BBC impartiality must continue post-election

In recent days Barry Gardiner, a Labour candidate and one of Jeremy Corbyn’s main attack dogs, has been savaging the BBC for alleged bias in its coverage of the election. He has howled down presenters for misrepresenting or trivialising his party’s plans for government. Given those plans, he should be grateful: misrepresenting or trivialising them can only improve them.

This has come as a surprise to those who thought the BBC was an institutionally Leftist organisation whose principal purpose, and not just in political programming, was to confront and diminish the forces of conservatism. Mind you, what Mr Gardiner has said bears scrutiny. In desperation, for example, he turned on Eleanor Garnier, a BBC political reporter, accusing her of “fake news” and “fake questions” and of “compliant” journalism because, until the dissolution, her father and her father’s cousin were Tory MPs. Miss Garnier’s reporting is a model of objectivity; and her father is a distinguished libel lawyer, so if I were Mr Gardiner I’d be very careful.

To be fair to the BBC, its election coverage so far has seemed pretty straight. By simply being objective it is hugely damaging to Labour. Thursday’s 10 O’Clock News showed Mr Corbyn not turning up for a poster launch, Len McCluskey falling down some steps, Mr Corbyn’s car running over a BBC cameraman and then Ben Bradshaw, the candidate in Exeter, admitting his party had already lost and attention should turn to Theresa May’s plans for Britain. If Labour is determined to turn its campaign into a Carry On film, it can’t blame the BBC for reporting it factually.

However, I receive emails most days from readers drawing my attention to what they believe is BBC anti-Tory bias, none the less. Some distrust the BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, though she seems pretty blameless to me, and the Corbynistas hate her. A common complaint, not specific to Ms Kuenssberg, is that both the Liberal Democrats and the Greens get more than a fair wind, given the absurdity of their policies and the fact that they are, to say the least, minority interests. That, I think, is true, and probably the result of the BBC bending over backwards to give everyone some airtime. It is probably just as well, given how things are going in that party, that it has more or less given up reporting on Ukip.

Last year I thought the BBC did an immaculate job covering the referendum. Cynics might say that that was because it never occurred to them that Remain would lose. A very senior BBC man told me that on the morning of June 24, as reality sank in, some in the studios were in tears. The anecdote suggests not that the BBC is conventionally Left, or conventionally Right, but that it has bought into the globalist/internationalist/ environmentalist liberal (in the American sense of the word) ethos that currently represents one of the most arrogant and intolerant thought-- systems on the planet.

Since the referendum, that mindset has been unleashed by the BBC. Nick Robinson, a Today programme presenter (and former Young Conservative), had the honesty not even to try to hide the fact, saying the BBC had no obligation now the referendum was over to maintain impartiality about Brexit. That would help explain the deluge of pessimists, doomsayers and aggrieved Remainers that have infested the airwaves for the last 11 months, usually treated to soft questioning. It was symbolised by an outrageous half-hour radio programme presented by the arch-Remainer Lord “Gus” O’Donnell, in which the former cabinet secretary announced it would take us years to leave and, when we did, it would be ghastly.

That, though the BBC either doesn’t realise or wish to admit it, is typical of the tone of its news and factual programming when an election isn’t on. I suspect the BBC will be scrupulous between now and June 8, not least because the only parties in the election that these days come close to articulating its editorial values – the Lib Dems and the Greens – haven’t a proverbial prayer of influencing policy. After June 8 there will be regular items about the collapse of public services, the effects of austerity, the destruction of the planet (anyone who appears on a BBC programme and casts doubt on the notion of man-made global warming is treated like an imbecile), multiculturalism and, of course, the inevitable catastrophe of Brexit. As with the Brexit coverage since the referendum, the view will be that the time has passed to handle any of these questions with impartiality.

The globalist/liberal view is unrestrained in foreign affairs coverage. If Donald Trump is a crook and a fool it isn’t the BBC’s place to say so: in terms of objectivity, its coverage of him has been disgraceful. I recall the BBC turning on James Comey, the ex-chief of the FBI, when he destabilised Hillary Clinton’s pitiful campaign last October; but it loved him last week, when President Trump fired him. Similarly, the globalist/ liberal Emmanuel Macron got remarkably uncritical treatment compared with that of Marine Le Pen.

I admire the BBC, and think in many respects it is a superb public service broadcaster. But, speaking as a friend, I worry that its editorial voice too loudly reflects the views of the metropolitan liberals, with their unshakeable and sometimes bullying assumptions about how the rest of us should think and feel, who control the corporation. Probably to their distaste, the country is about to elect, by a huge margin, a Conservative government pledged to implement policies such as Brexit and immigration controls that they find abhorrent. A large Tory majority is something the BBC should treat with care, because if it becomes very obvious that the public service broadcaster and the public are drifting too far apart, it won’t be the public that are forced back into line.

Its editorial voice too loudly reflects the views of the metropolitan liberals