British Broadcasting Corporation

Origins

The BBC began life as the British Broadcasting Company on October 18, 1922. It was formed by a group of radio manufacturers, including radiotelegraph inventor Guglielmo Marconi, who were eager for an organization to provide programming for their product. Daily broadcasts began on November 14, 1922. The general manager was a dour 33-year-old Scottish engineer, John Reith. In these fledgling years some news was broadcast, but never before 7 p.m. so that newspaper sales would not be affected. In 1926 the BBC faced the first major crisis over what, even then, was taken to be absolutely axiomatic to its founding principles: its editorial independence. During the general strike of that year the biggest and most intense conflict between the trade union movement and the government in modern British history took place and the public turned to the BBC for news because no newspapers were being published. The BBC sought, with a modicum of success, to represent the news of the strike as seen from both sides. This infuriated the then chancellor of the exchequer, Winston Churchill, who [Page 181]wanted the BBC to be taken over by the government. Reith and then–Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin resisted, and the BBC maintained its independence. The incident would be the first of many conflicts between the BBC and the government of the day. Yet the 1926 conflict demonstrated just how effectively the BBC was fulfilling its commitment to independent journalism on the grounds that if the government is disturbed about news coverage then the corporation must be doing something right.

At the beginning of 1927 the BBC became the British Broadcasting Corporation, established by a Royal Charter. This would be crucial to its continued efforts to maintain its independence since the charter meant that the BBC was an institution of the monarchy and not the state. The charter also established a board of governors, appointed by the monarch, who were deemed to be trustees of the public interest. The significance of this for the BBC's independence in general, and its journalism in particular, was that the only way the government could seek to control the BBC would be, ultimately, by getting the monarch to remove the governors. Since this would inevitably be extremely controversial, and since under the terms of the (unwritten) British constitution the monarch cannot be seen to be involved in political controversy, the possibility of the governors being removed was remote in the extreme. It was also determined that the BBC would be funded by a license fee, paid by anyone who owned a radio receiver and, later, a television. The purpose here was to provide financial independence for the corporation, so that it was reliant neither on advertising nor state subvention. The thinking behind this was very much that of Reith who looked west to the unregulated radio of America and east to the rigidly controlled radio of the Soviet system and did not like what he saw in either direction.

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