Open Writing

During World War II, I was old enough to understand the enormous credibility of the BBC, and to appreciate the trust placed in its news broadcasts by people who were fed only propaganda by their own governments. The somber, Morse code ‘V” for Victory signal, beat out on a base drum, followed by the news of the day, spoken in measured tones by an announcer you would have followed into the fires of hell if asked, was like a rock in the shifting sands of war.

Though the BBC was often the subject of criticism, and even ridicule in later years, it was unassailable at that time. Its association with the middle and upper class civil service automatically set standards for who was hired and how they conducted themselves, and even the way they spoke on the air. The vocal delivery was referred to as the “Kings English,” though one has to wonder why, when most of the kings of England had pretty serious speech impediments.

News readers were required to dress formally for their unseen performance, as ludicrous as that may seem today. One news reader, I think his name was Alvar Lidell, (If it was someone other than he, then I apologise) was seriously censured for broadcasting in a slight state of inebriation on the night the war ended in Europe. One would think he might have been forgiven for that.

When I left England for good in the Seventies, there was movement towards recognizing that not everything of importance happened south of a line drawn through St Albans. I think Broadcasting House first tipped its hat to the Welsh, who in any case had been providing some of the most outstanding broadcasters, but naturally without the Welsh accent. With great pain I suspect, they then turned their attention to the Midlands, and finally to Yorkshire.

The BBC’s way to “regionalise” its offerings was to create studios within the regions. Heaven forbid that they would risk contaminating the long ‘A’ by bringing people down to London from the north. At the time I was appeased, since I had a Yorkshire accent that had often been the butt of jokes by my London based colleagues. But somehow, even local news didn’t have the same ring of authority that the “How now brown cow” people gave it. The “Brummy” touch couldn’t quite hack it either.

In recent years, a now entrepreneurial BBC began building on the popularity here of some of its TV sit-coms and drama series, with a nightly news program, “BBC World News.” This was welcomed in America by both British ex-pats and Americans alike, for the very same reasons that Europeans valued it in WWII – reliable, balanced, factual news reporting. Though I had been barely aware of it before, some, if not all American TV News channels are politically biased beyond belief. The BBC news made this very plain, just by comparison.

The news anchors, one in Washington and one in London, are familiar BBC types; in fact one of them, the very fetching Tania Becket, could even be described as a little far back. They still project their traditional, measured delivery in standard English, though perhaps with a little more hype than their forebears. But it’s the reporters in the field that I have the problem with. Who are these people, risking life and limb to bring us the straight skinny on the Iraq war, and the Taliban’s latest dirty tricks in Afghanistan? It’s regionalization gone mad!

A couple of them seem to be from Northern Ireland, judging by the thick, nasal accents that only the Reverent Ian Paisley could be proud of. Some of others wouldn’t be out of place around the Clyde shipyards, though saying this will probably bring the I.R.A and the lads from Sauchiehall Street gunning for me. Added to the grating regional accent is the often irritating affectation of staying on the same note at the end of a sentence, or going up a semi tone and letting the last syllable tail away. Frank Phillips would be beside himself.

I have a South Yorkshire accent that has barely yielded to my 32 years in America, and I delight in regional tongues of all sorts. But I must admit that when it comes to delivering complex facts about happenings all over the world, in places with strange sounding names, you can’t beat standard, un-accented English. I certainly don’t enjoy spending the news hour translating for my American wife, and often times for myself. Where are you when we need you Enery Iggins?

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