show you tweets and emails from people
on all sides saying that I am anti-SNP, anti-
Jeremy Corbyn, anti-Green, anti-Leavers.
I get this every day. Now, I have worked in
the commercial sector — in ITV — but if
people had any idea of the vast amounts
of time and energy we at the BBC put into
how to get the balance right, I think they
would be very surprised. Does that mean it
is always right? God, no. I think your most
powerful point is that the BBC needs con-
stantly to say: are we even asking the right
questions?
moore: I do think that there are quite a few
people in the BBC who are really desper-
ate to keep us in the European Union. They
sort of see it as their mission and adopt an
‘oh this is what civilisation’s all about’ sort
of view.
robinson: All I can say is that I saw no evi-
dence of that, nor do I think the coverage
produced any evidence of that. If anything,
the people who were angry with the BBC’s
coverage of the referendum campaign
were the Remainers. The people who were
knocking on the director- general’s door
were the Peter Mandelsons and the Chris
Pattens and the Gus O’Donnells. They
weren’t Iain Duncan Smith, Boris Johnson,
Michael Gove or, indeed, Charles Moore.
moore: No it was more in the aftermath,
I think, because then you could feel the
grief of the BBC.
robinson: Well, I don’t think you could feel
grief. And surely, going back to your issue
of bias, it’s a little bit like arguing with
the referee in football: you never com-
plain that the referee is biased in favour of
your team. You always think the referee is
biased against your team, and broadcasters
are always alleged to be biased against a
team. Is the BBC pro-monarchy, Charles?
The left think we’re pro-monarchy and
that we shouldn’t be.
moore: The BBC is not a referee, it is itself
a team. It has a massive interest in playing
for certain results, the most important of
which is its own survival.
robinson: Well, all organisations have a
certain interest in their own survival. Of
course they do.
moore: But other businesses don’t get pub-
lic money by law and they’re infinitely less
important.
robinson: No political party in this country
has yet suggested that the BBC should not
get public money. Now, under your organi-
sational theory, we’d only have a partisan
interest in backing one side or the other if
one party were more or less hostile to the
BBC. But they’re not!
moore: They won’t be! They don’t dare. It’s
as simple as that.
A
moore: I read your Radio Times piece slight-
ly differently from other people actually,
because I wondered if you are more aware
than the average BBC person of how a
Conservative person might think. And
knowing that mindset, perhaps you’re
thinking: ‘Well, how should we change?’ So
you are defending the BBC partly because
you wish to change it. Is that right?
robinson: Well, I was genuinely bored —
and irritated — by the whingeing from
both sides in the EU debate. That whinge-
ing doesn’t encourage openness, nor the
sort of discussion that you and I are hav-
ing now. And there is a debate to be had. Ionce wrote a long chapter in a book about
whether impartiality, as a concept, is sus-
tainable in this new era. It is an artificial
construct, a legal construct dating back to
the 1930s. You could say: let’s get rid of
it. But we see things done differently in
other countries, particularly the United
States. There, you have right-wing activists
watching Fox and liberal activists watching
MSNBC. The result? No shared facts about
anything. They can’t have a proper political
debate or dialogue, because nobody can
even agree on what they are talking about.
I’m not saying that there are no merits in
the US approach: it offers freedom, and so
on. But I think it is worse than our system.
And that’s why I am rather aggressive in
defending our system of impartiality.
moore: Obviously if you have the current
BBC’s setup, that’s what you must try to
be. I mean both that you must morally,
and that you must for your own surviv-
al. Other wise you couldn’t endure. But
maybe all that is being blown away. Maybe
the American system — or lack of a system
— gives a better reflection of the reality of
the world. The BBC exists thanks to a poll
tax which it is literally illegal to avoid. It is
collected with a phenomenal ruthlessness,
which, if it were not the BBC doing it, theBBC would itself expose. And we know
that’s not going to last, because no young
person now pays. In the modern world,
media organisations are far more power-
ful than they used to be. And they ought to
be challenged.
robinson: Will you forgive me going back? I
read a piece that you had written in which
you were worried that Article 50 can be
overturned. I can see why, after all your
adult life having this argument, you would
be concerned about that. But my worry
is that we’ll kill this interesting period of
political debate by some sort of desper-
ate, banal tedium of broadcasting being,
‘And now campaign A will be countered
by campaign B. Campaign A will say X and
campaign B will say not X.’ If we do that
for two years, then we will all want to jump
into the Channel.
moore: One way of not doing it would be
for the BBC to be much, much bolder
about the subject matter, so you can then
have programmes which are much more
fierce either way. The BBC might then not
always present leaving the EU as almost
impossibly difficult. It’s a fight all the way:
the BBC is trying to throw up obstacles
instead of looking ahead and asking: ‘How
does the decision that the nation has made
get enacted?’
robinson: I not only disagree with but,
frankly, resent the idea that the BBC is
throwing up obstacles. The BBC didn’t
take Brexit to the Supreme Court: peo-
ple took it to the Supreme Court. When
you edited the Daily Telegraph, you’d have
sacked everybody who suggested: ‘Don’t
cover that, cover Iain Duncan Smith’s latest
press release.’ You cover the biggest story
— which is, for example, that Brexit could
have been derailed by a court case.
But a point you make really well —
which I will take away — is that the system
will keep throwing up potential problems,
hurdles, call them what you will. Business
uncertainty, legal cases, warnings from
Europeans that this won’t be achieved in
this or that negotiation — there is an end-
less supply of things that may sound like
bad news, sour grapes or wishing for a dif-
ferent result. Now, I would say that they’re
not. They’re generated by a real external
process, not by the BBC, and we report
on it. But we have to look for the range of
voices, range of arguments and so on.
So my plea is: let’s not turn this debate
into something dictated by 25-year-old
PRs writing a ‘line to take’ to be read out
by campaign spokesmen from either side.
And end up stuck in that cycle for the next
two years.
moore: Well, we all say Amen to that. My lit-
tle sign-off is that you’re going to have to
change, because we are going to leave. And
if the BBC is still the pro-Remain organi-
sation, it won’t survive.
robinson: Which it isn’t! And it will!‘We’re digging a mega-basement with
swimming pool and media room.’‘The BBC exists because of a poll tax
that is literally illegal to avoid, and
is collected with ruthlessness’