A breach of trust
Ofcom defends Blue Peter fine
The subject of regulating the BBC - or to be more precise, what method of external regulation is required (if any) - has always been a contentious issue, especially in relation to maintaining the impartiality of the BBC in respect to current government policy, namely the prevention of undue political influence.
Indeed the whole aftermath of the controversial Hutton Report illustrated just how critical the whole regulation issue is, and although this led to the introduction of the BBC Trust, the resulting changes were made under circumstances that could be interpreted as being inspired by some form of political duress, even if some degree of reform was actually needed.
It's not always the case that the BBC is right under all circumstances, and like other large organisations it sometimes makes pragmatic decisions that could be based on specific factors such as financial and marketing concerns that may end up disadvantaging certain groups of people, eg. initially restricting the BBC's iPlayer to PC's running Microsoft Windows.
Plus there are rare occasions when the BBC's internal complaints procedure fails to satisfy in one form or another, hence the (perhaps superficial) requirement to have some form of external arbitration to resolve any grievances; it's all related to that thing known as democracy, even if the end result doesn't satisfy everyone that's involved.
Since Ofcom has decided for the first time in its history to impose a fine against the BBC in relation to the Blue Peter competition fiasco, we can conclude that Ofcom felt that it had to directly punish the BBC as opposed to referring punishment to the recently-created BBC Trust. But why has Ofcom decided to take such a step at this point of time?
Basically speaking, this decision has probably been made in the context of other recent premium rate phone line fiascos such as Channel 4's "You Say We Pay" scandal. Ofcom wants the general public to trust broadcasters because the commercial sector relies on a good broadcaster-viewer relationship in order to allow its advertisers to effectively sell goods and services.
Therefore if the general public stops trusting broadcasters in general (which by definition includes the BBC), then they will begin to distrust the advertisements and sponsorship of the commercial channels which commercial broadcasters rely on for their basic revenue stream. Remove that trust and the advertisers start to lose what's left of their basic integrity.
Take all of this into account and you now realise why Ofcom has been pursuing these issues of integrity with missionary zeal, leading to a succession of fines and punishments which has resulted in the BBC being fined for its Blue Peter scandal.
But of course this raises more questions than answers. Just because Ofcom has been given the power to fine the BBC doesn't mean that it had to use such a power in this particular instance, and it's arguable that such powers should only be used in extreme circumstances. Or maybe Ofcom couldn't envisage a 'worse' situation than this?
Was this circumstance extreme enough for Ofcom in particular to justify a fine, and even if justified should that fine go to the Treasury or be paid to a nominated charity instead? The 'good cause' involved with that Blue Peter competition would have been an ideal subject for a donation, especially to provide some form of additional recompense.
The fact that the fine is heading for the Treasury out of the licence fee should be a cause of concern, even if it was effectively punishment for a (hopefully) one-off situation that had no political connections, because for one thing it appears to have set a precedent for future action of this nature in relation to Ofcom.
And more importantly, Ofcom did not hand over final judgement of the Blue Peter case to the BBC Trust, choosing instead to dish out its own form of punishment. Although Ofcom can legally do this sort of thing within its remit, it's hard not to consider the possibility - however remote - that Ofcom really wants to regulate the BBC to a greater extent that it is permitted to.
What isn't in doubt is the fact that the Blue Peter production team made a serious error of judgement in their decision to conceal a major technical problem in order to preserve the illusion that nothing wrong had happened. The main issue here is that Ofcom probably ought to have been delegated the task of deciding what form of action needed to be taken.
