This week a national and international love object will feel the chill of the government's need to cut the deficit. The BBC's World Service, broadcasting to 180 million people in 32 languages, and until 2014 still funded by the Foreign Office rather than the licence fee, will take its share of the pain.
The World Service is not so much admired or debated as venerated. No sooner have the vulgarians elsewhere in the BBC fallen from grace – having, say, mucked up the task of naming the Blue Peter cat or allowed Messrs Ross and Brand to redefine the boundaries of taste – than a leader writer on any self–respecting newspaper, an MP or prime minister will opine with patriotic pride about the World Service's colossal editorial virtues and its importance to Britain's reputation across the universe. These custodians of the public debate will be broadly right. The World Service is indeed one of the UK's most powerful brands. It has been so for decades and mostly for good reason – though its journalism has not always been worth the hype.
When I worked for the World Service in the early 80s Margaret Thatcher wanted to save money and cut it. She was roundly abused and Lord Carrington, the Economist and many others told her she was being profane. In fact the World Service then – though not now – was a creatively shrivelled beast, with too little money or, worse, ambition to make the sort of radio that Radio 4 would turn out by the mile. I remember writing a very mildly critical review of a poor book by Richard Nixon and seeing it thrown in the bin on the grounds that my judgment was too strongly expressed. And a programme on the Northern Ireland hunger strikes that had a rather vivid contribution from Ian Paisley was mangled for fear of it projecting a nasty image of Britain. True, the news agenda was different and splendid, but much else was overrated.
In the 1990s this newspaper joined a campaign against the merger of some World Service programme departments with their domestic counterparts. The Guardian feared the icon would be despoiled – as if the World Service audience would be treated to a steady diet of stories about car crashes on the M25 instead of analyses of Indian politics. The mergers happened, but the dumbing down did not. The World Service had got sharply better under John Tusa in the mid-80s and the improvement was sustained.
But whatever its ups and downs, the institution works. For many years I was involved in the International Press Institute – an organisation devoted to freedom of expression for journalists and always keen to argue with prime ministers and presidents who wished to muzzle dissent. I would walk into any IPI meeting and my experience as editor of the main evening TV news bulletin or even as controller of Radio 4 was mostly incomprehensible or of no interest. All they knew was that I had arrived from Planet BBC and on that basis they decided that I should probably be listened to – if not necessarily obeyed. More or less all this respect came from the BBC's international services, and more or less all of that came from the World Service's highly potent cocktail of history, mythology and reality.
Bush House – World Service headquarters – is, or used to be, plastered with posters quoting the more respectable sort of world leader proclaiming the World Service's virtues of impartiality, fairness and authority. And the editorial perspective of the polyglot and remorselessly internationally minded World Service helps the more intelligent end of BBC journalism to steel itself against the temptations of celebrity rubbish.
All of this is good reason why the government might have protected the World Service in the way it has chosen to protect the Department for International Development. It is not to be. Though I am far from convinced that the provision of decent and honest news and current affairs emanating from Britain should be put in a completely separate category from the necessary provision of roads or wells, it is hard to think of a better example of British soft power; and once a language service is cut, it is lost for ever.
The deficit had to be dealt with. I have no quarrel with the idea that the BBC as a whole could not be spared. But I hope that when the BBC takes over the funding of the World Service it will realise that it may need more funding than it is about to get.
