Heaven help the blasphemers against the sacred cow of the BBC

Boris Johnson’s supposed affront to the Corporation has revealed its unhealthy, thin-skinned sense of moral superiority

If Boris Johnson falls it will not be because of “partygate”, or the cost of living crisis, or the Rwanda migrant policy. It will be because he maligned the BBC. At least, that was the impression I got from Sir Keir Starmer last week, who was happy to pass on this judgment from the Corporation itself. Apparently, whatever myriad ethical or political errors the Prime Minister had committed, they were as nothing to the moral outrage of what the BBC took to be disrespect for its dedicated staff.

The slighting reference to the news coverage that Mr Johnson appeared to have made came at a time, as Justin Webb noted on the Today programme and then reiterated in a tweet, when BBC reporters such as Jeremy Bowen, Lyse Doucet and Clive Myrie were putting their lives on the line reporting the war in Ukraine. It was, he suggested, quite unforgivable and of a different order from a mere political mistake.

Of course, it is absolutely true that the correspondents Mr Webb named are carrying out their professional responsibilities with courage and integrity in Ukraine. As are the correspondents from Sky News (whose coverage has been particularly good), ITN, Channel 4 News, CNN, NBC and all the other global news outlets of the West, including print journalists. War correspondents have to face risk and trauma: that is what they do and have always done – and their colleagues safely back at home feel the greatest concern and regard for them as they do it.

But there seemed to be something more to the affront of the BBC (and its echo chamber in the Labour party): this was not just any news outfit that was being insulted. It was “our BBC” – the voice and conscience of the nation.

Other agencies might be out there on the front line, prepared to cope with physical danger and emotional stress, but the BBC presence was of a different order because, you sensed, its role as an institution that represented the spirit of Britain itself, was unique. In fact, so far as I know, the BBC is the only broadcasting organisation in the Western world that readily describes itself as an “institution”, which implies that it is utterly unlike any competing provider of programming or information.

The irony is that, if anything, this overweening sense of self-importance has probably weakened the BBC’s coverage of Ukraine. Its correspondents have often seemed more interested in reporting their personal reactions to the horrific scenes they have witnessed than following fast-moving developments in global events. (At one point, I recall the BBC’s John Simpson asking the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen how he felt covering the war had affected him.)

Certainly, the attacks on civilians and the consequences of Russian actions deserved an account that had a good measure of emotional involvement, but switching news channels repeatedly as I did, it was easy to get the impression that what journalists call “colour” – anecdotal background – was being given more prominence by the BBC than, for example, the expert military analysis that was a major feature of the Sky News coverage. But presumably this is just the kind of prosaic comparative judgment that the BBC and its political friends would decry.

Reporting the first European war in a generation should not be a matter for criticism of any kind because of the valour displayed by those who are engaged in covering it – especially if they work for a sacred British institution whose honour should never be questioned. You may note a resemblance here to the untouchable reverence with which the NHS (“our NHS”) is treated in official public discourse. I shall return to this point.

It is not a coincidence, I’m sure, that this peculiarly sensitive reaction to what Boris Johnson was thought to have said coincides with a crisis in the BBC’s own identity. There is, I gather, a remarkable degree of dismay at the highest levels over the existential threat to the future of the funding model, which is clearly an absurd anachronism.

Requiring every household to have a licence to own a television is like Communist Romania, where you needed a licence to own a typewriter. But the loss of income that the end of the compulsory licence fee would bring is, in a sense, the least of it. What would also be lost is that sense of irreplaceable uniqueness – the belief that the BBC plays a role that is fundamental to the British character – which is what its defenders seem to imply. (Nick Robinson stated this quite explicitly when Prince William attacked the Corporation over its handling of the Martin Bashir Diana interview, describing it as “one great British institution attacking another”.)

Time to ask some questions: is it healthy for a broadcast organisation to see itself in this way? Is it helpful for broadcasters to regard themselves as the anointed guardians of the public consciousness? Has this conceit not led BBC news and current affairs coverage into dangerous presumptions that alienate sections of the population – who are nevertheless required to subsidise them?

Certainly, the news operation has got itself into an extraordinary moral tangle over the need to reflect diversity of opinion. The editing and production of political discussion has now become positively paranoid about what may be regarded as acceptable to transmit.

That is why so few outside commentators are now appearing on programmes that are supposed to involve debate. Everything is kept safely internal. BBC presenters interview BBC correspondents. Paradoxically, in its determination to become more open and diverse, the BBC is actually becoming ever more insular.

What is it about these monumental national establishments such as the BBC and the NHS that renders them above reproach, and turns any criticism of them into blasphemy? I suspect it is their perceived character as socially unifying forces: in a country still riven with class consciousness, the national broadcaster and the national health provider are believed to treat everyone as equals. That, of course, ceased to be true a long time ago – if indeed, it ever was.

This overweening sense of self-importance has probably weakened the BBC’s coverage of Ukraine