Why silence Hardtalk?
What’s behind the BBC’s decision to axe one of its most popular news programmes?
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- Caroline Frost
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On my computer I keep a file of things that always make me laugh out loud when I revisit them. One of these is the 2014 clip from Afghanistan when the BBC’s Middle East correspondent Quentin Sommerville tried to broadcast live from in front of an eight-tonne pile of burning narcotics, his report going hilariously, gigglingly, to pot.
It isn’t often that headlines in this country are made by BBC journalists more familiar on overseas hotel room TV screens than in the UK, but it happened again recently with the news that Hardtalk, the BBC’s solitary longform interview news programme, is to be binned after 27 years of holding public figures to full and forensic account. Stephen Sackur, the show’s presenter since 2005, has not taken this sitting down, taking to social media and other BBC shows to question a decision, he tells me
carefully, he finds “very strange”.
He also found dark irony in its timing, coming on the same day as the BBC’s director-general made an impassioned plea for more government money (which he received in the Budget) to support the work of the World Service, championing its prized “impartial radio output”, its reach of 320 million people a week and its crucial role in the global battle for truth. With one hand Tim Davie was holding out his begging bowl in the name of worldwide trust, while with the other he was drawing a red line through one of the corporation’s most respected and globally popular programmes.
Stephen Sackur showcases polite but unbending journalism
With guests ranging from Nelson Mandela to Gwyneth Paltrow via Mikhail Gorbachev and Henry Kissinger, Hardtalk’s production team worked for weeks, sometimes months, to secure access to public figures making international headlines. As Sackur puts it, “We would appear to embody all that BBC bosses hold most dear.” For sure, as its determinedly neutral host, he showcases polite but unbending journalism, and fronts a distinctive brand that has adapted to the digital world, with a reported audience of 70 million just for the TV show every week. As well as the TV programme on the BBC News Channel, it goes out on World Service radio, in a podcast version and also social media bite-sized clips.
So what’s the thinking? The decision appears to be two-fold: cost and strategy. The first is unblinkingly disingenuous: with its few staff, low overheads and weekly repeats, Hardtalk is a lean machine. Cancelling it will produce no more than five per cent of the savings required by BBC News.
The strategic switch at least makes more sense: that the corporation’s commitment to live and breaking news cannot accommodate the luxury of a programme whose only job is to interview people. This happens all over the BBC countless times a day in hundreds of other shows and formats. Hardtalk just does it best.
The cancellation of Hardtalk sits in the context of a long-running chasm between domestic and overseas news departments, clashing broadcasting priorities, and ultimately the question of what matters more to BBC News chiefs – millions of listeners and viewers tuning in around the world who have never heard of the licence fee, or who’s being interviewed in the 8.10am slot on the Today programme?
Why should we care what happens to a show seen by so few in the UK? Well, in a slick new promotional trail for the BBC’s enormous news-gathering operation narrated by Clive Myrie, we learn that the corporation’s journalists “get up in the morning and work through the night, all over the world… the fight for truth is on.”
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Stephen Sackur may be bigger in Chechnya than he is in Chiswick, but he and his programme are linchpins in that fight. The decision to remove them from the battlefield is, indeed, very strange.
Authors
Caroline Frost
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