How this cuddly interview with a pompous fraud shows a corporation that's not worth saving, by ex-BBC editor

By Professor Tim Luckhurst

PUBLISHED: 20:55 EST, 29 March 2014 | UPDATED: 04:52 EST, 31 March 2014


The BBC faces a grave and unprecedented crisis. Shamed by failures such as the Jimmy Savile scandal and outrageous payments to departing executives, the Corporation now confronts an existential threat: decriminalisation of non-payment of its licence fee.

MPs recently voted to permit this reform, which the BBC believes would cut its income by £200 million per year.

Meanwhile, the crucial challenge of charter renewal must be completed by 2016 – against a backdrop of revolutionary technological change and economic uncertainty.

Disgraced: Former Co-op Bank chairman Reverend Paul Flowers pictured in January as he answered bail at Stainbeck police station in Leeds following his arrest last November

Disgraced: Former Co-op Bank chairman Reverend Paul Flowers pictured in January as he answered bail at Stainbeck police station in Leeds following his arrest last November

Respected lifelong supporters such as Roger Mosey, former editorial director and the mastermind behind coverage of the 2012 Olympics, are beginning to argue for real change in the BBC’s size and structure. This is the context in which Jeremy Paxman sat down last week to interview Paul Flowers, disgraced former Chairman of the Co-operative Bank, for Newsnight, the  BBC’s flagship television current affairs show.

For Paxman, feared and admired by Britain’s political elite as the BBC’s most formidable on-screen interrogator, this should have been a task to relish. Flowers, better known as the Crystal Methodist, was leader of a major British bank that was very nearly bankrupted under his chairmanship. He had given no broadcast interviews since his disgrace. Paxman had a glorious and unique opportunity to ask hard and important questions.

 

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Why did Flowers accept a job for which he was luminously unqualified? Was his judgment clouded by his addictions? How did he hide his use of hard drugs and rent boys from other members of the Co-op board? Did he remain in post when he knew he could not manage the complex challenges facing his bank because he needed his generous salary to maintain his double-life?

The evidence to inform such a grilling was available. It was published last year in this newspaper in a detailed exclusive that went on to dominate the BBC’s news. Jeremy Paxman must have had access to it; Britain’s national newspapers are delivered to the Newsnight offices every day.

But Paxman did not grill Flowers. He did not even toast him lightly. This giant among broadcasters, who has reduced junior politicians to tears and whose intellectual acuity can intimidate Cabinet Ministers, played the softest of soft cops.

His first question: ‘What’s this last year been like?’ set the tone, and it rarely got any harsher. Flowers got away with claiming that he was not responsible for his own grotesque incompetence because he hadn’t appointed himself to the Co-op board, ‘others did that’.

'Paxman did not grill Flowers. He did not even toast him lightly': The pair enjoy their chat on Newsnight

'Paxman did not grill Flowers. He did not even toast him lightly': The pair enjoy their chat on Newsnight

Paxman did not bother to explore whether he should have declined the job. He did nothing to prevent Paul Flowers portraying himself as an innocent exposed to pressures he could not be expected to handle. Everything was somebody else’s fault. This Methodist minister who utterly betrayed his vows became simply unfortunate.

And then it became truly offensive. The sex- and drug-addicted Flowers, this pompous fraud who told the Treasury Select Committee that his bank’s balance-sheet assets were £3 billion when they were, in fact, £47 billion, attacked this newspaper for daring to expose him.

Britain’s most successful Sunday newspaper is, he says, a ‘pseudo- fascist’ title with ‘far-right tendencies that make Vladimir Putin look like a bleeding heart liberal’. This was vile and atrocious nonsense, but Paxman did not challenge it.

We have seen him sneer contemptuously at interviewees who try to escape blame by shooting the messenger. With the Crystal Methodist he simply let it pass.

This was a recorded interview, so the BBC knew what it had long before it appeared on Newsnight. Sadly, nobody paused to think that it might not be any good.

The first clue that Flowers had escaped unscathed emerged on Radio 4’s PM programme. In a spectacular example of cross promotion of its wares that infuriates the BBC’s commercial competitors, PM’s Eddie Mair interviewed his colleague about Newsnight’s story. Paxman said Flowers came across as a potentially likeable man who had experienced terrible pressure.

