Listen, I hate to ruin a yarn wall but I don’t think it’s at all helpful to start framing the current crisis at the BBC as a giant conspiracy or coup by dark rightwing forces, and get stuck in the weeds of that. The fact is, the three mistakes that form the bulk of Michael Prescott’s explosive leaked memo about impartiality – the Panorama edit, issues with coverage of the transgender issue and bias in the BBC Arabic service – happened and are bad. Given their spectacular fallout and the highest-level scalps that have been claimed, the opportunity to now deal with them might as well be taken by what is, let’s not forget, the most trusted news organisation in the world.
There is no news organisation in the United States that reaches more than 25% of people in a week. BBC News reaches 74% of UK adults in a week. There is vastly more distrust of news brands in the US. We in Britain live in a country with a far less polarised news market than almost anywhere else, in a world where 70% of people don’t even have a free press. This is great, whatever you might be told by Nigel Farage – a political leader who’s gunning to be the next PM but still presents a nightly current affairs show on GB News like that isn’t a massive conflict of interest and we live in Russia or something. Thanks for dialling in, Mr Ethics!
