A week in the death of public service broadcasting

In the week that the retrial of Barry George was announced, the BBC said that it is going to axe Rough Justice, namely the programme that has uncovered numerous miscarriages of justice in the UK legal system over the years. Put simply it's too expensive for the BBC to produce as the result of the recently announced cutbacks to its factual programming.

It may be the case that modern techniques used to secure the conviction of criminals are now resulting in fewer misconvictions, but the high profile case of Barry George (concerning the murder of Jill Dando) shows that there's still plenty of room for doubt. And will Panorama seriously consider investigating a low-profile case that requires intensive research?

Indeed this sort of cutback may not go down too well with government ministers who are starting to feel that the BBC has shown arrogance in electing not to close down BBC Three; some ministers probably think that the BBC ought to just broadcast two TV channels like it used to, and axing Rough Justice probably helps to confirm their fears.

Thankfully for the BBC, the licence fee has been secured for the next few years and with a bit of luck (and time) it may still be able to convince politicians that the licence fee may be worth continuing with, even if not exactly in its current form. But it's decisions like this that threatens to undo all the hard work made by some people within the BBC.

Then there's ITV axing its Sunday political programmes, which just goes to show that the current system of media regulation is totally useless when it comes to enforcing public service committments. ITV holds expensive regional licences which other commercial broadcasters would love to get their hands on, so why doesn't Ofcom force ITV to strengthen its committments?

In a House of Commons committee meeting yesterday, John Whittingdale called for a 'plurality' of public service broadcasting, but a public service broadcaster requires funding, committment and enforcement; it's no good wanting public service when the temptation not to provide such a service becomes too great, as seems to currently be the case with ITV.