When the BBC is accused of bias, its reaction is always the same – executives and journalists protest that if all sides attack the BBC with equal force all the time then they must be doing something right. This plausible defence isn’t good enough when it comes to Brexit. As we enter the final year before the UK is due to leave the EU, there is a widely held belief among EU supporters that the BBC is guilty of something almost worse than bias – shutting down the story.
A chill surrounds the subject of Brexit, a fearfulness that means interviewers swerve from obvious lines of questioning and editors are reluctant to carry reports that question the inevitability of leaving the EU and the competence of the government’s strategy. Also, important stories are downplayed, such as Christopher Wylie’s appearance in front of the Commons culture committee with folders of evidence alleging Vote Leave’s overspend during the referendum.
As Wylie made a convincing case that Vote Leave had distorted our democracy with data and cash, news sites across the world, from Canada to Denmark, began to run the story prominently. But not the BBC, which initially tucked his evidence into a report about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s refusal to appear in front of the same committee. The corporation did just enough to cover itself but in reality it was pressing the mute button and that, too, has implications for our democracy.
Still rife is the practice of false equivalence – placing verifiable facts from one side of the Brexit debate against airy assertions from the other to create an illusion of balance. So economists who quote the government’s predictions of a Brexit penalty of between 2-8% of GDP must be “balanced” with the wildly optimistic predictions of Brexit economist Patrick Minford.
And when even this phony balance can’t be struck the BBC turns its back. Last weekend, thousands of EU supporters marched in towns and cities across the country, but little appeared on the BBC. Yet Nigel Farage has only to tip a crate of fish into the Thames and the BBC dutifully turns up to film the stunt.
The BBC seems to have abdicated its duties of judgment and guidance. While its correspondents are happy to steer the British public to the truth of what is happening in Putin’s Russia, they are extremely tentative when it comes to Brexit, even though the country’s unity and economic survival are plainly at stake. Last week, the prime minister made a “unifying” tour of Britain, stating that Brexit will mean more money for schools and hospitals, yet it occurred to few at the BBC to place this claim against the government’s own certainty that there will be less money available.
The veteran broadcaster John Simpson put it well in an interview after the referendum. “If people looked to the television or radio for a clear guidance about what to do, well, we didn’t give a clear enough guidance on the lies being told.” In other words, the BBC had failed in its duty to interrogate claims and, yes, to judge them. Nearly two years on, that is still the case.
It’s hard to say categorically that the BBC’s top interviewers have their own agendas, but the conviction on social media that, for example, John Humphrys and Nick Robinson of the Today programme are personally motivated is awkward for the BBC. Last week, in an interview with Chris Patten, Humphrys stated that people had voted to leave the single market in 2016. Patten shot back that they hadn’t.
In an interview with Wylie on the day after his evidence, Robinson said: “Some might argue that issues of friendship, issues of sexuality and your own guilt at having developed the technology… you are confusing these with claiming democracy has been overturned.” Robinson has a right to ask the question, but it seemed to be an attempt to diminish the importance of what Wylie was saying about the referendum.
The World at One and World Service, incidentally, do not slap down contributors who remind us that parliament still has a crucial vote on the Brexit deal in the autumn. But this not does not alter the picture of a cowed BBC; nor does it excuse the shocking fact that over a period during which Ukip MEPs have been on Question Time more than 30 times, MEPs from Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Greens or Plaid Cymru have been hard to see.
How we have got here is interesting. As with much else in British society, the toxins released by the referendum have affected the BBC. It also suffers from constant pressure applied by the government and hardline Brexiters in the Conservative European Research Group. Yet it has to be said that an element of its compliance does appear to be voluntary – a kind of cleaving to the established order, which I can’t remember seeing to this degree ever before. In these fraught times, the last thing we need is a BBC that mistakes the state of being neutered for neutrality.
