By Vincent Graff
Aug. 25— The controller of BBC1 launched an unprecedented
attack on Rupert Murdoch yesterday, calling the media billionaire a
“capital imperialist” who wants to destabilize the corporation
because he “is against everything the BBC stands for.”
Lorraine Heggessey said Murdoch’s continued attacks on the BBC
stemmed from a dislike of the public sector. But he did not understand
that the British people “have a National Health Service, a public
education system” and trust organizations that are there for the
benefit of society and not driven by profit.
Her controversial comments, in an interview with The Independent, are
believed to be the first time a senior BBC executive has publicly attacked
the motives of the media tycoon. They follow an intensification of anti-BBC
rhetoric from Murdoch’s side.
The BBC has been alarmed by the increasingly close relationship between
the government and Murdoch’s British newspapers, at a time when
the BBC’s relationship with New Labor is strained as never before.
The frostiness of the relationship has raised speculation that the government
will consider abolishing the license fee in its forthcoming review of
the BBC’s charter.
Heggessey’s remarks will cheer supporters of the corporation who
fear the BBC has kept quiet for too long in the face of attack from
Murdoch and his most senior employees.
Her comments come in the wake of a speech to the country’s senior
broadcasting executives by Tony Ball, chief executive of British Sky
Broadcasting, in which Murdoch’s News Corporation is the major
shareholder.
Ball told the Edinburgh International Television Festival last week
that the BBC ought to be forced to sell its most successful programs,
such as EastEnders, Casualty, and Have I Got News For You to its commercial
rivals, who would screen all future episodes instead. The money raised
by such sales should then be ploughed into experimental programming,
he said.
Executives at the BBC and elsewhere see the plan as a Murdoch-inspired
attempt to cripple the corporation by depriving it of its most popular
shows — and the large audiences that go with them.
Ball told a questioner at the festival that it “would not be such
a disaster” if the BBC were eventually to become a marginal broadcaster.
But Heggessey retorted: “It wouldn’t be such a disaster for
Sky because he hopes that the less successful we become, the more people
will subscribe to Sky. It would be a disaster for the BBC.”
Supporters of the BBC say Ball’s proposal, intended to influence
the government’s hand as it considers the renewal of the BBC’s
charter, follows relentlessly negative reports in Murdoch’s British
newspapers about the BBC’s conduct in the David Kelly affair. The
Times and The Sun, in particular, have come under attack for what is
perceived as anti-BBC bias.
“I would suspect that everybody who works for Rupert Murdoch knows
what he expects of them and they know that if they don’t deliver
they will be booted out,” said Heggessey. Newspaper readers “know
when they are being peddled a line,” she added.
In his speech, Ball proposed two further restrictions to be placed on
the BBC, which he argued would prevent the corporation from straying
too far into territory he regards as the sole domain of commercial broadcasters
such as his own.
The BBC should be banned from buying any foreign-made material, he said.
This would prevent the BBC from pushing up the price of American sitcoms,
Hollywood movies, and Australian soap operas, the staples of many commercial
channels.
“I really cannot see why public money is being diverted to those
poor struggling Hollywood studios,” he said.
Heggessey said BBC1 did not run any overseas-originated programs during
peak time but “the audience expects us to run movies and we do.”
Source: Independent (UK)
