The BBC - Biased, Blinkered And Contorting

"When news broke that thousands of young girls suffered sexual assaults and rapes at the hands of grooming gangs, at first, the BBC dodged the story"

On my first visit to Mainland China in 1987, many things struck me. Top of that list sat the impeccable pukka British accents amongst our minders and translators. I gamely asked one, "Which public school did you attend?" None had travelled outside China, but all had sat at the knee of the BBC to hone their English. The accents, intonation and vocabulary were straight from the Beeb. I was impressed. 

The BBC once set the gold standard across many domains of news, kids TV and entertainment. I learned about the broader world through their comprehensive reporting. The nightly newscast, with the likes of Angela Rippon, was compulsory viewing in our house. Later, under the bedsheets, I'd tune into the World Service on a transistor radio (the kids today won't know what that is). Voices from strange places beyond the horizon took me on a world tour. 

There was no question that the BBC gave us the 'truth' although on reflection how we could conclude that never entered our minds. It was a simple given — we trusted the BBC because no one would believe that Richard Baker would lie to us. After all, the words' spin' and 'agenda' had yet to enter our lexicon. Moreover, as a soft power tool, as my experience in China demonstrated, we shouldn't discount the BBC's impact on the international stage. 

How things have changed; in recent weeks, the BBC registered the most complaints in its history for the coverage of Prince Philip's death. Put off by the wall-to-wall commentary interrupting scheduled shows; the viewers turned away in droves. Over 110,000 individual complaints came in.

When the BBC responded by putting up a form to ease the complaints process, that procedure took the flak for encouraging more protests. One commentator noted, "BBC presenters and editors pray for the eternal life of the royal family – or, at least, to be absent from work when the death of one of its members is announced." The scars are still there from the lacklustre coverage of the death of the Queen Mother in 2002. Poor BBC can't win. 

A relative best summed the attitude of the great British public, "I need to know he's gone, which wasn't unexpected. A few words of praise and can I now get back to Gogglebox?". 

As the BBC has fallen further from public favour, it's fascinating to watch how the zeitgeist changes. The roots of this demise are deep and multifaceted. It's arbitrary where we start to consider how this plunge from grace came about because it's all interconnected. I'd assert that all history is context — the long prologue. 

So let's jump straight in. The BBC's biased coverage of events, which was always there, faced easy exposure in the Internet era. In recent times that the BBC championed a Remainer narrative on Brexit annoyed many people. Then you have the Jimmy Savile saga and the other sex offenders that the corporation sheltered for decades. Former Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten, as the Chairman of the BBC, caught some of the flak as that story emerged. The institutional damage remains unresolved.

My own experience gives a small window to the way the BBC operates. Dealing with an aircraft crash at Kai Tak in 1988, an over-excited BBC reporter rushed up, "Can you tell me the name of the RAF officer coordinating the rescue?". RAF officer? He was less than impressed when I replied no RAF personnel had a role. Later on the radio news, I heard him announce, "British Forces led the rescue effort". 

With that, he'd ignored the excellent work done by the Hong Kong Fire Services, the local ambulance crews and the police. The undertone was that these colonial citizens need leadership and guidance. Moreover, the report was deliberate deceit. 

Then you have the BBC taking a stance with 'facts' adapted to fit. I could rehash many such tales arising from Occupy Central and the riots of 2019/20 when BBC coverage proved so slanted it fell over. But, in fairness to the BBC, they were not alone in whitewashing often violent events as peaceful.  

David Sedgwick's book "The Fake News Factory - Tales from BBC land" presents a broadcaster with a political agenda driven by activist journalists, who care little for balance. He cites many examples, much data and insider interviews to make a convincing case that the BBC is dishonest. And Sedgwick, as an academic, is on solid ground. 

He documents the BBC's involvement in 'Project Fear' as it sought to overturn the 2016 Brexit vote. The methods used included outright lies, the citing of anonymous sources to portray exaggerated scenarios and giving Remainers easy passage on discussion panels while ruthlessly questioning Brexiters.

In the 2000s, when news broke that thousands of young girls suffered sexual assaults and rapes at the hands of grooming gangs, at first, the BBC dodged the story. In sharp contrast, false allegations against a footballer attracted headlines. Shamed into covering the Telford and Rotherham sex scandals, the BBC next opted to question the victim's stories. 

Other media soon cited over 19,000 recorded cases of grooming — a figure the BBC continued to doubt. It's long known that the culprits came from almost exclusively from one group, something that the BBC appears unwilling to acknowledge.

Even Crufts, an annual dog show, attracted higher billing on BBC News. The industrial-scale rape of young girls and women that had gone on for decades was demoted or mostly ignored in BBC land.

With 44 men arrested for the rapes and assaults of working-class white girls, the BBC didn't mention the story on their main news channel. When the cases came to court, the BBC ran headlines 'woman denies embellishing abuse claims' and 'women denied lying'. Who is on trial here? 

That the BBC went on to wage a campaign against Sarah Champion MP, who'd highlighted these awful cases, speaks volumes. Any honest reflection of these events must conclude that certain groups are fair game on the BBC and others protected, even when they rape and murder. 

Sedgwick goes on to expose how the BBC protects itself from complaints. A team of primarily ex-BBC employees adjudicate cases in OfCom, the regulator. Rarely do these insiders break ranks to take the complainant's side against the corporation.

These days the Internet is doing a much better job in areas that the BBC previously dominated. For example, Triggernometry, an online chat show hosted by two comedians, digs deeper on current affairs than anything the BBC can produce. Catch this episode that discusses racism in Britain.

With audiences abandoning the BBC in records numbers and a campaign to defund the organisation underway, the corporation's future is in doubt. Surveys reveal that the public is not willing to keep paying for a biased BBC.

Yet, I must say it's essential not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The BBC produces a vast range of content, a fair part of which is excellent. The local radio stations serve their communities well, while nobody matches the BBC on natural history programming. So if the scalpel needs to incise anything, it's the distortions in the news and current affairs departments. 

Meanwhile, the evident one-sidedness of the BBC hasn't escaped the attention of the overlords in Beijing. In a forensic putdown, this BBC reporter took a hit. Ouch!