THE walls of Broadcasting House have finally begun to crumble.
Over the 25 years that News-watch has been monitoring BBC output, millions of minds have been tainted, conned and betrayed by the relentless streams of bias and propaganda churned out by the Corporation. Now a day of reckoning has arrived.
Tim Davie and Deborah Turness, the BBC’s Director-General and Director of News, are set to resign after revelations that a BBC One Panorama programme in the build-up to last year’s presidential election deliberately falsified a Donald Trump speech to suggest that he fomented rioting on Capitol Hill. The BBC at the highest levels knew about the fraud for many months and concealed the truth.
It is arguably the most serious scandal in the Corporation’s history. But let us be clear: this collapse did not happen last week, or even last year. It has been at least a quarter-century in the making, the inevitable result of successive governments’ cowardice and BBC arrogance.
So-called accountability has been left in the hands of the BBC itself – as judge and jury of its own standards – and Ofcom, and both bodies have become bastions of self-interest and complacency, censorship of dissenting voices and fraudulent fact-checking.
For at least 25 years government ministers have mouthed platitudes about ‘valuing our great national institution’ while ignoring every warning about its bias, its secrecy and its contempt for ordinary viewers. They have watched the BBC turn from a national broadcaster into a self-appointed moral guardian and spouter of propaganda, and they have done nothing.
The 19-page Michael Prescott dossier, now public thanks to the Daily Telegraph, leaves no room for doubt. Prescott, a veteran journalist, was appointed as independent adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Guidance and Standards committee (ESGC) three years ago after the Dyson report into the BBC deception connected with the Martin Bashir interview of Prince Diana.
Prescott’s detective work into Panorama’s doctored edit of Trump’s speech found that this was not a slip of the editing razor blade but a conscious falsification. He reported this to the ESGC but they did nothing.
He was so frustrated that he then compiled 19-page dossier which chronicled a newsroom culture where bias is hard-baked into the fabric of the newsroom, dissent is punished, and truth is doctored at the whim of the Corporation. His findings included that BBC Verify – supposedly founded by Davie and Turness as a bulwark against ‘fake’ news’ – produced fake ‘race bias’; BBC Arabic parroted Hamas propaganda, and gender-critical reporters were censored by Stonewall-aligned editors.
And where have successive governments been through all this? Looking away. Every administration since Blair has promised reform and delivered none. They have merely tinkered ineffectually with elements of the BBC Charter.
The Conservatives, who spent 14 years complaining about bias, never once dared to act, introducing instead in the latest mid-term Charter review (2023) a limp half-cocked rearrangement of the Charter deckchairs. Lisa Nandy, as Labour’s culture secretary, gave yesterday ‘full confidence’ in the very leaders who presided over deception. Confidence in a Gormenghast of bureaucratic stone-walling!? What an insult to the millions of licence-fee payers who are forced to fund the lie.
Westminster’s relationship with the BBC and Ofcom is an endless pantomime of mutual flattery: the Corporation flatters the political class as enlightened; the political class flatters the BBC as sacred. Together they have created a two-tier system of truth, one for the state broadcaster and one for everyone else.
For decades, ministers and BBC executives have hidden behind the same delusion: that the licence fee buys independence. In reality it has bought impunity. No other public body enjoys compulsory funding, near-total regulatory immunity, and the right to mark its own homework. Ofcom, allegedly charged with keeping the BBC honest, has become its accomplice, upholding only a handful of impartiality complaints in the years it has allegedly been the cop in charge.
The result is a broadcaster accountable to nobody, insulated by self-righteousness and by the political fear of taking it on.
Davie claimed when he was appointed DG that his main mission was restoring BBC impartiality. What is now clear as a result of the Prescott dossier is that what was proposed was bureaucratic hot air.
The BBC’s editorial culture has become a secular priesthood or cult with a worldview so uniform that it can no longer perceive its own prejudice. From Brexit to Trump, from climate to Gaza, it preaches one moral narrative and damns dissent as heresy. Now the deceit has been exposed from within, and the high priests have fled the altar.
This is a time for reckoning. The BBC’s failure is not merely institutional: it is constitutional. A state-mandated broadcaster that manipulates political reality has betrayed the democratic trust on which it was built.
We were told by a revolving door of BBC autocrats that our data were ‘selective’. We were smeared, ignored, patronised. Now the Corporation itself admits to the very crimes we documented: fabrication, suppression, denial.
