Anthony Barnett (London, OK): The V in TV now stands for vacuum not vision. I watched this evening's Panorama followed by the much trailed part I of John Prescott on class. There was a time when the BBC's "flagship" programme was an hour. Now it is 30 minutes and much of this is dedicated to atmospheric cutaways - all drama and little thought.

Tonight's was a first on the database state but jumped from data losses, to the ECAF monitoring of children, to the ANPR tracking of all car movements, with fragmented discussion of a single, central database. There was no discussion of a national information register, nothing on ID cards. It was designed to alarm not explain. There was no analysis. It was out to lunch when it came to reporting on why total surveillance was happening and what the consequences might be if it works. Sometimes I have the feeling that a report has been carried, a story 'run', with the main purpose of being able to say that the issue was "covered" and not censored or ignored. However, it is a form of death by kindness, a form of quasi-cover-up - tucking up the duvet rather than uncovering the body below it. 

Disappointment turned me momentarily into a couch potato and I switched from BBC 1 to BBC 2 to watch the first half of six months filming of John Prescott that will enjoy two one-hour slots. There were one or two memorable moments and a brilliant 'middle class' young woman who pointed out that she could not be working class becuase she was not working. Here again there was a total absence of ideas, explanations.

Prescott has a fine inner hatred of the upper class that he has brought with him from ten years of serving them on liners, and good for him. But there was no reflection on the different kinds of working class communities. It was all about his style and his 'chips'. Blair, it always seemed to me, kept him in the Cabinet as a trophy of his defeat of Old Labour and as an insurance policy in case he was needed to quell a rebellion (as Prescott did for John Smith when he speech to conference saved 'one person, one vote' and opened the way for the party's modernisation and electoral victory). He wasn't needed and so the Blairs never invited the Prescotts to Chequers.

What apart from himself does Prescott stand for? What original policies are identified with him after a lifetime in the Commons? What influence has he had? The programme maker kept trying to make something of her subject and what he was really 'about', but the question was so personalised that he could not but be devoid of ideas. If only the same effort and investment hds been put into the BBC's investigation of the database state.

Update: David Elstein was excellent in a Today Programme interview about BBC Radio's lewd telephone message debacle. The problem lies not with the presenters like Jonathan Ross who are, he pointed out, paid to be vulgar. It is due to the internal nature of the beast. "It is cultural and it is systemic", Elstein pointed out. The BBC goes downmarket yet thinks it is a law unto itself. How does this relate to the Panorama and the Prescott programmes? I was expecting them to have some kind of intelligent culture, a probing judgement, a belief in their own capacity for judgement. But I can see now that the BBC itself doesn't have the internal culture to deliver this. Its self-belief is merely an immense lazyness that comes from thinking it is immune.