IMPORTANT NEWS ON / FOR THE MEDIA IN THE UK

Tory officials threatened BBC during election, says Miliband's strategist

Tom Baldwin says senior BBC executives faced repeated threats of far-reaching reforms if they didn’t change election campaign coverage

(Tom Baldwin is a former director of communications and strategy at the Labour Party and was a senior adviser to Ed Miliband in the general election)

 Tom Baldwin: ‘BBC executives and journalists have told me that there were regular, repeated threats from senior Tories during this election campaign about “what would happen afterwards” if they did not fall into line.’ Photograph: REX Shutterstock

Conservative officials threatened the BBC with far-reaching reforms, such as changes to the licence fee funding system, if it did not alter the political balance of its coverage of the general election campaign, Tom Baldwin, one of Ed Miliband’s senior advisers, has claimed.

Read here:
link: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/may/13/tory-officials-threatened-bbc-miliband-tom-baldwin-licence-fee?CMP=share_btn_fb

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And to set the record straight:


http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/13/bbc-labour-election

The BBC was not in the pocket of Labour this election. Quite the opposite

Tom Baldwin

For all its faults, the BBC is an organisation that is invested in fairness. But it has been too easily swayed by pressure from Tory-supporting newspapers

 BBC Broadcasting House in London. 'Downing Street’s criticism of the BBC is akin to a football manager railing against the referee after a 3-0 win with a disputed penalty.' Photograph: Chris Radburn/PA

If history is written by the winners, that is partly because the losers are too busy feeling sorry for themselves.

I know watching the news or opening a newspaper is a painful business while the Tories perform victory rolls after a win they did not fully expect or really deserve. For most of the Labour party – including all those seeking to strike a delicate balance between necessary soul-searching and trashing our past five years – the temptation has been to spend the past few days with a duvet pulled tight over our heads.

But one story has finally made me stumble out of bed. The Tory newspapers have welcomed the appointment of John Whittingdale, an old Thatcherite, as culture secretary with gleeful headlines about the government “going to war” with the BBC. This was accompanied by unsourced comments about how the Conservatives were determined to “sort out” the broadcaster, cut or even kill the licence fee in revenge for “infuriating” them during the election campaign.

Quite apart from the disturbing suggestion that a democratically elected government would seek to stamp on and silence dissent from an independent broadcaster, there is deep falsehood at the heart of this.

There has been a long-standing campaign by the Conservative party, fuelled by the commercial interests of sections of the press, to attack the world’s most successful state-funded public service broadcaster as a giant leftwing conspiracy. It is not. And I write that with the certainty of someone who has spent this year making almost daily complaints to the BBC on behalf of the Labour party.

Let me be clear: responsibility for our defeat rests with all of us who took decisions in the campaign. And, in failing to win our battles with the BBC, we should take responsibility for that too.

Far from being in the pocket of Labour, the BBC was too easily swayed by newspapers that support the Tories and are heavily invested in Labour’s defeat. It contaminated everything, from the questions that were asked in interviews, to the lazy assumptions that were made about Ed Miliband. When the rise of digital is causing the direct influence of the Sun, the Telegraph, the Mail and the Times to plummet faster than their readership, it was frustrating the BBC should have so often have provided an echo chamber for them.

Our biggest dispute with the BBC was over the prominence it gave to the idea of a deal between Labour and the SNP that was never on the cards. After the first 237 incarnations on news bulletins, I struggled to see how this theme could be developed further, yet the BBC continued to lead with speculation about bizarre consequences of a Labour-SNP government for the economy, tax, and even road schemes. At no stage was there an examination of David Cameron, Nicola Sturgeon and Nick Clegg’s motives in playing tag-team with almost identical messages on the same nonexistent deal.

It was a scare story based on a false premise and some badly flawed polls. Britain was not heading for a minority Labour government but towards a Tory majority and we were all making the same mistake in believing the polls. The BBC wanted endless reports on the prospects of a deal, we wanted to focus on our positive offer for living standards, young people and the NHS, but we should all have been talking about what would happen in a Conservative second term.

The Tories are, apparently, complaining about the way the BBC handled debate negotiations. But it was at their insistence that the format was expanded to include the Greens, the SNP and Plaid Cymru. And it was at the Tories’ pleading that, rather than upset the prime minister by empty-chairing him, the BBC withdrew any such threat. I am genuinely puzzled about what exactly did Cameron find not to like?

In truth, Downing Street’s criticism of the BBC is akin to a football manager railing against the referee after a 3-0 win with a disputed penalty.

Perhaps this is all part of modern politics, this application of pressure with the media. But the Tories have better reason than most to understand where the pressure points lie. Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson all have hired their chief spin doctors from the ranks of BBC journalists. So, far from being part of a leftist conspiracy, it is a rich recruiting ground for Conservatives.

I suspect, however, that something else is going on too. BBC executives and journalists have told me that there were regular, repeated threats from senior Tories during this election campaign about “what would happen afterwards” if they did not do as they were told and fall into line.

Since the election, we have already learned that the Tories plan to gerrymander parliamentary constituencies in their favour and remove voting rights from Scottish MPs. If Whittingdale’s appointment and the briefing that surrounded it is now a foretaste of a real attempt to shackle the BBC, then we should all be worried.

I have often been infuriated by the BBC. As a newspaper journalist I objected strongly to its reporting of the Hutton inquiry in 2003. As an adviser to the Labour party, I made my objections plain about BBC election coverage.

But for all its faults, no government should play political games with its independence. The BBC is an organisation that is invested in fairness, seeking balance even when it is impossible to achieve, listening and speaking to everybody.

All that is precious and fragile, especially now.

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Tom Baldwin is a former director of communications and strategy at the Labour Party and was a senior adviser to Ed Miliband in the general election

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