According to Newsnight’s legendary anchorman, the important part of the interview was Flowers’s assertion that the Chancellor of the Exchequer put pressure on the Co-op to buy branches from Lloyds.

Flowers is a former Labour councillor. He backed a £50,000 donation to Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls’s office. Ed Miliband appointed him to the Labour Party’s advisory board on finance. His allegations were patently partisan and self-serving. Paxman should have recognised instantly that his interviewee was not a reliable source of political wisdom.

Did Newsnight promise Flowers an easy ride? Jeremy Paxman¿s interview with Paul Flowers was more than a wasted opportunity to expose details of a shocking scandal, writes Professor Luckhurst

Did Newsnight promise Flowers an easy ride? Jeremy Paxman¿s interview with Paul Flowers was more than a wasted opportunity to expose details of a shocking scandal, writes Professor Luckhurst

What went wrong? Was Newsnight so keen to secure an interview with Flowers that it promised him an easy ride? That is denied emphatically, but part of the answer certainly lies in big changes taking place at the programme under the leadership of a new editor. Ian Katz, who was until recently deputy editor of The Guardian newspaper, has been given a free hand to shake things up and attract new viewers. Newsnight’s loss in January of long-serving presenter Gavin Esler, in my opinion a better and more insightful journalist than Paxman, has clearly weakened the show.

The recruitment from ITV of the brilliant Laura Kuenssberg on a salary of £200,000 has provoked jealousy. Some insiders say Paxman himself is revealing signs of insecurity. That beard was bad; a gentle approach to important interviews would be intolerable. And Katz has made blatant errors, such as calling Shadow Minister Rachel Reeves ‘boring’ on Twitter. I’m all for change, and Ian Katz has the talent to make it happen, but he must maintain editorial standards.

Jeremy Paxman’s interview with Paul Flowers was more than a wasted opportunity to expose details of a shocking scandal. It betrayed values viewers are entitled to expect and insulted an ally the BBC needs. Great popular newspapers reserve the right to criticise the BBC and hold it to account. That is their duty. But, when the Corporation is in real danger, the British press rallies to its cause.

Newsnight's loss in January of long-serving presenter Gavin Esler, in my opinion a better and more insightful journalist than Paxman, has clearly weakened the show
The recruitment from ITV of the brilliant Laura Kuenssberg on a salary of £200,000 has provoked jealousy, says Professor Luckhurst

Newsnight’s loss in January of long-serving presenter Gavin Esler has clearly weakened the show, while the recruitment from ITV of the brilliant Laura Kuenssberg on a salary of £200,000 has provoked jealousy

Newspapers may demand a better BBC, but they know the Corporation is a crucial partner. Since the BBC fought for its independence from government during the General Strike of 1926, newspapers have been Auntie’s critical friends. The BBC needs them to remain friendly now, not least because old arguments about the licence fee’s unique capacity to serve our democracy are wearing thin.

Just 24 hours after Newsnight’s abject handling of Paul Flowers, an ambitious commercial broadcaster, LBC Radio, hosted a debate between Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage that aired crucial issues concerning Britain’s future. The result: Wednesday evening’s BBC news was dominated by a broadcast coup in which it had played no part.

In August 2011 Sky News beat the BBC to dominate television coverage of the liberation of Tripoli. New technologies mean such things will happen more often. The BBC’s defence must include a relentless focus on quality.

The media world it once dominated is changing radically and the BBC must fight harder than ever to retain its place at the heart of British life. Winning will require the highest standards of professional excellence. They cannot be achieved through experiments that allow a rottweiler of Paxman’s calibre to mutate into a  cuddly, emollient eccentric.

If Newsnight’s interview with Paul Flowers was an example of a new style of BBC journalism then it should be abandoned immediately. A BBC that encouraged such abdication of editorial rigour would not be worth saving.

LICENCE FEE CAMPAIGN MP ANDREW BRIDGEN: PANICKING TV BOSSES THREATENED RULE CHANGE WOULD KILL OFF CBEEBIES

Andrew Bridgen

COMMENT By ANDREW BRIDGEN, Tory MP for North-West Leicestershre

For decades, the BBC has been regarded by many as untouchable – a sacred being which must be protected from political interference at all costs.

But the Corporation is not some blushing dowager duchess whose honour is under threat.

