, 14th December.
Read Tony Hall on why Britain needs the BBC
The big question for the BBC today is fundamental and about democracy; not for the first time.
The Corporation was founded in 1922 between two key moments in British democracy—1918, when the first votes for women were granted and votes for men finally became universal, and 1928 when all women gained the vote.
It was thus present at the creation of the UK as we know it now. The first Director General, the famous Lord (but then plain old John) Reith, knew perfectly well that he had a profound role to play in sustaining democracy. This a democracy that was fully formed just at the moment when it was decided to form the BBC as an independent, but public service and publicly-funded, monopoly broadcaster.
Today, there is a great deal of anxiety about democracy—with thinkers like Colin Crouch even talking about “post democracy.” A new charter may be about to begin, but the BBC, which is smaller than it was five years ago, will probably continue to shrink.
So the BBC was present at the birth of British democracy, and the former is shrinking as it looks like the latter could be withering. That’s not to say there is necessarily a causal connection—though there is little doubt that the BBC remains a pretty strong mechanism for sanitising and calming political discourse, a power that is diminishing in the internet era.
Rather, I wonder whether we will look back on the BBC as having been one of the stabilising, statist institutions of its time which, though slightly longer lived than state-run industries, may, like the NHS, have become so chipped-away-at as to lose its place at the heart of British identity and culture. I wonder whether historians will look back and think that the BBC was essentially a phenomenon of the late 20th century.
That is only one of several big questions which I’m sure we’ll be discussing at Wednesday night’s Prospect event. But with Rupert Murdoch’s renewed bid for total ownership of Sky, and the World Service expanding its remit in an international mood which seems to have something of the Cold War about it, there will be no shortage of urgent questions to address. And that’s before we consider the Daily Mail’s striking—post-democratic?—call for Theresa May to appoint someone to chair the BBC “who shares the world view of the party elected to rule.”
Read Tony Hall on why Britain needs the BBC
The big question for the BBC today is fundamental and about democracy; not for the first time.
The Corporation was founded in 1922 between two key moments in British democracy—1918, when the first votes for women were granted and votes for men finally became universal, and 1928 when all women gained the vote.
It was thus present at the creation of the UK as we know it now. The first Director General, the famous Lord (but then plain old John) Reith, knew perfectly well that he had a profound role to play in sustaining democracy. This a democracy that was fully formed just at the moment when it was decided to form the BBC as an independent, but public service and publicly-funded, monopoly broadcaster.
Today, there is a great deal of anxiety about democracy—with thinkers like Colin Crouch even talking about “post democracy.” A new charter may be about to begin, but the BBC, which is smaller than it was five years ago, will probably continue to shrink.
So the BBC was present at the birth of British democracy, and the former is shrinking as it looks like the latter could be withering. That’s not to say there is necessarily a causal connection—though there is little doubt that the BBC remains a pretty strong mechanism for sanitising and calming political discourse, a power that is diminishing in the internet era.
Rather, I wonder whether we will look back on the BBC as having been one of the stabilising, statist institutions of its time which, though slightly longer lived than state-run industries, may, like the NHS, have become so chipped-away-at as to lose its place at the heart of British identity and culture. I wonder whether historians will look back and think that the BBC was essentially a phenomenon of the late 20th century.
That is only one of several big questions which I’m sure we’ll be discussing at Wednesday night’s Prospect event. But with Rupert Murdoch’s renewed bid for total ownership of Sky, and the World Service expanding its remit in an international mood which seems to have something of the Cold War about it, there will be no shortage of urgent questions to address. And that’s before we consider the Daily Mail’s striking—post-democratic?—call for Theresa May to appoint someone to chair the BBC “who shares the world view of the party elected to rule.”
