The biased BBC is indulging in gossip and fantasy

Something very strange has been going on in BBC News programmes, on radio and on TV, over the past week or so. There has been an escalation in attacks on the Conservative Government, on Boris Johnson’s leadership bid, and on Brexit. These attacks are coming so thick and fast, and in so many different flagship programmes, that I wonder if it is time to ask if the BBC is at war with the Tories?

This is tricky territory, of course. The BBC always claims it is neutral and argues that because it often comes under attack from Left and Right this shows that it is even-handed. The best thing, then, is to look at the evidence as dispassionately as possible.

On Tuesday, the BBC broadcast the Tory leadership debate. Its coverage has widely been attacked as a shambles. I have not read a single defence. The format was hopeless, the set was a disgrace, and made all the candidates look uncomfortable. Emily Maitlis, in particular, has come under fierce attack on social media and in the press for interrupting speakers, especially Boris Johnson, for her hectoring tone, and for failing to control the debate. The Daily Mail argued that she asked Johnson far more questions than any other candidate, often in a surprisingly aggressive tone. Candidates were left in the strange position of having to choose whether to reply to the questioners carefully selected from the general public, or whether to reply to Maitlis asking her own questions, according to her own agenda.

I say “carefully selected from the general public.” I am joking, of course. The most serious problem with the BBC’s coverage was that they invited two questioners, one an Imam from Bristol who has made a number of unsavoury public statements on social media, and another, who was a Labour council candidate last year in south London and previously worked at the party’s HQ. The screening process was a disaster.

Second, the Today programme seems to have been loading the dice in its choice of interviewees and news stories on Thursday and Friday. On Thursday, the main interview at 8.10 was with the Dutch PM who launched into a passionate attack on Brexit. On Friday most of the domestic news stories were in one way or another attacks on the Conservative Party or on Brexit: Mark Field’s “horrific” (according to Dawn Butler) attack on a Greenpeace activist, talk of “skulduggery” in the Tory leadership election, an interview (again the key interview at 8.10) with Mark Carney, who provided a useful soundbite attacking Boris Johnson’s Brexit policy, which the BBC will doubtless run all day, just as they did with soundbites from the Dutch PM on Thursday. Who knew the views of the Dutch PM were so interesting to British news listeners and viewers? Finally, there was a news “story” about a supporter of Rory Stewart receiving an abusive letter from another Tory MP. A big news story, really?

Question Time on Thursday was happy to join the party. I only watched for a few minutes, enough to be appalled by Fiona Bruce’s unpleasant tone towards the Conservative MP, Kwasi Kwarteng and the prominent pro-Brexit businessman, Tim Martin.

Thursday was also when the skulduggery debate took off. A number of prominent BBC reporters and presenters (including Laura Kuenssberg, Nick Robinson and, surprisingly, the saintly Andrew Neil) hinted at shenanigans in the voting (Boris supporters. None produced any evidence at all. This was pure gossip and speculation.

Thursday’s Newsnight ran with this “story”, again with no evidence at all. At the time of writing (Friday morning) no complaints have come from the Gove camp, or indeed, anyone else involved in the leadership campaign. In what sense, then, was this a news “story”? No complaint, no evidence, and yet there it was on the BBC’s Ten O’Clock News, on Newsnight and on Today the following morning as a lead story.

Finally, Field-gate. This broke while Newsnight was on air and Kirsty Wark immediately called for him to be sacked. Not a word about whether we needed more evidence than the short mute clip available. No question about why security had failed to intervene or how they had let forty Greenpeace activists into the hall, or why no one seemed to protest against what Field was doing. No questions about how “peaceful” this demonstration was or wasn’t (what was the activist carrying in her hand?), or whether there should be any limits to protest in public spaces at a time when an MP has been killed and when everyone is concerned about terrorist attacks. Nick Watt was far more judicious in a later discussion and Today on Friday morning balanced a discussion with a Greenpeace activist by including the different views of a Conservative MP, Peter Bottomley.

Since Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader, the BBC has been soft on antisemitism on the Labour Left; it has been consistently negative towards Brexit but more so in the past few days than at any time I can remember; it has been consistently critical of Boris Johnson, culminating in Emily Maitlis’s aggressive interviewing and in the “story” about alleged “skulduggery” and “shenanigans” by the Johnson campaign; and it has got itself worked up in a real frenzy over the Mark Field story at a time when there are news stories of huge international significance, such as escalating tensions between America and Iran.

This is not the end of the world. But put together it looks as if a number of flagship BBC programmes have a view of the Conservative Party, of Brexit and of Boris Johnson in particular, which are less impartial than we might expect from BBC News. At times, this week, it has seemed as if the BBC has decided to go to war with the Tories.