BBC Charter and Agreement

The BBC has formal obligations unlike newspapers which have no particular requirement to tell the truth. The Agreement was badly written but the meaning is clear enough. The older version is more to the point. The more recent gives them more scope to pervert the truth.

BBC Trust - Charter and Agreement
The Charter The Charter sets out the Public Purposes of the BBC and guarantees its editorial independence. The new Royal Charter was granted to the BBC on 19 September 2006. www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/framework/charter.html

The Agreement
The Agreement complements the Charter. It goes into more detail on many of the subjects mentioned in the Charter and also covers such things as the BBC's regulatory obligations and funding arrangements.

The Agreement was made between the BBC and the Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport, and approved after a debate in Parliament in July 2006.

• Agreement, PDF (344KB)

• Agreement, text only (164KB)

REGULATORY OBLIGATIONS ON THE UK PUBLIC 
SERVICES 
43. Content standards 
(1) The Trust must approve guidelines designed to secure appropriate standards in the content of the UK Public Services. 
(2) The more specific obligations set out below are not intended to restrict the general scope 
of paragraph (1). 
44. Accuracy and impartiality 
(1) The BBC must do all it can to ensure that controversial subjects are treated with due 
accuracy and impartiality in all relevant output. 
(2) In applying paragraph (1), a series of programmes may be considered as a whole. 
(3) The UK Public Services must not contain any output which expresses the opinion of the 
BBC or of its Trust or Executive Board on current affairs or matters of public policy other than broadcasting 
or the provision of online services. 
(4) Paragraph (3) does not apply to output which consists of— 
(a) proceedings in either House of Parliament; 
(b) proceedings in the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly or the Northern Ireland 
Assembly; or 
(c) proceedings of a local authority or a committee of two or more local authorities. 
(5) The Trust must— 
(a) draw up and from time to time review a code giving guidance as to the rules to be 
observed in connection with the application of paragraphs (1) to (4), and 
(b) do all it can to secure that the code is complied with. 
(6) The rules in the code must, in particular, take account of the following matters— 
(a) that due impartiality should be preserved by the BBC as respects major matters 
falling within paragraph (b) of the definition of “relevant output” (in paragraph (8)) 
as well as matters falling within it taken as a whole; and 
(b) the need to determine what constitutes a series of programmes for the purposes of 
paragraph (2).