Covering the royal family is bizarre - BBC Correspondent Jonny Dymond | The Howie Severino Podcast
Among the BBC’s leading journalists, Jonny Dymond recently came to the Philippines for one of the British broadcaster’s flagship programs, World Questions, and spoke to Howie Severino about what makes the Philippines interesting to outsiders. He also talks about his coverage of the British royal family (“a surprisingly hard job”) and Russian President Putin (“His mission is about Russia, not communism”).
Dymond explains how the BBC has been able to stand up to the British government despite being funded by taxpayers.
In the face of various threats to journalists around the world, he urges media colleagues to keep believing in their mission. “If you don’t have people who are prepared to call out the government, who are prepared to report on the government’s successes and failures, then it’s impossible to say that you really have a functioning democracy,” Dymond asserts.
“It’s easy to be cynical, but coming to the Philippines where I know journalists have been under so much pressure, it kind of straightens my back. It makes me believe again in what we do.”
BBC’s World Questions in Manila moderated by Jonny Dymond airs in the Philippines on BBC Radio on March 9 at 8 P.M.
The panelists on the show:
Atty. Antonio Carpio – Former associate justice of the Supreme Court
Dr. Roberto Galang, Dean of the Ateneo de Manila University Gokongwei School of Management
Ms. Rafaela David – President of the Akbayan Citizens' Action Party
Professor Richard Heydarian – Columnist and senior lecturer at the University of the Philippines
Dymond explains how the BBC has been able to stand up to the British government despite being funded by taxpayers.
In the face of various threats to journalists around the world, he urges media colleagues to keep believing in their mission. “If you don’t have people who are prepared to call out the government, who are prepared to report on the government’s successes and failures, then it’s impossible to say that you really have a functioning democracy,” Dymond asserts.
“It’s easy to be cynical, but coming to the Philippines where I know journalists have been under so much pressure, it kind of straightens my back. It makes me believe again in what we do.”
BBC’s World Questions in Manila moderated by Jonny Dymond airs in the Philippines on BBC Radio on March 9 at 8 P.M.
The panelists on the show:
Atty. Antonio Carpio – Former associate justice of the Supreme Court
Dr. Roberto Galang, Dean of the Ateneo de Manila University Gokongwei School of Management
Ms. Rafaela David – President of the Akbayan Citizens' Action Party
Professor Richard Heydarian – Columnist and senior lecturer at the University of the Philippines
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Good day, Podmates! Howie Severino again, reminding you that a long attention span is a gift of wisdom.
00:08 Our guest today is a prominent British journalist with the BBC who has covered the world, but also the royal family in Britain, Johnny Diamond.
00:18 He is currently in the Philippines for the BBC program World Questions featuring four public personalities in the Philippines.
00:26 Attorney Antonio Carpio, former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court; Dr. Roberto Galang, Dean of the Ateneo de Manila University Gokong Way School of Management;
00:37 Ms. Rafael David, President of the Akbayan Citizens Action Party; and Professor Richard Hedarian, columnist and senior lecturer at the University of the Philippines.
00:49 Good afternoon, Johnny Diamond, and welcome to the Philippines.
00:53 Howie, thank you very much indeed, and thank you for having me on the show.
00:57 All right, before anything else, I must compliment you on your hipster-sounding name, Johnny Diamond. Is that a common name in England?
01:08 It's not that common, no. It's just what I was born with, really. I'll tell you a secret, Howie. In full, it is Jonathan Diamond, okay?
01:18 I shortened it when I was about 17 or 18 years old, and now I have the career to go with the name.
01:24 All right, but I have to mention to our listeners that you spell your last name D-Y-M-O-N-D.
01:33 I do indeed.
01:34 So that is not something you coined?
01:37 No, no, no, no, no, no. It really is my family name. I promise you.
01:41 Okay, great. So, and by some stroke of serendipity, your event in the Philippines will be held in the Diamond Hotel.
01:51 Diamond here is spelled in the conventional way in Manila, so it's going to be the Johnny Diamond Show in the Diamond Hotel. How's that for branding?
02:00 Okay, we could call it that. We don't yet call it the Johnny Diamond Show. We call it World Questions.
02:07 But maybe when the next contract comes up, we'll change the name to the Johnny Diamond Show. Who knows?
02:12 Okay, I'm going to ask you a bit about this show and what you're going to be doing in the Philippines.
