The BBC shows no intention of doing so. If any BBC journalist doubts me, they should listen again to the interview Caroline Thomson, the chief operating officer, gave to John Humphrys last November.

With admirable vim, Humphrys laid into the £440,000-a-year manager and asked what a pensioner paying the licence fee was meant to make of "the enormous salaries being paid to BBC executives".

"I understand that concern," said Thomson.

"So you will take a pay cut?" asked Humphrys.

Thomson floundered for a moment, then revealed her true thoughts. "I will certainly take a pay cut if asked to, and I hope you will too, but," and here she regained her composure, "but joking aside, the licence fee is an enormous privilege and we have to make sure we're spending it properly. As you are aware, we are going through a big efficiency drive. We've cut £300 million a year as a result of that and we've also lost 4,000 staff."

I have yet to see a better expression of the ideology of the BBC's elite. In their own minds, they justify their sumptuous and undeserved rewards by sacking professional producers and journalists. Two consequences will flow from their lopsided cost-cutting, I believe. First, you must grasp, Thomson and her colleagues spend their days in meetings in air-conditioned rooms. Their sheltered lives mean they are more likely to be swayed by populist or pseudo-populist outbreaks of emotion than reporters and editors who have experience of the complexities of reporting the world. I would not expect them to stand firm the next time there is a demand that the BBC lower its standards.

Second, although my newspaper colleagues may not realise it, BBC journalists are in the same sinking ship as the rest of us. We should feel no schadenfreude. Someone has to bring us the news, but I am damned if I can see who is going to do it.