The Beeb’s prejudices must no longer run unchecked on the web
THE Government-backed regulator Ofcom already oversees BBC TV and radio news to try to ensure that Britain’s national broadcaster fulfils what its charter calls its primary public purpose: ‘to provide impartial news and information to help people understand and engage with the world around them’.
So, many will think it only right that the Government’s mid-term review of the BBC hands Ofcom new powers to regulate its online news coverage, too.
BBC news online currently exists in a strangely unregulated wilderness. This has long reflected the double standards embedded in the establishment’s view of the online media: popular Conservativeminded newspapers such as the Daily Mail must be policed, in print and online, but the liberal BBC could be left unmolested to spread its prejudices across the internet.
When Lord Justice Leveson delivered his 2,000-page 2012 report into the ‘culture, practice and ethics’ of the UK media, he demanded statebacked regulation of our free Press. Yet only around a dozen pages dealt with what Leveson sniffily called the ‘ethical vacuum’ of the internet.
Leveson claimed he had ignored online outlets because, unlike with the Press, ‘people will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular assurance of accuracy’.
Yet ‘trustworthy’ and ‘accurate’ are exactly what people expect of the BBC as well as what its online news coverage claims to be.
It has been able to hide behind those false assurances while peddling woke propaganda on the web, about everything from trans rights to immigration – and, crucially today, Israel and anti-Semitism.
The Government’s plan to give Ofcom more power online appears to stem from the controversy about an anti-Semitic attack on Jewish students travelling in a private bus on London’s Oxford Street in November 2021.
The BBC online report claimed without any proof that ‘ antiMuslim slurs’ had been heard on the bus.
Despite complaints from Jewish organisations, the BBC left this libel on its website for almost eight weeks. Ofcom investigated and found BBC news guilty of ‘significant editorial failings’.
But because the story was online, the regulator was only able to offer this as an ‘opinion’; under the new rules it could issue a stricter ruling and punishment.
Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has also brought the BBC’s prejudices starkly into view online. Take the infamous example of the explosion at al-Ahli Hospital on October 17.
ABBC News alert and post on the BBC Breaking News X (formerly Twitter) account quickly declared: ‘Hundreds feared dead or injured in Israeli air strike on hospital in Gaza, Palestinian official says.’
The ‘Palestinian official’ that the BBC quoted authoritatively online was of course Hamas.
And we soon knew that the explosion was really caused by a stray Islamist rocket fired from inside Gaza. But with the assistance of BBC online, the lie had already gone around the worldwide web before the correction had got its boots on.
The Government’s review notes that ‘concerns about the broadcaster’s objectivity’ make up the majority of complaints about the BBC’s editorial output.
Whether extending Ofcom’s regulatory powers to BBC news online will really address these concerns is open to question.
Nevertheless, it is high time that BBC online news was called out for its political prejudices masquerading as impartiality.