"SAVE BBC WORLD SERVICE" by Tully

[101470.1700@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

		NO MORE BEATING ABOUT THE BUSH
The World Service must be defended against an arrogant BBC management

Article in "The Observer" by Mark Tully
7th July 1996
     (ACCOMPANIES PLEA TO LOBBY BRITISH FOREIGN SECRETARY AND BBC CHAIRMAN)

	The BBC World Service is no longer to make its own programmes or control
its own news service.  So what's all the fuss about?  Isn't it just the BBC
staff whingeing again?  If that's so, why have so many of the great and good
written to the Campaign to Save World Service expressing their concern?  Why did
so many people lobby Parliament last Tuesday?  Because the unique character of
the World Service is under threat.  Its news agenda will be controlled by those
whose prime concern is the domestic services, and not the stories in which
international listeners are interested.

	In 1975, and Indian journalist woke me up in Delhi to tell me that all
the major opposition leaders had been arrested.  I filed a story listing their
named before censorship was imposed and communications cut.  The World Service
duty editor realised it was part of his agenda to broadcast these names.  Indira
Gandhi was livid.  She wanted time to prepare India and the world for the news
that the entire opposition of the largest democracy was locked up.  Two weeks
later, after I had been expelled from India and was back in London, the then
foreign editor of the domestic Radio News Services asked me why on earth I had
wasted time on an expensive phone-call dictating the names of arrested Indian
politicians most British listeners had never heard of.
When Rajiv Gandhi lost the General Election in 1989, I was badgered by the
presenter of the PM programme to say that he was finished.  When the interviewer
despaired of changing my mind he said, "Well, Mark Tully may not think Rajiv
Gandhi is finished, but this report from our reporter here in London says he
is."  Bush House knew he was not, and certainly didn't try to get me to say he
was.

	Differing agendas and interpretations mean that a take-over can never
make sense: yet that is what has happened.  The much admired and influential
news service edited in Bush House, the headquarters of World Service, has been
taken over by the domestic services.
This does not mean to say there is anything wrong with the agenda of the
domestic services.  BBC News would not be so effective in Britain if there were.
But the domestic agenda is the very one which drives Indians up the wall.  I had
more than 20 years' experience of the difficulties of persuading domestic
editors that India is interesting, and I don't think my successor has had much
more luck.

	At the same time, I have had more than 20 years reporting India's
politics, its economy, the great changes taking place in society, the problems
and the achievements.  In India, I am regarded with affection because of the
affection for the World Service.  In Britain, I am asked by Indians why all they
hear about their country is news  of poverty, and corruption, dirt and disease.
I know that is an exaggeration.  I know that the recent General Election was
covered by the domestic services.  But I also know that the overall impression
left by the BBC's domestic news is.  If the World Service loses its independence
to pursue its own news agenda, listeners and viewers in India and the rest of
South Asia will switch off, and they are the largest audience.

	Who cares?  Successive governments have thought it worthwhile to fund to
the World Service.  That makes it all the more surprising that the Foreign
Office, which provides those funds, didn't bother to consult the World Service
managers before agreeing to these drastic changes.  The World Service is an
invaluable asset for British business, too.  It is one institution which does
make Britons abroad proud to be British.
The writer Ben Okri, speaking at the lobby of Parliament, said the World Service
was "almost a world in itself, a world of influence".  He warned: "To come along
and try to break this into a simple structure is to break its fundamental hears,
its beauty and its integrity."  The former hostage Terry Waite, who, if anyone,
knows the value of the World Service to Britons in difficulties, said: "I regard
the Sixties as an age of architectural vandalism and I would regard this age as
an age of institutional vandalism."

	Corporation managers argue that the changes are just restructuring, that
there's no threat to the World Service.  Look back on the history of BBC Radio
since it was forced into an arranged marriage with television.  In almost every
departmental merger, the person from television, not radio, got the top job.
The widespread opinion that radio would suffer if its new and current affairs
moved in with television was ignored.  Liz Forgan, the managing director of
radio, has resigned, and the BBC has lost the much admired controller of Radio
Four, Michael Green.  There has been a creeping takeover by television, which is
not surprising when the Director-General regards radio as "just a different
delivery system".  There will be a creeping take-over of the World Service too.

	The BBC staff magazine Ariel published a chart looking like the family
tree of a particularly fecund dynasty, with smiling King John as the one
recognisable World Service face.  In the news branch of the dynasty there is no
one from the World Service; it's only got 140 million regular listeners,
slightly more than the Nine o'Clock News.
The World Service broadcasts in 40 languages other than English.  Those
broadcasters are to be left as appendages in Bush House while the heart of the
service, the newsroom, moves to White City, to become the poor relation of the
domestic news services.  Sir Christopher Bland, the chairman of the BBC, who has
two months' experience of the corporation, says they can communicate by
telephone.

	Imagine a sub-editor on a six-month contract, who knows little or nothing
about India, sorting out the complicated details of an Indian story with a
member of the Hindi service he has never met.  Local knowledge and an awareness
of the nuances of language have made the World Service unique.  It's very
difficult to quantify that in management-consultant-speak.

	How can a top management which makes the most radical change in World
Service's history without consulting its managers understand an institution as
unique and as complicated as Bush House?  At the lobby of Parliament, the
novelist and former BBC governor P.D. James said: "I don't know whether to be
more appalled by the decision itself than by the way it's been arrived at.
Arrogance, extraordinary arrogance."  The chairman says he has heard "no
sensible arguments" against what he has proposed."  Whom has he asked?

	James's withering attack went on: "I would like to say to both John Birt
and the new chairman - they do not own the BBC."  She is right; the nation owns
the BBC, and the must now be a national debate on its; future.

	No one is saying the World Service does not need to changer; it changed
during the 30 years I was on the staff.  But for the past three years, the
morale of all BBC staff has been battered by continuous change.  Sir Christopher
and John Birt should remember the experience of an employee of the Roman army,
Centurion Gaius Petronius.  He said: We trained hard, but it seemed that every
time we were beginning to form into teams we would again be re-organised."
Reorganisation, he learnt later in life, could be a wonderful method for
"creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and
demoralisation."
The staff of Bush House have launched the movement to save the World Service.
They are confused, but they are not demoralised.  They will be, and inefficient
too, if others don't join their campaign for a national debate.  The men at the
top of the BBC don't listen to their staff.