No cosmetic ‘review’ or internal inquiry can repair this. Many now believe that the BBC is beyond repair and should be scrapped. For the time being this is unlikely to happen. In the meantime, the only remedy is drastic structural surgery:
· Abolish the BBC’s self-regulation. Replace the Executive Complaints Unit with an independent Public Media Ombudsman empowered to compel evidence and issue binding rulings;
· Remove Ofcom from the picture. It is useless as a public guardian of impartiality because it is ram-full of BBC apologists;
· End compulsory funding. The licence fee is the root of impunity; move to voluntary subscription or a time-limited public levy;
· Strip the BBC of moral exceptionalism. It is a broadcaster, not a church;
· Rebuild trust through transparency. Every guest list, every complaint, every correction must be public. Rigorous systemic monitoring of BBC output, both internal and external must be compulsory.
Lisa Nandy’s ‘confidence’ statement will go down as one of the most tone-deaf pronouncements in modern media history. To express confidence in the architects of deceit is to become part of it. The Government must decide whether it serves the people or the Corporation that manipulates them. If Parliament fails now to impose external accountability, then the collapse of public trust in the BBC will become the collapse of trust in politics itself.
Tim Davie and Deborah Turness are going, and that is a moment of high drama. But they are only symptoms. The sickness lies deeper: a moral arrogance that mistakes ideology for virtue and monopoly for independence. For 100 years the BBC has arrogantly told Britain what to think. Today, through those like the Telegraph (and TCW since its inception) who see the true picture, Britain has finally begun to answer back.
Let this be the moment when the public, not the broadcaster, sets the terms of truth. Let this be the end of the age of impunity. Because after 25 years of denial and betrayal, enough is enough.
Tim Davie has stepped down as BBC Director-General over the misleading editing of a Trump speech, with news chief Deborah Turness also calling it quits. The Mail has the latest.
In a statement, Mr Davie said: “There have been some mistakes made and as Director-General I have to take ultimate responsibility.”
It comes after the scandal hit broadcaster was this week plunged into a fresh crisis after an internal dossier exposed a string of incidents that demonstrate serious apparent bias in the Corporation’s reporting.
The concerns regard clips spliced together from sections of Mr Trump’s speech on January 6th, 2021 to make it appear he told supporters he was going to walk to the US Capitol with them to “fight like hell”.
The documentary Trump: A Second Chance? was broadcast by the BBC the week before last year’s US election.
Mr Trump’s White House has since accused the BBC of “100% fake news”. …
Deborah Turness, the CEO of News, has also resigned following criticism that the BBC documentary misled viewers
The resignations also follow a newsroom revolt after a newsreader who corrected “pregnant people” to “women” while live on air was rebuked.
The BBC has also faced fierce criticism for its coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and transgender rights.
While the dossier, written by former journalist Michael Prescott and sent to the BBC board, also raised serious concerns about BBC Arabic’s reporting on Gaza.
The corporation had already been under pressure after admitting to breaking editorial guidelines when Bob Vylan’s “deeply-offensive” chant of “death to the IDF” at Glastonbury was broadcast live to millions.
There was a nationwide backlash to the set, which saw Vylan lead the crowd in a chant of “death, death to the IDF,” as well as “from the river to the sea”, and used the term “f****** Zionists”.
The band’s frontman, real name Pascal Robinson-Foster, even claimed that BBC staff on the ground at the event told him that they “loved” his set, and called it “fantastic”.
Mr Davie was forced to apologise to the Commons’ culture select committee, and told staff the broadcast was “deeply-offensive” …
Following his departure, Mr Davie said: “I wanted to let you know that I have decided to leave the BBC after 20 years. This is entirely my decision, and I remain very thankful to the Chair and Board for their unswerving and unanimous support throughout my entire tenure, including during recent days.
“I am working through exact timings with the Board to allow for an orderly transition to a successor over the coming months.
“I have been reflecting on the very intense personal and professional demands of managing this role over many years in these febrile times, combined with the fact that I want to give a successor time to help shape the Charter plans they will be delivering.
“In these increasingly polarised times, the BBC is of unique value and speaks to the very best of us. It helps make the UK a special place; overwhelmingly kind, tolerant and curious. Like all public organisations, the BBC is not perfect, and we must always be open, transparent and accountable. While not being the only reason, the current debate around BBC News has understandably contributed to my decision.
“Overall the BBC is delivering well, but there have been some mistakes made and as Director-General I have to take ultimate responsibility.”
Stop Press: Trump’s White House has wasted no time in wading into the high profile resignations which just hit the BBC:
Stop Press 2: Broadcaster Colin Brazier has berated presenter Nick Robinson after he claimed there was a political campaign to “destroy” the BBC, reports the Mail.
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