Within Radio 4 itself, Government hostility is sharpening tensions between BBC modernists and traditionalists fighting for the soul of an institution that across the nation is beloved and infuriates in equal measure. Indeed, Dorries appears to be carrying her party’s colours into open warfare against the national broadcaster, describing it at the Conservative Party Conference earlier this month as nepotistic, elitist, and London-centric.Īll of which is grim news for the corporation’s new-ish director-general, Tim Davie, currently negotiating the Beeb’s new five-year licence-fee settlement. Only two days before, Johnson had put in a niggly appearance on The Andrew Marr Show, with the presenter later accused of political bias by the new Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries.
Even Robinson seemed to realise he had wildly overstepped from robust to plain rude. Yet now, Radio 4 may see the Government march on the BBC after Today presenter Nick Robinson’s recent confrontational interview with Boris Johnson, during which he barked at the Prime Minister to ‘stop talking’ like a brittle headmaster losing it with an unruly child. Get it wrong at the latter, says one former executive, and ‘people march on Whitehall’. There are, former BBC director-general Mark Thompson used to say, only two things that could get corporation bosses like him fired: messing up a major news story, or messing around with Radio 4.
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