The hardest word

Ceri Thomas has found himself caught between roles as Editor of Today on Radio 4 and leader of the "doing fewer things better in radio" workstream, as part of the BBC's process of Delivering Quality First - and ended up a little bruised.

A Saturday debate on Today, on March 12th, picked up on the future of BBC local radio. DQF ideas are said to have included reducing local radio output to shows at breakfast and "drivetime", with the rest of the airtime filled by 5Live.  Nick Clegg said this was a bad idea, and than local radio was "unbelievably important". The contrarian wing at Today invited Charle Beckett of LSE-backed think tank POLIS and Gerry Stocker, Professor at the equally-pompously named C2G2 (Centre for Citizenship, Globalisation and Governance) of Southampton University to discuss.  Charlie Beckett asserted that BBC local radio "tends to get its stories from local newspapers", and the service was not essential.  Gerry Stocker, Charlie and Evan cosily thought the internet was the best way of delivering local news, and holding local government to account. The result: a hefty six letters of complaint (published) in the staff magazine Ariel.   And an apology from Ceri.

When we're preparing for live interviews we always try to do the obvious background work: we try to understand the claims that interviewees are likely to make and give presenters a brief that will allow them to push back if an assertion deserves to be challenged. The discussion was envisaged the day before as a broad conversation about governance and accountability at local level and not specifically about local radio. As a result, we had not fully briefed Evan on these specific points and he let them pass.


For the record, I know how vital a role local radio plays in digging out stories and holding local officials to account - and if we didn't defend that good track record on air, it wasn't our finest hour.


What's not clear is whether or not Ceri was "on deck" for this edition; Jasmine Buttar has been covering for him during the DQF process.