In 2005, I wrote a cover piece in the New Statesman, which I was editing at the time, detailing BBC management’s concerns about John Humphrys’ pugnacious style on Iraq and other issues, and their desire for political interviews to be toned down. This was shortly after the highly tendentious Hutton inquiry that had forced out the BBC chairman and director general. This was under a Labour government.
To illustrate the story, we chose an old-fashioned television with spindly legs alongside the logo and the words “Broken, Beaten, Cowed”. That was the BBC then: that is the BBC now in the shadow of the Gary Lineker saga.
A couple of years earlier, I had been asked to do stand-in presenting on The World Tonight, my favourite programme, and the only domestic news show that focuses on foreign affairs. It was all going well. Listeners seemed content; the editor was happy. Then the word came down from on high that someone attached to a leftwing magazine (I was political editor of the New Statesman then) should not be given such exposure, as that might compromise BBC impartiality. All the while, editorial leadership was falling over itself to give Andrew Neil, the chairman of the Spectator, as many interview programmes as he could manage.
I don’t regard this as bias – although the BBC has had a more enduring revolving door for journalists and management with the Conservatives than it has had with Labour. I regard it more as a craven reflex towards political bullying that has been going on, to a great or lesser extent, for decades. Labour isn’t bad at it, but Tory governments, bolstered by their polemicist friends in certain newspapers, have shown themselves over the decades to be far more accomplished playground thugs.
Two other instincts are the herd mentality and risk aversion. I will cite one more example, this time from 2000: I had been assigned to Today to do political features, with a brief to “push the boat out”. I was suspicious that I was being set up for a fall, but I took up the challenge. On one occasion, on the main 8.10am slot, I did a “two-way”, saying that Mo Mowlam, the Northern Ireland secretary, feared she would be punished for receiving a rapturous ovation at Labour’s conference, upstaging an envious prime minister. I can say it now because she sadly died long ago. She had told me this in the bar at Blackpool the night before; I checked with her that she was comfortable with running the story.
Within minutes of it airing, amid much f-ing and blinding from Downing Street, one manager sidled up to me near the toilets. “I just want to be sure that you’re confident you got it right,” he said to me. “Because I need to be sure I can defend you in case of trouble.” Trying to mask my exasperation, I told him that if I hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have run it. As it turns out, Mowlam was entirely correct: she was sidelined.
I decided I wouldn’t hang around; I concluded, with sadness, that there were better places to do rigorous journalism.
That is the BBC at its worst. As it has been over the past few days. As it defaults to being at the first sign of trouble, which is much of the time. This is the same organisation that believes it is populated by “remainers”, having been the midwife to Brexit, by giving equivalent airtime to lies propagated by the leave team in the cause of “balance”.
This is the same organisation that has encouraged much of its best talent to leave because it did not stand up to the government over the licence fee settlement, leaving a hollowed-out newsroom. This is the same organisation that is emasculating its international output, on TV and radio, at a time when Chinese and Russian propaganda organs are expanding fast.
The most urgent requirement in this latest of many self-inflicted meltdowns is to turn today’s truce into genuine peace with a football presenter who was always popular and has now been turned into a national treasure. The second is to sort out the mess that are impartiality guidelines, enforced far more assiduously on liberal than conservative employees or contractors. Hopefully the independent review now announced will do that.
The third is to remove inconsistencies and hypocrisies. You should not stop one celebrity freelance from speaking out, while allowing others to. You should not remove a journalist from a leftwing magazine from presenting shifts, while allowing one from its rightwing rival to have as many programmes as he likes.
The most important task, however, it is to acquire a spine, to understand that the next time a minister harangues you (which will be tomorrow, the next day and the day after), you tell them to take a running jump.
Like dry rot, the fear principle is now so ingrained that it will take a long time to scrape it out. Friends in Russia, Georgia, Turkey, and all those fighting for freedom of expression, are scratching their heads at the notion of an institution long respected around the world taking its best-known sports presenter off air because he has the temerity to speak out passionately on asylum. That is not a good look for the UK.
The BBC is one of Britain’s few global selling points. To survive with any credibility and to retain what support it still has, the repair work has to begin urgently.
John Kampfner is an author and broadcaster
