Vice News’ head of European news programming has criticised the BBC for failing to take enough risks and airing too much “beige” news and current affairs.
Kevin Sutcliffe, a former Channel 4 and BBC executive who launched Vice’s news channel last year, said that the corporation “doesn’t particularly break stories” and needs to be braver.
“You shouldn’t get tripped up on volume over quality [of news and current affairs],” he told the House of Lords communication committee.
“This is important as the BBC does put out a huge range of programmes. Current affairs I’d like to see [be] braver, [the BBC] doesn’t particularly break stories. At the moment it often feels a little beige, it passes you by. Tick the box, done the coverage. Given the amount of investment available the BBC should be braver.”
Sutcliffe, who during a decade at the BBC worked on programmes including Panorama, described its approach to news and current affairs coverage as “constrained”, prone to inertia due to fear of political backlash.
“It is a very alert organisation to the political ramifications of what it does,” he said tactfully. “There is a level of alertness to what might happen if we [the BBC] do something. I watch a lot of BBC political coverage and am aware it is not quite the crusading open journalism I would expect and [the type of] political reporting I see in other places like newspapers. They are very, very alert managerially to implications [of a story], to over-thinking. I do think the BBC feels like a constrained organisation.”
Sutcliffe compared the BBC to the NHS in wanting to try and cover everything for everyone and said he would like to “see the BBC hold truth to power more regularly than it does”.
He described the approach of the BBC, and by extension other traditional TV broadcasters, as “formal” and “stuffy”.
“They are very formal, old fashioned,” he said. “They have not really changed [how news and current affairs is reported] in 30 or 40 years. Just the [on-air] graphics occasionally. They do not speak to a millennial audience. We have filled that area and continued to grow. This change of tone [is] important for the BBC going forward.”
Dorothy Byrne, the head of news and current affairs at Channel 4, agreed that the BBC needed to up its game.
“My message to the BBC is it has to be brave and tackle difficult subjects and its not just for others to do that,” she said. “The BBC must be brave and must not be politically correct and looking over their shoulder worrying.”
