Anthony Barnett (London, OK): The episode of the Queen and the BBC, two of the defining institutions of Britishness, has a ghastly importance. The Queen is simply the empty signifier of a descent into Murdoch land. Perhaps because they have been creating an internal market with outsourced production companies, the BBC commissioned a film on the Queen made by RDF. The film makers seem to have got bored and manufactured the Queen "storming out" of a photoshoot with Annie Leibovitz by reversing a sequence so that her walking in is shown as her walking out. According to the official report, the "fuse was inexcusably lit when RDF edited the footage of the Queen in a cavalier fashion". Hold on a second, can lying be described as just being "cavalier"? We are also told, however, that no one "set out to misrepresent the Queen". In which case was the story true? On Newsnight, the BBC's Chief Operating Officer Caroline Thompson said that there was a "failure to recognise how sensitive it is", which implied that if it hadn't been the Queen it would have been OK. The Controller of BBC 1 was obliged the resign, because he had boasted about the scoop in presenting a trailer of the film to the press, telling them it shows the monarch "losing it a bit and walking out in a huff". When he was told what he had said was a load of cobblers he just hoped it would all blow over - or, as they put it in their pompous way, he was "slow to appreciate the magnitude and import of the mistake".
Running through the whole business is a collapse in standards into the tabloid maelstrom of the media torrent which I'd sum up as "If it's a good story it does not have to be true".
This is the slogan that could sum up Britain.
Of course, it is possible that the Queen did walk out, they did not have the sequence of pictures to show this, and they they fabricated the appearance of what was a true sequence of events and that the Controller knew this and took a risk.
I'm afraid a much more likely version goes like this - but you can guess yourself the BBC have a short summary sequence of the whole business.
Queen is grumpy and indifferent to the fashionistas and their filming. They get bored and want to make a more "interesting" film that will "sell round the world". (They feel that her indifference means she has "walked out on them" because they are the truely important ones....) If anyone suggested it might be misleading they would have been dumped on as a victim of deference and snobbery. You can imagine the pseudo-republican Murdoch scorn. The Controller then thinks great I can expose the Queen as a grumpy old Garter and get some cheap publicity. A sensation is created which justifies itself because it is sensational. All would have been well except that it is discovered too late in the day that the monarchy still has some power.
If it had been a film about the life of a film star, then of course the star would have been collusive in the whole thing and any "storm' contrived. If it had been a film of a regular old lady who, like the Queen was pretty unimpressed by modern television, they could have had their revenge and shown the film, over-riding any protests about its dishonesty with protestations about their "experience and integrity".
The pitiful aspect is first that the BBC is cutting its budget for quality documentaries for which their is a great audience and hunger while it squanders money on the RDF film, and second its loss of understanding of what truth is about. Caroline Thompson also assured Kirsty Wark of Newsnight that "quality and standards will be the heart of what we do". But standards mean being truthful in documentaries even if it is complicated. This concept wasn't referred to.
Although we have moved on from Blair, the culture that created him has not. I don't think we should be deferential towards the Queen, the monarchy or other governing institutions. Blair wasn't at first and was refreshingly anti-Establishment. But we should be deferential in the sense of having respect for what is the case. It can be frustrating and hard work. The impatience of the media torrent sweeps this aside as it only believes in itself. For the first time in life I am thinking that perhaps in this dispute I am on the side of the side of that old reactionary the Queen.
UPDATE: Saturday morning's Guardian leader: "What began as a wheeze to spice up a trailer for a press conference". The assumption that news is entertainment is complete. It isn't "a wheeze" to misrepresent someone, no matter who it is. But the Guardian thinks the BBC should not "beat itself up over every minor misdemeanour". You have been warned. Deliberate falsification is a minor matter, at least when it is fun for those who do it and colleagues. At this rate the only trustworthy section of the Guardian's reporting will be its corrections and clarifications.
