Battle to Save BBC Jobs

I attended a meeting with the General Secretary of the National Union of Journalists, Jeremy Dear, and Ofcom, the body set up to regulate the broadcasting industry. The reason for the meeting was that Ofcom is reviewing the future of public service broadcasting and will be making recommendations to the Government in the New Year about how the resources to maintain good quality broadcasting are to be raised. I have a number of constituents who work for the BBC in the nearby White City studios and in the broadcast media. I am anxious that the future of the BBC is secure and that there is no more privatisation or outsourcing of its services with further loss of jobs and reductions in the quality of its programming. I am also concerned about the cuts that have occurred in ITV, reducing ITV’s local public service broadcasting.

The NUJ is mobilising a campaign with BECTU, the other broadcasting union, to highlight the threat to the BBC and public services broadcasting on ITV. I have been supporting this campaign because if we are not very careful we are in real danger of not only losing a large number of jobs locally but also undermining the high standard of broadcasting that we have built up over the years in our television and radio stations.

I interviewed Jeremy Dear about the union’s campaign.

submitted by John on 05 Nov 2008 at 23:30