Mark Mardell explains why he moved to be the BBC's European Editor in the current British Journalism Review.
This bit is curious:
I will doubtless have many problems of definition and explanation, but I think one of the difficulties is because the European Union is such a strange beast and one that is still evolving. Sometimes the argument makes me think of two people staring at an octopus in an aquarium. One is saying that the creature before them is clearly a spider because of the number of legs, the other that it’s obviously a fish as it’s breathing in the water. The twist is not simply that it is neither, but that, in reality, by force of will it can become either, or something in-between. Perhaps the British, citizens of a nation that’s an unequal alliance of three and a half countries and which grew out of an early English Empire, are well placed to understand the EU’s oddities and potential, for good or for ill.
He is of course right to say in the article that Europe has become one of the biggest political issues in Britain over the last fifteen years. From John Birt's period as Director-General - possibly from his time as Deputy D-G before that - the BBC found itself having to devote greater resources to European coverage, and expanded the number of bureaux in Europe. But ‘Europe’ also became a focus of the BBC’s own corporate agenda, with new channels being launched in continental Europe. Increasingly decisions affecting BBC Corporate strategy were being taken within the institutions of the European Union, following the passage of the 1989 Television Without Frontiers Directive.
The BBC published a report on its European coverage earlier in the year, of course, and BBC News has responded to that. Any views out there?