02:18 But this is your first time in the Philippines. Any initial impressions?
02:23 I think the first impression is, wow. The second feeling is regret. Regret that I'm here just for a few days.
02:32 I can't really even get out of Manila. I went around parts of Manila this morning.
02:38 And the hustle, the bustle, the buzz, the energy, the chaos, the building, the destruction.
02:47 I mean, it's like a huge sensory overload for someone from sleepy London.
02:54 There's just a sense of energy and excitement. A sense of opportunity as well.
03:02 And yes, a sense of chaos, of making do, of making things happen.
03:09 It's very exciting to be here, but I am so unhappy that I can't get out of Manila.
03:14 I wish I could, and I hope that I can come back sometime.
03:17 We'll see you again then, after this event. So you're in Manila for BBC World Questions. Tell us something about this show.
03:26 Okay, World Questions is a panel programme. We have four guests, generally politicians, commentators, analysts.
03:35 We have an audience that is present and that drives the show by putting in their own questions.
03:42 We have them ask questions of the panel and then quite often make comments about what they've heard or about the topics that have been selected.
03:50 It is recorded, edited lightly, and then it goes out on BBC World Service Radio, the international radio station of BBC.
04:03 It goes out on the English network, which gets around 95 million listeners over the week.
04:10 It's a big audience network and the show is, I guess you could call it our flagship programme.
04:17 It's an expensive programme to put on. We go round the world monthly.
04:23 We do six shows on location and six shows by Zoom. And this is one of the on location shows.
04:31 So it's a thrill to be here. It's always a better show when you're on location because you've got the audience there.
04:38 You've got a real sense of place and you get the buzz of actually being there.
04:44 We are very happy with the programme. It's a lot of work to do, but it's a very exciting programme to do.
04:52 And we get a lovely show out of it nearly the whole time. We're really looking forward to this one.
04:58 In various announcements, it's been called a debate, a discussion. It's also been called a panel.
05:05 So what format will we have in the Philippines?
05:09 OK, so what happens is the audience comes to us about an hour and a half, two hours before the show actually starts.
05:15 We have something to eat and drink and then we hand out cards and say to them, give us your questions.
05:22 Write your questions down. The questions all pour in to the office, the small office that myself and the programme editor work out of.
05:31 And then we break them down into topics and we select six or seven of those questions.
05:37 About half an hour before the show starts, the audience comes in. We bring the questioners up to the front.
05:42 They'll sit in the front row. And then when the show starts, one by one, the questioners will ask their questions of the panel.
05:49 And the panel will discuss and debate the answers to those questions.
05:54 And then we'll get comments to some of the questions from the audience.
05:57 So it's a mixture of audience debate, panel debate and then me trying to guide the whole thing to get the best out of it.
06:06 So, yeah, it's a panel discussion. It's an audience debate. It's all of those things.
06:10 But as I always say, just before we start the show, I thank the panel who come in.
06:16 But I tell the audience, you are the stars of this. You are the people who make this show so interesting and so different.
06:23 And you are the ones who will essentially give it that buzz. And we do get, you know, we're very lucky.
06:30 We get a nice audience. We get a buzzy audience.
06:33 Yeah. Well, speaking of your audience, I'm just curious how you choose the members of your audience and the people who will be submitting questions.
06:43 Because, you know, we are a very noisy democracy with a lot of different opinions.
06:50 We can get really hostile to each other, like in a lot of other democracies.
06:54 And so how do you how do you manage that aspect? I mean, how do you curate your audiences for these events?
07:02 The short answer, Howie, is we don't we don't really curate them at all.
07:06 We'll put out advertisements across social media and using any other contacts that we have saying, come and see the show.
07:14 And then people register online and then it is essentially first come, first served.
07:20 Once they have registered, there's no sense of us pulling in a certain kind of person.
07:26 It's not a perfect system, as you know, and as I'm sure your listeners know, news and broadcasting is the art of the possible.
07:33 It's not the science of perfection, but we get a good cross sectional. We hope to get a good cross section of people.
07:39 We invite everyone of any opinion to come. The only real rule we have and we don't have police marching up and down,
07:47 but the desire we have is to have a light, intelligent debate.
07:52 If a question is asked, then there's time for it to be answered.
07:56 If an accusation is made, we want to have time for an answer to be given.
