Media: BBC under Birt: freedom lost or survival assured?: The veteran broadcaster Mark Tully fears an 'iron structure'. But no institution can withstand the current level of battering by the media, warns Michael Leapman

THE EMPIRE struck back in Birmingham yesterday when Mark Tully, the BBC's correspondent in Delhi, gave voice to his well-trailed denunciation of the corporation under its director-general, John Birt. Although the impact of his speech to the Radio Academy had been blunted by its leak to the Independent on Sunday, his audience was sympathetic when, looking back to what he clearly felt had been a golden age of broadcasting, the veteran Tully said of Birt: 'I don't think he understands what the BBC is or what it should become.'

The applause lasted several minutes, but only a few members of the audience stood up and senior BBC executives stayed silent. Birt's response will be delivered in his speech to the academy this morning.

In January, just after he became director-general, Birt set out his vision of the corporation as a well-managed centre of broadcasting excellence. He spoke of 'the solid, enduring bedrock of BBC values' and listed them as 'the celebration of quality and innovation; the dedication to craft excellence; the healthy spirit of independence'.

It is that last value which Tully and those who think like him believe has been compromised by the Birt regime.

'An iron structure has been set in place in news and current affairs to make sure that producers do not have freedom, that they conform to what is known as Birtism,' Tully said. He also attacked the new 'internal market' accounting methods, which put a greater premium on bureaucracy than creativity. 'Accountants can easily argue that the whole management structure was too expensive, but it was that structure which preserved the independence of the different directorates and prevented the emergence of over-powerful director- generals.'

Tully is one of those creative reporters who relies on flair, combined with his deep knowledge and affection for his subject. 'Surely a broadcasting organisation which depends so much on individual human talent needs to have some flexibility, perhaps even an element of chaos, to allow for experimenters and eccentrics,' he said.

Those qualities are out of fashion under the new ascetic regime - as is Tully's lived-in on-screen appearance, contrasting with the lean, bland, well- groomed breed of younger news reporter now in favour.

There are no right and wrong sides to this argument, which has been raging in the BBC almost since Birt went there as deputy director-general six years ago, with his first assignment of bringing the news and current affairs department to heel.

The Birtists maintain, with some justice, that in the name of creativity a lot of sloppy reporting was allowed on air, sometimes resulting in expensive libel actions. There comes a time when all institutions need to change, and inevitably the changes hurt a lot of people who prospered under the old order.

It is easy to forget that the pre-Birt years at the BBC were far from an endless summer of harmonious endeavour. Ever since its creation more than 65 years ago, the corporation has been riven with disputes about its role, its direction and its senior personnel. As the nation's most influential cultural institution, it would be surprising if that were not so.

The plot is nearly always the same. Gifted broadcasters chafe at the restrictions placed on them by governors and management. In 1965, for instance, Donald Baverstock, head of BBC 1, was forced to resign because, according to Bernard Levin in the Daily Mail, he was 'a threat to the safe, tidy Establishment image of the BBC'.

On this occasion the villain of the piece was Sir Hugh Greene, now regarded as one of the most successful of all director-generals. Yesterday, Tully said of him that he 'perhaps did more than anyone else to open up broadcasting in Britain'.

When Baverstock left he took with him Alasdair Milne, one of his retinue of young iconoclasts. Milne soon returned to the BBC and, 30 years later as director-general, was in turn excoriated by younger colleagues for lack of backbone in standing up to the governors and government who sought to ban the 1985 Real Lives programme involving a Sinn Fein councillor. In 1987 Milne was dismissed by the new chairman of the governors, Marmaduke Hussey, to make way for Michael Checkland and then John Birt.

To put the current row into this historical perspective is not to say that there is today no crisis at the BBC. No institution can survive unscathed the intense media battering that the corporation has suffered in the past six months.

Birt and his colleagues would like to get down to improving the BBC's recent dismal ratings performance, but while the tribe of the disaffected, disgruntled and disappointed continues to command conference platforms and the ear of journalists, they are unlikely to be allowed to do so.

(Photograph omitted)