The BBC is not the problem

What better way to get people’s minds off all those parties in No10 than by attacking the BBC? It’s a tactic that might please some of Boris Johnson’s backbenchers, but most people will be bemused by the sudden leap into the culture war fray. And they are not stupid. Voters recognise a cynical diversionary move when they see one.

Nadine Dorries (above), the minister with oversight of the corporation, announced this weekend via Twitter that the license fee would be frozen until 2024 and might even be scrapped, before appearing to soften that position. The explanation for this sudden, extreme decision is that the Beeb is too expensive, and that forcing people to pay a license fee to watch television is unfair.

The BBC had previously proposed an increase in the license fee. The government rejected the idea, on the grounds that the Beeb should not take any more money off the people — unlike the government itself, that is, which has raised taxes to their highest level in decades. As well as this, inflation is running at 5 per cent, meaning that everything is becoming more costly. But again, for some reason, the license fee must not increase along with inflation from its current £159. That is an annual figure. By contrast, Sky TV’s January deal is for £84 per month. The government contends that it is the BBC that is poor value for money.

The structural argument against the BBC says that television has fundamentally changed and that streaming services such as Netflix have made the old license fee model out of date. (It’s a claim somewhat undermined by Netflix’s failure to turn a profit.) Even so, the BBC’s critics say, things have moved on and the corporation has failed to keep up. It’s time for a change.

Away from this broad-brush media analysis, there is a further anti-BBC angle, which is ideological. A small but rather vocal group maintains that, in political terms, the BBC is going way off course, that it is biased, that it is excessively “woke”, that it was against Brexit, that it is too metropolitan and that it no longer represents the country it purports to serve.

When the people who make this argument talk about “the BBC”, they aren’t really talking about the BBC. They’re not talking about the shipping forecast, or Match of the Day, or the Antiques Roadshow, or Desert Island Discs, or Songs of Praise. Really they’re talking about the narrow section of BBC output that deals with national news and current affairs.

The presenters of Radio 4’s Today programme come in for particular flack, as do the corporation’s other big news editors and reporters. They are all too left wing, so the argument goes. They are too critical of the government, too critical of Brexit and too interested in niche woke causes.

This is the view of among others, TheArticle’s own David Herman. In his column this morning, David argues that the BBC was, among other things, biased against Brexit. I disagree with David’s view of the BBC and on this point in particular. But more broadly, I have trouble with the assumption that journalists putting views contrary to the government’s interest somehow represents a failure. It is not. That’s what political journalists are for. And when you consider the length of time Britain has spent under a Conservative government, it is understandable, and indeed democratically desirable, that the national broadcaster should be able to put the contrary view. A national broadcaster, free from market pressures, is especially well-positioned to do this.

As for the BBC’s reporting during the Brexit campaign, even if its coverage was biased in favour of Remain — I do not think it was — it didn’t make much difference did it? The country still voted for Brexit. What’s more, Britain went on to elect Theresa May, no lefty her, followed by Boris Johnson, who campaigned on the promise that he would “get Brexit done”. So much for the Beeb’s remain, left-wing influence.

Perhaps this means the BBC is simply irrelevant, its news coverage and analysis so skewed that nobody cares what it says any more. They hear its lefty arguments, and do the opposite. But that view is not borne out by the facts. Despite the government’s — and Rupert Murdoch’s — determination to get rid of it, people seem infuriatingly fond of the BBC. YouGov, the polling company, finds that nearly two thirds of people rather like Auntie. It is actively disliked by only 23 per cent of respondents.

The Beeb is far from perfect, but it is nothing like the rolling disaster its detractors claim. What appears as bias is nothing more than the other side of the political story getting a decent airing. Yes, editors from Novara media get invited onto Question Time, but so does Nigel Farage. While the right has become convinced that the Beeb is a hotbed of leftist wokery, the left has become convinced that Laura Kuenssberg, the corporation’s outgoing Political Editor, is a Tory stooge. An organisation that has infuriated both sides of the political divide has struck a political balance.

What it comes down to is this — the debate about the BBC is complete nonsense. Most people like the BBC and most of the time it does a pretty good job. The idea of the “BBC in crisis” has been manufactured by a prime minister who is trying to save his own neck. War is currently brewing in Ukraine, inflation is running at 5 per cent, a cost of living squeeze is under way and a persistent global pandemic is still weighing on our health service. With an in-tray like that, it is hard to see how a responsible government could regard the crushing of its globally-admired national broadcaster as anything like a priority.

But then, as recent revelations have made all too clear, Johnson is not responsible. Quite the opposite in fact. Britain currently faces some very serious problems. The BBC is not one of them.

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