Fundamental BBC overhaul is needed

MY old friend, Justin Beament ( WDP, October 3) waxes eloquently in his support for the BBC.

He asserts that the Corporation is free from political interference and strives to ensure that a regime of impartiality is the overriding factor in the reporting of contentious issues.

However, I believe his faith to be misplaced, the evidence for which is drawn from Robin Aitken’s incisive expose of the BBC’s institutional partiality, ‘The Noble Liar’.

The Corporation is undoubtedly the most influential media institution in the UK, if not globally, according itself the reputation of always telling the truth. A reputation it claims is founded on public trust. The facts suggest that our trust has been egregiously abused over many years.

The most glaring example of its political bias is characterised by its reportage over many decades on the issue of the EU.

Its Europhile credentials were established at the time the UK was attempting to join the then EEC.

Its naked support for this proposal culminated in the appalling treatment meted out to Jack de Manio, the presenter of the original Radio Four programme, Today.

De Manio was a highly vocal opponent of the proposal, in contrast with the ‘group think’ stance that pervaded the BBC at that time. Such ‘lese majesty’ was, of course, intolerable to the BBC’s political masters and pressure was brought to bear upon the then Managing Director of BBC Radio, to remove him.

It wasn’t until 2000 that details of this disgraceful event emerged having been suppressed for a quarter of a century.

Ironically, another Today presenter was to potentially suffer a similar fate. In 2017 it was disclosed that political pressure from influential establishment Remainiacs had been considered to bear upon Broadcasting House to mitigate John Humphreys’ perceived ‘excessive’ Euroscepticism.

In this case the BBC wisely demurred, correctly assessing the magnitude of ordure that it would receive as a consequence, not to say the damage it would do to its ‘reputation’ for ‘impartiality’ if it came to light.

As might be expected for an organisation that arrogates to itself the right to decide on how its news and current affairs programmes are nuanced in accord with its perceived social liberal principles, complaints of bias are met with studied indifference and rarely resolved in the complainant’s favour.

Self-evidently, bias is difficult to prove. However, in the 1990s Lord

Pearson commissioned extensive discursive analysis of the BBC’s news and current affairs reportage on the topic of the EU. The statistical evidence obtained from this analysis unequivocally demonstrated a strong bias towards Europhile opinions in the order of 2:1.

True to form, the Corporation studiously ignored this wellresearched evidence until 2004 when, following a change of senior management, it instigated an inquiry under the aegis of Lord Wilson.

A year later his report confirmed the allegations of bias by Lord Pearson and the BBC was ordered to put its house in order.

Incredibly, as the researcher David Keighley established post-Brexit in a further discursive study, the

BBC had clearly ignored the Wilson imperative. He found there was a persistent partiality in the selection of commentators by the BBC who clearly supported the Remainiac cause. Again the Corporation refused to accept the undoubted scholarship of Keighley’s analysis or engage with him preferring to retreat into its familiar ‘bunker mode’.

This institutional arrogance is unacceptable in the nation’s public broadcaster. Through the television tax we are the Corporation’s paymasters. As such, we deserve to be treated with respect and our concerns listened to and acted upon.

Self-evidently this is not happening and the opprobrium that is being heaped upon the BBC is, in my opinion, richly deserved.

Whether the appointment of Mr Davies as the new Director General will herald a new era for the Corporation is questionable.

Certainly, its operational structure and financing model is in need of a fundamental overhaul if it is to have any relevance. Without trivialising these aspects they are relatively easy to resolve. What will prove more difficult is the eradication of the fundamental confirmation bias that has infected those journalists who work for the BBC, blinding them to their own personal prejudices.

Without resolution of this malignant influence the original lofty ideals of the BBC are just so much dross and it will richly deserve its self-destruction.

I hope Mr Davies is listening…