08:01 And we generally get that. Yeah, we have good, noisy debates and we have enthusiasm from the audience.
08:07 And we certainly want that when we have the show on Tuesday night.
08:11 But equally, we want to hear the answers. I often say we want to have as much light as we have heat.
08:18 And we don't want the heat overpowering the light.
08:21 OK, understood. However, do you ever end up with like overly partisan audiences who favour just one particular side,
08:32 you know, constantly applauding one panel member and booing or jeering the opposite opinion?
08:40 Yeah. Yeah, we do. It's like life. It's not perfect. Sometimes it will be one sided.
08:46 Sometimes you get a bit of hostility. And that is the job of the moderator of me to try and calm things down and to say to an audience,
08:56 come on, you've come here to have a debate. You've come here to hear all sides. Now you need to let people speak.
09:02 It rarely gets out of control. Sometimes it gets a little hot, a little lively.
09:09 But again, the people we have on the panel are experienced in public speaking.
09:15 They know that there's going to be an audience in front of them.
09:18 And they also trust us to keep that audience under control if needs be.
09:25 It's a balance to strike. We want to hear from the audience. It's important to it's part of the show.
09:30 It's a key part of the show. And yet at the same time, we need to maintain a decent debate.
09:35 Most of the time people get it. Sometimes it gets a bit rowdy and we have to just tamp things down a little bit.
09:42 What does the BBC bring to the table in this kind of format, these kinds of events?
09:47 One thing it brings, to be honest, is it brings the organisational skill to do this.
09:53 It brings the desire to have the debate. And yes, it brings the funding because this is not a cheap programme to make.
09:59 It's expensive to bring us out here. It's expensive to get hold of a venue.
10:03 You know, the staff themselves cost money. So it's a combination of things.
10:09 But it also, I think, I hope, brings a trusted brand as well.
10:15 The BBC is not as big in the Philippines as it is in some countries, in some regions.
10:21 But in places where we are perhaps a bit more well-known, we get a lot of respect for what we do.
10:27 And then understanding from politicians and participants that we will deal with them fairly.
10:34 It's just part of who we are that we have a fair debate, a decent debate.
10:40 And as I say, all sides are heard. There's no point in having a shouting match.
10:47 And that's simply not what the BBC is about. And I hope that participants and people who give us their time and their experience understand that.
10:57 And why come to the Philippines at this particular time?
11:01 It's not so much about timing. Some people say to us, why don't you go immediately before an election or immediately after an election?
11:11 The truth is we have a lot of news coverage around that time on our network, on World Service Radio, on World TV or wherever it is for the BBC, online as well.
11:22 There's not much point in us coming in and trying to replicate the efforts either of domestic media or of the work that BBC news teams are doing.
11:32 So timing isn't necessarily the issue. Why come to the Philippines? I mean, look at this place.
11:38 It's so interesting in and of itself.
11:43 It is interesting whether it is, you know, rumbling disputes with China, questions about identity, questions about the previous administration, the current administration,
11:55 this astonishing mix you have of race and culture and languages, the position of the Philippines in the world, all of that.
12:04 And then there are the broader questions that tie all these nations together.
12:09 It is astonishing how often the same kinds of topics come up on big global levels.
12:15 It will be things like Russia and China and the Middle East as well.
12:20 But also questions about the environment, about the cost of living, about crime.
12:28 The world is both a smaller place and a bigger place than perhaps we all imagine.
12:33 Smaller because we are bound together by the same concerns. Bigger because it takes an awfully long time to get round the place.
12:41 The Philippines, though, is both unique and is also part of a greater whole.
12:47 And each country gives the World Service a new thing to talk about, a new thing to think about and gives our audiences, I think,
12:56 something that helps them understand both about a place they might not have been to, but also about the world that they themselves live in.
13:06 OK, I want to ask you about other things that you've done, just so our audience has a better understanding of who's going to be moderating this.
13:16 You're obviously a versatile journalist because you've covered extensively Russia and President Putin and also the British royal family.
13:31 So those are very different subjects from the geopolitical to the kind of soap opera of the monarchy that we often read about here in the Philippines.
13:41 But are there similarities between those those two main topic areas?
13:46 It's quite difficult to get information out of either of them. That is a joke to some degree.
