Three years ago, the BBC World Service embarked on radical change. Radio services to Eastern Europe were closed down and the Russian service pared back, all to fund new TV stations in Arabic and Persian.
I cannot disagree in principle with some of this. It seemed to make sense that countries like Poland and the Czech Republic now being fully-fledged democracies, in NATO and in the EU, and with lively independent media of their own, that they were no longer in need of a UK taxpayer-funded BBC World Service. I did suggest at the time that a memorial be created to those like Georgi Markov who gave their lives broadcasting for freedom. Meanwhile, there were strong foreign policy reasons to bring alternative voices into the Arab world and into Iran.
However, the whole experiment is starting to fall apart. Nigel Chapman, its Director who masterminded the changes, left in November. In the current climate, the Russian service should be expanded, not reduced, a debate which I initiated in the Commons last week, with strong support from other MPs, notably Dr Julian Lewis MP. The campaign has attracted a lot of backing, notably from a wide variety of people with an interest in Russia and/or the BBC, including the former World Service director Sir John Tusa and others who have co-authored a letter in today's Telegraph.
Now the Government and the BBC have botched efforts to find a new Director, which led to the Government Minister, Bill Rammell, misleading the House of Commons in the debate last week. Rammell assured me that the recruitment process would be open to outside applicants. Yet, the very same day, the BBC published an advert in their in-house magazine, Ariel, stating it was for internal applicants only. This is a very important position, which was paying £228,000 in 2005, and the BBC must ensure that it gets the best applicant possible, someone who can turn the service around. There is a strong suspicion that the BBC is reserving the position for a favoured internal candidate.
And the Persian TV service is in trouble too. I raised in the debate a theoretical problem with it. To broadcast TV, one really needs a strong presence in a country. A radio service is much easier to do from exile, like the World Service did so well in both World War Two and the Cold War. But TV needs pictures, and to get pictures in Iran, one needs to have journalists and camera teams who can gain easy access both to the country and in terms of being able to move around it. For Iran, this would preclude a large number of exiles and most Anglo-Iranians. Today, Israeli news sources are reporting that Iran has arrested a number of BBC journalists as alleged spies.
Meanwhile, the internal recruitment process goes on. These internal applicants have been given only 11 days around Christmas and the New Year to send in thier CVs. Given the Government's misleading of the Commons on the important subject of how the recruitment is to be approached, I have called on the process to be suspended pending a statement in the Commons. The Director of the World Service is too important a position to be handed out by the BBC to a favoured son or daughter without a proper search for the best talent available. Given all the other troubles at the service, like the decimation of the Russian service and the reported arrest of BBC jounalists in Iran, there now appear to be strong arguments to favour an external candidate.
