Willful, Wishful Blindness: Trust and the Real Learning from the BBC Crisis
The UK press is screaming ‘blue murder’ about the recent turn of events in the BBC:
- ‘How to restore trust in the BBC’
- ‘You don’t trust us – and maybe you never will’
- ‘Trust lost, hard to regain!’
A crisis for the BBC? Certainly. But a “complete loss of trust” is a wild exaggeration. Still, there is one troubling problem at the heart of things, and the BBC must get at it: a willful and wishful discomfort with facing truth. Vital for any organization, truth-facing is especially so for a news outfit.
The Apparent Problem
The problem in recent weeks has been in one part of the vast BBC operation – its flagship current affairs programme, ‘Newsnight’. There has been real incompetence and mismanagement, and people are rightly angry and critical. But this is an organisation that has real pedigree and a brand that is deeply respected and trusted the world over for the quality and integrity of its daily product.
Deeply held trust, reinforced over many years, simply does not disappear in one moment with one incident. The BBC will take the steps to right the ship around ‘Newsnight’ and move on.
To recap quickly:
It turns out that one of the BBC’s leading (and well loved, but now dead) entertainers in the last quarter of the 20th century, Sir (!) Jimmy Savile, was for many years a serial and horrific abuser of many young and vulnerable people who came under his influence. It was extensive. It went on a long time. He was never stopped.
Then, ‘Newsnight’ did a poor job of investigating and communicating about the Savile case. Compounding the error, ‘Newsnight’ wrongly accused a senior politician of serious sexual abuse in another situation. The newly appointed Director General of the BBC – George Entwhistle – resigned after just a few months in the job. Indignation, blue murder – loss of trust! – pour forth through all the media channels.
Here’s what caused the hullaballoo:
- Sheer incompetence – “ Newsnight’s journalism would have disgraced a student newspaper,” wrote one commenter
- Over-bureaucratic, over-layered management, with diffuse accountability
- Poor crisis management
- A public primed to be cynical because of other recent scandals (not just NewsCorp)
- A tone-deaf full year ‘pay-off’ of £495k to the resigning DG who had only been in the job for a few months
- Hugely toxic ‘hatred’ of the BBC in some political and media circles that is easily stirred and spoiling for any fight
- A shift in the dynamics of trust regarding media output. Restraint, rigour, caution, consideration of consequences – these apparently no longer engender trust. With the impact of the social media, trust today means sharing everything you know; transparency replaces judgment.
If that’s all there were, this would be just another scandal, albeit very public. But there is another, deeper level of concern.
Willful, Wishful Denial
What is much less certain is whether the BBC can change a culture that was willfully – perhaps wishfully? – blind to the horrible sexual abuse that took place around some of its programmes for young people. In one of the hospitals where Savile got away with all this, one interlocutor has recently said, ‘ We did wonder whether something was going wrong. But Savile simply pulled in too many funds for anyone to want to do something about it.’
This is a culture that suborns, induces, and nurtures moral blindness.
Margaret Heffernan talks about this in her recent book ‘Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril’ (Walker and Company, 2011). She says:
We are all susceptible to willful blindness, ignoring truths about ourselves, each other and the way we live, that threaten our sense of identity and security…We all succumb to the human tendency to prefer people like ourselves, to readily accept information that confirms our sense of ourselves, and discredit data that doesn’t fit our dominant ideologies. And when people are tired, busy and distracted, it’s clear that the mind falls back on stereotypes and received wisdom.
Think News Corporation, Enron, Lehman Brothers (‘The CEO, Richard Fuld, organised his life to ensure that he never encountered employees unexpectedly’), Bear Stearns (‘The CEO chose not to implement a form of risk analysis that might have revealed how much debt the bank actually carried’) and the Catholic Church (‘When first confronted with the fact of child-abusing priests, the Church chose first of all to take out insurance’).
Heffernan argues that the root cause of our willful blindness is our human instinct to obey authority. ‘Research into conformity shows that most of us would rather give a wrong answer than jeopardise belonging to a group.’
It’s the Culture, Stupid
This is where the really fundamental work lies for the BBC – reshaping a culture that is less prone to willful blindness, and more driven by its values of independence and integrity. This kind of work is not easy. So perhaps some of Heffernan’s prescriptions might come in handy along the way:
- Become more aware of our biases
- Overturn corporate cultures that reward long working hours
- Actively seek out dissenters in our circle of friends and colleagues
- Ensure that the powerful surround themselves with independent thinkers and critical allies who have the freedom and moral courage to tell them the truth
- Re-examine the role of obedience and compliance
- Teach critical thinking.
