Jim McGuigan, Georgina Born, and the BBC

Yes, I know, it's another post on Auntie Beeb - and there's lots of other UK media and their impact in the U.S. we need to keep in mind - but this is worth reading. I found a piece, by Loughborough University's Jim McGuigan, in the latest issue of Flow. McGuigan's commentary is on the future of the BBC in an age of neo-liberalism, though in effect it turns into a book review of Georgina Born's Uncertain Vision - Birt, Dyke and the Reinvention of the BBC (2004). Born's book, which I haven't yet read, is an ethnographic study of the BBC, in the tradition of Tom Burns's The BBC: Public Institution and Private World (1977) and Philip Schlesinger's excellent Putting 'Reality' Together (1978). Born combines ethnographic study, critical analysis and policy prescriptions as she "draws upon Seyla Benhabib's notion of a 'politics of complex cultural dialogue'" to call on the BBC and public service broadcasting to "'cultivate commonality, reciprocity and tolerance'".
McGuigan concludes his piece with the following:

Born identifies 'five structural forms of mediated exchange' that may be facilitated by broadcasting organizations retaining a genuinely public service purpose in spite of the forces that threaten to destroy it in our current age of neo-liberal dominance. These are when:-


1. 'the majority hosts divergent and contested minority perspectives';
2. 'minority speaks to majority and other minorities [-] inter-cultural communication';
3. 'via radio, video, cable and satellite television or the net, minority speaks to minority (or to itself) [-] intra-cultural communication';
4. 'territorially-based local and regional community networks' are facilitated by 'interactive project[s]' and 'experiments in online local democracy';
5. 'issue-based, non-territorial communities of interest are linked by point-to-point networks'. (2004, 516)


Born's list registers the BBC's pioneering role in the development of online services to supplement conventional broadcast material.

In conclusion, it is important to stress the need for public services delivered online without charge, exemplified by the BBC's efforts in this respect, as well as through broadcast-scheduled television and radio. Otherwise, the communications field is abandoned entirely to commercial, market-based services that represent the overwhelming privatization and commodification of information, knowledge and culture, which has been taking place and seems, to pessimistic observers, unstoppable.

I wonder if BBC Director-General Mark Thompson, currently engaged on decimating his workforce (actually, double-decimating, since he wants to get rid of 20% of his employees), is paying attention?