HOW best to celebrate your 100th birthday? The BBC, demonstrating its close kinship with the Church of England, commissions a series to reveal and examine its most egregious failures. (My irony is not wholehearted: it is, of course, an admirable sign of maturity and commitment by both institutions that they/we dare to wash our dirty linen in public.)
Days That Shook the BBC with David Dimbleby (BBC2, Tuesday of last week), the first of three episodes, explored the relationship of the BBC and the twin centres of the Establishment: 10 Downing Street and Buckingham Palace. Dimbleby eagerly scrutinises the reality of the BBC’s much-vaunted core values. Is it genuinely independent? Does it act with absolute integrity and impartiality? Does it enjoy complete public trust?
He charted how successive Prime Ministers attempted to make the Corporation support government policy and desist from critical questions. His narrative showed that there is little doubt that, at key moments, the BBC caved in to pressure, only too aware both of the political vulnerability of licence-fee funding, and the PM’s power to appoint and dismiss the Director-General. Dimbleby summons old colleagues and friends and submits them, genially, to the third degree to reveal the truth.
It is fascinating, revealing, and upsetting, as we see how influence and power get their way. Yet it provides a sense that this might be the best level of independence that we can hope for from a publicly funded broadcaster.
I would value a greater analysis of the underlying values. Is there such a thing as absolute independence? Surely, journalistic pursuit of the truth always exists in a modifying context. And Dimbleby is fully aware of the irony of this gamekeeper-turned-poacher affair.
One of the BBC’s entirely admirable public commitments is the extraordinary annual music festival of the BBC Proms. My colleagues on this paper properly report its remarkable ever-expanding programmes — but what about the televised concerts? The sound is less good than the wireless; so, is anything gained?
Yes, a great deal: as the camera focuses first on a section, then on an individual player, the conductor, and then the whole hall, we get a sense of the overall context, and then, in close-up, of the extraordinary depth of commitment, skill, and sheer joy that create performances of the highest quality. The performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 (BBC4, Sunday) by the Chineke! Chorus and Orchestra went beyond that in destroying barriers: Chineke! (“god of creation” in Igbo) is Europe’s first professional black and ethnically diverse orchestra.
Classical music belongs not just to white males: it is everyone’s heritage. With current national and international catastrophes, did Beethoven’s proclamation of the brotherhood of all mankind ever carry such profound resonance?