The BBC's director of news, Helen Boaden, came under attack from a regional newspaper editor today for the corporation's "encroachment" on local media.
John Meehan, the editor of the Hull Daily Mail, accused the BBC of failing to strike the resource-sharing partnerships it had promised to help local media.
Speaking from the floor at the Society of Editors conference in Stansted, Essex, Meehan said: "The reality is the BBC only ever wants the pretence of partnerships, which serve its other purposes, or a partnership that's totally uneven and favours the BBC and actually causes us problems and diminishes our position. We've had lots of meetings about partnerships but nothing ever happens."
Boaden said the BBC was attempting to extend the syndication of its content to regional newspapers.
"Personally I don't want it," Meehan retorted. "I don't want my website to be an electronic billboard for the BBC."
"What do you want?" Boaden then asked. "I want the BBC to stop encroaching on our business," Meehan said.
"The BBC is getting into local and getting into local in a serious way," he added.
Boaden countered that the BBC Trust had blocked plans for a BBC local video news service in late 2008.
"You only didn't do it because this industry fought the strongest campaign it has ever fought and united in a way it had never done before," Meehan said.
"It was perfectly reasonable to get into local," Boaden replied. "Our audience research showed our audiences wanted a local proposition from us. The BBC Trust decided not to let us go forward, that's the way the system works. I'm not quite sure what exactly you are complaining about."
Boaden also told the audience of senior newspaper editors and executives that she agreed the salaries of top BBC executives were "enormous".
Her own £320,000 salary makes her significantly better paid than the prime minister. But Boaden said it was not for BBC executives to determine their own worth.
"At the BBC you do not choose your wage and unless you are saintly you don't turn it down," she added. "Do I think the director of news is worth a lot of money? I damn well do. Whether that much money is up to the BBC and in the end to the licence-fee payer to decide."
In a speech to the conference, Boaden warned that life was unlikely to "get much easier" for established media such as the BBC and newspapers. The days of a common national debate were receding, she warned.
"On-demand, personalised news means that audiences can simply opt out of that shared agenda if they don't like it, can't be bothered or find it dull," she said. "I'm not sure any of us have entirely understood the potential implications of this in the long term."
However, there would still be a role for established media despite the massive plurality of information sources, Boaden added.
"In the future it may be hard for our journalism to punch through the world of information available," she said. "When really big things happen, people will want established media they trust to tell them the facts and explain why they happened."
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