Steven Barnett - centre-leftist

Oh dear - gotta flog the dead horse once more. My excuse is that Steven Barnett has just posted the most magnificent target, which sums up everything I despise about the BBC and, by extension, people like Barnett. He teaches communications at the University of Westminster and has written books on broadcasting. He writes for the Observer and runs the Open Democracy blog. He claims to be a moderate centre-leftist.

Nothing moderate about his denunciation of the ASI report Global Player or Subsidy Junkie? Decision time for the BBC by former BBC producer David Graham (summary here). Possibly it is just a hissy fit by an academic confronted by someone who actually knows what he is talking about, but it is revealing nonetheless.

Graham's argument is that the TV Licence Fee should be abolished, and that the BBC should instead become a subscription service - for its own good. In reply, Barnett appears to argue that the BBC is unimprovable precisely because of its quasi-monopolistic status.

Of course the BBC restricts opportunities in the private sector, in much the same way that many Harley Street practitioners have their income potential severely constrained by the NHS. We don’t premise health debates on assumptions that the job of the public sector is to fill in gaps left by the private health insurance market, just as we don’t start debates about policing on the basis of enhancing opportunities for Group 4. We start with public policy objectives, and an essentially social democratic ideal of a public space, like libraries and public parks, which offers access to all and does not treat its users as consumers defined by the size of their wallet.

That's really a take-it-or-leave-it statement, which I think fairly represents the centre-left POV, although he fails to explain what is "social democratic" about the regressive tax that funds the BBC. Graham's argument, equally clearly, is that monopoly is stultifying and that if the BBC is as good as it claims to be, it has nothing to fear from becoming a subscription service.

Bennett's most amazing argument is that programming diversity is preserved by the tax levied on all TV owners because, he says, every country that has pursued a "free market, commodified view of broadcasting rather than starting with desirable public policy outcomes" has produced homogenised pap.

The Adam Smith Institute’s “solution” would redefine public service programming as dull, worthy, low-rating programmes which would be relegated to the margins. It would inevitably result in less of what people actually want. Less original high quality drama, less new comedy, less high quality news, less investment in British children’s programmes, less original investigative journalism, less innovation. And it would destroy one of the few remaining properly resourced, independent and internationally acclaimed journalistic operations.

It is precisely because BBC programming is dedicated to what it, not its viewers, has decided are "desirable public policy outcomes" that so much of its product is dull, worthy and low-rating. Recent examples of "high quality drama" are extremely rare, its comedy shows are packed with aging "alternative" comedians still living in the 1980s and 90s, and its news programmes are insolently biased. Children's and popular programmes cost little to make and are money-earners for the Corporation in addition to the tax it collects.

It is an anti-democratic, patronising and deeply corrupt organisation, and it is fully representative of the type and class of people who have made this country so dreary. And oh, by the way Steve - what you are defending so passionately is the "elitism" that people like you denounce in every other walk of life.