LAST evening I was chatting to BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner for an Aye Write event and, inevitably, we got on to the current crisis at his employers.
He told me that what most frustrated people like himself, and other time-served correspondents and reporters, was that the public might fail to distinguish between the reporter involved in the Diana Panorama programme and the contrasting rigour applied by most BBC employees.
As he said, despite being shot and partially paralysed by Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia 17 years ago, he still reported on them and on Daesh because he was paid to explain what was happening, not to judge it. (We agreed later in offline conversation that re-hiring the Panorama reporter in question just five years ago was, at best, a baffling management decision.)
Many National readers I know are particularly hostile to BBC Scotland, whom they regularly accuse of bias in terms of its coverage of the indy debate. Having worked for the Beeb for many years, I’m pretty sure that any notion of an organisation-wide conspiracy is well wide of the mark.
READ MORE: Tory minister tells BBC to 'project British values' – or face licence fee chop
What I do find odd is some of their news priorities in their main evening Reporting Scotland slot. Most often sins of omission when choosing to ignore pretty seminal events.
However, I would caution those who would cheerfully join the BBC bashing throng, which includes many members of the current UK Government, that they should be careful what they wish for. Andrew Neil’s new GB News was apparently set up to counter alleged left-wing bias in the BBC.
It’s a bias they’ve kept very well hidden so far as I can detect, and now the two men at the UK BBC helm both come from Tory backgrounds, I’m guessing it’s right-leaning programming we need to guard against. Plus, anyone who has watched the appalling Fox News can appreciate what truly integrity free broadcasting looks like.
Both Home Office Secretary Priti Patel – surely the least empathetic holder of that office – and Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden have already taken aim at the national broadcaster. Patel, typically, is all threats and bluster. Dowden, in more subtly threatening tones, urges the national broadcaster “to be equipped to step up to project British values and distinct quality”.
READ MORE: Priti Patel issues warning to protesters who stopped Home Office raid
He also talks about “serving the nation” being its “defining mission”. And here we have the core problem of a UK government which bandies the term nation about when, as we all know, there is no such thing as a UK nation.
If, as he implies, the BBC wants to get rid of metropolitan myopia, and be more responsive to national and regional aspirations, then he might like to consider that the “groupthink” of which he accuses the BBC is at least as evident in 10 Downing Street and the entire UK Cabinet.
It is the Johnson administration which is most culpable of trying to impose “British values” on people and places for whom Britishness is yesterday’s news and yesterday’s labelling.
Gordon Brown tried this before as PM – extolling the virtues of British values and instincts. The notion took off like the lead balloon it always is. The British values encompassed in slashing aid, naked cronyism, and terminal indecision during the pandemic are not ones we should want any part of.
There is no question that parts of the internal BBC culture need to come under scrutiny. Johnson, Patel, Dowden and co make pretty poor scrutineers.
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