This is not the stuff of MBA programs. These are not issues to be solved by technocrats, or lawyers, or business process experts. They are the simple stuff of creating an ethics-friendly culture. Simple, of course, doesn’t mean easy. But it is – let’s not forget – still simple. Seek the right thing, talk about it, and walk the talk.
(Small?) Parts of BBC worth saving
I was impressed by the interview John Humphrys did with his own BBC boss on Saturday. No willful blindness or lack of indepence there!
One of the many links to the interview:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/cristinaodone/100189044/john-humphrys-has-made-me-proud-to-be-a-journalist/
The kind of journalists that are willing to take on their own boss inspire some kind of trust in me.
George Entwhistle actually left his job after only being in it for 35 days! You might well ask who appointed a man who would be forced to fold after such a short time. The whole story seems to run and run – and its all about trust and integrity at all sorts of levels – journalists, their editors, and in turn, layer after layer of management above them.
Big organisations seem to be far more prone to cover-ups than smaller teams. Maybe its just that the less emotionally strong gravitate to big organisations because they think they will be there for life, away from risky moves, risky jobs. So perhaps the knee jerk reaction to set backs is to go into denial. I have no scientific evidence – but intuitively it feels right from my experiences.
I certainly got the feeling early on that many jounalists were behaving like their ultimate boss, George, was already toast. You know how these things get around internally in organisations.
[From Julian]
‘Thanks very much Ron and Chris ( hi!) for your comments. I completely agree Ron with your appreciation of John Humphrey’s brilliant and independent interview of the BBC DG, powerful stuff. And, Chris, I think it is part of Heffernan’s argument that longstanding service in large organisations can lead to us accepting more what goes on around us.
Perhaps, in the interests of more non-conformity to reduce wilful blindness, we could combine both thoughts and advocate an internal and independent ‘news’ function in organisations which runs ‘tough’ stories on what is really going on in their organisation with complete editorial independence, including hard hitting interviews with the boss!
And here is another comment from someone who responded to the blog in an email, with which I completely agree- ‘I haven’t lost trust in the BBC and I don’t know anyone who has outside the Parliamentary village who are using the crisis for their own benefits. I wonder if politicians tell us long enough that we’ve lost confidence in the Beeb that we actually start to do so or will deep trust win out. Hope so!’
Julian,
Thanks for your take on the situation. Your comment on non-conformity strikes a chord. Having worked in large and small organizations, Culture has a lot to do with it. Yet many organizations let culture develop on its own.
I think the tone for this is set from the top. If the workers see the boss telling a fib and no one reacting pretty soon fibing is acceptable. Someone said youo can’t hold the line on your ethics 98% of the time because once you go down the slippery slope…
Take Good Care
Julian, Well Done!! What hasn’t been mentioned is that Mark Thompson, who was truly in the middle of the scandal, is now the CEO of that old grey lady, the New York Times. They have been playing it very quietly, appearing to hope that somehow it will all work out, rather than recognizing that they have a potentially explosive situation themselves.
You have pointed out very well a known but too often ignored axiom of the business world, i.e., the highest priority of any leadership group is to feel good about themselves and to ignore any information that would give them reason to question their “deserved” place at the top. Thanks for this.
Rich
Rich,
Indeed, I’m surprised the Thompson issue hasn’t gotten even more publicity. He and the Times look very exposed, from where I’m sitting; which could mean two major news organizations in two countries could be at risk of significant trust loss.
[From Julian Powe]
Three points stand out in my mind a few days after writing this blog, with thanks for all comments.
Firstly, the BBC has been taking some knocks on trust levels – a recent poll showed that more people distrust the BBC’s journalists (47 percent) than trust them (44 percent). But these trust levels are way ahead of other public bodies and representatives in the UK.
Secondly, it is the culture that holds the key. The interesting thing for me is that the work the Beeb needs to do on culture for the sake of the quality of its output will also be the work that encourages less willful blindness. As one BBC source said this week,’The BBC needs to restore the culture where producers have the confidence to produce and the editors the confidence to edit’. And to blow away the cobwebs of excessive focus on compliance.
And finally the willful blindness theme popped up again this week in the UK with the Church Of England synod failing to accept women bishops, the motion losing by 6 votes, after a vast majority of bishops (all men of course) voted for it with the lay representatives making it fall. There have been women priests in The Church for 20 years and this week’s vote was the culmination of 12 years’ debate. ‘A systematic refusal to admit reality’ as one commentator put it. ‘