Ian Jacob
Sir Edward Ian Claud Jacob , known as Ian Jacob, was a British Army officer, who served as the Military Assistant Secretary to Winston Churchill's war cabinet and was later a distinguished broadcasting executive, serving as the Director-General of the BBC from 1952 to 1959.
Early life
Jacob was born in 1899 in Quetta, Pakistan. His father was Field Marshal Sir Claud Jacob, in whose footsteps Ian followed by becoming a professional soldier with the Royal Engineers in 1918, after being educated at both Wellington College, Berkshire and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. In 1924, Jacob married Cecil Treherne, the daughter of another senior army officer, Surgeon Major-General Sir Francis Treherne. The couple had two sons.Jacob trained as an officer at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich and later at the Staff College, Camberley from 1931 to 1932,, his fellow students there including Brian Horrocks, Sidney Kirkman, Frank Simpson, Cameron Nicholson, Arthur Dowler, Nevil Brownjohn, and Thomas Rees. He also studied at Kings College, Cambridge.
Wartime work
Jacob served as the Military Assistant Secretary to the War Cabinet for the duration of the Second World War. He worked closely with Winston Churchill and implemented Churchill's communications during his thirteen wartime journeys outside the United Kingdom. Churchill valued Jacob's efforts enough to endorse his promotion from the rank of colonel to lieutenant general over the course of the war. As a brigadier, Jacob was promoted to the substantive rank of colonel in the Regular Army on 30 June 1943. He was granted the acting rank of major-general on 8 September 1944 and advanced to temporary major-general on 8 September 1945. In the 1944 Birthday Honours, he was appointed a Companion in the Military Division of the Order of the Bath.Post-war
As Jacob had never been in command of troops, he had few prospects for serious work in the forces after the war and sought to make use of his experience in communications. Indeed, he was one of a number of wartime information service staff who moved into broadcasting after 1945. Jacob retired from the Army on 1 July 1946 with the honorary rank of major-general.By the end of the war, the BBC's European Service, based at Bush House, had become the world's most respected and sophisticated foreign language broadcasting operation and had been admired for its contribution to the war effort. After the war, however, its significance was greatly reduced and its future in some doubt. The departing head of the service, Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, recommended Jacob as a potential successor. Sir William Haley, the BBC's Director-General, had already met Jacob during preparations to report the news of the D-Day landings and was aware that his political contacts could be valuable. He heeded Kirkpatrick's recommendation, and Jacob was duly appointed Controller of the European Service following his retirement from the Army. Jacob accepted the post shortly after receiving a knighthood for his work with the war cabinet.
In 1947, Haley decided to rationalise the BBC's overlapping European and Overseas services into a single operation. Jacob's successful management of Bush House led to his being appointed Director of the reconstructed Overseas service in which post he continued until 1951. In February 1950, he helped to establish the European Broadcasting Union and served as its first President until 1960.
Back into government
Churchill was re-elected in 1951 and in addition to being Prime Minister, he also took the office of Secretary of State for Defence. He immediately asked for William Haley to second Jacob from the BBC to reprise his advisory role, this time under the title of Chief Staff Officer. After a single visit to the United States of America and Canada, Churchill had realised that the Defence portfolio was relatively dull during peacetime; he left the post and appointed Field Marshal the Earl Alexander as his replacement. Jacob was less comfortable working for Alexander than for Churchill, but a new opportunity arose for him in June 1952, when Haley announced he was to leave the BBC to become editor of The Times.Jacob as BBC Director-General
As Haley departed, it was apparent that Jacob was likely to succeed him in the role of Director-General. Jacob was well respected by the senior staff of the BBC, much more so than the other candidate George Barnes, then the controller of BBC television.. However, Jacob was still officially seconded to the Ministry of Defence, and so a member of the Board of Management, Sir Basil Nicholls, was made acting Director-General until Jacob could be released back to the BBC. Jacob eventually entered his new job on 1 December 1952.Jacob's tenure coincided with the rise of television, which was beginning to displace radio as the main broadcast medium. In contrast to Haley's hard-bitten era, Jacob's was a time of financial prosperity for the BBC. Indeed, he initially found it hard to persuade senior staff that money was available and that there was ample opportunity to spend it in developing television to the full.
Jacob was an enthusiast of news and current affairs programming and was keen to continue the BBC's tradition of accuracy and impartiality in its journalism. However, this goal led him to misinterpret the intentions of the controversial Editor of News, Tahu Hole, who was inclined to abuse the impartiality principle to avoid management responsibilities. In fact, it was only in 1958, by which time BBC News was being put to shame by its competitor Independent Television News, that Jacob finally noticed Hole's shortcomings and moved him into an administrative post. Jacob did, however, campaign for the abolition of the restrictive Fourteen-Day Rule that prevented broadcast analysis of topics that were to be debated in parliament within the next fourteen days. Also during Jacob's time as Director-General was the first showing of Panorama which is the world's longest-running current affairs series as of 2017.
Jacob's approach to news coverage was not always popular with the government. His former mentor Winston Churchill in particular had never liked the BBC's journalistic impartiality, thinking that broadcast media should be a tool of government rather than a forum of political analysis and criticism. Churchill's successor as Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, objected to the BBC's reporting of the 1956 Suez Crisis. Eden insisted that unfavourable reports of the British bombardment of Egypt should not be broadcast to the world on the BBC's Overseas Service, but Jacob refused to compromise:-
Eden responded by cutting the budget of the Overseas Service. However, this punitive measure was lifted after Eden's resignation in 1957 with no further restrictions on the BBC's journalistic freedom.
Jacob was replaced as Director-General in 1960 by Hugh Carleton Greene. Though less radical than Greene, he saw the BBC successfully through many significant events in British broadcasting: the surge in television viewership ; the introduction of the competing ITV service in 1955; the gradual modernisation of some old eccentric practices. It was also mostly on the strength of Jacob's work that the 1960 Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting recommended that the third television channel should be offered to the BBC, eventually materialising as BBC2 in 1964.
Jacob's date of retirement was 31 December 1959. The following day, he was appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire in the New Year's Honours.