This is a multi-billion pound national institution with huge influence over British life.

I would argue the pendulum has swung the other way. Far from the BBC having to deal with meddling politicians, it is Parliament which is having to fend off the huge lobbying and media clout of self-interested  BBC executives.

Take the BBC’s extraordinary response in the past few weeks to my campaign in the Commons to decriminalise non-payment of the licence fee. I believe it is a perfectly sensible and much-needed reform to stop the ludicrous situation of people facing jail, whose only crime is very often to have been too poor to afford their £145.50 TV licence.

That’s why it was backed by a rainbow coalition of 150 MPs, ranging from stalwart Tory John Redwood to ardent Labour Left-winger Jeremy Corbyn. I fully support organisations arguing their corner in an open and transparent manner.

BBC Media City UK at Salford Quays, Salford, Greater Manchester: Mr Bridgen accuses the supposedly politically independent BBC of going into defensive mode and unleashing its army of lobbyists

BBC Media City UK at Salford Quays, Salford, Greater Manchester: Mr Bridgen accuses the supposedly politically independent BBC of going into defensive mode and unleashing its army of lobbyists

However, horrified at what they saw as a dire threat from MPs to their rich income stream, the so-called politically independent BBC went into defensive mode and unleashed its army of lobbyists, acting in a way that Corporation panjandrums are normally so disapproving of.

One by one, MPs who had publicly backed my proposals received telephone calls from a BBC staffer imploring them to change their minds in a bid to pick them off on the quiet and get them to withdraw their names.

'Active presence in Westminster's coffee bars': The MP also says that former Labour minister turned BBC man James Purnell lobbied against him

'Active presence in Westminster's coffee bars': The MP also says that former Labour minister turned BBC man James Purnell lobbied against him

The argument whispered into parliamentarians’ ears was that the proposed law change would spell financial meltdown for the BBC which, in a spurious fashion, claimed it would result in the closure of emotive services such as local radio and CBeebies.

One well-known Labour MP said: ‘I’ve just had the BBC on the phone telling me I’ve got to take my name off your amendment.’

At the same time, it was reported to me that James Purnell, the ex-Labour Cabinet Minister turned £295,000-a-year BBC director of Strategy and Digital (whatever that means), was an active presence in Westminster’s coffee bars.

I don’t know if we are expected to believe that these chats over cappuccinos with MP after MP were somehow a coincidence.Sadly, Mr Purnell’s efforts to influence the argument did not extend to holding a public debate with me over the licence fee plans on BBC1’s Daily Politics show last week just before the crunch vote.

Barely ten minutes before we were due to cross swords on air, Mr Purnell – not normally a shrinking violet – pulled out with no excuse offered.

Happily, the Beeb’s blocking tactics failed and – pending a review of options – by 2015 non-payment of the licence will no longer be a crime. Parliament has set in motion changes which will remove one of the biggest blots on our justice system.

It is an opportunity for the  BBC to remodel itself for the  21st century.

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What a disgrace, Paxman out and a Joseph style purge on the BEEB'S lefties. Come on Patten do the job you were brought in to do.

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The beginning of the end :-)

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Can't wait to see the back of the Beeb. If everyone simply withheld the punitive license fee tax, it would take about two weeks to be rid of all those parasites, and they wouldn't be missed

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Scrap the regressive and unfair BBC tax now!

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just shut it down or make it earn its living by pay to view.

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The media never asked these questions of the bankers that caused the financial crisis why pick on paxman over the co-op ?

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the irony of a newspaper with a right wing agenda berating the state broadcaster for 'bias' is not lost on me.

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Time for the BBC to either go or undergo radical change. Why should I pay the licence fee when only about 10% of my TV viewing time is spent watching BBC. It has become as corrupt as any other government influenced organisation. The top brass are only there to see how they can milk the system with bonuses and high salaries. They acted in a disgusting way over the Jimmy Savile affair. They were once famed for being unbiassed. That is no longer true. And this shambles is just another example of the misuse of public money. Something the viewing public have no control over. And the government unwilling to put a stop to.

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Brilliant. Time for the public to shove some spokes into the wheels of this sinister, left-wing propaganda machine!!

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The BBC is beyond reform. It should be broken up and sold off, and its monopoly destroyed.

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