Even as BBC News was reeling from an avalanche of assaults on biased reporting covering everything from Donald Trump to Israel to transgender issues – made all the more potent by the fact they were revealed in an internal memo – the official line was clear.
Whatever its faults, there was never a greater need for a publicly funded broadcaster such as the BBC to impartially inform the people and keep the rest of the media honest.
In theory, there is merit to that argument: we are awash in fake news, barmy conspiracy theories, downright lies and echo chambers delivering only what their audience wants to hear.
A corrective to all that which we could trust would be warmly welcomed. But the words ‘in theory’ are doing a lot of heavy lifting in that last sentence – for in practice I fear it is mission impossible.
Instead of shining a light through the fog of digital distortion which increasingly blights all our efforts to learn the truth, BBC News has become part of the problem, not the solution.
Instead of rigorously reinforcing its impartial credentials as never before, it has squandered them by becoming monopolised by liberal-Left wokery and ‘progressive’ groupthink.
Many (though not all) of those who run the BBC know this. They regularly pledge to do something about it. They see the market advantage of being the gold standard for news and current affairs when so much around is tarnished and unreliable. They understand impartiality is a sine qua non if the BBC is to remain compulsorily funded by all of us. But nothing ever happens. Indeed, things only get worse.
Instead of shining a light through the fog of digital distortion which increasingly blights all our efforts to learn the truth, BBC News has become part of the problem, not the solution, writes Andrew Neil
The BBC has faced criticism over the years for its coverage of everything from Donald Trump to Israel to tansgender issues
BBC News has always tilted a tad Left. But it was largely populated by journalists professional enough to leave their own opinions at the studio door and committed to a core mission of impartial and unbiased reporting. I saw this first hand in the many years I spent at the BBC.
I doubt many I worked with shared my views. But there were no ideological clashes, no feeling I was in the midst of some Left-wing cabal. Different views didn’t matter. We were united in a commitment to hold politicians to account whatever their persuasion.
But times change. A new generation now dominates the newsroom, more activist than journalist, more committed than impartial, more uniformly Left than ever before, intolerant of opinions that challenge their ‘truth’, in the jargon.
Mark Urban, until recently a stalwart BBC journalist of the old school, has written tellingly about how recent generational changes brought in a ‘younger, more dirigiste kind of progressivism… the language of “lived experience”, “don’t be a bystander”, and formulas such as “silence is violence”, entered the editorial conversation.’
He reveals how ‘one producer with strong views on trans issues tried to veto an interview bid for JK Rowling, saying she was “very problematic”… another of our journalists told [Spectator columnist] Rod Liddle to his face that they were dead against inviting him on.’
With these values and attitudes now dominating BBC newsrooms it’s hard to see it ever becoming the gold standard for anything, never mind impartiality.
It’s possible, I suppose, that a strong head of news could root it out. In practice, I suspect the problem is endemic, a systemic feature of the beast rather than a bug which can be squashed.
It is not just a problem for the BBC. It is true of public service broadcasters across the democratic world.
All lean Left, all are in thrall to a new generation of Leftish activist-journalists obsessed with matters of cultural identity, race and gender.
I’ve recently returned from Australia where ABC, the equivalent of the BBC, is regarded by the centre-Right as more Left-wing than the BBC.
On a previous visit, I appeared on ABC’s version of Question Time in which the other four panellists were all pretty much cut from the same political cloth. As you can imagine, it made for pretty dull viewing.
Sir Robbie Gibb joined the BBC’s board of directors in 2021, having served as director of communications for Theresa May when she was in Downing Street
With these values and attitudes now dominating BBC newsrooms it’s hard to see it ever becoming the gold standard for anything, never mind impartiality, writes Andrew Neil
No surprise, the show’s ratings slowly collapsed. But rather than spice it up with some contrary opinions they let it be canned. In other words, ABC preferred demise to giving a platform to views with which it didn’t agree.
In America, the TV and radio stations of the Corporation For Public Broadcasting are even more Left than ABC. President Trump recently cut off their funding, which sounded petty. But when you listen to their relentless liberal-Left output it’s hard to see why the US taxpayer should be funding them.
Canada’s public service broadcaster, CBC, is regarded as so hostile to the country’s Conservatives that they’re committed to ending public funding. In France and Germany, the public service soul sisters of the BBC also skew markedly Left.
Why should this be? For a start, all media trends Left – just look at the news on Sky, Channel 4 and even ITV these days – unless there is a concerted effort to stop it.
That is especially true of public service broadcasting, which is immune to the pressures of the marketplace and attracts those naturally hostile to the profit motive and capitalist endeavour.
They are overwhelmingly liberal arts graduates touting progressive politics, who flock to our great metropolises to pursue their careers – which is exactly where the BBC does its hiring, whether it’s London, Manchester or Glasgow.
The fact our big cities are now solidly Left-wing fiefdoms – which they were not a generation ago – only adds to the in-built bias of the BBC employment pool.
This will not be easily put right. I doubt it ever will. The one person who’s recently been robust in rooting out bias, BBC non-executive director Robbie Gibb, a good friend and colleague, has been pilloried as leading a Right-wing coup for his efforts.
A nonsense, of course. But the claim was weaponised by journalists within the BBC, who are clearly prone to believing their own fake news and conspiracy theories.
They then mobilised their allies across the huge swathes of the British media where the Left is strong, who then unleashed a torrent of abuse and disinformation on him, pour encourager les autres.
It’s probably worked. I doubt anyone else will now go where Gibb wasn’t afraid to tread.
But it raises fundamental questions about the purpose of the BBC in today’s hectic media environment. For if BBC News cannot be counted on to provide a properly impartial service, then the millions who don’t share its biases will wonder why they should still pay the licence fee for a news service which seems to disparage their values.
Add in the fact that some of the best British drama these days (Slow Horses, Adolescence, Day Of The Jackal, Black Doves, Ludwig, Department Q) are made by US streamers, not the BBC, and the two major justifications for the licence fee – impartial news and high-quality British drama – are suddenly swept from underneath it.
The BBC is lucky Labour is in power. Governments of the Left see the BBC as ballast to counter what they still think is a powerful Right-wing Fleet Street.
So, though a compulsory poll tax is fast becoming unsustainable, the Government will renew the licence fee (or some version thereof).
This will secure the comfortable lives of those whose salaries and social status depend on the BBC into the next decade. But will it now secure the BBC’s future? Without radical reform it is destined to decline, the licence fee subject to relentless attrition.
The number of TV licences fell by 300,000 in the year to March. Around 3.6million households now say, rightly or wrongly, they don’t need a licence. It is estimated that licence fee evasion and cancellation cost the BBC £1billion last year, even though two million enforcement visits were made to people’s homes.
No amount of arm-twisting will stem the tide. Licence fee evasion will reach epidemic proportions in the years to come as a younger generation revolts against paying for something they don’t watch.
Therein lie the seeds of the BBC’s inevitable demise on its current trajectory, destined to be the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders of the digital age.
