The BBC is Trapped by Its Own Self-Mythologizing

From Broadcasting House, headquarters of the BBC, comes fighting talk: “We will fight like hell,” they say in response to Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit. Actually, the BBC didn’t say that—but given the Corporation’s own somewhat fast-and-loose approach to editing the speech of others, I decided to take the liberty of paraphrasing. Anyway, the sense of it is right: The BBC has decided that it will defend, at whatever cost, its reputation in the Florida courts.

That cost might prove very high.

Despite this defiant stand, there are signs of misgivings, even within the Corporation itself, about the wisdom of this approach—but then, the BBC’s response to events of the past month has been contradictory and incoherent.

To recap: A senior journalist, Michael Prescott, was hired as an adviser by the BBC’s standards committee, which has the job of monitoring how well the organization lives up to its internal guidelines about integrity, truth-telling, and fair-dealing. Prescott, once the political editor of The Sunday Times, was set the task of reviewing certain areas of output including coverage of the conflict in Gaza, the way the BBC reports “trans” issues, and other matters.

In the course of his investigations he came across a Panorama edition which looked at Donald Trump’s campaign in the 2024 election. Called Trump: a Second Chance? it included the now notorious edit which made it seem as though the president had explicitly urged his supporters to storm the Capitol building on that infamous day back in January 2021. In fact, this call to arms was confected by editing together two phrases spoken 50 minutes apart. That is clearly dishonest journalism: a textbook example of “fake news,” if you like.

Prescott’s report, which also discovered quite egregious anti-Israel bias in the BBC’s coverage of Gaza, as well as the fact that a group of trans-activist journalists within the BBC had suppressed all gender-critical commentary in news output, was duly delivered to the board. But to Prescott’s perplexity and dismay, no action was forthcoming, and his report sat, like an unexploded bomb, in some BBC file until last month, when it was leaked to The Daily Telegraph. At which point all hell broke loose.

The Telegraph—a long-standing critic of the BBC, which it views as incorrigibly biased in favour of the liberal-left (full disclosure – I often write that commentary myself)—exploited its scoop to the full. Although the disclosure about the Trump edit was not the worst thing Prescott uncovered—in my view the anti-Israel bias was more shocking—it was the most eye-catching, and was taken up across all the British media. Pressure mounted until suddenly and unexpectedly the BBC’s Director-General, Tim Davie, and its Head of News, Deborah Turness, both resigned.

This is where the incoherence of the BBC’s response becomes clear: Despite the resignations, the BBC went on to maintain that the Trump edit had been merely an “error of judgement” and that the Prescott dossier had revealed nothing in the way of “systemic bias” at the BBC (this is seriously misleading: the BBC’s coverage of Trump from 2015 onwards has been unremittingly hostile). But if it had been, as claimed, a “one-off” mistake, why did these two senior executives have to resign? An isolated bad edit by a rogue programme-maker would hardly merit that kind of response.

So, the BBC now enters into the legal fray in Florida having, by virtue of the resignations, already tacitly admitted the seriousness of the lapses in its journalism. Despite this apparent contradiction, the BBC’s internal logic provides an explanation: The BBC’s whole raison d’être rests on the contention that it is better, more honest, more truthful than every other broadcaster in the world. Indeed, on its website under “values,” it proclaims itself to be “independent, impartial and truthful.” Because, by its own reckoning, the BBC is a virtuous organization worthy of praise, it follows that its reputation must be defended at all costs, otherwise that reputation would collapse. To admit that Prescott had it right, and that all BBC journalism is colored by adherence to a set of fashionable liberal-left opinions, which profoundly affect its world-view, would precipitate an existential crisis at the organization. That is why the BBC feels it has to fight Trump and deny the truth of Prescott’s damning report. The Corporation is hoisted on its own virtuous petard.

There was another course open to the BBC from the start. Had it made obeisance to the president at the outset, and perhaps offered him some cash compensation, his amour propre might have been propitiated. That would have involved reputational damage but would have cauterized the wound and closed down the story. It is too late for that now, and the BBC is likely to be involved in a messy and costly lawsuit the outcome of which is highly uncertain.

As is usual in Britain whenever the BBC is under threat of some kind, progressives have rallied to its cause. Trump is damned and the BBC applauded for standing up for itself. That is because the BBC is the true citadel of progressivism in the UK. Over many decades, the Corporation has enthusiastically put its heft behind every cause endorsed by progressives; feminism, especially its demand for unfettered access to abortion, is now a core BBC value. Similarly, the whole DEI agenda goes unchallenged as do many other shibboleths of the left: climate change, LGBTQ etc, Black Lives Matter, and the campaign to convince us all that gender is independent of biology—all these contentious issues are treated by the Corporation as settled with no need for further discussion.

With Labour in government and the liberal-left establishment firmly on its side, the BBC seems determined to ride out the current storm and carry on with business as usual. If the BBC sees off the president’s claim for damages, as it might, it will be claimed as a huge victory for the Corporation and a vindication of its journalism. But the facts contained in the Prescott dossier remain on the record. This latest scandal, which so clearly demolishes the BBC’s myth of “impartiality,” will do long-term damage whatever the outcome of the lawsuit.

Radical political change is in the air in Britain for the first time in my 70-odd years; in all that time, the BBC has been protected by the liberal establishment because it is a powerful and reliable ally. Under a populist right-wing government, that protection would be withheld and then Michael Prescott’s pigeons might come home to roost.

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