13:52 Are there similarities? No, not really. I mean, as you say, with the royal family, covering the royal family is bizarre because it is this
14:05 spectrum from the sort of frankly silly celebrity side of things, which is what so many people are very interested in,
14:13 whether it's rocks or family arguments or going to some exciting place and doing something exotic,
14:21 to the very serious, the constitutional role which the royal family still inhabits in the UK.
14:28 The historical, a different way of looking at the United Kingdom, all these different things crowd into this one topic.
14:37 Putin, which I did a podcast about for the BBC, is a very different story.
14:42 It's about the descent of a country, really, from a flickering democracy into a rather dark autocracy and authoritarian state.
14:54 And the drive of one man to change his country and in some senses take revenge for what he sees as the humiliation of the Russian nation
15:12 with the end of the Soviet Union and the triumph of the West in the Cold War.
15:16 So they're very different topics and they take a very different kind of treatment as well.
15:23 I'd like to ask you a little bit about the royal family.
15:29 You've talked about in previous conversations on radio and maybe elsewhere,
15:34 you've talked about watching the Netflix series featuring Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, who moved to the United States.
15:43 First of all, should I still call him Prince since he's withdrawn from his royal duties?
15:48 What's the protocol there?
15:49 The good news, Howie, is you no longer have to call him Your Royal Highness.
15:54 I know you'll be relieved about that, but you should still call him Prince Harry when you next meet him.
15:59 OK.
16:00 OK, OK.
16:01 But one of your takeaways, your major takeaways from the Netflix series was you said that it was very clear he has a contempt for the British media and how it's treated his family.
16:16 Of course, that's no secret.
16:17 Did you feel that contempt applied to the BBC and to you in particular?
16:24 I don't think he differentiated particularly between the bestselling newspapers in the United Kingdom,
16:33 which back in Britain are called the tabloids as a generic name, and the broadcasters and the photographers and the bloggers and the rest of them.
16:46 I think he simply saw the media as an intrusion that he deeply disliked.
16:54 Bear in mind that he still believes that it was the media that drove his mother to her death, his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales.
17:06 And you could see when you were on a job, I could see when I was covering him that he really did look at, literally look at reporters, cameramen, broadcasters with deep dislike.
17:24 You know, it's a job he was born into. It's not a job he chose.
17:28 And not everyone wants to live in that strange goldfish bowl of publicity and celebrity.
17:34 And he clearly didn't. And so he constantly would remark on how much he disliked it, as we saw in the Netflix series of interviews.
17:48 And for those of us who spent some time, I didn't spend a whole lot of time following him around, it was pretty clear that a considerable part of his character actually had become centered around a dislike of the media as a whole.
18:05 And how much do you think this contempt is mutual? Because in other countries with monarchies, we don't seem to see this kind of adversarial or even spiteful relationship between the media and the monarchy.
18:25 In fact, in Asia, it's almost the opposite, right?
18:29 It's a different story in some nations in Asia. I know that. Yeah.
18:34 Well, there are even some legal restrictions about how you cover them, right?
18:39 Yeah.
18:40 But how do you guys feel about them? I mean, obviously, you're covering them as a news story, but to what extent is this contempt is kind of reciprocated?
18:54 In general, I don't have deep personal feelings about the royal family as a whole or individuals within the royal family. It's not a job that I would particularly choose to do myself.
19:10 It's surprisingly hard. It's not hard like, you know, hard physical labor, but a lot of it is pretty repetitive, not particularly interesting.
19:22 It is always in the public eye whenever they are out and about. Some people think that's great and is a life that they would like.
19:31 I'm not convinced that a lot of people would actually like it after a fairly short while.
19:36 It's a curious job. It's difficult to have real friends in the job.
19:43 Constantly concerned that people are leaking against you, briefing against you.
19:51 It's pretty strange royalty and has been for a really a very long time.
19:57 I think there's a difference when we talk about media and its relationship with someone like Prince Harry.
20:03 There's a difference between the news journalists who cover someone like Prince Harry day after day and then those who offer their opinions,
20:12 the columnists and the writers who at various points became very adversarial towards him.
20:20 I have to say for myself, I simply don't have particularly strong feelings one way or another towards the individuals in the royal family or towards Prince Harry.
20:31 Obviously, when someone says, you know, you've made my life a misery, which he did say about the media, you do wonder what it is you've done.
20:40 But a professional keeps his distance or keeps her distance and just sort of sticks to reporting the story.
20:47 So why should the rest of the world care about it?
