The day before the UK left the European Union, I attended a meeting at the BBC in Salford where the head of news announced that 450 jobs would be cut as part of a plan to save tens of millions of pounds. The BBC has come under heavy attack in recent months – from Boris Johnson branding it the “Brexit Bashing Corporation”, to a senior Labour MP accusing it of consciously favouring the Conservatives during the 2019 election campaign. And more recently, the corporation was dealt another blow as Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan suggested that the television licence that funds BBC shows and services could be abolished from 2027.
As a Spanish journalist living in the UK, I find it bewildering that politicians would want to threaten an institution that elevates Britain’s international standing and serves as a model for public service broadcasters all around the world.
After three years of heated parliamentary arguments, messy negotiations and failed withdrawal agreements, Britain’s reputation in Europe has been considerably damaged. Before Brexit, many countries looked up to the UK as an example of a successful parliamentary democracy. That is just not the case anymore. Sylvie Kauffmann, editorial director of France’s Le Monde, echoed the feelings of many Europeans when she wrote in 2019: “Once, we used to hold up British parliamentary life as the Rolls-Royce of liberal democracy. Now that Rolls-Royce looks more like a dodgem.”
Crippling one of the country’s biggest and most respected brands will further erode the UK’s reputation. Yes, the BBC has its flaws (the gender pay gap row comes to mind), but the public service broadcaster is admired all over the world, from Europe to the US and even begrudgingly by Russia. I’ve spoken to people all over the world for Radio 5 live and almost everyone I speak with knows what the BBC is. Most importantly, they trust it enough to share their stories with it. In my experience, the people that refuse to talk to the BBC (or complain about it on the phone) are usually British. The rest of the world seems to love it.
The BBC has a glorious history. When most of Europe was conquered by the Nazis during World War Two, many citizens in occupied Europe tuned in to the BBC, making it one of the most significant sources of accurate information for people living under Nazi rule. In 1939 the BBC opened a Spanish service in London which became a reliable source of information for Spaniards during the Franco regime, despite the pressures exerted by the Spanish embassy in the UK. After the war, many European countries modelled their broadcasting system on the BBC. In an open letter published by The Guardian in 2015, the directors of several Nordic public service media companies (ranked amongst the most trusted media companies in the world) explained how the idea of public service broadcasting was born in the UK: “No creative organisation in the world is as well known and has such a reputation for quality as the BBC,” they wrote. “That reputation reflects on Britain as a whole.”
I come from a country where few people trust our public broadcaster. TVE (Televisión Española) is regularly criticised for displaying pro-government bias in its selection of news and guests. According to a study by the Pew Research Centre in 2018, only 13% of Spaniards cite it as its main source of news. Furthermore, 16% of Spaniards that consider themselves right wing cite TVE as its main news reference, compared to 8% that consider themselves left wing. The same study found that in the UK, 48% of people consider the BBC to be their main source of information, with practically no political distinctions amongst it’s audience: it is the informative reference for 48% of left-wing Britons and 51% of right-wingers, which suggests that it is probably doing a good job at being impartial (despite what senior politicians in both parties may think).
Spain’s trust in its media is amongst one of the lowest in Europe. In the UK, public trust seems to be moving in that direction. If you want to reverse that, hold on to the BBC. Criticise it by all means and hold it accountable when it needs to be. But don’t let your politicians undermine it, and don’t let them convince you that you don’t need it. Additionally, if you want the UK to recover its reputation as a voice for sense in the world, you’re going to need one of your most respectable brands. Unfortunately, that probably means paying for a TV licence.
Julia Tena de la Nuez is a Spanish freelance journalist.