BBC chasing ratings led to the Martin Bashir scandal – little has changed

It’s the nature of some problems that we might not always be emotionally conditioned to recognise solutions.

Take, for instance, the BBC’s Panorama programme from Thursday night. Following an inquiry by former supreme court judge John Dyson, the episode acknowledged the systemic failure of the BBC to take seriously the business of its journalism around Martin Bashir’s infamous interview with the Princess of Wales in 1995. This was a chance for the BBC to admit that it had failed to live up to “high standards of integrity and transparency”, not just around the interview but the investigation into its own failure led by former director-general, Tony Hall.

The talk today, then, should be about reforming the BBC in constructive ways that help the corporation rediscover its original mandate. Instead, much of the media has engaged with the same kind of quasi-celebrity gossip that led us into this grubby mess in the first place. Journalists wonder when and where the marriage between the Prince of Wales and Diana broke down, whilst statements released by their two sons are parsed for deeper meaning. Does it reveal much about the current mental state of the two princes and their broken relationship? Above all else, people speculate about timelines. Would Diana be alive today if she hadn’t given that interview to Bashir in 1995? If Bashir had not lied about those closest to Diana, nurtured her paranoia about “the establishment”, would she have embarked on a series of decisions that ended with her climbing into the back of a Mercedes driven by a drunk chauffeur one night in Paris, two years later, in 1997?

One can understand why these matters preoccupy us. As modern life continues to alienate us from our surroundings, our neighbours, our communities, we instead project those energies onto imagined connections with familiar faces. Diana was a cultural phenomenon not because she was special – loveless marriages among royals were hardly new – but because she came along at the right time. She became the “Queen of Hearts” because we’d been conditioned to care for her by the very media which was also her chief antagonist.

What shouldn’t be forgotten today, therefore, is that the insidious forces that propelled Bashir to prominence were working across all media. Many of those outraged at the journalist’s behaviour weren’t exactly shrinking violets themselves, least of all the Prime Minister who is apparently “very concerned” at Dyson’s findings. Lest we forget: Bashir and Johnson were emblematic of an age in which journalism was lured to the Dark Side; where the temptation to give readers the “facts” they wanted stood in the way of giving them the facts they needed.

This is how the story of the Bashir “scoop” cuts so much deeper than mere royal gossip. It is symptomatic of the BBC’s bigger crisis over the past two or more decades; seminal because it heralded that world in which the BBC has been increasingly drawn into the business of entertainment rather than education. Martin Bashir, himself, went on to sing on The X Factor and then interviewed celebrities in a successful career in America. Both tell you all you need to know about his professional ambitions. Yet those ambitions also became the ambitions of the corporation, at first challenged by new media and more recently Netflix and Amazon.

In this climate, the very kinds of programming – and, by extension, reporting – that could justify the licence fee are pushed off into the margins (or onto online services) to make room for “ratings winners”. Just this year, the BBC finally clarified the future of its main arts channel, BBC Four, admitting that it would “become the home of the most distinctive content from across the BBC’s archive”. In other words, it would show more repeats. Just last year, it announced that 450 would lose jobs as part of £25 million in savings across regional TV news, current affairs, local radio, as well as online news, which were in addition to 150 jobs lost in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. To give that context, that’s just 17 times Gary Linekar’s annual salary or 19 times Zoe Ball’s.

More damning still has been the criticism around the BBC’s investigative journalism and its unwillingness to ask hard questions of the government. John Sweeney, 18 years a BBC journalist, recently launched a podcast, “Hunting Ghislain”, on LBC. Tweeting out the news of an award for “best podcast”, Sweeney described it as “the perfect fuck you to BBC management” who he has repeatedly accused of undercutting serious journalism by refusing to “speak truth to power”. He’s hardly the lone voice.

Many of the BBC’s staunchest defenders will have found it increasingly difficult to justify their arguments so long as the BBC continues to be so profligate with the public’s money whilst ignoring (or diminishing) its duties towards the public. That’s why the talk today should be less about Bashir, whose decline has been precipitous, and more about the culture that enabled him. The model of superstar “journalists” like Bashir no more fits the BBC’s ethos than its current willingness to pay millions to superstar “presenters” whilst sacking journalists and reducing local production. It’s to be hoped that this week’s Panorama is the first step towards recovery. The BBC has shown willingness to shine a light on its failings and, just like a scientist who discovers a flaw in their methodology, it will be stronger for that. Reporting the truth might sometimes be boring and might not win it many ratings, but it remains the Beeb’s best hope of survival.