The Discreet (Self) Harm of the BBC

And why it matters

It’s a well-established trope in vampiric folklore that you don’t invite bloodsuckers across your threshold, and anyone who has ever watched a vampire movie knows what happens when you do. The BBC has clearly not watched these movies. Again and again, the vampires show up at its door and it invites them in, even when it knows who they are and what their intentions are.

This hospitality owes more to cowardice than ignorance, naïveté or good manners. Faced with criticisms from right-wing politicians and media outlets that accuse it of ‘elitism’, and left-wing and liberal political bias, the BBC routinely puts out the red carpet to its enemies in an attempt to placate them. For years it has regularly invited Mosley-Farage and his cohorts onto Newsnight, Question Time and other emblematic talk shows.

The BBC doesn’t mention that some of its regular guests, such as Claire Fox or the ubiquitous Kate Andrews, come from well-funded right-wing thinktanks with very specific political agendas. Desperate to demonstrate its balance and impartiality, it routinely normalises the abnormal, and gives space to people who hold the corporation and its values in contempt.

Even when Farage relentlessly attacks the BBC from his platform on GB News, and whines on that he and Reform have been marginalised or victimised by the ‘metropolitan elite’, the BBC continues to seek out his opinions on the great and small matters of the day. Like the bullied playground child, it gives sweets to its tormentors in the hope that they will leave them alone.

Fat chance. As Labour has yet to learn, the more you capitulate to these bastards, the more they want to take from you. In 2024, BBC presenter Geeta Guru-Murthy referred to Farage’s ‘customary inflammatory language’, in response to a Reform party speech in which the Great Man referred to immigration as an ‘invasion’ and ‘flood’ perpetrated by a ‘large influx of young males.’

Of course, there’s nothing remotely inflammatory about that. And Mosley-Farage immediately began to bray, as he does, that he was being victimised once again. ‘What happened to impartiality?’ he thundered on X. Mosley-Farage’s thuggish sidekick Lee Anderson, the man who claimed that Sadiq Khan was in thrall to ‘Islamists’ joined in. ‘Shocking stuff here from the BBC,’ he declared. ‘Time to scrap the license fee and sack the lot of them.’

Two hours after the speech, Guru-Murphy issued what the Mail gleefully described as a ‘grovelling apology’ on live tv for using language ‘which didn’t meet the BBC’s editorial standards on impartiality.’ That same year, the Beeb apologized to Reform for calling the party ‘far-right’ - a claim that the arrogant public school lout Richard Tice had called ‘defamatory and libellous’.

The BBC has occasionally had to apologise to Farage for reportage that it genuinely got wrong. Fair enough. That is what you would expect any credible media outlet, let alone the nation’s flagship public service broadcaster, to do. But its pitiful willingness to bow and scrape whenever Reform says ‘boo’ has done it little credit, and has done nothing to appease those who hate it.

Gaza

And then there is Israel. In 2010, Panorama produced ‘Death in the Med’ - an account by the journalist Jane Corbin of the Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla ship, the Mavi Marmara, in which nine activists were shot dead. Corbin effectively accepted the Israeli view that these activists were armed jihadists, and this persistent deference to Israeli talking points has been a consistent hallmark of the BBC’s reporting on the latest horrific chapter in the ‘Israeli-Palestinian conflict’.

Earlier this year, the BBC pulled its superb and deeply-moving documentary on the Gaza war from the point of view of Palestinian children, following criticisms that its young presenter’s father was a member of the Hamas Agricultural Ministry. A more courageous broadcaster might have acknowledged this, and kept the documentary on air, on the grounds that its content was sound, and presented Palestinian perspectives that were rarely heard.

But the BBC is not that kind of broadcaster - particularly under the direction of a board riddled with Tory appointees. In June this year, a report by the Centre for Media Monitoring on the BBC’s coverage of the Gaza war found ‘systematic language bias favouring Israelis’, ‘suppression of genocide allegations’ by BBC presenters, and the ‘minimisation of Palestinian suffering and perspectives and the amplification of Israeli narratives, victimisation and emotive stories.’

In an essential article in Equator on the BBC’s coverage of the war, based on more than two dozen interviews with BBC staff, Daniel Trilling presents much the same picture:

For two years, millions of people have shared the same jarring experience: we have seen death and destruction live-streamed from Gaza, then seen that same violence sanitised, excused, qualified and debated on air and in print. Some of the West’s major media outlets have been nakedly partisan, even propagandistic, on behalf of Israel.

Trilling does not include the BBC amongst these ‘nakedly partisan’ outlets, and he attributes the corporation’s willingness to toe the Israeli line on Gaza to a ‘culture of fear’ driven in part, by ‘top-down interference’, inside the corporation, and a constant barrage of accusations of pro-Palestinian bias from Israel and its right-wing supporters in the UK.

