LONDON, 21 December 2003 — The BBC has decided that a curb must be placed on the work of its public faces, and in particular that those presenters who now moonlight as celebrity columnists must stop. The corporation considers that the practice is incompatible with its obligation to be politically neutral, and so from now on some of its best known journalists will be restricted to working for the BBC itself.

The boundaries of the ordinance are not very clear, and are going to lead to trouble. It seems to me, too, that this whole dispute rests on a misunderstanding of the notion of impartiality. Political parties, large and small, are always very hot on the question of impartiality; I am reliably informed, and indeed have observed on a couple of occasions, that many government ministers as a matter of routine affect to lose their temper once an interview has come to an end, and noisily complain about unfairness.

It would be a great shame if the BBC ever came to accept that idea of impartiality; the idea that every presenter, every interviewer, should be entirely neutral and uncritical. The point of the corporation’s impartiality is that it should not, as a body, support particular parties or indeed individual political policies. What that means, however, is that it should give a voice to a wide spread of opinion.

There is no reason why the corporation’s impartiality should not encompass presenters who themselves, within the BBC or outside, give voice to decided opinions. Naturally, there are limits; I don’t think we would want a chief political correspondent who openly supported one party or another. But nor would you want a newspaper columnist who was an abject supporter of one party’s policies, rather than a skeptical interrogator, wherever his ultimate loyalties lay.

There are already a large number of restrictions on what political commentators and news reporters may say on the BBC’s own broadcasts. Personally, I think these already go too far. There is no real reason why a BBC journalist should not be able to argue a case, so long as everyone understands that what they are listening to is comment. It would be worrying, admittedly, if producers took to pursuing an argument through the means of news, but there is no harm in a political commentator talking in very committed terms about a particular government policy, and it need have no impact on the BBC’s overall impartiality. If that is true even on the BBC’s own programs, it is certainly the case when employees write for newspapers.

Viewers are not stupid. They certainly understand when an argument is being frustrated by rules; they certainly understand when a false notion of impartiality results in government policy going unchallenged, a disaster of public administration being reported rather than attacked. And it’s important that the BBC’s most voluble figures be given free rein to express themselves wherever seems most appropriate.

If that alters, it can only result in a diminishment of the BBC’s own authority, and will not serve the end of impartiality which this claims to address.

In the end, all we will have are a lot of people dressing up in monkey costumes to advertise Freeview, which is not worth very much; the reduction of people who, after all, are politically engaged and energetically skeptical to the status everyone seems to occupy these days, mere showbiz “personalities”.