Turning points at the BBC: who can save it from mediocrity and bias?
(Alamy)
This is my 150th piece for TheArticle. Looking back, I have noticed that the pieces that have had the most resonance with readers have been about the BBC, especially BBC News programmes, about their bias, how it has lost touch with the country, its failure to properly cover Israel and anti-Semitism, how often presenters insist on editorialising on air instead of being impartial.
I have loved writing about Paula Rego and Antony Sher, the beautiful music documentaries of Christopher Nupen and John Wyver’s documentary about the building of Coventry Cathedral, but they don’t seem to strike the same chord as my criticisms of the BBC. These speak to more people.
Over Christmas I listened to some wonderful programmes on Radio 4, but they left me feeling wistful, as if we are reaching the end of a golden age at the BBC. Melvyn Bragg and his guests discussed Fritz Lang on In Our Time, with such passion and erudition. I hope he will present it forever but he is now 82, so I fear this is a hope that will not be realised. The Lang programme was first-rate, but my recent favourites have been on Plato’s Gorgias and on Herodotus, both broadcasting classics.
I also heard Andrew Marr’s final radio programme, after almost twenty years, on Start the Week, coming soon after his last television programme on BBC1 on Sunday. He chaired a discussion with Professor Catherine Noakes, Teresa Lambe, one of the co-developers of the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, and James Nestor about the scientific race against Covid-19 and the lost art of breathing.
And, another great programme, Jeremy Irons and Dame Eileen Atkins reading Eliot’s Waste Land, preceded by Rowan Williams describing when he first read Eliot as a teenager and Jeanette Winterson speaking about how her mother burnt all her books on a bonfire. This was the BBC at its best, interesting people talking about great filmmakers, literature and ideas. But for how much longer?
Over on BBC1 television, the news readers are taking over. Fiona Bruce on Question Time, Clive Myrie on Mastermind, Sophie Raworth on Sunday Morning. I wouldn’t trust any of them to talk interestingly about Weimar cinema, Plato or Eliot or about the state of politics, or even the BBC. Nor would I trust any of the executives who appointed them to commission anything like the programmes I listened to, enthralled, over Christmas. Will BBC TV stop the drift to exclusively middlebrow broadcasting? This is the first worrying turning point that faces the BBC.
But, of course, dumbing down is one of the lesser vices at the BBC. The New Year has started with more complaints about allegations of racism and anti-Semitism, not from the mainstream media but from The Jewish Chronicle under its new editor, Jake Wallis Simons. The JC’s front page on New Year’s Eve was dominated by two news stories. The first headline was “Damning new evidence undermines BBC’s Oxford Street racist slur claim”. It began: “The JC can reveal damning new evidence which appears to undermine the BBC’s claim that an anti-Muslim slur was uttered by a victim of the anti-Semitic Chanukah bus attack on Oxford Street.”
The second headline read: “Demands for BBC to adopt IHRA as row rages over ‘biased’ reporting.” The article began: “The BBC is being urged to adopt the internationally recognised definition of anti-Semitism amid mounting uproar over its ‘biased’ reporting on Jews and Israel… The demand by senior British politicians and Jewish groups comes after global racism watchdog the Simon Wiesenthal Centre (SWC) named and shamed the BBC on its annual ‘Global Antisemitism Top Ten’ list. The BBC was ranked third for repeatedly producing errors in its output which SWC claims have systematically ‘slandered’ Jews.”
This is the in-tray that welcomes the new BBC News chief Deborah Turness, formerly of ITN and NBC. The Director-General, Tim Davie, was quick to arrange a meeting with the Board of Deputies President Marie van der Zyl, after she criticised the BBC’s refusal to apologise for its coverage of the first story. It remains to be seen whether Ms Turness will likewise acknowledge the importance of this issue and the BBC’s problematic coverage of anti-Semitism and Israel in general.
Will she do a better job than her predecessor in handling the crucial appointments she will need to make over the next few months? This is the second worrying turning point that faces the BBC. At stake here is not only the confidence of the Jewish community in British public broadcasting, but the general credibility of the Corporation, at home and abroad.
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