20:52 I mean, obviously, the rest of the world is fascinated, but.
20:57 Are there larger issues here? I mean, beyond the squabbles and how people feel about each other within a certain clan or family?
21:06 How everything you say applies not just to the rest of the world, it also applies to the United Kingdom.
21:11 Why should people care in so much detail about who said what to whom and why this extraordinarily remote family about whom we know very little actual personal stuff?
21:24 Why it is this topic of seemingly endless debate and conversation?
21:30 And it's really, I suppose, because it's just part of human nature. It's a mix of family life, which we all relate to the divisions within families and the friendships and rivalries within families.
21:47 Some degree of residual power, not much actual power.
21:52 A lot of wealth, you know, servants and palaces and all that romance and fantasy.
21:59 And escapism as well. You know, in Britain, it's not a very powerful institution.
22:07 It is a symbolic monarchy and has almost no constitutional power.
22:15 But it it has the power to divert us from, I don't know, the bills and arguments with relatives and the lousy weather.
22:24 It's a world of celebrity that somehow is different from every other bit of celebrity.
22:30 It's different from Hollywood and it's different from sports stars and music stars.
22:36 It's as I say, it's a very strange institution. It's not one that I was remotely interested in before I became royal correspondent, but say the opposite, frankly.
22:45 But it's an interesting way of looking at Britain and its history. And I think monarchies themselves are interesting things.
22:55 Why they survive, why they thrive, why they interest people.
23:00 But you're right. It's a fairly irrational interest. If one that still seems to grab hundreds of millions of people.
23:12 OK, I'd like to pivot a bit to President Putin of Russia, whom you you've podcasted at least a dozen times about.
23:21 Yeah. After all of your research and reporting, what should people in Asia know about Putin?
23:27 After all, a big part of Russia is quite close to Asia or even considered part of Asia.
23:34 And how do you think he, his attitude, his ambitions can affect our part of the world?
23:41 That's interesting, isn't it? I remember Barack Obama, the former US president, rather dismissing Russia in the tail end of his second term in office.
23:51 And he said Russia is not a global power. It's a regional power like that.
23:55 And that that kind of thing was the stuff that drove Putin absolutely into a frenzy.
24:00 It's like you're not important. Well, you know, is he a world power, a regional power now?
24:08 It's up to others to make that call. But it's pretty clear that part of his mission was reestablishing Russian power and influence around the world.
24:19 I think he is a Russian nationalist. It's nothing to do with the Soviet Union. It's nothing to do with communism.
24:26 It's about Russia and his conception of Russia, its importance, its territory, its future and reestablishing Russia and the Russian people, the Russian community.
24:42 Now, I'm not sure and I'm treading on areas that I'm not as clever as I might be, but I'm not sure there are that many challenges for Asia in that analysis of Russia and that rebuilding of Russia as there are for Eastern Europe and lands that were once Russian and that still have sizable Russian communities in.
25:10 And really only a fool predicts the future. But everything from the last 20, 24 years of his time as president has been about reestablishing Russia as a major player on the world stage.
25:26 And so it is through that lens, the Russian lens that we look at President Putin, why he has done what he's done before and why he might do what he might do in the future.
25:37 So what's your bet on Ukraine? How will that end? And could it end the way the Russian presence in Afghanistan ended, which Russia just left?
25:50 Well, Russia left after horrific losses and having drained its treasury and lost enormous amounts of public support, didn't it? Or the Soviet Union did. I don't know how Ukraine is going to end. I'm not sure anyone knows how it's going to end.
26:07 Far better strategic minds than mine are grappling with it. I mean, it's a cause of immense sadness, terrible, terrible sadness, the ongoing destruction there.
26:19 And you have to wonder about the terrible losses that Russia and Ukraine have suffered, but in particular, Russian losses, contrasting with what everyone thought, and clearly what President Putin and the Russian military thought was going to be a very, very short, successful campaign.
26:40 The situation has not gone at all well for Russia, and it has had to transform itself as it becomes a war economy and has become a very isolated economy, isolated from Europe, certainly.
26:55 I mean, I wouldn't put money on anything, on any particular ending for Ukraine, but I would point out how Russia's ambition, a long time ambition to be a European, a great European power, ended pretty much on the day that it invaded Ukraine, and that the doors to Europe slammed shut for Russia.
