YOUNG: BBC’s bad news

This is going to be about the 11 billionth rant about the modern media, but you should still read it because unlike all those other articles this one isn’t solely about Fox News. Yes, Fox is a biased station that pushes a bizarre brand of neo-conservatism without the subtlety of left-wing stations such as CNN, MSNBC or Comedy Central, but my criticism is really directed at everyone involved in the whole news process: the corporations, the personalities and, above all, the consumer. The problem is that British Prime Minister David Cameron has as much influence on American world news coverage as Jack Parker has on the BU athletic department. As much as I like “Monty Python’ and “Doctor Who,’ I don’t want my television, radio and Internet affected by someone who calls an upset stomach a collywobble.

Let me back up, explain myself and assure you that even though I’m Irish, I don’t hate the Brits. Well, maybe Cromwell, but who doesn’t? Anyway, to come up with the billions it takes to run the BBC, the British government collects about US $230 as an annual license fee from everyone with a color television set. In an effort to reduce spending in a time of national stringency, the British government has put a six-year freeze on the BBC license fee. I’m sure you’re saying to yourself, “Self, what does it matter if British people have to watch lousy television? Serves them right for calling cookies biscuits.” Well, it matters because the British government is also going to require that the BBC World Service be funded by the license fee rather than by the Foreign Office. When you combine the freeze and the World Service’s additional US$426 million cost with inflation, Parliament’s new policy will result in at least a 16 percent budget cut for the BBC. That doesn’t sound all that bad until you consider that if the U.S. were to cut the Medicare program that would amount to only a 12 percent cut in the federal budget. The BBC would lose fewer pounds if it starved all its employees.

The BBC will absolutely have to scale back and cut costs everywhere, including the World Service, just to stay afloat. That will be disastrous for everyone who watches or listens to the news, not just those in Britain. You see, the World Service is indisputably the globe’s premier international news broadcaster, with its first-rate reporters stationed all over the earth. It is respected as insightful, impartial, independent and every other nice word that starts with the letter “i’. It also provides a significant portion of the world news we Americans imbibe when we are so boring as to pay attention to the rest of the planet. NPR and many other American news agencies rely, directly and indirectly, on the BBC for their international updates. That means that the budget cuts will have an enormous impact on what my mother listens to on her car radio every morning. Since she’s the one who brought this topic to my attention you can be sure that she’s about as pleased with this development as the Tea Party is with President Barack Obama. Probably less, actually, as she doesn’t drink her coffee until she gets to work.

I don’t blame the British government for cutting costs. Our friends across the pond are having just as hard a time economically as we are and they’re sensibly trying to save money without sacrificing welfare or defense. No, I blame the American news companies for making us dependent on the BBC World Service for quality international news in the first place. For news to be really effective and informative, it has to stand up to objective criticism, and the BBC puts its Yankee counterparts to shame in that regard. This isn’t just about the major political bias you’ll find in every American news outlet, coloring every story like an egg on Easter. The World Service’s impartiality comes from its exclusive dedication to objective facts, not out of some lame and ineffective attempt to “balance’ varying views. Its stance is that the only viewpoint is the one afforded by the facts, and that’s all too rare an attitude.

Unlike the government-sponsored BBC, American news agencies are for-profit businesses. If we want to get on-site, in-depth, non-judgmental investigative journalism everywhere from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe, we’ll need to make it worth their airtime’s while. They’ve got the resources to do a great job, but we need to give them the incentive first, and we need to give it to them now. Otherwise they’ll just keep showing us segments starring Bill O’Reilly and Eliot Spitzer. Of course, I’m calling the kettle black here. After all, my mother told me about the BBC budget cuts while I was reading about Brett Favre and Jenn Sterger.