BBC - BETRAYAL OF PUBLIC SECTOR BROADCASTING

One shocking fact to have emerged
from Lord Patten at his appearance
before a Commons Select Committee
was his disclosure that having
sanctioned the payment of £180,000
to a headhunter to replace Mark
Thompson, the BBC Trust then
appointed the Deputy Director
General, George Entwhistle to the
post.

It is entirely appropriate that the
Metropolitan Police should look
into the obscene amount that he was
paid after his brief and disastrous
tenure, together with the manner in
which eye-watering amounts of
licence-fee money were similarly
squandered on departing senior
figures.

This revelation should be viewed
within the context of the deteriorating
quality of programmes. It should also
be considered against the background
that, in the past year alone, some three
thousand people a week are reported
to have come before the courts for the
non-payment of the TV licence fee.

The penalty can be a fine of £1,000 and
possibly imprisonment. Some will, of
course, refuse to pay because they feel
that the BBC is merely the propaganda
arm of the Labour Party and some will
simply not have the money. Then there
will be those who look at the TV
schedules - eighteen repeats today alone
- and come to the conclusion that the
£3.56bn the BBC receives annually
from the licence fee represents
increasingly poor value for money.

We need only look at the still unfolding
Savile scandal to realise that the
corporation's travails are a powerful
metaphor for incompetence, profligacy,
corruption and worse. It is a great
institution that has lost its way.

The BBC appears to have all but
abandoned its role, as Lord Reith
intended :an impartial public-service
broadcaster, educating and enriching
the fabric of our changing society.
Instead, it has become a number of
disfunctional and unaccountable
fiefdoms, contemptuous of any
criticism with regard to how it spends
public money in competing with the
commercial media in a pointless
ratings' war.

The recent appointment from a
shortlist of one of former Labour
cabinet minister, James Purnell, as
head of digital and strategy,
underlines the BBC's admitted
left-wing bias. Westminster watchers
will remember that he was
responsible for Labour's last
election campaign. His undoubted
talents will, no doubt, be used in
attempting to secure victory for Ed
Miliband in 2015.

Mr Purnell's annual salary of
£295,000 will come from the BBC's
compulsory levy on over two
thousand licence-fee payers. This
does not take into account a
generous, two-year salary pay-off,
should he decide to leave for
whatever reason.

As we have seen from other
examples, this is only the tip of the
iceberg with the upper echelons of
a self-serving senior management
safeguarding its own interests, not
those of the licence-fee paying public.