The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
The BBC is blind, as usual, to its own bias
Iwatched the action unfurl, my heart in my mouth. Spooked by an ugly noise, the beast seemed out of control. Would he be caught and calmed and order restored?
I’m talking of Nick Robinson, of course. The poor chap has been frothing and squirming, apoplectic and bewildered at the sight of that irritant GB News, those rascals who run and present shows on the channel, getting away with it, week in, week out. Incredulous is Robinson that no one is stopping it and shutting it down. The “no one”, specifically, being the chief executive of Ofcom, Dame Melanie Dawes, who was interviewed this week on the BBC’s Today programme, by Robinson’s colleague Justin Webb.
“We’ve put them on notice,” she said. “Notice of what?” asked Webb. “That fines and sanctions may follow.” But, Webb pointed out, there have been 11 rulings thus far, yet no sanctions or fines have been administered.
When the chief executive of GB News, Angelos Frangopoulos, was on the Today programme himself last September, I could hear Robinson and his other colleague, Amol Rajan, scoffing at the absurdity of this interloper. Yet still the channel broadcasts, night after night, its shows fronted by the likes of Jacob ReesMogg and Nigel Farage. And if it sounds fishy that Right-wing ReesMogg interviews other Right-wingers, including his sister Annunziata, Ofcom has sent warnings when the likes of Rees-Mogg actually break the Ofcom code and read the news.
Robinson has been fuming on Twitter, wailing like Job in his sackcloth, and screaming things like: “So Nigel Farage can present an ‘impartial’ programme on a TV ‘news’ channel during the general election according to the broadcasting regulator Ofcom.” He was hoping to stir them into a response, but they ignored him. So back he came: “Dear Ofcom, for clarity can you confirm that other politicians like Nigel Farage who are not candidates can present ‘impartial’ programmes on ‘news’ channels during an election?”
Again they ignored him. So he took up the subject on The Today Podcast
(paid for by the BBC licence-fee payer and promoted on Twitter, it is a podcast in which Robinson has a habit of quoting himself from his show and reading extracts of stuff he has written in his books).
“Right-wingers set it up, Rightwingers fund it, the presenters are Right wing,” he moaned. “A politician interviewing a politician isn’t journalism,” he went on. And then he got Rajan – presumably trying to take a break from Robinson – to record his thoughts in between changing nappies at home.
“GB News, and the way it has transformed broadcasting in this country, has happened without a debate,” said Rajan. That’s right, no proper debate, hosted by proper journalists such as Rajan and Robinson, before and after which the likes of Rees-Mogg must walk the gauntlet of the BBC news studio, like Indiana Jones venturing through the Temple of Doom, trying not to step on the hissing snakes.
Robinson and Rajan, in their passionate quest to be impartial (clearly anything but when it comes to podcasts slamming GB News), may actually be right. Maybe there is an Ofcom breach when double-barrelled Right-wing politicians quiz their double-barrelled Right-wing sisters on the infallibility of the Pope or how climate-change policies are making people cold and poor, or whatever else Rees-Mogg bangs on about in his opening “Moggalogues”.
But while the existence of GB News so riles the Today gang, perhaps they ought to step back, take a long sniff of the coffee and realise that the reason GB News exists is because of their ilk.
I’ve listened to the Today programme and observed the BBC’s news coverage in general over the years, so I get why the likes of Paul Marshall, the hedge-fund-millionaire backer of GB News, decided to launch, and continues to support, the eyewateringly loss-making channel.
And it’s that strong whiff of institutionalised bias, of Left-wing consensus, that emanates from the BBC; such a strong whiff that not only led to the launch of the channel, but saw audiences flock to it – and continue to do so in such numbers as to have seen off its rival Talk TV, run by News UK, which is biting the dust as I write.
What, you might wonder, kept the fledgling GB News going in the latter stages of 2021, after its launch in June of that year? It was the most chaotic start. Its star frontman, Andrew Neil, had quit, and technical glitches made it look like the calamitous dress rehearsal of a nativity play.
Yet it was the BBC itself that encouraged it onwards. I’m thinking particularly of Robinson himself on October 5 2021 when, while interviewing Boris Johnson, he told the then-PM: “Prime Minister, you are going to pause. Prime Minister, stop talking.”
It was a moment that represented the very essence of why GB News had been created. In the words of one of the current presenters, Albie Amankona: “[GB News was] set up to challenge what happens in traditional media outlets and that’s what we do every day – challenge a liberal metropolitan consensus and give under-represented voices a way to speak to the nation in a different way.”
Or rather, when, for example, interviewing the British prime minister, to show them a modicum of courtesy in respect of the job. A role that, with my peculiar views, I think should come with free babysitting, housekeeping, food and drink, and whatever else it takes to help the person do the best job possible.
Another example came this week when the BBC Politics Twitter account repeated an allegation made on Sunday
with Laura Kuenssberg by eco-warrior Chris Packham that journalist and free-speech campaigner Toby Young’s blog, The Daily Sceptic, was “put together by a bunch of professionals with close affiliation with the fossilfuel industry”, which Young calls
“false and defamatory”.
That air of disdain towards prime ministers and broadcasting interlopers endures as if they are like the Collins English Dictionary: a benign and righteous breath of official, correct air. And when things don’t go their way, they are like the Manchester City football manager, Pep Guardiola, complaining that the fixture list is demanding, the breaks between seasons are too short and if his team loses, it’s because the pitch wasn’t flat.
Now this is all sweet agony for me, as I’m a Today addict. I can shout at the radio, but I can’t give it up. And if Labour win the general election this year, I’ll be listening very carefully to see what kind of ride they’ll give Starmer and co. And, like that result, Labour will win because of the Tories in the same way that GB News exists because of the BBC.