The BBC has recently come under fire for breaches of nonpartisanship, after a leaked memo criticised the broadcaster for, among other things, anti-Israel and pro-trans biases. A Panorama documentary on Donald Trump last year has provoked the most ire, after the programme edited the President’s speech in a manner seemingly implying he explicitly encouraged violence on January 6 2021.
It’s very painful to have to break ranks with my fellow left-wingers; progressives are pack animals. But looking at the ongoing saga surrounding the BBC’s (lack of) impartiality, the blase responses which the Left have so far offered have been far below par.
I’ve heard left-wingers expressing a sort of disappointed acceptance, diminishing the significance of recent revelations, seen when Lewis Goodall granted Panorama’s misrepresentation of Trump’s speech, before asking: “but how much does that matter?”
Actually, it matters quite a lot. The Panorama documentary was a flagrant contravention of the BBC’s standards that almost certainly misled viewers by misrepresenting Trump’s speech. I’ve heard some argue that it was an unintentional error—as if that matters. The BBC misrepresented a major political figure; whether it was deliberate is irrelevant to the damage it may have caused.
I’m no fan of Donald Trump. The man is capricious, odious, and politically grotesque. But amid the precipitous dilution of truth which we encounter in the digital age, impartiality in broadcast news is crucial.
Elsewhere, breaches of the BBC’s standards are manifest, with a documentary on Gaza pulled from BBC iPlayer after the revelation that its narrator was the son of a Hamas official, and newsreader Martine Croxall found to have broken the BBC’s impartiality guidelines for rolling her eyes at the words ‘pregnant people,’ before correcting the phrase to ‘women.’ It doesn’t matter on which side of these issues you fall; these are major failures from the state broadcaster.
So the Left’s shoulder-shrugging is dismaying. But more broadly, it is desperately counter-productive.
Regardless of the sincerity of progressives diminishing the significance of the Panorama fiasco, their nonchalance gives the distinct impression of double standards. Each time someone on the Left plays some variation of the tune of ‘it’s no big deal,’ the left wing transmogrifies into an infantile political syndicate cheering partisan journalism which from which it benefits: bias is fine, provided it’s left-leaning. Progressives are thereby rendered rule-bending tribalists, brushing off principles the second they can get ahead. The appeal of the Left should be its scruples. But its blasé response to this BBC scandal impresses the idea that it will sack off its beliefs to trip the other side.
Truth has a vital place in journalism, and its erosion is a real concern, while the Left’s diminishing of the BBC’s bias grossly damages its credibility. Impartiality is essential for equipping political actors with the tools to conduct discourse. Calling out its absence is the only way to keep hold of it.
“George Orwell statue” by sam.romilly is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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BBC Partiality Should Worry all of us
The BBC has recently come under fire for breaches of nonpartisanship, after a leaked memo criticised the broadcaster for, among other things, anti-Israel and pro-trans biases. A Panorama documentary on Donald Trump last year has provoked the most ire, after the programme edited the President’s speech in a manner seemingly implying he explicitly encouraged violence on January 6 2021.
It’s very painful to have to break ranks with my fellow left-wingers; progressives are pack animals. But looking at the ongoing saga surrounding the BBC’s (lack of) impartiality, the blase responses which the Left have so far offered have been far below par.
I’ve heard left-wingers expressing a sort of disappointed acceptance, diminishing the significance of recent revelations, seen when Lewis Goodall granted Panorama’s misrepresentation of Trump’s speech, before asking: “but how much does that matter?”
Actually, it matters quite a lot. The Panorama documentary was a flagrant contravention of the BBC’s standards that almost certainly misled viewers by misrepresenting Trump’s speech. I’ve heard some argue that it was an unintentional error—as if that matters. The BBC misrepresented a major political figure; whether it was deliberate is irrelevant to the damage it may have caused.
I’m no fan of Donald Trump. The man is capricious, odious, and politically grotesque. But amid the precipitous dilution of truth which we encounter in the digital age, impartiality in broadcast news is crucial.
Elsewhere, breaches of the BBC’s standards are manifest, with a documentary on Gaza pulled from BBC iPlayer after the revelation that its narrator was the son of a Hamas official, and newsreader Martine Croxall found to have broken the BBC’s impartiality guidelines for rolling her eyes at the words ‘pregnant people,’ before correcting the phrase to ‘women.’ It doesn’t matter on which side of these issues you fall; these are major failures from the state broadcaster.
So the Left’s shoulder-shrugging is dismaying. But more broadly, it is desperately counter-productive.
US Government Shutdown: The Blatant Cruelty of the SNAP Crisis
Regardless of the sincerity of progressives diminishing the significance of the Panorama fiasco, their nonchalance gives the distinct impression of double standards. Each time someone on the Left plays some variation of the tune of ‘it’s no big deal,’ the left wing transmogrifies into an infantile political syndicate cheering partisan journalism which from which it benefits: bias is fine, provided it’s left-leaning. Progressives are thereby rendered rule-bending tribalists, brushing off principles the second they can get ahead. The appeal of the Left should be its scruples. But its blasé response to this BBC scandal impresses the idea that it will sack off its beliefs to trip the other side.
Truth has a vital place in journalism, and its erosion is a real concern, while the Left’s diminishing of the BBC’s bias grossly damages its credibility. Impartiality is essential for equipping political actors with the tools to conduct discourse. Calling out its absence is the only way to keep hold of it.
“George Orwell statue” by sam.romilly is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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