Public Interest Broadcasting

The pre-privatisational corporate pusillanimity that is the post-Hutton BBC has given further assurance of its dedication to New Labour values with its statement on why it cancelled a scheduled programme at the last minute, in favour of some instant current affairs about the Shannon Matthews affair. There seems to have been no particular reason why a Panorama special on British family values could not have waited until a few days after the verdict, except that the BBC felt its viewers' attention span might not survive the delay. Nevertheless, "the conviction of Karen Matthews and Michael Donovan on December 4 was felt to be of huge public interest," according to a spokesbeing, translated with typical care by the country's leading liberal newspaper as "the BBC said it believed the Panorama programme ... was in the public interest." It is true that the real-life soap opera did gain better ratings than the Dickens adaptation which it replaced, thus justifying the BBC from every possible New Labour perspective.