A Floundering Defence of the BBC

It just can’t help itself; the BBC seems to want to see itself killed off. At a time when Britain’s precarious financial position means no household expense is left unscrutinised, a damning dossier reported by The Telegraph calls into question not only the way the corporation is run (as a public corporation), but whether it should even exist at all.

Within said dossier were several damning breaches of impartiality, a crucial BBC principle, which included the splicing together of differing parts of Donald Trump’s infamous January 6th 2021, Capitol Riots speech, where lines spoken almost an hour apart were edited together to suggest the President directly called for what many have labelled an insurrection. 

Further, the memo highlighted a consistent disparity in reporting between the BBC’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war between its English and Arabic news sites, the use of dubious or unsubstantiated claims in some of its on-the-ground reporting, and one-sided reporting of linked events. For the latter, a notable example given is the BBC’s extensive coverage of a letter signed by 600 lawyers suggesting that the UK’s sale of arms to Israel broke international law, whereas a similar letter arguing the exact opposite was barely mentioned. 

Leader of the Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, declared that “heads should roll” after the release of the dossier, and she’s right (and since initially penning this, heads have certainly rolled). The BBC is the UK’s public broadcaster, and thus it has a responsibility to uphold objectivity, truthfulness, and, most importantly, impartiality, yet it has systematically failed to do so as of late. Ever since the beginning of the war in Gaza, there have been complaints about the BBC’s coverage and the behaviour of its staff. Much was made about the BBC’s then-highest-paid presenter, football pundit Gary Lineker, reposting a video explaining Zionism by a Palestine Lobby group, which contained anti-Semitic imagery, among a string of controversial social media posts. 

It’s only right for such failings to be met with consequences for those in charge of the organisation, though it’s hard to say the BBC is in an enviable position. It can hardly be considered an easy task to give objective coverage of ongoing events, given that any stance, no matter how remotely implied, will violate the very notion of its impartiality. But then again, when covering particular events, bias will probably be interpreted by both sides, no matter how it is reported, as is the case with modern information warfare, alongside the age-old fact that the truth often changes depending on what party badge you wear in peace, or what end of the gun you’re looking at in war. 

Imperfect impartiality, almost complete accuracy, and an impressive lack of subjectivity can, however, be achieved through a rigorous (if tedious) process of continual and consistent fact-checking. It’s more important than ever that the news detaches itself from bias, given the increasingly political mainstream media and how it feeds (and is fed) by online misinformation.

But that’s not the only reason why this article is ‘a floundering defence’. It’s floundering in that it seems anytime you try to defend this perpetually controversial organisation, there’s a new headline someone can point to that makes such a perspective seem, at best, misguided, and at worst, ignorant. But the BBC isn’t just a flawed but generally impartial entity; it’s a cultural institution, a stalwart of broad news coverage, and the defining example of an attempt at what reporting should be, even if it often falls short of its self-imposed, overly ambitious expectations. 

It’s hard to explain the BBC’s cultural value without seeming overtly biased by personal preferences in programming, and perhaps there is an element of that in the ensuing argument. I do find the BBC’s election coverage more compelling and complete than anywhere else, and you won’t see me catching coverage anywhere else (aside from tuning in to the odd US broadcaster for a bit during Presidential elections); I enjoy a lot of the corporation’s output, including a British institution in itself, Doctor Who; and I do have BBC News notifications on my phone, with the organisation remaining my primary source of affairs consumption. But this bias doesn’t taint the suggestion that the BBC offers immense cultural value, even if that is, of course, relative. 

What I’m getting at is that even if its production isn’t your cup of tea, the BBC retains a widespread popularity that has historically defined it. I mentioned Doctor Who, but there’s a reason a blue telephone box and a Dalek are globally recognised British iconography, and that’s the point – regardless of personal programming preference, there is an intrinsic value to the BBC’s contributions to British culture that’s easy to understate while the institution is so caked in controversy. 

There’s a brilliant, if slightly outdated, article in The Times that expands on this point. It discusses the notoriety of the BBC’s programming and how it becomes a core tenet of Britishness. The article is from 2015, and thus the fact that many of the programmes it lists are still as culturally significant now as they were then is a testament to the longevity of the BBC’s cultural output. From The Great British Bakeoff, the work of Attenborough, the seminal rewatchable (if divisive) classic run of Top Gear, to the organisation’s broadcasting of The Olympics and Eurovision, among much more. It’s easy to discount the value of such output when you have it, but doubtless there would be a void if it disappeared. At a time when Britishness is an increasingly divisive and questioned concept, we shouldn’t just throw away such an acute, yet undoubtedly successful, example to pursue an overt neoliberal agenda of privatisation ‘just because’. Culture certainly has a value, even if it’s harder to monetarily quantify, so let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. 

The BBC has become somewhat of a political tennis ball, batted across the aisles of Parliament back and forth as a means of reflecting bias against whoever is swinging at it. In such an environment, the question of privatising or dismantling the organisation has inevitably surfaced. The reason for this inherent politicisation is the organisation’s long history, which spans over a century. The BBC, reporting on changes not just in Britain but in the world, is as much a part of history as a deliverer of it, whether it's the Nazi occupation of Europe, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall, or Brexit. The BBC is so old and broad in scope that it's inevitable that such a prominent fixture of the British state would run into the problem of becoming too much of a bureaucratic mainstay, and the baggage that comes with it. 

In a world that’s increasingly controversy-obsessed and where the bar for what is deemed controversial drops lower by the day, of course, there are going to be missteps, errors, and blunders. But when you cover as vast an amount of content as the BBC does, for as long as it does, this inevitability doesn’t mean the organisation is wretched or accursed. 

To reuse a metaphor deployed earlier, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater – one turbulent period does not define an institution, and unless you reject the much-discussed merits of an objective source of information in a disinformation age, killing off the BBC just isn’t the answer, no matter how controversial it finds itself. At the end of the day, the main issue most have with the BBC is that it’s ‘biased’. These accusations come from the left and the right, who deliver them in about equal measure.  When roughly equal indignation comes from across the spectrum in this incredibly partisan world, you know the BBC must be getting something right.

Image: Flickr/David Jones 大卫 琼斯

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