Profile The BBC: It has been censured by the Hutton report, top heads have rolled and it faces its biggest crisis, but the BBC will soldier on and learn from its experience, writes Pete Lunn.
Visitors to the BBC News Centre in West London feel like they've walked onto the set of a sci-fi movie. It is a vast, open-plan, glass-walled communications centre, with spiral staircases connecting its layers. Banks of screens are separated by machines that beep and hum. Signs above desks are in alien language: "Tech Ops", "Home Intake", "Sat Desk". Hundreds of journalists bash keyboards, earphones half on, telephones trapped below chins. People walk briskly and purposefully; wires dangling from lapels and pockets.
News is broadcast 24 hours a day, on television and radio, worldwide as well as in Britain, across four main television channels and even more radio stations. The beast must be fed.
What a contrast between this state-of-the-art info-hub and the BBC's initial response to the wounding Hutton Report. The biggest broadcasting organisation in the world, which conducts thousands of interviews daily, was holding no press conference and answering no questions.
Several hours after publication, the corporation released pre-recorded pictures of a statement read by Director General, Greg Dyke. The mumbling Dyke appeared to have been turned a peculiar shade of green by the judge's conclusions. Closer examination revealed that the backdrop was also a sickly shade. The footage was just poor quality. The BBC, hallmark of quality television, had been reduced to sending in a home video. Accused of sloppy journalism, it appeared shabby too. Headlines were unanimous: "BBC in crisis".
Perhaps. But spare a thought for non-news staff who make BBC drama, sport, comedy, entertainment, education and music. Hundreds walked out in protest at Dyke's inevitable resignation. They have lost a popular boss. Their future is uncertain, because one of more than 20,000 colleagues, one of the minority who work in news, made a mistake - albeit a whopping great big one.
News is only part of what the BBC does, and for some not even the most important part. Indeed, recognising the sheer size of the BBC is crucial to understanding what is best, and worst, about the world's largest broadcaster.
Every cliché about bulky, bloated, bureaucracies has been applied to the British Broadcasting Corporation. It has "the turning circle of an oil tanker"; it's "a monster genetically designed to get bigger and bigger", a purveyor of "cultural tyranny".
There is some truth in all of this. On their first day in BBC news, eager young journalists are welcomed with piles of documents. One is supposed to be an explanation of how the newsgathering system works. The booklet I was handed included an organisation chart large enough to make a management consultant salivate. The tangle of lines connected titles such as Assistant Home Television News Organiser, Editorial Policy Unit and Foreign Desk Facilities Coordinator. It was utterly unfathomable.
New recruits also receive a spiral-bound book. Roughly the size of a house brick, it is the infamous BBC Producer Guidelines, extensively quoted by Alastair Campbell throughout the Hutton Inquiry.
Newcomers quickly realise that no one has time to consult this encyclopaedia of broadcasting ethics before stories go to air. Putting the lunchtime TV news bulletin together involves quick discussion about which of the morning's events will matter, scrambling camera crews and reporters, dodging back through London traffic and splicing together pictures and script at lightning speed. A pale-faced producer only reaches for the guidelines if a complaint is made, nervously hoping that official procedure was followed.
Scrambling TV crews is not like scrambling fighter aircraft. In order simply to attend a breaking story, forms have to be filled in, hazard assessments completed, justification made, costings checked. If these are not satisfactory, bean counters will refuse to cooperate. Programme-makers refer to them as the Programme Suppression Unit. Good journalists are not just the ones who can get the story, but also those who know how to coax the bureaucratic machine, and when to kick it.
My first taste of canteen gossip involved an experienced producer telling a tale about a technical operator whose position had been abolished by cost cuts. Although his job had ceased to exist, he was not told of any new one and the salary cheque kept arriving. The man decided to spend his time walking the corridors of Television Centre carrying a clip-board, looking official and visiting the many coffee outlets dotted throughout the labyrinthine building. His contribution to broadcasting output, or lack of it, was not picked up for months.
But that was a decade ago. Greg Dyke's predecessor, John (now Lord) Birt, systematically slashed budgets throughout the mid-1990s. I attended meetings where my editor stood next to a flip-chart, crossing out job titles with a big marker pen. Critics taking advantage of the current crisis, calling for the fat to be trimmed, would be surprised to discover how lean an animal the modern BBC has become. The huge expansion of channels and stations, the switch to digital, the creation of the most-visited website in Europe, have all been achieved with little extra cash.
The other frequent claim of the corporation's detractors is that it faces insufficient competition. This amuses insiders. Twice a day all the programme and bulletin editors are brought into the same room to check progress on the big stories and raise any tricky editorial issues. Competition could not be fiercer. Each pretends their outlet has uncovered nothing more than the obvious angles and guests, hiding new leads or imaginative interviewees.
Today, the radio programme on which Andrew Gilligan worked, has a legendary mutual animosity with its lunchtime equivalent, The World at One. There is televisual rivalry too between Newsnight and the bulletins. I witnessed one senior correspondent explode with rage over this. His report had previewed the possible contents of a much-anticipated report. Half an hour after transmission he switched BBC channels only to hear all the correct details read from a leaked copy. Another team had been working on it just down the corridor. No wonder they were smiling more than usual when they passed on the way to get coffee.
Journalists desperately competing for stories can be as much a cause of sloppy journalism as a quest for quality. Standards, of course, is ultimately what the whole row between the government and the BBC has been about. Twist the logic a bit and you realise that the most common adjective used to describe the whole fracas, "unprecedented", is a compliment to the BBC. It shows how rarely it gets a big story wrong.
Tensions between the state broadcaster and the British government are not unprecedented. Throughout its 82-year history the BBC has faced allegations of being in the government's pocket. It has frequently proved otherwise. During the Falklands War there was an almighty row when Newsnight presenter Peter Snow refused to report the British government line as fact. He scripted that "The British government said X" and the "Argentinian government said Y", leaving the viewer to decide who to believe. Margaret Thatcher was said to be livid. Moreover, that politicians from all parties debate the regulation of the BBC and its charter, renewable every 10 years, suggests it is in the pocket of no one.
The solution to the BBC's crisis is not resignations, restructurings, new complaint procedures, or changes to its charter. The answer could lie in a single refresher course on journalistic note-taking, compulsory for all news staff, including the Director of News.
On my initial BBC training course, I was shown footage of an accident during filming which left a famous presenter in need of plastic surgery. The trainer explained why it had happened and how it could have been prevented. He then leaned forward, looked us all in the eye and said "the producer has not worked since". Every trainee learns about it, none will repeat it.
Andrew Gilligan got burned because he forgot a basic lesson of journalism: if the quote isn't in your notes, you can't repeat it. His bosses joined him in hot water because they either forgot it too, or assumed that someone with Gilligan's experience wouldn't.
Britain's "auntie" will survive the crisis with little long-term effect, provided she is left to pass on the painful wisdom of her experience.
Pete Lunn is a former BBC journalist