The extent of the hubris is remarkable. The BBC has been caught out in an appalling act of disinformation. Panorama doctored a Donald Trump speech to falsely show him supporting rioting. This has been described as ‘a mistake’ – as if it were some kind of technical glitch. But the misrepresentation was clearly deliberate – Trump’s call to protest ‘peacefully’ was spliced and diced into a call to ‘fight’.
For the BBC, it was all in the cause of presenting Trump as a baddie. If there is a piece of inconvenient evidence which doesn’t fit that narrative, then it must be twisted to ensure it does. The BBC staff will smugly convince themselves this is morally justified, providing viewers with the ‘greater truth’.
The BBC chairman, Samir Shah, has apologised – but rather in the ‘sorry, not sorry’ tone of a petulant teenager. The editing of the Trump documentary did ‘give the impression of a direct call for violent action’ and was an ‘error of judgment’. Rather a serious one, you might think. But Shah goes on that it ‘was to convey the message of the speech made by President Trump so that Panorama’s audience could better understand how it had been received by President Trump’s supporters and what was happening on the ground at that time’. So that’s all right then. We should be grateful for learning what the BBC decided was Trump’s real message rather than what Trump actually said.
It’s not the only issue, of course. A letter to the BBC Board from Michael Prescott, a former external advisor to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee, highlighted a range of concerns. ‘The BBC has faced, and still faces, considerable criticism from the Jewish community and from cross-party parliamentarians across both Houses over its record in reporting the conflict in Gaza and, in particular, the coverage of BBC Arabic,’ says the letter. ‘In spite of this, and the findings of the internal BBC report, there is no sign of an open admission by the executive about systemic problems within BBC Arabic.’
The BBC Arabic has a website, radio station and TV station. Its twisted coverage has been to present the Hamas terrorists as the plucky good guys and Israel, a free and democratic nation responding to the most gruesome atrocities, as the aggressor. I’m afraid that the rest of the BBC’s network has scarcely been immune from this mindset.
Then we have the controversial issue of trans ideology. Prescott reported ‘what sounded like effective censorship by the specialist LGBTQ desk within News’. The Stonewall view had to be followed. If a man says he’s a woman, then he’s a woman. Prescott adds:
What I was told chimed with what I saw for myself on BBC Online – that stories raising difficult questions about the ‘trans agenda’ were ignored even if they had been widely taken up and discussed across other media outlets.
All this while ‘BBC Verify’ piously sets itself up to declare ‘disinformation’ is being put forward on social media and other media outlets.
A statue of George Orwell stands outside Broadcasting House. It is inscribed with Orwell’s words: ‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’ What a bitter irony from these purveyors of Newspeak. They should take the statue down.
Prescott warned the Governors of ‘a dismissive attitude’ to the concerns raised, which he documents. Shah claims: ‘That interpretation is simply not true.’ He adds that ‘the BBC has published corrections where we have got things wrong’. A circular argument: If the BBC doesn’t uphold the complaint, then the complaint is invalid. So often, the BBC judges itself and declares itself not guilty.
Shah refers to the ‘thousands of hours’ of BBC output to dismiss Prescott’s claim of ‘worrying systemic issues with the BBC’s coverage’ from the instances he has highlighted. But any rigorous and fair-minded analysis of the BBC’s output could find ample examples every day. Yet Shah sticks with the tried and tested ‘shoot the messenger’ response.
The BBC’s Director General Tim Davie has quit. But in doing so he declared: ‘I want to be absolutely clear that recent allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong’. As if he were the ultimate authority – the BBC giving objective and impartial judgment on itself.
Forgive them for they know not what they do, might be the kindest verdict. Operating in a bubble, they might genuinely believe that a series of highly contentious claims is so overwhelmingly accepted as to be beyond dispute.
How often do you hear BBC interviewers making aggressive demands for deregulation or public spending cuts? How robustly does Ed Miliband expect to be challenged over his climate alarmism? Or Yvette Cooper over wasteful examples of Overseas Aid spending?
News and current affairs is not even the worst area. Lord Hannan reflects:
Drama is so predictable that you can immediately infer who the goodies and baddies are from their ethnicity. Everyone can imagine an EastEnders plot about trans people struggling against bigotry; but could you imagine an episode about a market trader ruined by excessive regulations?
The irony in all this is that the BBC arrogance is accelerating its own demise. ‘There is also a political campaign by people who want to destroy the organisation that you are currently listening to,’ Nick Robinson told the Radio 4 Today programme. Robinson is among the more insufferable examples of someone who pushes his own views while demanding to be treated as an oracle.
A real friend of the BBC would be seeking a more sustainable arrangement than the licence fee. The number who pay it plunges each year. Netflix already has more viewers than the BBC. Probably, the BBC could still thrive as a subscription model. It probably could still rescue its reputation as a (relatively) trusted news source. But the longer the delay in sorting itself out, the more likely it will become that its survival really is put at risk.
This week, Nimby Watch is golfing in Sevenoaks, a leafy town firmly within London’s commuter belt. Hang on, we’re golfing now? Since when did either of us play golf? Hey, I’ll have you know I placed third in a golfing competition just last month. I take my time at the tee deeply seriously. That was […]
Under Westminster City Council’s planning policies you couldn’t build Parliament today. In the eyes of modern planners, the gothic revival Palace of Westminster would be considered ‘pastiche’ – and Westminster City Council writes on pastiche that: …pastiche designs, which are pale imitations of historic buildings, [are not] appropriate or desirable. There are lines like this […]
As the dust of party conferences settles and journalists try to read the runes of what they mean for the coming political year, two things are already clear. The first is that Andy Burnham’s conference speech was a masterclass in tickling the tummies of his party faithful, with a heady mix of teary emotion and […]
