The Right Wing War on the BBC

The resignations of Tim Davie, BBC Director General, and Deborah Turness, the corporation's Head of News was some unexpected Sunday news. The trigger, as if you didn't know, were accusations of bias and unfavourable editing of an edition of Panorama. 'Trump: A Second Chance?' was found by an internal review to have misled viewers after showing a clip that spliced together two parts of the speech Donald Trump gave to his supporters on 6th January, 2021 prior to their storming the Capitol. As James Ball rightly noted, while the actualité was off, the substance was true. Trump did rile up his rabble, and he did try to prevent the constitutional passing of the presidential office to Joe Biden. But the truth doesn't matter. The White House has been crossed and there had to be consequences. The departure of Davie and Turness was the price to be paid.

I've occasionally written about the BBC and the role it plays in British politics. The ideal of fact-based reporting, impartiality, and balance have always been values worth striving for. These are the chief props around which the corporation's illusio is draped. But like most official ideologies, these are for the little people - those who produce BBC programming, and those that consume them. As Tom Mills argued a while back, as an institution its leading cadres have always been clear which side the BBC is on. It cleaves to the state, is always guarded in its critical reporting, and takes its political coverage cue from the right wing press. Even though they're in such an advanced state of decay that their collective editorialising reaches niche as opposed to mass audiences.

Despite this, and having been led for the last five years by a close ally of the Tories, being overseen by committees of Tory appointees, and Turness's own efforts to skew news story selection to "win over" Reform supporters, the right in this country want to see the BBC destroyed. The media interests BBC news coverage does so much to emulate want an end to a non-commercial competitor. They want it gone so there's more eyeballs on their programming, more markets, and more opportunity to shape output through the pressure of advertising. They want to rid the airwaves of the idea of journalism, and reduce news coverage to the abysmal level of GB News-style propaganda. The BBC, like the NHS, also demonstrates that organisations based on state funding independent of markets can be successful. Which is anathema to the small-minded but hyper-class conscious elites that dominate this country's media production.

What now? There is an opportunity for the government here. The BBC Board will appoint the next Director General, and considering its present make up another establishment worthy with solid links to the right wing press and/or the Tories would be a likely pick. However, though the body is arm's length there are ways and means Keir Starmer and Lisa Nandy, as culture secretary, can engineer an outcome congenial to them. There are plenty of former Blairites orbiting around the consultation/CEO/directorship circuits available for the role. It is in their interests to have someone at the helm that would nudge the BBC's steering wheel away from amplifying right wing talking points and give the government a bit of a break. But as we've seen time and again, this Labour leadership's first instinct is to appease the right. In my view, Starmer is more likely to acquiesce to the appointment of another right winger than get anyone committed to the BBC as an institution. After all, giving in to what the oligarchs want is the grown up thing to do.

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