House of Cards author, Lord Michael Dobbs, has described the BBC as “arguably this country’s strongest cultural brand”, but said it had also been guilty of “organisational and intellectual arrogance”.
Dobbs, whose political thriller became a hit BBC drama and has since been reinvented with Kevin Spacey on Netflix, said the corporation had taken an “extraordinary battering” in recent years and that much of the criticism was justified.
Delivering the Royal Television Society’s Huw Wheldon Memorial Lecture on Thursday, Dobbs said: “The BBC is a little like the monarchy. Impossible to measure how much she earns for the country, but we know it’s immense.”
Dobbs said the BBC had “an impact in every corner of the globe. It is one of the prime weapon systems in our arsenal of soft power that will grow increasingly important in the years of uncertainty that lie ahead”.
He said the World Service was “arguably the most important form of foreign aid we provide”.
But he added: “That doesn’t mean giving the BBC a blank cheque, or refraining from giving it a good kicking when it deserves it, but it does mean making sure it has the opportunity, and the encouragement, to meet its ambition of doubling its global audience to half a billion people in the next seven years.
“What a difference that could make. A vibrant system of public service broadcasting that is part of our future, not just a glorious past. If we didn’t have the BBC, how much would we be willing to pay to invent it?”
Referring to a string of controversies that have engulfed the BBC in recent years, including the Jimmy Savile scandal, Dobbs said: “The BBC has taken an extraordinary battering in recent years, no more so than over Savile.
“I think much of that criticism is justified. Sometimes the BBC has seemed more like a private fiefdom than a public service.”
He picked out other areas in which, he said, the corporation’s record “isn’t spotless”, including its “institutional bias in favour of the European Union … Too often, and for too long, the BBC has implied that anyone who wanted to question immigration policies must be racist”.
Despite his criticism, Dobbs said the BBC was still “the most trusted source of news in the UK. It’s often very, very good at news. Equally often, it’s terrible at self-criticism.”
Dobbs gave his speech on the same day the House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee published its report on the future of the BBC, calling for the abolition of the BBC Trust.
Dobbs said the UK had the “finest broadcasting system in the world. And the BBC is at its core”.
But he added: “There is a real danger of the BBC being brought low by a hundred headlines, a thousand unnecessary taxi rides, and millions that have been spent on redundancies and failures.
“There’s a sense amongst many opinion formers that the BBC … has too often in recent years slipped into both organisational and intellectual arrogance. The criticism in many instances is well-founded.”
The third series of the House of Cards adaptation went live on Netflix on Friday.
