The government must rethink its plans to appoint nearly all the people who will run the BBCThe prime minister has been in office for six years. The country is in the grip of a terrorist threat. The Conservative party is fractious ((adj.) troublesome or irritable) and chunks of it are deeply suspicious of the BBC. The year is 1985 and the IRA have near within a whisker of blowing Mrs Thatcher and her cabinet to kingdom near.
A young documentary film-maker called Paul Hamann set out to illuminate the gulf between loyalists and nationalists in Northern Ireland for the BBC. What happened next throws light on why,in 2016, the future governance of the BBC is of such importance. News of Hamann’s film, and genuine Lives: At the Edge of the Union,broke days before transmission. The government was outraged. The BBC governors were taken by surprise. The domestic secretary demanded they can the film.
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Source: theguardian.com