The BBC has little desire to work with UK newspapers digitally because it is obsessed with competing with Google and Facebook, MPs have been told.
Matt Rogerson, the head of public policy at Guardian Media Group, said that the newspaper group had not had a “particularly positive” experience of collaboration with the BBC during the current charter period.
Rogerson was asked by the House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee looking into the BBC in light of the charter renewal process why he believed there is not a climate of collaboration with the corporation.
“I think they have their eyes on a different prize to working with news brands in the UK,” he said. “They see themselves as competing with Google and Facebook, and they see attention time on Google and Facebook the primary drivers of their concern. If you do that the incentive to be more collaborative with UK news providers dissolves away. And if you do that you focus keeping more people on your own website and not partnering in a collaborative way.”
He added that the BBC’s attitude to collaboration has been “you can take a few scraps from the table but there has not been a sense of genuine partnership”.
Rogerson also pointed to concerns digital rivals, such as the Guardian, Telegraph and Mail Online, have with the BBC internationally competing in areas outside a public service remit which hampers their commercial ambitions.
One example was how the BBC is moving into “soft” content and programming such as “cookery, autos and culture” that is well served by commercial players.
“We’ve made investments on the basis we will get a commercial return,” he said. “We didn’t expect to see BBC as the gorilla on shoulder if you like coming along behind the Guardian and other news brands and setting up commercial ops in Australia and the US.
“It is ironic that the one [organisation] in the world guaranteed funding on ‘hard’ news [has] moved into soft content … areas where there is no market failure. When organisations like the Guardian, Telegraph and Mail [Online] deliberately setting up operations there … that is questionable I think. Our position is around fairness and best public value.”
Rogerson said he would much rather see Ofcom regulate the BBC than the BBC Trust.
Later in the session the committee asked Fran Unsworth, director of the BBC’s World Service Group, about the Guardian’s claims.
She was sceptical and critical about many of the assertions made by Rogerson claimming that the corporation had approached the Guardian with a “list” of potential areas and initiatives to collaborate over “but they never got back to us over them”.
