Viewers like BBC's reliabilty, says Patten, as culture secretary questions whether its news coverage is too dominant
The chairman of the BBC Trust defended the size of the corporation's news operation and said it was popular with viewers because of its quality, reliability and accuracy.
Lord Patten told the Royal Television Society's biannual conference in Cambridge: "Would Britain be better served if we weren't on the spot when Osama bin Laden was killed and had to depend on American television companies to cover it? I'm not sure that would be of benefit to the public."
He argued that the BBC's greatest strength was its ability to cover global events such as the murder of the former Pakistani president Benazir Bhutto on the ground.
Patten made his comments in the wake of the revelation that the government has asked media regulator Ofcom to assess news provision as part of a review of cross-media ownership rules.
Earlier, the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said the BBC could be included in the industry-wide review to determine whether limits should be put in place to prevent a single provider from becoming too powerful.
In an interview to MediaGuardian's Media Talk podcast, Hunt said it was necessary to take into account the fact that the BBC "has different governance structures" and the "question you need to ask is do those different governance structures ? provide the protection the public needs against one media organisation becoming too dominant?"
Patten told the RTS: "We produce a quarter of the minutes of TV and radio news and get three-quarters of the audience. That may be because people are exercising something that Edmund Burke was very keen on ? namely choice.
"A lot of people with a Sky box use their Sky box to watch BBC news. They do that because they think the BBC is giving them fair, accurate and impartial information about what's happening in the world." He said he was "not nervous", adding: "I'm pretty relaxed about looking at the BBC's share of the news market."
"The BBC is so big ... partly because ... [its audience] think it's fairer and more accurate than most of the newspapers they read," Patten said. "I don't think people could argue that the BBC could be subject to the whim of people with a commercial agenda." He added that only around one in 10 people relied exclusively on the BBC for their news.
Patten also conceded that the corporation may have to cut foreign bureaux as it seeks to make savings as a result of a 16% cut in the licence fee. But he said the BBC would still have far more journalists based around the world than any other UK news organisation.
The BBC will publish proposals and a public consultation on cost savings in October, as part of its "delivering quality first" drive.
Patten said entertainment programmes were likely to be harder hit than news coverage and that more staff would probably move to Salford. "If you can't run a damn good broadcaster on �3.5bn a year then God help you," he added.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/15/bbc-chairman-defends-news-operation
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