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You have to admire the chutzpah. The cheek of it. Donald Trump describing the BBC as “corrupt” while threatening to take legal action. Karoline Leavitt, The Donald’s White House mouthpiece, calling the BBC “100% fake news”. The man has never been known for his self-awareness so it’s safe to say the irony has almost certainly passed him by. If you’re being charitable, let’s just say that maybe it takes fake news to spot fake news.
The US president is a master of the lie. Makes Boris Johnson look something of an amateur. Boris always followed a lie with a giveaway smirk. He couldn’t help himself. It was an integral part of his self-destruction. As if, buried deep down in his subconscious, there was a part of him that wanted to be found out.
But The Donald does it with a straight face. Knowing that no one dare call him out. During his recent state visit to the UK, Trump told a press conference he had ended a war between Albania and Azerbaijan. A war no one – not least the Albanians and the Azerbaijanis – knew was taking place. Keir Starmer just nodded and said nothing. No point in creating a diplomatic incident. Whatever it takes to stay on the right side of Trump.
Maybe the BBC could learn a thing or two from The Donald. Or even from Boris. Because when push came to shove, its Panorama team didn’t make a very good job of its untruth. Possibly because it hasn’t had as much practice. For the most part, the Beeb aspires to the highest standards of impartiality in its news journalism. Often to the point where it goes out of its way to find a climate change denier to balance its stories on global warming.
Yet in the Panorama programme on the Capitol riots, the BBC messed up big time. Splicing together two separate clips 50 minutes apart from the same speech to make it sound as if Trump had been inciting violence.
What’s more it was all so unnecessary. Everyone already knew that Trump didn’t accept the result of a democratically held election. There was no need to lay it on any thicker. People understood exactly what The Donald thought. He had been hiding in plain sight. Yet Panorama tampered with the footage and inevitably got caught out. As was bound to happen. After all, it wasn’t even that subtle.
And now it’s open warfare on the Beeb. Apologies and the resignation of Tim Davie, the director general, and Deborah Turness, the head of news, are merely the start of the pile-on. Everyone with a grievance and an agenda are now queueing up to put the boot in. Some within the organisation itself. There’s something uniquely British about that. Anyone not on message in Fox News gets turfed out. In the Beeb, the harshest critics often get promoted to positions of authority. We call it accountability and self-reflection.
Bashing the BBC is something of a national pastime. Though it’s hard to find another news broadcaster that is quite as trusted anywhere in the world – not to mention its entertainment, education and sport channels – we Brits like nothing more than to give it a kicking. Some on the right reckon it’s a hotbed of well-off Islington socialists; some on the left think it has long been held hostage by the Conservative party. So you might think it was probably getting things just about right. Up until times such as now when it gets it wrong.
First out of the blocks was Nigel Farage. Of course it was. Nige the presenter on GB News, a channel that makes no pretence to impartiality. Nige, the man who makes Panorama look like amateurs in the way he self-edits his own life. As the Reform UK leader tries to position himself as a mainstream politician, his past is increasingly erased.
Nige was using the parliamentary recess to hold his customary Monday morning press conference in central London. This time the presser was meant to be about small businesses – his main thrust seemed to be that Brexit had been a disaster; Nige is now almost Trumpian in his reinvention – but most of the questions were predictably about the Beeb.
“The BBC is institutionally biased,” he declared. “Just look at the way it covers net zero and climate change.” Nige seemed to think that reporting the science that is accepted by more than 95% of the world’s scientists was a major dereliction of duty. There wasn’t nearly enough coverage for the average climate denier. In the same way there wasn’t enough broadcast journalism for those who believe the world is flat. They also pay their licence fee. Do they not count?
Balance was everything. Rather than just showing a programme on the 6 January riots, surely the BBC should have devoted as much air time to how Kamala Harris had been inciting people to march on the Capitol. The fact that she hadn’t done anything like this was not a problem. The Beeb had a duty to make something up. You can’t just have Trump undermining democracy. Because that would be undemocratic. To redress its lies, the BBC should also just broadcast its entire coverage of the riots unedited. Or perhaps not.
Nige had been on the phone to Trump on Friday, he said. And The Donald had not been happy. Was this the way to treat an ally, he had complained. The riots would have been sanctified by the founding fathers. A thing of wonder. So Nige was pretty much done with the Beeb. Apart from the BBC World Service. But everything else could go. The days of the licence fee were numbered. He would be talking to Nadine Dorries. Good luck with that. Mad Nad has made a habit of being wrong about almost anything.
Other politicians kept a lower profile. Kemi Badenoch put out a statement saying the BBC was institutionally biased. She too reckons everyone who works for them are secret commies. Labour didn’t quite know what to do – on the one hand this, on the other hand that – and only Ed Davey mustered any real support. Yes, it had fucked up but it was still a globally respected broadcaster that deserved our support.
It just so happened that as Samir Shah, the BBC chair, delivered his own apologia, the Beeb also chose to announce a second series of The Celebrity Traitors. There’s also the possibility of a further spinoff of The Political Traitors. The only difference being that there’s only one faithful.
