So, they finally got their scalp. The timing tells its own story: the head of the BBC brought down by a relentless campaign of attrition from forces that have long wanted to see Britain’s public broadcaster weakened or broken.
Let’s be clear about what’s really happened here. There has been an agenda against the BBC — well organised, well funded, and pursued ferociously by malign interests both inside and outside the corporation, and inside and outside the U.K.
They were celebrating big time when the resignations of Tim Davie and Deborah Turness were announced. It’s the same playbook we’ve seen from the MAGA movement, from Murdoch’s media empire, from the Mail, for whom BBC bashing has been a decades long obsession, from the Telegraph since it ceased to be a serious newspaper, and of course from the Farage crowd: accuse independent institutions of bias, grind them down, and reduce them to a fearful, impotent, and compliant mouthpiece.
Yes, Panorama made mistakes over its Trump documentary. But the central facts haven’t changed: Trump did incite a riot at the Capitol, people died as a result, and his recipe of grievance and division still infects politics around the world — not least our own.
It’s quite something that it is the Trump angle to the story that did for Davie and Turness when I would argue that the real current scandal for which the BBC should be held to account is its role in over-promoting a ragbag of right wing MPs who are front of the queue for its destruction.
Trump’s tactic of beating up on critical media and rewarding journalistic sycophancy is working for him in the US. Now it’s making its mark here.
Ask yourself – who wins from a BBC under constant attack? Whose agenda does it suit? You, the citizen? Or the Murdochs, Farages, and Paul Marshalls of this world?
The BBC is imperfect and I haven’t always agreed with its output. How could anyone when its output is so vast? Indeed in an earlier period I was largely blamed for the loss of a previous DG, and a chairman.
But do not lose sight of the bigger truth: the hard right populists and their corrupt media allies loathe the BBC not because it’s too “pro-trans” or too “anti-Israel” when in truth it is neither. They loathe it because they do not control it.
That’s exactly what they want to change. They want to bring the BBC to heel.
Davie’s departure is a big win for them. It’s a loss for anyone who believes that a democracy needs at least one national institution capable of holding power to account without fear or favour.
Suggested Reading
How the BBC can rebuild itself and hold Britain together
And don’t forget these are the same people hellbent on undermining another great three-lettered British institution, the NHS. For people who want to make Britain great again, they have a weird way of going about it, tearing down the things that made us great in the first place.
Never in my lifetime has the BBC faced such an existential threat. We can only hope Davie’s successor has the courage and the support from the government and the public to see it off. This will be a far worse country if we fail.
Most popular
First the flag. Now the poppy
How Corbyn lost the room
How the House of Windsor let Andrew happen
Reading is the new resistance
