For the first time in my life, I'm not sure I can trust the BBC

On Friday morning there was as extraordinary moment on Radio 4’s Today programme. In a discussion about the significance of the current Brexit debate James Naughtie said, “The ERG. Jacob Rees-Mogg’s group, in France would be in the National Front because that’s what they believe and in Germany would be in the AfD.”

This is an astonishing remark. To compare the ERG, which is made up of about seventy Conservative MPs, to two far-right European parties associated with extremist and racist policies is completely wrong.

Members of the ERG were appalled. The former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith attacked Naughtie’s ‘outrageous’ comments and called for him to withdraw the “misleading and untrue” remarks.

Naughtie did indeed apologise eventually. Not exactly with the speed of a gazelle, it must be said:

“I was wrong to say in a live discussion this morning that members of the ERG would be happy in a far-right party. That was not my intention, because I don’t believe it. I was trying to make the point that if our parties fracture in some way after Brexit – on Right and Left – we could see a political landscape emerge that looks more like the rest of Europe than it does at the moment. But my words were ill-chosen and I’m sorry for any offence caused.’

Naughtie is not an inexperienced broadcaster. For over twenty years, from 1994 to 2015, he was one of the main presenters of the Today programme. He is now its ‘Special Correspondent’ with responsibility for “charting the course of the constitutional changes at the heart of the UK political debate” [sic]as well as the BBC News’s Books Editor. He has anchored every election results programme for BBC Radio since 1997 and has worked on every US presidential election since 1988.

What is striking here is not what was said but what wasn’t, not who spoke but who didn’t. Sarah Sands, the editor of Today , who has presided over a huge fall in the programme’s ratings, said nothing. Fran Unsworth, the head of BBC News and Current Affairs, said nothing. As far as I know no one in the serried ranks of BBC News and Current Affairs management said anything. Did they not notice? Did they not think there was anything to apologise for?

The current state of the Brexit debate is appalling. Tempers are frayed. People are saying all kinds of stupid and offensive things. The BBC of all institutions in this country should offer careful speech and proper analysis not sling around the most incendiary of remarks. Naughtie is a significant figure at the BBC. BBC director general Tony Hall called Naughtie, “the emotional heart of Today for a generation”.

There is another context. According to Guide Fawkes, a recent ComRes poll for Leave Means Leave revealed that, excluding don’t knows, 60% of people think that organisations like the BBC seem in favour of remaining in the EU and have not provided an impartial view of Brexit. This rises to 75% among Leaving voters.

There are others who are unhappy with areas of BBC coverage. This week Palestinians protesting against Hamas rule in Gaza were beaten and arrested. Where was the coverage? Where were Lyse Doucet or Jeremy Bowen, the faces of the BBC’s coverage of the Middle East? I saw and heard nothing on the main news programmes. It was a busy week with Brexit dominating the headlines. There had been a massacre of Muslim worshippers in New Zealand. But the events in Gaza were an extraordinary news story. The protests, according to National Public Radio continued for four days. According to the BBC News website, ‘ The protests are on a scale and of an intensity that has not been seen since Hamas took full control of Gaza in 2007… The Hamas response to the protests has been harsh. Dozens of people have been arrested and had their homes raided, among them activists, journalists and human rights workers. ’

It was on the website but I haven’t heard reports on Radio 4 or seen reports on the BBC News Channel or Newsnight . The historian Simon Sebag Montefiore has made the same point: “ No coverage of Palestinian protests vs Hamas. Isn’t it revealing that virtually no one esp the many anti Zionist pro Palestinian Corbynist activists mention or support the Gaza Spring protests against Hamas cruelly suppressed by that despotic faction?” One journalist responded to his tweet: “ Very revealing. It’s almost as if they only care about the Palestinians when Israel is the aggressor. But that can’t be right, surely?” Exactly.

Christian licence payers may also be wondering at the lack of coverage of the massacres and persecution of Christians in Nigeria recently and, indeed, in large parts of the Middle East. Thousands of Christians have reportedly been killed n Nigeria. Again, where’s the BBC coverage which might lead to action by the Foreign Office?

There is, I fear, a pattern here. Slandering pro-Brexit Conservatives, ignoring violence by Hamas against their own civilians and even worse violence against Christians, which dwarfs the terrible violence against Muslims in New Zealand but received nothing like the same coverage, tell a story about BBC news values and priorities. If those had been Israeli soldiers beating and arresting Palestinians, that would have been a big story on the BBC News. If those had been white people killing black Christians in Nigeria on that scale or Israelis persecuting Christians in the Middle East it would have been a huge story. If James Naughtie had implied that a significant group in Corbyn’s Labour Party were comparable to the Front National would he still be in a job? At the bottom of the page of the BBC News website with their account of the Gaza protests there is a caption saying, “Why you can trust BBC News”. For the first time in my life I am not sure I can.