James Purnell. Image, BBC.
Splash headlines about the BBC are not unusual in the solidly conservative British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph. Usually, they are negative, or even hostile: the “Torygraph” (as friends as well as critics often dub it) views the BBC with suspicion and even hostility, as a bastion of liberal values, overpaid bureaucrats and EU-friendly programme makers.
The banner headline on Monday March 20th – “BBC demands top billing in law” – was actually triggered by an article on the paper’s opinion page written by one of the BBC’s top executives, James Purnell, bearing the heading “British TV is being hidden by digital giants”, and the sub-heading “Netflix, Amazon and Sky are making home-grown programmes hard to find on their set-top boxes”. I don’t know if those headings were chosen by the Telegraph or Purnell, but – like much of the article – they were undoubtedly misleading.
