JEFF OVERS/PA HIS MASTER'S VOICE: The BBC has been used by generations of leaders, from Winston Churchill to Tony Blair, pictured, to speak to the British public and the wider world
Bad Reception
	It is fighting for journalistic credibility — and its commercial rivals smell blood. Can the British Broadcasting Corporation be both a global player and a public servant?
	By J.F.O. MCALLISTER | London

Posted Sunday, October 5, 2003; 12.48BST
In a large concrete bunker far beneath the Bournemouth convention center, where the Labour Party held its annual conference last week, the British Broadcasting Corporation was hard at work. Amid temporary power lines and data cables, huddled around laptops and editing equipment and food wrappers, gaggles of journalists and technicians were churning out news for the many outposts of the Beeb's far-flung empire. Each had a laminated sign over its table: World Service, News 24, Radio Scotland, Radio Wales, Breakfast News, The World Tonight, P.M., The World At One, Today, Newsnight, Radio 5 Live, Arabic Service. A few hundred meters away, at the beachfront hotel where the top brass of Tony Blair's government was staying, the chairman of the BBC's Board of Governors, Gavyn Davies, was hard at work, too. "I'm going to lunch to be attacked by politicians," he joked.

The BBC isn't worried about where its next meal is coming from, but it is under heavy fire: from the Labour government over the claim by Today program reporter Andrew Gilligan that Blair's communications director, Alastair Campbell, sexed up the dossier Blair used to justify war in Iraq; from commercial rivals who claim the €167 annual levy on every household with a television amounts to an unfair subsidy to help the Beeb enter new for-profit ventures in Britain, Europe and the U.S. (see following story); and from conservative critics who allege liberal bias in BBC reporting and reject the need for any state-funded broadcasting. Without the €3.8 billion the BBC gets in annual subsidy, it couldn't afford all those reporters, or the expensive dramas, documentaries, educational programs and comedy shows it exports around the world, which have won it an unrivaled reputation for broadcasting excellence. But as the Beeb ramps up for a government review of its charter that could turn off that spigot and curtail its activities, "it is probably under more hostile attack now than it ever has been in its history," says Steven Barnett, a professor of communications at the University of Westminster.

It wasn't always this way. Before the digital age started fracturing audiences, the Beeb was Britain's hearth; it tried to unify and uplift as it informed and entertained. The image of a man with a three-piece suit and a posh accent intoning the news into a microphone has always been more iconic than true; BBC programs have been setting trends and breaking news for decades. But the outlets it must now fill have become so vast and varied, and the tastes and cultures it serves so divergent, that it no longer seems run by a single benign intelligence. Its reporters, like its arts programs, have become edgier and more opinionated. But icons are not supposed to be edgy, and in reflecting the age, the BBC has inevitably undercut its own authority.

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	Blair in the Glare [Sept. 8, 2003] After the British Prime Minister testified last week — beating back charges that his team "sexed up" the case for war against Iraq — his top spin doctor resigned. Can Blair repair his tarnished image? The Upfronts: NBC's Nervous Reality [May. 13, 2003] At the first of the fall-schedule unveilings, the hanging-on-to-number-one Peacock knocks other networks' reality shows —but hedges its bets Question Time [Sept. 1, 2003] The inquiry into a weapons expert's death exposes the Blair government. And the PM's up next End of a Dream [April 22, 2002] German TV giant Kirch's house of cards finally collapses under a mountain of debt Anarchy from the U.K. [June 05, 2000] A different British invasion is under way as BBC America imports shows that are anything but stuffy Shaking up the Beeb [May 08, 2000] A new director-general at the venerable British Broadcasting Corp. vows to slash bureaucracy and foster creativity Asia's Hot New STAR [Oct. 28, 1991] The BBC takes aim at CNN on a satellite-TV service Search all issues of TIME Magazine