Why has Auntie gone into hiding?

Today should have been that unique moment in the broadcasting calendar when BBC executives stand accountable - taking questions from the media, on your behalf, as they present their annual report. This year, however, the control freaks within this ever-more Stalinist regime have had a better idea: simply ban the press from the launch and hope that does away with much of the scrutiny.

At a time when the corporation's huge expansion is raising serious questions about its remit, this extraordinarily clumsy decision has bewildered commentators as well as competitors. "Maybe they think they no longer need to explain themselves," says a rival broadcaster. "They're so busy censoring their staff perhaps it's become second nature."

The BBC, naturally, has an answer - namely, that it wanted to do things "differently" this year, and that it has agreed to face the scrutiny this morning of the "tough" Commons Culture Select Committee.

But Tim Yeo, shadow culture secretary, is among those raising their eyes: "I'm surprised that the press," is excluded." he says. "They're an important audience and most papers have specialist correspondents who are well informed about the BBC and in a position to ask some pertinent questions.

"There is a greater obligation than ever on the BBC to be transparent in its finances and accountability, to ensure it is not taking unfair advantage of what is effectively taxpayers' money."

So here are a few questions that we would have liked to ask Greg Dyke and Gavyn Davies at today's launch.

How much of our licence fee are you spending on the new digital channels, and what evidence is there that they provide value for money? Why are you heavily promoting a new BBC internet search engine when dozens of commercial players are already there? If you are so committed to education as to spend £170 million competing with educational publishers, why did you close BBC Knowledge, your "lifelong learning channel", to make way for BBC4? What, in fact, is the ever-expanding, increasingly commercial BBC actually for?

As the corporation expands unstoppably into digital broadcasting, online publishing and "digital learning", its less well-funded commercial rivals are shouting ever more despairingly about unfair competition-The Artsworld channel, due to close in two weeks, blames BBC4 for its demise, and nerves are fraying at E4, Paramount and Sky One in anticipation of the imminent approval of the youth channel BBC3. In both cases, rivals point out, the licence fee will fund channels more than half of us cannot receive, and on turf already catered for by existing channels. So much for the corporation's original justification that it could take risks unfettered by commercial pressures to attract new audiences.

But with its licence fee apparently safe for another 15 years, according to recent remarks by the Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, it clearly feels less bothered about explaining itself.

As one rival says: "The BBC was given extra licence-fee money by the Government to fulfil a specific purpose - so that viewers would go digital and it could switch off analogue broadcasts. But instead of targeting consumers proving resistant to digital TV, they are going for those already very well served - there were, for instance, already 14 children's digital channels before the BBC arrived.

"This is really about protecting the BBC well into the future by securing viewers among children and young people who are still prepared to pay a licence tax of £110 a year." We shall never know the truth, of course - negotiations between the BBC and the Government about launching the channels were shrouded in secrecy.

Tony Ball, chief executive of BSkyB, calls the corporation "a monster genetically programmed to get bigger and bigger", and the breadth of its current ambitions suggest it has no finite goal. The Murdoch empire naturally has good reason to bait broadcasting's dominant player, but now the list of critics is widening, from MPs criticising the "dumbing-down" of its politics coverage to former director-general Sir Michael Checkland berating its "imperial march" into commercial areas beyond its public-service remit.

In May, an alliance of 18 educational publishers, including Pearson and Reed Elsevier, promised court action to halt the corporation's hugely ambitious expansion into the school software market, which they claim will cost them £400 million. They charge that the BBC has failed to consult before earmarking £170 million for the project, and that by driving smaller firms out of business, it will narrow the choice of materials available to schools.

"The BBC is a fantastic ambassador for this country when it does what the commercial marketplace cannot deliver, but that traditional yardstick has been completely forgotten in the Dyke/Davies world," says Hugo Drayton, MD of Hollinger Telegraph New Media. "In the internet business, the BBC has led to huge market distortions, launching services willy-nilly without any approval process and without proper regulation. It's a monster with the arrogance to do what it pleases."

As it competes ever more aggressively with its commercial rivals - taking over ITV Digital's broadcasting platform, or undercutting ITN in ensuring BBC World is seen on the Heathrow Express - the BBC needs to be as accountable to licence-fee holders as its competitors are to their shareholders.

The board of governors, acting in place of external regulators, has proved inadequate to the task of holding BBC management to account in this fast-changing digital world: as Tim Yeo points out, the corporation has no obligation to explain exactly how it spends our cash, even the detail of its blockbuster film budget or its digital channels' launch costs.

At the very least, the governors need to hold their meetings in public, the process by which new services are approved should be made more transparent, and the press should be seen as a guarantor of accountability rather than as a threat. For if the BBC is going to play by commercial rules, we, its shareholders, have a right to know that we are getting a fair deal.