The BBC has come under criticism from a virtuous right who ignore their own double standards after editorial failings left formally impeached president Donald Trump – a man who by 2021 had been fact checked 30,573 times in the previous 4 years – threatening to sue the corporation for $1 Billion. Director General Tim Davie resigned in the wake of the attacks, however, as reported in The Guardian, he left a parting comment that “Others want to run our narrative, the amazing work locally, globally, that we’re doing is utterly precious. We have made some mistakes that have cost us, but we need to fight for that and I’m fiercely proud of that and don’t let anyone stop you thinking that we are doing a fantastic job. We’ve actually grown trust, so let’s get that narrative out there.”
The source of the majority of the criticism came from a leaked memo from Micheal Prescott that stated that the BBC has made a series of errors in its impartiality guidelines on the topics of the Israel-Gaza and “transgender rights”. The memo also criticised the editing of a Panorama programme released that spliced together separate clips from a Donald Trump speech at the January 6th riots.
Those at the vanguard of the criticism of the BBC can often be accused of having their own reasons for doing so. On 21st November, GB News ran an interview declaring the BBC licence fee “doomed”. It was another example of how the fee is routinely weaponised by the corporation’s opponents. Former prime minister Boris Johnson recently said he would “stop paying the licence fee” and encouraged others to follow suit. Increasingly, the licence fee is being reframed not as a contribution to a democratic public service, but as a personal transaction that individuals can withhold if the BBC fails to mirror their own views. This shift reduces a collective civic institution to a form of ideological ‘consumer choice’, and that is precisely the point.
Unlike the BBC, which is funded collectively by the public and – as proved this month – accountable to them, GB News is sustained by a small group of wealthy investors with clear ideological interests including hedge fund manager Sir Paul Marshall and the Dubai-based Legatum group. Its survival does not depend on serving a broad, diverse audience, nor on maintaining public trust. It depends on the willingness of its financiers to underwrite a project “aligned with their worldview” even as that project serves to finance right wing politicians to whom it will then promote across the channel. When such a privately backed broadcaster calls the BBC’s public funding model “doomed”, it is not a neutral critique of value for money. It is an attempt to harm a civic institution and grow the audience of one shaped by the priorities of its funders.
The BBC is bound by the Royal Charter, regulatory frameworks, and public service requirements that no commercial broadcaster is expected to meet. The mistakes of the institution are treated as existential crises precisely because it is held to a higher standard and one that is representative of the population of the country. When GB News, TalkTV, or other partisan outlets publish distortions or misrepresentations, they are seen as expressions of ‘opinion’ or ‘editorial independence’. For example, GB News broadcast almost 1,000 anti-climate attacks before and after the 2024 election. However, when the BBC errs, it is framed as institutional corruption, with criticism often coming from both the Left and the Right. This structural asymmetry allows commercial outlets to weaponise BBC missteps while never subjecting themselves to equivalent scrutiny.
The Panorama incident in which BBC producers missed an editorial error made by an outsourced company, for example, does not seem to have been a calculated attempt to rewrite events. It was an editorial error that should have been addressed transparently and corrected. Undoubtedly it was a mistake, but the editing did not change the sentiment of what Donald Trump said, instead serving to intensify the drama. However, the mistake was abstracted into a narrative of endemic bias proof that the corporation is not simply imperfect, but untrustworthy. This distinction matters. The BBC’s mistakes are often seized upon not as opportunities to improve a public institution, but as opportunities to delegitimiae it. The aim is not accountability, but attrition; the slow erosion of a broadcaster that still reaches audiences across class, geography, and political identity.
The BBC is often a whipping boy for disruptive voices to criticise. It provides the baseline against which outrage media defines itself. GB News and right-wing politicians both at home and across the Atlantic exist in permanent opposition: without a ‘biased BBC’ in the UK or a ‘fake news’ CNN, NBC or NYT in America to rail against, their cause deflates. They would demand that the BBC represent the viewpoint they hold while simultaneously condemning it for perceived partisanship. Their audiences are told they are being lied to by a monolithic institution, while being comforted by outlets whose editorial lines are funded, controlled and reinforced by a handful of donors. The BBC is burdened with the impossible task of pleasing everyone, while its critics need only please their investors.
Words by Eddie Monkman
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