BBC too obsessed with competing with Google and Facebook to work with UK newspapers, says Guardian boss
Guardian Media Group’s head of public policy, Matt Rogerson, has criticised the BBC for not working more with UK newspapers, claiming that the broadcaster is too concerned with competing with Google and Facebook.
Rogerson made the comments to MPs during a House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee looking into the BBC in light of the charter renewal process.
When asked why there was not a climate of collaboration with the corporation, he said that the BBC “see themselves as competing with Google and Facebook, and they see attention time on Google and Facebook the primary drivers of their concern”.
Rogerson argued that the BBC’s obsession with competing with these platforms has “dissolved” its incentive to collaborate with UK news providers and has led the public broadcaster to focus more on its website numbers rather than working with UK newspapers to cover more news.
He added that the BBC’s attitude to collaboration has been “you can take a few scraps from the table but there has not been a sense of genuine partnership”.
Other issues brought to the committee’s attention were the BBC’s international operations, which Rogerson stated was outside its public service remit.
“We’ve made investments on the basis we will get a commercial return,” he said. “We didn’t expect to see BBC as the gorilla on shoulder if you like coming along behind the Guardian and other news brands and setting up commercial ops in Australia and the US.”
He argued that the BBC’s decision to produce more “soft” content such as “cookery, autos and culture” programmes was sweeping up the commercial opportunities in the regions which the Guardian, Telegraph and Mail Online had worked to attain.
“Our position is around fairness and best public value,” he added.
Fran Unsworth, director of the BBC’s World Service Group, was given the opportunity by the committee to refute the Guardian’s claims. She was critical about many of the assertions and claimed that the corporation had approached the Guardian with a “list” of potential areas and initiatives to collaborate over “but they never got back to us over them”.