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It’s something of a mystery. For weeks before the government’s plan for the future of the BBC was published on 12 May, newspapers were full of speculative scares. These claimed that Culture Secretary John Whittingdale was planning all kinds of punitive measures to constrain the Corporation: limiting its ability to commission and schedule popular programmes, diverting part of the licence fee to other broadcasters, forcing disclosure of the salaries of all freelance employees earning more than £150,000 and changing its historic Reithian mission mantra: “inform, educate and entertain”.
There was precious little truth in any of this: just as similar kites had been flown in the weeks between Whittingdale’s surprise appointment to the Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) in May 2015 and the publication of his Green Paper on Charter renewal two months later, only to be exposed as ill-informed rumour-mongering. The question arises, inevitably: who was spreading this stuff, and why?
