BBC Vacancies

BBC Vacancies

I don’t say you’re self-censoring – I’m sure you believe everything you’ve said; but what I’m saying is, if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.

(Noam Chomsky to the BBC’s Andrew Marr, then of The Independent.)


When your brand image is neutrality it’s not nice to be called biased. While workers at Fox news probably laugh at the accusation, then agree, many at the BBC take offence: No one is pulling their strings. They just report what they see, as they see it.

In an important sense they are absolutely right. Simply by being the kind of people they are, it is possible for them to convey propaganda yet still feel like impartial correspondents. As Chomsky suggests to Marr, like all job vacancies media vacancies are strictly circumscribed. They’re not for just anyone. They are certain shaped holes that can only accommodate a certain shape of person. And while many of the more overt criteria are skill-based (being as pretty, clever, knowledgeable, specialist, annoying, funny or vacuous as required) every bit as important is the political shape of the candidate. If you don’t meet that criteria you won’t get the job.

To start with a fairly uncontroversial example, BBC Radio Two’s breakfast show is never going to be offered to an outspoken Marxist. Social commentary, when it does arise, will more likely be restricted to the horrors of traffic cones, or the difficulty of finding a parking space (and then somebody steals it!)

The reflex reaction to this of course is that the BBC wouldn’t employ anyone politically outspoken in such a role. The BBC must remain ‘neutral’ on such matters. But of course this is completely circular. Neutrality is in the eye of the beholder. If the type of people who already govern and run the BBC get to choose what constitutes neutrality then the acceptable candidate is simply the one who sounds neutral to the ears of that elite. The job selection process becomes nothing more than a mechanism for selecting politically like-minded people.

And it shows. It is BBC ‘neutrality’ that dictates that non-fatal storms in Cornwall or (even more tellingly) Florida will find their way to the top of the news the same day a hundred drown in Bangladesh. Likewise, one British athlete failing to complete her event can take up the first ten minutes of the evening news on the same day that more US/UK war crimes go unreported.

If that’s balanced reporting then forgive me for becoming unbalanced. That such a perverse worldview can be touted as impartial speaks volumes about the mind-set of those making the most important decisions at the BBC. As such it pervades, even outside the news room, even on lightweight Radio Two. There, it is perfectly acceptable to speak in hushed tones about retail terrorism, but any mention of Western atrocities will have you back on Radio Norwich by the weekend.

No fear. The unconscious vetting process works. Phrases like ‘US sponsored terrorism’ are simply not in Steve Wright’s or Terry Wogan’s vernacular. They’re not those sort of blokes. Conversely, phrases like ‘The terrible events of September the eleventh’ drip from their mouths like honey. No risk of impartiality if you only mourn for ‘our’ dead. While the majority of Earth’s inhabitants would find the first phrase every bit as justifiable and chilling as the second, any likely Radio Two DJ would be incredulous. The right man or woman for that job simply wouldn’t be the type to think, let alone talk, in those terms. It’s a vital, but unspoken, part of the job description. No need for a bullet-point.

Radio Two neutrality takes motoring, package holidays, love of football and national pride as simple apolitical reality. Being on the receiving end of lust for oil is not a valid perspective. The reality pushed by Radio Two is owning a car and worrying about pension funds, and those blessed EU bureaucrats messing with the Great British banger. If such a perspective doesn’t come naturally to you, don’t bother applying. Like the dyslexic enquiring about the vacancy as proof reader, you’ll be politely refused.

Just the same, if you don’t think the world starts and ends with Hollywood movies, products, pop stars, soap operas and celebrity gossip, don’t apply to be a daytime Radio One DJ. Don’t apply to work at the BBC’s history department unless you are obsessed with one six year period of British stoicism during a whole century of imperial misadventure. And whatever you do, don’t apply to be a presenter of the BBC’s ‘Top Gear’ if you plan to use it as platform to voice your concerns about global warming. The very essence of Top Gear is being rich and selfish and paying no attention to the consequences of you actions. That’s the job.

Instead you should apply to be a presenter on…er?

When it comes to assessing the most ‘liberal’ end of the BBC’s potential vacancies it’s easy to miss the wood for the trees. The fact that, very occasionally, Newsnight presenters do pose the right questions, obscures some thunderingly obvious limitations on political impartiality.

Here’s one little conflict of interest: Newsnight ‘anchors’ earn millions. Kirsty Wark, Jeremy Paxman and Gavin Esler are paid millions, literally. That one fact renders a whole range of important questions out of bounds. If you think extreme material inequality is the central problem facing the world, what chance do you have of these people arguing your case? How fiercely can Paxman hold a minister to account over the corporate asset stripping of the British media when he himself is enjoying such a large slice of the spoils? How critical can he be of the dumbing-down and commercialisation of TV when his own standard of living is one of it’s consequences?

Many of today’s most famous journalists probably railed against Margaret Thatcher during the eighties. Perhaps some still speak bitterly of her in private. Nonetheless, it is the world she created that paved the way for their extraordinarily well remunerated jobs. Before Thatcher and Reagan no newsreader expected to find a million in their pay packet. Robert Dougal would have had a heart attack. Thatcher set out to smash dissent and increase corporate parasitism in the BBC, and she did a thorough job. The political ‘shape’ of current BBC vacancies is a direct consequence of that strategy.

The next standard response to all this is “So what would you do instead?”. But of course that’s a different question, and to ask it signals agreement. (Presumably, a more democratic society would foster a more democratic media, but that’s no great theory.) Suffice to say, the current structure of the BBC and it’s complex connections with state and capital ensure strict limits on the political perspective of its output. It can only afford to employ people prepared to observe those boundaries.

Thanks, in part, to a lifetime’s exposure to the BBC’s output, there are many among us who can meet that criteria, without even being conscious of doing so. That’s the real howler in Marr’s quip about having his ‘organs of opinion’ removed when he joined the BBC. It was those very organs that got him the job.