The choice of subject for the 2008 Hetherington Memorial Lecture, ‘Credibility Crunch – the media and morality’ couldn’t have come at a more opportune time.
With the prolonged, almost always ill-informed, debate about Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross’s antics with Andrew Sachs (Manuel from Fawlty Towers) still read in every newspaper, written about on every blog and discussed in every conversation, Dame Joan Bakewell’s talk had particular resonance for a Stirling University audience with the media in crisis on their minds.
‘I wish to examine how an insidious falling away of moral integrity has crept into broadcasting to such an extent that its leaders seem unsure how to react and what criteria of behaviour and judgement to invoke,’ offered Bakewell as an introduction.
This confusion was summarised with all the compact, assured wit you’d expect of a Dame from the world of broadcast.
“It’s your BBC,” they say, and then are surprised when 37,000 viewers say what they think. What a moral muddle!’
The irony sparked a titter of mirth in the Logie Lecture Theatre, as the audience followed a formidable and assertive public speaker with 40 years of broadcasting experience behind her.
It’s these four decades in the media that allowed Bakewell the knowledge and awareness to enlighten, and perhaps entertain, for 45 minutes in a room not renowned for its comfort.
Evaluating the change in the BBC from a loyal set of staff, sharing in the values of a trusted brand image, to a current creative workforce that is mainly outsourced, with Television Centre now the home of ‘planners and marketing people, press officers and managers’, Bakewell summarised decades of change that has affected the intentions of public broadcasting.
It’s change, though, that has allowed Bakewell to brush with controversy herself, admitting in her speech that she is ‘perhaps the only broadcaster to go further than Ross and Brand’ with her 2001 BBC documentary Taboo, in which an erect penis was on show in the studio.
Her argument was judgement before censorship, stating that ‘it is not cultural conservatism to want to discourage the progressive coarsening of our comedy shows and reality programmes’, whilst Taboo was there to discuss an acceptable context for such a ‘spectacle’.
Honouring the late Alastair Hetherington’s memory with a speech worthy of his name is always going to be hard, but Bakewell proved more than adequate at doing justice to a man whom she admired for his integrity and radicalism.
She’s seen and heard a lot in her time – including probably a lot worse things than the thoughts of Ross and Brand – and come out with opinions and experience to share. Her veracity was thrilling, and this was the perfect lecture to inform, to educate, and toentertain.
Thomas Meek is a fourth-year Journalism Studies undergraduate.
Alastair Hetherington (1919-99) was a former editor of the Guardian and Controller of BBC Scotland before becoming Stirling’s first Research Professor of Media Studies. The annual Hetherington Memorial Lectures, organised by the Stirling Media Research Institute, are sponsored by the Scott Trust.
Transcripts of the lectures can be found at www.fmj.stir.ac.uk/hetherington/index.php/
