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Public service broadcasting is 'lynchpin' of British culture, says Joan Bakewell

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Broadcasting veteran says PSB is under threat from multichannel competition and errors such as excessive BBC pay

Public service broadcasting must be defended as a "lynchpin" of British culture and democracy in the face of threats from the growing number of channels and self-inflicted errors such as extravagant BBC executive pay, Dame Joan Bakewell warned yesterday.

Delivering the annual James Cameron Memorial Lecture, Dame Joan issued a rallying cry to broadcasters to rediscover the ethos of public service broadcasting predating the Thatcher era, which prompted a potentially ruinous commercialism.

The broadcaster said independents proliferate as a result, often staffed by young programme-makers who have no concept of the values and restrictions that once governed public service broadcasting. In a system amounting to "organisational mayhem", they see those values as little more than "the leftovers from history".

The concept is, she said, "threatened by today's culture of multiplying channels and intensified competition and the legacy of its own errors: extravagant executive pay and excessive expansion. Public service broadcasting is a lynchpin of our democracy. At a time when so many other institutions – financial, parliamentary – are deeply flawed, the battered and tattered ideals of public service broadcasting survive. If a societal consciousness is creeping back into public affairs, then now is the time to celebrate public service broadcasting and see it flourish again."

But this need not, and should not, mean bland, unchallenging broadcasting. "Public service broadcasting is not to be defended as a service that never offends. It must be free to allow the expression of a range of opinions as diverse and as extreme as is legal in our society; to allow humour that mocks and lampoons; and drama that stirs up deep and often disturbing responses," Bakewell said.

"It must not bend to vested interests, party political pressures or lobbying from religious or international interests. It must have the courage of its own judgments and defend them against those who want to see broadcasting as a cowed and spineless enterprise, best suited to easy entertainment."

In a wide ranging speech charting the progress of PSB from the BBC's inception, Dame Joan warned against excessive romanticism, conceding that many programmes from the 1960 and 1970s, viewed today, would appear "stilted and dull".

But, she said, "there is a wistful sense that we have lost something. That is why people enjoy breaking the boundaries for the sake of it. You see it in Mock The Week and in Gordon Ramsay's programmes. Somewhere we have neglected the values that protected public service broadcasting."

She said that in 1955, 10% of the BBC's output consisted of arts and culture programming, while 25% was aimed at children. Only 1% qualified as "soaps". By 1995, soaps were 4%. The proportion quickly progressed to 20%.

It was John Birt, director general from 1992 to 2000, who truly changed the ethos with a management style in tune with the Thatcherite era, she told the gathering at City University, London. It was, she said: "highly individual and centred on the free market and money". She said that Birt introduced the internal market and a bureaucracy that saw "ever richer executives and programmes strapped for cash".

While she acknowledged that the BBC Trust is seeking to address the ethical issues dogging the corporation, Dame Joan said some attempts appear hamfisted.

She highlighted a recent trust ruling against the BBC's Middle East correspondent, Jeremy Bowen, criticised by the trust for comments made as part of his reporting on the Arab/Israeli conflict, as well as a ruling that Michael Palin oversimplified the issues when he talked about who was to blame for the Yugoslav conflict of the 1990s in a travel programme. Palin was very angry, she said, adding: "Where would James Cameron have been under such a regime?"

The gathering also heard from Sonali Wickrematunge, the wife of Sri Lankan newspaper editor Lasantha Wickrematunge, a trenchant critic of the government there, who was murdered in January. He was given a posthumous award by the James Cameron Trust. In a statement, she said he would have been honoured to be numbered among those who "risk life and limb" fighting "freedoms we all cherish". Ms Wickrematunga, who is in hiding, added: "Lasantha would have been proud to be thought worthy of taking his place with the other great warriors honoured by this memorial award."

The main award of the evening went to the Guardian's Gary Younge for his "extraordinary" reporting before and after the election of Barack Obama.

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