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BBC’s issues with impartiality run deeper than Emily Maitlis [1]

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Date: 2022-08 

Much of what former Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis said in this week’s annual MacTaggart lecture will have been reassuringly familiar to self-described moderates.

Right-wing populism is a threat to independent journalism, she said, as is populism on the Left. Sometimes BBC journalists strive too hard to be balanced and they are too reticent about the impacts of Brexit. All quite predictable.

But Maitlis also levelled some more surprising criticisms at the BBC, including a claim that an “active agent of the Conservative party”, Robbie Gibb, has become “the arbiter of BBC independence” from his position on the BBC’s board. She also referred to a Financial Times report of attempts by Gibb to “block the appointments of journalists he considers damaging to government relations”.

Credible accusations of direct influence over editorial decisions by the executive and by members of the ruling party don’t sit well with centrists and moderates. It’s the sort of thing that happens in places that have regimes rather than governments. As long as politicians aren’t picking up the phone and dictating the content of news bulletins, the BBC remains a public broadcaster, not a state broadcaster. So runs the logic of the sensible centre.

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But the problems at the BBC run much deeper than explicit interference by the executive. Its news and current affairs departments are captive to an establishment common sense that should have been buried at least as long ago as the 2008 financial crisis. Anyone who was paying attention while the BBC interviewed a succession of ‘City economists’ during that period will not be remotely surprised that the institution is sensitive to the needs of those who wield substantial social power.

Maitlis is only scratching the surface of a much deeper problem that academic researchers like Mike Berry have been trying to warn us about for years. Tom Mills, with whom I collaborate occasionally, wrote a whole book, ‘The BBC: Myth of a Public Service’, about all this.

Barrage of misinformation

There’s something badly wrong with the world-view of the London-based establishment to which the BBC belongs and from which it takes its cues. And this was obvious long before Maitlis decided to speak out.

A decade ago, openDemocracy launched ourBeeb, a wide-ranging attempt to start a conversation about the BBC’s future. Under its auspices, the case was made for democratic control of some of the BBC’s journalism budget and for the introduction of juries into the corporation’s governance.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/bbc-maitlis-gibb-mactaggart-independent-journalism/

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