MPs expenses, phone hacking and BBC payoffs

Posted by Prof. Richard Sambrook

What do MPs expenses, phone hacking and BBC payoffs have in common? Yes they have all been  “scandals” which have understandably and rightly enraged the public. They have all had extensive media coverage, provoked questions in Parliament, and been exposed to pubic scrutiny. They have all produced humble retractions, apologies, red faces or worse.

However there is one other fundamental thing they have in common. They all spring from a similar cultural dysfunction. In each case, a closed, self sustaining, group developed a culture of entitlement in which “the way things are done here” slid unnoticed into behaviour that was publicly unacceptable. Some would call it a moral slide. Others, perhaps, a moral tide – which when it turns can expose  “the way things are done here” as indefensible, leaving the guilty stranded high on the beach.

I’m sure MPs were offered guidance on what to claim to help compensate for perceived low salaries. Tabloid newsrooms would have seen phone hacking as a common, relatively harmless, way of gathering inside information. The BBC used payoffs as a way to reduce the numbers of senior managers- but stretched the rules to do so. In each case, when the tide turned, “the way things are done here” was  no longer acceptable. Some of those caught out may be genuinely bemused as to what they did wrong. That’s the problem with closed cultures.

As the move for greater transparency in public life continues, we can expect to see more people, who simply thought they were behaving as they were expected or entitled to, caught out and stranded as a moral tide turns.

(Full disclosure: I was a BBC executive until 2010. Then I left for another job – and did not seek or receive any settlement deal or pension augmentation.)