27:20 It was an extraordinary end to two or three hundred years of debate and discussion about what Russia was.
27:28 And it's very difficult to see Russia opening up to Europe again for years to come. We'll have to wait and see. Everything changes.
27:37 But it's extraordinary to see the end of, for the moment, of its European identity and its association with Europe as a result of what looks like a catastrophic strategic mistake.
27:52 An imperialist Russia has been compared to the imperial giant in our part of the world, China. Do you see any parallels? Is this a fair comparison? Should China be learning anything from Ukraine?
28:07 Lots of people, of course, will point to China and Taiwan and say, "Oh, I hope China learns its lesson from Russia and Ukraine when it comes to any potential belligerence with Taiwan."
28:22 I'm not sure that there are quite such easy parallels in international affairs. And it's not clear to me that the idea of the Chinese empire is necessarily a territorial one, where it wants to grow bigger.
28:41 Taiwan is an exceptional situation. There's no doubt that China is a very confident power that wants to see, like other powers, its way of running itself extended over a wider area.
29:00 The Chinese empire is no longer about holding land, about colonising countries, something I don't need to tell the Philippines about. Empire is different now. Empire is about trade and influence.
29:14 It's about the running of the big international institutions. It's about who sets the rules and regulations for products across the world. It's a different world now.
29:26 And that seems to be as much the competition between China, other parts of Asia, and the US and the rest of the world as putting troops on the ground in the way that Russia has done.
29:40 It seems inconceivable that you'd have huge imperial advances in the ways that everyone understood empire to be in the 17th, 18th, 19th century. It's a different kind of empire now.
29:55 I want to ask you now about the BBC, because it's funded by the British government through licensing fees. In other countries, government-funded media tends to lack credibility.
30:11 How does the BBC maintain its credibility, independence, and the trust of the public?
30:18 The BBC is funded slightly differently from a lot of other nationally funded media. We have what we describe as an arm's-length relationship from the government, both financially and editorially.
30:33 Financially, that's because it is funded through a tax on households that have televisions, which sound very old-fashioned, but still works.
30:45 And although that tax is set by the government, it is in general separate from ordinary tax-raising powers. And that means you don't get year-by-year changes to that.
31:01 You don't get such a direct point of political pressure. And that sounds like it's a technicality, but it's actually really important that it's not funded from general taxation.
31:13 It's funded with its own specific levy. Alongside that arm's-length financial relationship is an understanding that is respected, although tested, I would say, that the BBC is an independent corporation.
31:30 It is structured such that it's not a government department, and it doesn't have a direct relationship with the government.
31:36 In fact, quite often, it has quite a contested relationship with the government.
31:40 We have a very powerful culture of independence and impartiality.
31:47 And part of that is set down in a rather thick rulebook, our editorial guidelines. Part of that is overseen by an independent regulator that looks at broadcasting across the UK.
32:00 But most of it comes from a very powerful culture within the organisation, which is that we are not the plaything of government, and that we will criticise government or air criticism of government, and that when pressure comes, we will stand up to government.
32:17 And in my time at the BBC, we have gone absolutely head-to-head with the government of the day.
32:25 That was a Labour government in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, an absolutely brutal, bloody fight with the government of the day.
32:34 So we have shown time and time again that we are prepared to stand our corner editorially.
32:40 And I think for a significant chunk of the population, both in Britain and abroad, that that is known and respected.
32:48 Now, let's not get it wrong. We have our critics. And I'm always very keen to stress that we listen to our critics.
32:55 We put ourselves in their shoes about how we present the news, how we choose news stories and how we treat them.
33:03 But we have, as I say, a very robust culture of self-examination, self-criticism and also independence and impartiality.
33:13 And that has stood us in pretty good stead in what are now very turbulent, both political and broadcasting times.
33:23 Well, to many outsiders, listening to you describe that experience of being in BBC, which is funded by the government through that method that you describe,
33:39 and at the same time being able to stand up to government sounds impossible in other societies and other contexts.
33:50 How replicable is that? Because right now, the future of media, independent media, journalism is being hotly debated.
33:59 Many journalists feel threatened now, not just politically, but institutionally, financially, etc.
34:07 But BBC seems to be healthy. As you said, you're here in the Philippines. This is not cheap to do, flying all the way here.
34:14 And obviously, the BBC has resources to do this. You guys are also able to stand up to the government.
