Whatever happened to Auntie? One of the prime casualties of 2012 was the BBC's reputation as a solid and dependable institution devoted to nature documentaries and unbiassed news. It was revealed as an demented bureaucracy, run by a management of grasping kleptocrats, harbouring sex criminals and using public money to defame innocent pensioners by calling them paedophiles.
OK. I exaggerate. The BBC is still a great institution...public service ethos...cultural guardian...David Attenborough etc. But if nothing else, the corporation has shown itself to be hopeless at broadcasting its strengths as well as its weaknesses. At one stage it seemed as if every BBC news programme was investigating other BBC news programmes. Shoals of BBC reporters were standing outside BBC premises waiting to doorstep BBC employees about the BBC. We lost track of the number of investigations that were launched over Newsnight, Lord McAlpine, Jimmy Savile. A new word entered the dictionary of infamy, when we learned that lots of senior BBC executives were being “recused” from their jobs. Which seems to mean suspended without prejudice so that they can be given large sums of money.
We now learn from the National Audit Office that 200 managers have received pay offs of more than £100,000 in the past three years. The public spending watchdog has described the BBCs severance packages of up to £900,000, as “excessively generous”. This news made me particularly annoyed because when I left the BBC some years ago I didn't get a brass farthing, or even a bronze bawbee. This was presumably because I hadn't been guilty of gross incompetence, defamation, sexual malpractice or sloppy journalism. I'll know better next time.
The remuneration practices of BBC senior management – most of whom seem to earn more than the Prime Minister - has been a bitter insult to the thousands of BBC employees who do not get large salaries for sitting on committees droning on about imagineering the blue sky challenges going forward. The BBC is not a highly paid organisation, compared with other professions. Most BBC producers – especially in Scotland - accept relatively modest pay as the price of doing a job they love. The BBC also produces an astonishing number of programmes – look at iPlayer – most of which are of very high quality, and makes them very cheaply. But somehow the BBC appears to be completely incapable of getting this message across.
