Broadcasting the facts

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32667, 24 July 1971, Page 13

Broadcasting the facts

It is not a matter of mere intention to be excellent—to be truthful, impartial or what have you, but of seeking out every painstaking step towards achieving it. There is a famous story of Lord Reith who was directorgeneral during the General Strike in Britain in 1926, four years after the 8.8. C. was founded. One day he was reading a news bulletin himself and while he was in the middle of it a message came from one of the news agencies that the General Strike had been settled.

The message was put in front of Lord Reith and without pausing in his reading he wrote "Check with 10 Downing Street.” Only when confirmation had come from the Prime Minister was the news of the settlement broadcast. I have heard a colleague saying in exasperation to one of our news editors: "I shouldn’t be surprised if you doubted Vatican Radio on the election of a Pope” and getting the reply: “We should expect to have the news first from our own correspondent in St Peter’s Square.” Millions of words I should like to dwell a moment on this question of the means by which the truth and nothing but the whole and speedy truth is obtained for our news programmes. It is, after all, an important question for the service I direct, which sends round the world in English every 24 hours some 70 programmes of news and current affairs. And remember that there are also broadcasts in 40 other languages as well as two television networks and four national radio networks.

A large investment must be made in order to ensure that

These extracts are from a lecture given by Robert Gregson, editor of the 8.8. C. World Service, to the Netherlands England Society in The Hague, Rotterdam and Alkmaar.

all these news programmes will be adequately served ... In order to maintain the standards we have newsrooms in all parts of Britain, many hundreds of journalists and correspondents, a flow of millions of words each day from the news agencies of the world and from our own monitoring service which listens to most of the broadcasting organisations. Our own staff correspondents in the five continents are reinforced by many more parttime ones. All this intake of news has to be assessed, sifted and assembled to make a bulletin whicn may be only 1200 words long, the size of a column in an average newspaper.

These principles and this method of working which I have described are the same for the external services of the 8.8. C. as for the domestic radio and television services. Indeed it is the declared policy that there shall be no essential difference between the treatment of news for listeners at home or abroad. It is a tribute to the wisdom of successive British governments that none has seriously attempted to put an end to the system whereby the external services share with the domestic ones the same independence of day-to-day control and the same freedom to broadcast or not to broadcast the programmes they wish.

... I have spoken of the wisdom of successive British governments in deciding to maintain the system by which the 8.8. C. whether broadcasting at home or

abroad, carries the entire responsibility for its programmes. That decision is a complex and continuing one. It is not a matter of a government deciding once and for all that the truth will be told and of then relaxing in the warm glow of moral self-approbation. The reputation for telling the whole truth has to be built up, day by day, and it can vanish in a single day. The practical politician who says that at some critical moment the British government should be able to cash the cheque of credibility is totally mistaken. There is no such account on which we can draw; there is no such cheque. There is only the ever-present need to be accurate, reliable and responsible. The practical politicians must hold fast to their wise decision even when they are tempted to change. Let me give a few examples. Surprisingly, perhaps, I do not choose the often quoted one from the war against Hitler, when Britain’s battleships were being sunk and the 8.8. C. gave the news in all its sombre detail; so that, when the tide turned our good news was also believed. The decision then was, at bottom, a government one because in time of war, with an inevitable security censorship, it could not be otherwise. Suez crisis Take rather the example of the landing in Egypt by British and French troops in 1956 at the time of Suez. Then the 8.8. C. had to reflect the division in British public opinion and in Parliament itself, even though the government wanted it otherwise. Fortunately that testing time did not last long and since then experienced politicians and diplomats have said that the 8.8.C.’s behaviour at that

time was of service to the nation.

When Rhodesia broke way from Britain it was a slower, nagging problem. As weeks went by the expert opinion that the 8.8. C. must seek to reflect threw doubts upon the official view that sanctions would put a short sharp end to the rebellion. Our duty was to publish both the determination to end the rebellion and the failure to do so. Even more delicate perhaps were the days in 1967 when devaluation of the £ was being carried out. While the responsible minister was—as he was bound to do—still denying the possibility of devaluation, our news sources in Europe told a different story. Objectivity It is not easy to maintain standards of objectivity and reliability at such times, but it has to be done because there is the inexorable round of bulletin and comment round the clock for both editorial staff and newsreaders. You will remember the sixday war of Israel and her Arab neighbours in 1967. The Arabic Service of. the 8.8. C. is the largest of our vernacular services and so we have many Arab members of staff. Many of them had close relatives in the areas that were overrun from whom they had no word, for whose safety they were deeply anxious. It was an arduous time for that service. Quite apart from the anxiety, the hours of broadcasting in Arabic were nearly doubled within a week. Yet for hour after hour the newsreaders read out the bulletins giving objectively and as dispassionately as possible the accounts of the war.

That was professionalism—the pursuit of excellence I spoke about earlier. And both sides in that war turned to the 8.8. C. in order to know the facts.