34:21 I mean, wow. I mean, as a journalist, I'm very I'm impressed listening to this, but at the same time, maybe a bit envious.
34:30 Or should I be also aspirational? Can that be done in other parts of the world?
34:36 I think it is. I'm not saying that what we have is unique and special and no one else can do this, but it is difficult.
34:44 It's difficult to start it from scratch now. It's quite tough. The BBC, it is part of Britain now.
34:53 It is part of what modern Britain is. It is a unifying force in what is a very diverse and heterogeneous nation.
35:04 It is all kinds of different, strange things. And I think it's fair to say that if it didn't exist now, you probably wouldn't invent it in the form that it is now.
35:15 Can it survive? Yeah, I think it can survive. I hope it will survive.
35:21 It is under challenge, no doubt about that. The funding mechanism is under challenge.
35:26 The audience is like all of our audiences are fragmenting and getting their information, entertainment and news in all from all kinds of different places.
35:37 I happen to believe it's a pretty good thing myself, both nationally and internationally.
35:43 I think it is a force for good and I will work very hard to persuade others of that and also to represent it.
35:52 But I think there's no doubt that a lot of public broadcasters are under challenge.
35:57 And especially, I suspect, in those parts of the West that have gone down a more free market and individualist route, you have more people saying, well, why are we paying for something that we may not use so much?
36:11 So all the time, the BBC has to justify itself. And it does it primarily by reaching as many people as possible on as many different platforms as possible.
36:21 And I won't bore you with the statistics, but, you know, in Britain, a huge proportion of people at some point of their day come into contact with and use the BBC.
36:33 So. We have to justify our worth every single hour of every single day.
36:41 And I will not pretend to you that that is not a bit tiring at times, but of course, it is public money.
36:47 It's other people's money that we spend. And so it has to be justified. But at the moment, the broad consensus in Britain, I think, is that the BBC is worth having and is worth the money that is spent on it.
37:00 Whilst I think it's very important to acknowledge that there is a chunk of people who do not agree with that.
37:06 You've been in many countries where, you know, there's a less favourable environment for media and for journalists.
37:16 Is there a future for journalism in the world?
37:19 If you don't have journalists, you can essentially give up on democratic government.
37:23 And I'm not saying that we're out to save the world or that we are the only function of accountability for government.
37:30 Obviously, they are accountable to the courts, to legislatures, to all kinds of different mechanisms that you can set up.
37:37 But if you don't have people who are prepared to call out the government, who are prepared to report on the government's successes and failures, then it's impossible to say that you really have a functioning democracy.
37:49 I won't pretend that I am overnight an expert in the Philippines, but I know the extraordinary pressure that has been placed on journalists here in the last few years.
38:00 And I'm humbled by it. I really am. That pressure is not something that I face, whether it is, you know, threats to safety or political pressure, institutional pressure that you've mentioned.
38:13 And the simple pressure of every day of being able to make a living. So I do understand that.
38:19 But, you know, I would say this, wouldn't I? I am a believer in journalism, in decent, honest journalism, and how important it is if people are going to live in democracies, which still to me is about living in a freeway and having some degree of agency, some degree of power over the life you lead.
38:39 OK, lastly, any advice for aspiring or young journalists?
38:45 Believe in what you want to do. It's very easy to be cynical.
38:51 And coming to somewhere like the Philippines, where I know journalists have been under so much pressure, it kind of straightens my back and makes me believe again in what we do.
39:05 And so to a young journalist, I would say start with belief. This is not going to be about you getting famous or rich, although if you're lucky, you might get both.
39:15 I don't know if that's your thing. It's about doing something that you can go to your grave and say, I served, I served a purpose there.
39:24 If you start with that belief, then I think, you know, you will do something decent with the journalism you spend your life on.
39:34 Well put. Wise advice and a good note to end on. So good luck on your program in the Philippines.
39:40 Johnny Diamond, journalist and host and moderator of BBC World Questions. Thank you for sharing your time and your perspective. Maraming maraming salamat. Mabuhay kayo.
39:50 Howie, a great pleasure. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. I hope it was interesting.
39:55 It was. It was. And for my colleagues as well. Thank you so much.
39:58 Take care. Cheers. Thanks, everyone.
40:01 Hi, I'm Howie Severino. Check out the Howie Severino Podcast. New episodes will stream every Thursday.
40:07 Listen for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and other platforms.
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