When the BBC sacked Jeremy Clarkson, a dedicated social worker I know in south London found it a useful topical example to explain to her young offenders how workplaces had different rules. At the same time the director general got death threats. The BBC winds itself into our national consciousness in very odd ways.
Arguing about how the BBC is paid for is a permanent fixture in British public life. But how it is held accountable and to whom, how politicians exercise power, and the apparently abstract structures of rules and habits and boards and relationships, does not bother the British public much. Like the rain, Auntie, it seems, is always there. That the BBC has commercial opponents who have a direct interest in it being smaller may not occur to the public either. And the BBC’s competition has grown immeasurably in the world of Facebook, Google, Amazon – mighty media monopolies which users think of as utilities that provide the conveniences they need, without perhaps understanding their potential stranglehold on differing opinions.
The wonderful thing about David Elstein’s ferocious review of Pinkoes and Traitors is that his agenda, pursued single-mindedly for over 30 years, is so transparent. He wants the BBC to be smaller or broken up or reorganised. He is in favour of anything that damages the BBC and crushes its universality. Above all he wants it financed by individual subscription for specific services. This would be the end of the BBC. His urge to say ITV was always better, first, superior, pristine in the past, is in his hands another aspect of the same argument.
