Diplomatic relations have all but broken down. In Washington earlier this month, Tony Blair’s most senior advisers ratcheted up the pressure. All-out war cannot be far away. For the British government has the enemy clear in its sights: it is the BBC.
Labour fired off two heat-seeking missiles within 72 hours, as the prime minister’s chief press secretary, Alastair Campbell, condemned the Beeb as a “downmarket, dumbed-down, over-staffed, over- bureaucratic, ridiculous organisation”.
His target was the BBC’s chief political correspondent, John Sergeant. On the eve of Blair’s visit to Washington, Sergeant asked how the prime minister might react if questioned about the sex scandal engulfing United States President Bill Clinton.
Campbell condemned the question as “irrelevant” before launching into a rant against the entire BBC. As it turned out, Blair was asked about the Monica Lewinsky affair so often, the topic ended up dominating a White House press conference and all subsequent news coverage.
Then Radio 4’s World at One came under fire for dedicating 13 minutes to an analysis of an acerbic, dissenting speech delivered the previous evening by rebel MP Brian Sedgemore. A party representative said the decision demonstrated the BBC’s “complete loss of perspective and their increasingly trivial agenda”.
It took the Conservatives seven years in government to declare war on the BBC, as Norman Tebbit did following Kate Aidie’s coverage of the 1986 bombing of Tripoli. Yet, after just nine months in office, Labour keeps clashing with the BBC. The rows come so often, they are losing their news value. “Labour attacks BBC” is slipping from journalism’s man-bites-dog category into the one marked dog-bites-man.
There’s no shortage of explanations for this breakdown of relations. One Labour spinmeister cheerfully admits the whole crusade is phoney, designed to weaken the BBC. He knows the accusations of anti- Labour bias are groundless, but they work – undermining the accused correspondent or programme editor.
The object of the exercise is to shake journalists’ confidence, implanting a self- censor in every BBC brain. The mission will be accomplished when every staffer’s first thought is: “Now, will I get a bollocking from Labour when they hear this?”
The less sinister view is that Labour attacks the BBC when it wants to divert attention from its own troubles. “It enables them to turn inconvenient stories into media stories,” says one BBC news executive.
Others wonder if Campbell et al are so harsh on the BBC for the same reason they turn so frequently on The Guardian. They get irritated that both those organisations refuse to be compliant.
“The Blair machine likes those who fall over like nine-pins,” says BBC political correspondent Nicholas Jones, who analysed the vexed relationship of pols and hacks in his book Soundbites and Spin Doctors.
“They do business with the Sun and The Times,” says Jones, because Rupert Murdoch has brought them into line. But the BBC, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph irritate Downing Street because they insist on practising journalism: reporting and assessing each story on its merits.
The current Labour spin team cut its teeth in the lead-up to the last election. They enjoyed an easier ride then, if only because governments, who are taking decisions and making public policy, inevitably attract greatest scrutiny.
What few outside Labour doubt is that the party is making a big mistake in its war on the BBC. For one thing, it tends to be counterproductive. More people noticed Brian Sedgemore’s acid attack on New Labour after Downing Street had objected to Radio 4’s coverage of it than would have done if the government had stayed quiet.
It is also an unequal fight. As the Tories learned to their cost, people like the BBC. They trust it more than they trust politicians, and they have been relying on it since long before Tony Blair or Alastair Campbell was born.