The BBC's management of risk

Book excerpt: This Committee of Public Accounts report on "The BBC's management of risk", sets out a number of recommendations on dealing with risk, and what the BBC's Executive Board should implement. Risk comes in different forms, from the risk of damaging the Corporation's reputation as a public service broadcaster to personal risk staff can experience when reporting from dangerous parts of the world. This report follows on from a National Audit Office report of the same title, and is available from the NAO website: http://www.bbcgovernorsarchive.co.uk/docs/reviews/nao_riskmanagement.pdf. Among the recommendations are: that BBC guidance needs a clearer delineation of responsibilities for risk management; that the main themes of risk management are not aligned with corporate objectives; that the BBC should update its assessments of the risks of working in hostile environments, as the abduction of journalist Alan Johnson showed; by failing to comply with its own Broadcasting Code, the BBC was fined by Ofcom over the a live phone-in competition on Blue Peter, and illustrates that some programme makers are ignoring the BBC's own editorial guidelines, exposing the corporation to reputational risk; the BBC has not related its risk to corporate objectives or assigned all risks to named owners; that BBC managers at all levels are not sufficiently engaged in the management of risk; there is still no fully satisfactory regime under which the BBC is accountable to Parliament for the value for money with which it spends licence fee payers money.