As with Farage and Reform, the BBC’s attempts to pre-empt or neutralise such criticisms have not worked in its favour. Earlier this month, the Telegraph reported a leaked internal memo from the BBC advisor Michael Prescott, which accused the BBC of being anti-Trump, pro-Hamas, and demonstrating an LGBT+ bias that led to ‘effective censorship’ of ‘gender critical’ voices in the transgender rights debate. The memo cited a Panorama programme from last year’s US presidential campaign, that had spliced together two separate segments from Donald Trump’s January 2020 speech at the Capitol building, which highlighted his exhortation to his followers to ‘fight like hell.’

In response, Trump’s cynical press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the BBC ‘100 % fake news’ and a ‘propaganda machine’, while the Israeli Foreign Ministry railed against the BBC’s ‘deep-seated bias’ against Israel, and its role in spreading ‘disinformation that fuels antisemitism and radicalization.’

So far the BBC’s Director-General Tim Davie and its News CEO Deborah Turness, have resigned, and there may be more resignations to coke. The immediate reason for these resignations is the Panorama documentary, which no one had complained about until Prescott’s memo. Everything about this fiasco - from the memo to the leak itself - smacks of a coordinated transatlantic coup. As Byline Times has reported, the former PR executive Michael Prescott has ties to Boris Johnson’s appointee Robbie Gibb - former GB News executive and part-owner of the Jewish Chronicle - who joined the BBC board of directors in 2023.

Gibb appears to have been instrumental in the ongoing attempt to clamp down on the BBC’s supposedly liberal bias, and it is probably not coincidental that the Prescott leak was accompanied by a fierce denunciation of the BBC from Johnson - Britain’s authentic truthseeking missile. The man who lies virtually every time he opens his mouth raged against the ‘palpable untruths about Britain’s closest ally’ and threatened to stop paying his license fee, unless Tim Davie ‘comes clean on how Panorama doctored Trump’s speech.’

Farage - of course - also used the occasion to attack the license fee, and a host of other right-wing lowlifes joined the chorus. Trump, as most readers will know, threatened to sue the BBC for between $1-5 billion for traducing his ‘beautiful speech’ - a threat that he now seems poised to pursue.

It is a deeply dispiriting experience to read media outlets like the Telegraph, the Mail and the Jewish Chronicle , with a long track record of lying and disinformation, amplifying Trump’s fake-victimhood and bleating about ‘trust’. Even the reporting of the Panorama documentary has been entirely dishonest. In some quarters it has even been suggested that Trump never actually said the words the documentary attributed to him. But despite the BBC’s egregiously-foolish decision to splice sections from Trump’s speech, it did not put words into his mouth. Trump did tell his supporters to ‘fight like hell’ on January 6 and some of them took him at his word.

In addition, these words are only one element in the case against him. In his final report to the attorney general on Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, special counsel Jack Smith claimed that ‘the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.’

Smith also noted that Trump was guilty of an ‘unprecedented criminal effort to overturn the legitimate results of the election in order to retain power’, and accused him of directing ‘an angry mob to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification of the presidential election and then leverage rioters’ violence to further delay it.’

In other words, Trump is precisely the criminal insurrectionist that he claims not to be, as some commentators, including Boris Johnson and some Telegraph journalists recognized at the time. But now, thanks to the BBC’s stupidity - and the outrageous dishonesty of its critics - he has been able to accuse the corporation of ‘defrauding the public’ - a claim that ought to be greeted with universal belly laughter. Once again, a more courageous broadcaster might have apologized for the Panorama error - an error that received no attention at the time - and left it at that. Instead the BBC offered up Davie and Turness as sacrificial offerings to the Trump-beast.

To its credit, the BBC has so far refused demands for compensation, which means it may end up in court. No prizes for guessing the outcome its enemies want. When the BBC apologized last week to the ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe for misquoting one of its speeches, Lowe responded with characteristic grace:

Let’s see what Trump can extract from them – I wish him well. I hope he goes for a billion. The BBC isn’t just biased. It’s institutionally biased. Seeped in an ideology that despises traditional Britain. The answer is simple: Defund it. End the licence fee. If that means the BBC can’t survive, then so be it. Remove the crutch. Let’s see how it gets on. I don’t care anymore. I have one word for the BBC. DEFUND.

Leave aside, for a moment, the slovenly mental idiocy that makes it possible to believe the BBC ‘despises traditional Britain.’ Because this is the game the BBC’s critics are playing. They don’t want it reformed. They don’t want it to do journalism better. They are not interested in ‘restoring trust’. They want the BBC gone, and if it takes Trump to do it, they will have no problem with that. Because ‘sovereignty’ means nothing less than the ability to side with a corrupt autocrat intent on destroying your country’s institutions.

To politicians like Farage and Lowe, the destruction of the BBC is another potential ‘victory’ in the Brexit process. As in everything else, they seek to destroy it, in the belief that they will inherit the ruins. For the millionaires and billionaires who are funding the right-wing press and its newer incarnations such as GB News, any media outlet that smacks of ‘public’ and which pays even lip service to the idea of impartiality is a red flag.

