MEDIA: BBC’s confusion shows in its own mission message

It was inevitable that the BBC would produce a mission statement

for the next century. The only surprise is that a multi-purpose,

multi-faceted, bi-media task force is not already at work on a mission

statement for the century after that.

In general, there is only one rational reaction to organisations which

produce mission statements. Derision. Heaping banalities on top of

truisms, usually with a swift dash of hypocrisy, does nobody any good.

And to add some more unnecessary truisms, an organisation where a strong

corporate culture and sense of purpose is felt by employees doesn’t need

a mission statement, and dozens of mission statements are no substitute

for the lack of a natural sense of direction.

Due to the imposition of its universal licence fee the BBC, more than

most, should indeed account for itself in public. Anyway, Chris Smith

had asked it to produce a statement of its plan for the next century so

at least it’s got an excuse for wasting licence payer’s money.

Yet even by the standards of the mission statement-writing trade, the

BBC’s 110 words are full of conditionality - the Beeb will aim, aspire,

seek and endeavour to do things rather than actually commit itself.

What do you make of this? ’We aim to be guided by our public purposes.’

Only aim? Surely to be guided by its public purposes is a sine qua non

for the Corporation. Given that it is inconceivable that the 110 words

were not gone over a hundred times and there is no possibility of the

wrong cliche being chosen, the wording is revealing. As is becoming the

usual pattern following its ludicrous ’AGM’, the BBC assembled an

audience of the great and good to receive its mission statement and lob

a few gentle questions.

A little reality managed to intrude. Jocelyn Hay of the Viewers and

Listeners Association suggested that boasting about 30 million hits a

month for BBC Online wasn’t so smart when you have to divide by ten to

get the number of users as opposed to graphic impressions accessed. That

gives us 100,000 users a day, possibly half coming from abroad. Never

mind, the BBC is a pioneer. It says so in the mission statement, so why

should anyone be bothered that only 0.5% of the 22 million licence

payers are using the service.

A few academics even had the temerity to ask exactly how many people

they expected to watch their digital services. Silly old academics. It

was all there in the document. The BBC’s new channels and services will

create ’new mass audiences’ for the BBC. Not unless there is the

greatest redefinition of words since Alice in Wonderland. But it is the

mismatch between the BBC words and its deeds that is most offensive.

Just as the BBC was promising to seek ’to satisfy all our audiences in

the UK’, Radio 2 was trying to dump another tranche of older listeners

and the Governors were not being minded to have a 6 0’clock News for

Scotland.

Never mind. You can be certain that the BBC will continue to ’aspire to

the highest ethical standards’. After all, it says so in the mission

statement.

Raymond Snoddy is media editor of The Times.

This article was first published on Marketing