The Mail (I know!) has extracts from ex-Today presenter John Humphrys memoir
sometimes finds hard to resist is social engineering. Yet its job is to hold up a mirror to society and reflect back to the audiences what it sees. For good or ill.
It should not try to create society in its own image. It should not try to place its powerful finger on one side of the scale of social justice.
Which is why I raised my eyebrows when the BBC announced it had created the new post of LGBT correspondent — and the man appointed said: ‘I’m looking forward to being the mouthpiece for some marginalised groups . . .’ It was the use of the word ‘mouthpiece’ that jarred. Obviously, the BBC must give a voice to minorities, but it must not act as anyone’s mouthpiece. That’s what lobbyists and public relations people do. To confuse the two is to undermine the job of a journalist.
Imagine a defence correspondent announcing that he sees himself as the mouthpiece for the Armed Forces. Or the health correspondent as the mouthpiece of the NHS.
Or even, heaven forfend, the royal correspondent as the mouthpiece of the Royal Family.
It worries me that the nation has become susceptible to certain pressure groups in a way that we should all find disturbing.
Academics call it ‘policy capture’. It means influencing policy — even dictating it — through fear rather than argument. They destroy those who disagree with them, often through personal attacks on their character or by sheer intimidation.
A relatively recent phenomenon in the BBC is the growth of groups of employees who conflate and, perhaps, confuse their own interests with those of the wider world.
The logic seems to be that if they feel strongly about a given issue, the BBC should not only listen to them but modify its output to reflect their own world view.
A generation ago, they might have been listened to politely and then shown the door. Today, they don’t need to talk to their bosses: they use Twitter.
One small example was an edition of Question Time. It included a question from a member of the audience who was worried that it might not be morally appropriate for five-year-old children to be taught about LGBT issues.
Some members of the BBC’s LGBT group, including a business presenter, took to Twitter to complain that the question should not have been allowed.
The director of BBC News responded by sending all staff an email reminding them that they’re entitled to their personal views, but not allowed to parade them on social media.