The BBC is precious, but that doesn’t mean we should avoid some hard truths

If the BBC didn’t exist, would we want to invent it? I ask that question because, following Boris’ landslide, Auntie is under attack for badly failing the nation. Right-wing commentators are spewing outrage about liberal establishment bias and ministers are boycotting Radio 4’s flagship Today programme amid dark hints that decriminalising non-payment of TV licences is just the start.

The BBC, like the NHS, is one of those much-loved British institutions. So much so that, as ever, we like as a nation to show our appreciation by putting in the boot. This time, though, it feels the critics may have a point.

It is tempting to agree with those who argue that since Corbynistas are also blaming the media for their electoral kicking so for once it must be doing something right. However, I fear that this is not only way too glib, it also underlines the fundamental flaw in journalism as practiced by the Brahmins of the BBC.

All too often, it seems, their idea of providing news and current affairs output in which the nation can trust, is to triangulate to the middle ground and sit there, sneering at both sides. At a time when the centre rules, as it did under Blair and Cameron, that might just wash. But today, after leading us blundering into the global financial crisis in 2008, and bungling things ever since, the liberal establishment can no longer claim either the moral high ground or a monopoly on truth.

When I started as a reporter, 35 years ago, it took me a while figure out why things I thought were important or interesting never got covered, and why, if I was to have a future in the business, I needed to wise up to what news editors looked for and quick.

Far from being objective reporters of sacred and unassailable facts, the dirty little secret about journalism is that it is a highly subjective affair. Reporters and editors constantly exercise their personal judgement, weighing up daily or, increasingly, in these days of rolling news, minute by minute, what fits “the news agenda”, and what slant will appeal to their editors and ultimately the public at large.

Reporters and editors often lack the time, and the skills, to know if something is objectively true. So they default to gut feel and a vague sense of what sounds right and fair to the average reader or listener. This usually means people like them. 

Great editors, like Paul Dacre of Daily Mail fame, could smell the way the wind was blowing and steer their papers bang on course to wherever Middle England was drifting at any one time.

Here in the UK, where newspapers wear their politics on their sleeve, we like to think the BBC is above such blatant bias. But we are fooling ourselves if we think the BBC can reflect the nation without having a view on where the nation is.

The debate about Brexit and the choices this country faced going into last week’s election was never really about facts, it was about what kind of country we want to be and what the future might look like. This is not an argument for allowing politicians who spout nonsense to be given an easy ride. But all too often the voices given the most house room seem to all subscribe to the same notion that only the mad, bad or stupid would want to leave the EU. Or that more government spending is the solution to every ill.

Britain is unique in what we used to call the free world, in treating news as a public utility, dispensed free at the point of use by the State. But in our peculiar British way, the BBC manages to be by the State, but not of the State.

At a time when social media have given every citizen their own printing press, and big tech has sucked the lifeblood out of a once diverse national and local press, the BBC represents something precious, which we must be wary of putting at risk. But that is not a reason to avoid looking some hard truths in the face. Quite the opposite in fact.