The BBC is now facing a crisis as grave as Jimmy Savile

WITH breathtaking complacency and an arrogant disregard for its moral duty as a public broadcaster, the BBC covered up the shocking sexual abuse perpetrated by its DJ Jimmy Savile.

Its hopelessly inept directorgeneral at the time, George Entwistle, failed to deal with the scandal, as well as another involving a shamefully irresponsible report by BBC2’s Newsnight that falsely linked a Tory peer to a child sex abuse allegation.

Entwistle was forced to resign after just 54 days in the job and, to add insult to injury, demanded a larger pay- off than the £450,000 he was eventually given.

Following this debacle five years ago, Lord (Tony) Hall was appointed as the new director-general. For many, inside and outside the BBC, having once been its head of news and current affairs, he was a reassuring figure, who, it was hoped, would steer the Corporation to calmer waters.

Indeed, Hall’s good sense enabled the BBC to move on post-Savile.

But I believe that Hall is now presiding over a new problem that is equally grave.

THIS is an all- pervasive culture of political bias in the Corporation’s news coverage. It is deeply worrying because it means the BBC risks losing the trust of the public, whose money, in the form of licence fees, keeps it in existence.

Disgracefully, I believe, the BBC manipulates the news to suit its Europhile prejudices.

This is not just bad journalism. When thousands of innocent civilians It’s dishonesty. It is an insult to had been killed in renewed the millions of people who do not fighting in Syria and when Jeremy

Corbyn had been exposed as share the values of those who

having once had links with inhabit the small, Left- wing Communist spies, this decision to bubble in which so many BBC give airtime to an anti-Brexit staff live and work. stunt betrayed, at best, extremely

The truth is that the majority of poor news judgment, at worst, Britons voted to leave the EU and unashamed bias. do not hold the liberal, metropolitan Sadly, we should not have values of most BBC types. been surprised.

There was concrete proof of the Another example. On a recent BBC’s bias over Brexit on its edition of BBC1’s Question Time flagship BBC1 News At Ten on four of the five panellists (Tory MP Wednesday night. Claire Perry, Labour front-bencher

BBC editors judged the second Emily Thornberry, broadcaster biggest story of the day to be the Terry Christian and political launch of a campaign bus journalist Rachel Sylvester) had advertising questionable claims all backed Remain. The following that a hard Brexit will cost the week, the ratio of Remainers was country £2,000 million a week. exactly the same. No wonder that a poll revealed that 27 per cent of voters believe that the BBC is anti-Brexit.

The same poll showed that 33 per cent of people thought — quite correctly — that The Guardian newspaper opposes the UK’s withdrawal from the EU.

Yet the fact is that The Guardian receives no money from the State in the form of a licence fee but is an independent commercial enterprise responsible to its readers and the trust that owns it.

As such, it can have any editorial line it wants. But the BBC’s Charter requires that ‘controversial subjects are treated with due impartiality’.

In sum, the BBC ought to represent the nation as a whole.

Its recent coverage is not the first time the BBC has been guilty of systemic bias over Europe.

Several years ago, I carried out a detailed study of its coverage of Tony Blair’s campaign to make Britain join the European single currency.

Of course, in New Labour’s heyday, the Beeb was head over heels in love with St Tony.

How revealing it was when presenter Jane Garvey said after Blair won the 1997 General Election: ‘The corridors of Broadcasting House were strewn with empty champagne bottles.’

No wonder then that, rather than dispassionately reporting the facts, BBC news reports unquestioningly swallowed the Blair line and carried regular items such as those claiming that major foreign investors were on the verge of pulling out of Britain unless the Government joined the euro.

Despite such reports being officially denied, the BBC refused to apologise or even clarify.

It is no exaggeration to say that the state-owned broadcaster fed the British public a series of lies. Such behaviour was reminiscent of the relationship between the Kremlin and its mouthpiece newspaper Pravda.

Who was head of news at the BBC at the time?

It was Tony Hall — the man now in charge of the whole BBC as it pumps out endless anti-Brexit propaganda.

HALL’S dereliction of duty is a betrayal of the values established by the BBC’s founder John Reith.

It’s worth recalling that despite huge pressure from the Baldwin government, Reith insisted that the Corporation would not take sides during the 1926 General Strike.

The BBC is at the heart of our national life and, above everything else, it should stand for the British values of tolerance, fair- mindedness, decency and impartiality.

And yet this bias does not merely infect its news coverage.

Three weeks ago, Radio 4’s Start The Week discussed migration. All four guests supported open borders. There seemed no attempt at balance on an issue about which opinion polls show that up to 90 per cent of the population have reservations about levels of immigration.

I write this more in sadness than in anger because I love the BBC. It is one of the great institutions which holds this country together as a nation.

At its best, it stands for integrity, public service and the creative genius which has made this country great. There are very few other organisations, besides the Armed Forces, the judiciary and, above all, the monarchy, which represent Britishness.

But my fear is that the BBC is losing the love and trust of the British people.

For it to survive, Lord Hall must show that it is answerable to all licence payers — and not the Leftliberal Establishment, who, despite what they think, only represent a very small minority.