For all its fake bleatings about trust and impartiality, these ‘populists’ are not interested in any facts or any views except those that are useful to its agenda. They don’t seek truth, or even the idea that truth is something that can be determined or agreed on. They aim to create a ‘woke-free’ media landscape in which their culture wars and talking points can be disseminated freely. To achieve this, they will bribe, bully and cajole anyone who gets in its way, as MAGA has done with some success in the US. The accusations of ‘pro-Palestinian bias’ are also part of this agenda, to which the Israeli right is firmly committed.

Liar-on-Liar Action

Anyone who doubts this should consider last week’s special question granted to GB News by Karoline Leavitt. In a clearly-orchestrated encounter, Leavitt abandoned her usual puff adder demeanour, and smiled benignly as GB News US presenter Bev Turner asked a garbled series of soft questions regarding the BBC and Trump’s response to it.

To see Leavitt describing the BBC as a ‘leftist propaganda machine’ is on one hand a grim reminder of the depths to which America has sunk. At the same time, the message was clear: MAGA hearts GB News - a platform whose commitment to ‘journalism’ owes much more to Goebbels than it does to HL Mencken.

That same week, Turner interviewed Trump himself, in an obsequious and shameful conversation that one would expect to find in North Korea or Stalinist Russia. It includes interactions like this:

BT: The state visit was beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it. Incredible.

DT: The whole thing was it couldn’t have been more beautiful. That room with a long table. It was amazing. I’ve never seen a room. I got to build one of them someday.

And this:

BT: You’re obviously a really good dad. Your children really like you, which is obvious. Or love you. Everybody loves their parents. But they don’t all like their parents. And they clearly have so much respect and warmth towards you. And I often think watching you that actually being a good president is a bit like being a good father. Yeah. Tough love, clear boundaries in the interests of the people that you’re looking after.

And this:

I’ve spent a little while in America now, and I’ve been really struck by the sense of positivity here. That can-do attitude is really in contrast to the UK and more broadly, Europe actually, which feels like it’s in the doldrums at the moment, economically, socially, really struggling.

And a final abject flourish:

Thank you. Have a lovely weekend. Well, you too, and good luck with oil, energy and illegal immigration.

This sickly sherbet was sprinkled with obtuse or leading questions, which enabled Trump to ramble freely about climate change, immigration, and crime fighting - and, of course, his response to the BBC. At no point did Turner push back against Trump’s crazed ramblings about state governors, Europe, falling crime rates or Shari’a law ‘and worse’ in Sadiq Khan’s London - a city where, according to Trump, they ‘stab you in the ass.’

Dazzled by her proximity to the Sun Bed King, even in his malignant dotage, Turner soaked up these rantings without even attempting to push back on anything at all, untroubled by any concern with with facts or accuracy. It’s the kind of journalism that makes Laura Kuenssberg look like Bob Woodward.

On one level, the content didn’t really matter. The mere fact that Trump conceded an interview to GB News was intended to demonstrate to the world - and particularly to the British public - that unlike the BBC, this is where the ‘truth’ can be found.

This is the howling epistemological wilderness that GB News’s financier Paul Marshall would like us all to inhabit - a desolate simulacra of ‘news’ and ‘journalism’ where here nothing means anything and the most abject lying garbage finally finds its rotting place in the sun.

This is where we are headed, especially if Reform get into government. There might be those on the left who are tempted to see the BBC’s self-inflicted crisis as some kind of justifiable karma. I’m not going to shed any tears over the departure of the hapless Tory plant Tim Davie. Like Boris’s Johnson’s crony Richard Sharp, men like this will always find well-paid employment no matter how much they fail.

But faced with an increasingly fascistic right-wing that is arrogant enough to believe its time has come, it is essential in the media, as in politics, to be able to distinguish the flawed from the unsalvageable, the bad from the worst. So criticize the BBC, by all means, for its many failings, from Jimmy Savile to Gaza. But if the BBC can make programmes like Death in the Med, it can also make documentaries like Once Upon a Time in Iraq and Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland, that the likes of GB News could not even begin to emulate.

The BBC may be many things, but it is not GB News. It is not even Fox News. And the vultures who are now seeking to take advantage of its cowardice and stupidity are no friends of journalism or the public sphere.

At worst, they are brazen propagandists, puppets of millionaires and billionaires who are quite prepared to support the corruption, venality and depravity of the Trump regime, in order to sweep away the last vestiges of liberal democracy in this country, and put Farage in Downing Street.

At best, they are blowhards and opportunists, incapable of distinguishing journalism from propaganda as they seek to build well-paid careers out of the rubble of the ‘legacy media’. Either way, a society that values its own health and survival should resist their attempts to wreck a national public broadcaster, which, with all its faults, remains superior to anything any of them could come up with.

Don’t expect this cowardly government to defend the BBC - it is Trump after all. And the BBC leadership - with Robbie Gibb at its heart - is unlikely to defend itself. Nevertheless, in a fight like this, it shouldn’t be hard to decide which side to support.

And it shouldn’t be difficult to see this fabricated crisis as another horrible symptom of the diseased political world that we are all forced to inhabit, in which too many people who should know better, invite the bloodsuckers across their threshold in the hope of appeasing them, only to find themselves well and truly bitten.