Resignations over ‘left-wing bias’ are both bitterly amusing and a dangerous portent of where the state broadcaster is headed
~ punkacademic ~
BBC Director General Tim Davie and head of BBC News Deborah Turness have opted to jack in their jobs following a right-wing campaign alleging systemic left-wing bias. Later today the corporation will grovel at the Culture, Media, and Sport Select Committee and apologise to Trump. The Telegraph—which clearly has its own bias issues—has been publishing excerpts over the last week of a dossier compiled by Michael Prescott, a former Murdoch journalist who was previously a supposedly-independent adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee.
The big news from the dossier has been about an edited clip of a Trump speech on Panorama. Prescott complains that the edit implied Trump was egging on the rioters on 6 January, 2021, but further allegations packaged in the drip-feed have been about pro-trans views amongst BBC journalists who have been “captured…by the Stonewall view” of gender identity. And then apparently there are concerns with BBC Arabic, which is supposedly anti-Israel. It’s culminated in Karoline Leavitt, the White House Press Secretary, joyfully telling a global audience that the BBC is “100% fake news”.
As anarchists, we know that the myth of BBC impartiality is just that. The state broadcaster depends on the government for its charter renewal, its board is appointed by the government, and its periodic attempts to question government have generally ended badly. In 2003 when then-BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan raised questions over the government’s evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Director General was forced to resign, Gilligan was fired, and his source, Dr David Kelly, died in mysterious circumstances. When it produced drama unpalatable to government, as in 1965’s The War Game—the production was shelved. In between, we were treated to the ridiculous choice to have Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams’s voice dubbed by an actor on the daily news at the behest of the government, lest his oratorical skills prove too persuasive.
The myth of the impartial BBC helps create an illusion of a democracy, when in fact the state’s mouthpiece obediently pumps out subservient garbage, the odd crease ironed out with resignations and dismissals. So the departure of Davie and Turness is part of a pattern, but what makes it particularly interesting is the backdrop of BBC reform led by Davie, dubbed a “war on woke”.
It was under Davie’s leadership that The Mash Report—a fairly inoffensive satirical programme—was cancelled for being too ‘left-wing’, and that the impeccably middle-class Gary Lineker found himself a liberal hero for having the temerity to show some humanity about Gaza. This is the same Liniker whose podcast network featured Rory Stewart (of Iraq occupation fame) and Alistair Campbell (of WMD fame) as ‘sensible’ political commentators. If you’ve lost people who find Alistair Campbell palatable, you’ve gone a long way to the right.
As anarchists, we won’t be engaging in fights for a ‘better BBC’ or to restore a status quo ante that never existed. We need to build our own non-hierarchical institutions and our own media, not fight pointless battles for centres of power that were never ‘ours’ to begin with. But we should still be mindful of the reach the organisation has, and its impact on public conversation. Davie’s BBC drank deep on far-right talking points, but it didn’t save him. The Prescott memorandum, which ostensibly sunk Davie and Turness, is nothing but a well-crafted series of far-right talking points, with all the big-ticket items you can find on reddit.
The truth is that the BBC—despite its best efforts—simply couldn’t give the technofascists enough of what they wanted. These attacks portend a further rightward shift and more attacks on trans folks, ethnic minorities, supporters of Palestine, and opponents of Trump. Too much fascism in institutions will never be enough for those they are trying to appease.
