Mark Thompson, director general of the BBC, opened the first session of the International Press Institute's world congress in Edinburgh with a passionate defence of public service broadcasting by pointing to the value of the corporation's journalism.
In responding to the question, "Does public service broadcasting have a future?", Mark Thompson answered with an unhesitating yes. That's unsurprising, given that he is the BBC's director general. What was interesting was that he chose to do so by concentrating on the corporation's journalistic mission, underlining his conviction that the "impartial, dispassionate, disinterested journalism, free of political influence and independent of commercial vested interests" was the most powerful reason for the existence, and continuance, of public service broadcasting (psb). He worried that this journalistic tradition is under threat from several directions. In global terms, from violent aggression towards correspondents or through censorship (he cited Iran's blocking of the BBC's website). In Britain, clearly, his concern is that there are threats to what he terms "psb space" from political and economic forces. He firmly rejected claims that the BBC is partial, pointing to the way in which it is seen to be biased from the varying, and opposing, positions of its critics. While conceding that there is always room for improvement and debate - hence the BBC's creation of a college of journalism - he said he is confident about the corporation's journalistic values. "The central purpose of our journalism", he said, "is never to tell people what to think." For Thompson, psb is about creating common ground, by which hed means not creating a national consensus but promoting a national conversation. Therefore, of course, the BBC requires both public support and political support, though politicians must not use that support to compromise the corporation's independence. Thompson's keynote speech was followed by three more militant defences of psb. Ananya Banerjee, deputy director general of Doorsarshan, India, explained the difficulties of satisfying its public service remit without licence fee funding. Pat Mitchell, the former chief executive of America's PBS, was upbeat about increasing audiences for psb in the face of a credibility crisis for commercial networks. Boris Bergant, deputy director general of Slovenian radio and television, who pointed to the crisis in eastern Europe where the emergent governments have not showed enthusiasm for psb.
