Is the BBC Immune to Criticism

What happens when a “world class” British institution starts promoting Hamas propaganda, and censuring a journalist for eye-rolling when she’s ordered to use the term “pregnant people” instead of women? Or with President Trump and the Panorama fiasco?

Yes, the problem isn’t that the BBC edited a quote to make it look like the US President said something that he didn’t say - it’s that people have dared to point this out. Rather than acknowledge its critics maybe have a point, as per Ms Polly Toynbee at the Guardian (see below), it’s far better to recite the glories of entertainment at the BBC - e.g. Celebrity Traitors, Strictly (never watched them myself) etc.

And, like the Bolsheviks, you pivot the real issue as being those awful counter-revolutionaries spreading their malice.

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We should only defend the BBC, if it’s actually good. 

It’s true value rests on the quality and integrity of the work it produces. 

What I think the BBC needs to change:

1. BBC recruitment is a problem. I have a BBC friend, and they’re largely from the upper-middle classes having attended elite universities. There’s almost a monoculture of similar people from similar social backgrounds with similar mindsets. They don’t even see their own biases and preconceptions because they all share them. The word “diversity”, to institutions like the BBC, never really touch on how people think. It’s the usual box-ticking exercise on forms, and then, hey-presto, we’ve got loads of diversity.
2. It cannot sanction or punish journalists for expressing a more gender-critical approach to the trans debate.
3. The BBC have forgotten the first rule of journalism: report the news, don’t create news. Especially with the Israeli war, it rushes to report to make Israel look bad.
4. I would also scale-back on the social and cultural deconstructionism of past few decades. Long story, but it’s leading to their own demise.
5. The BBC managers need to respond v. quickly when serious lapses take place. BBC managers, including the Chairman, Mr Shah, and Director-General Tim Davie, knew about the doctored Trump documentary as far back as January. But, rather than take action, they did nothing. Then, by ignoring the warnings of the independent standards adviser Michael Prescott about the Panorama programme when they were raised in internal meetings. The net effect, to any reasonable person, is that the BBC appeared to have hoped the whole fiasco would remain buried.

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Polly Toynbee writing in “If you care about the BBC, stand up and defend it: this could be the beginning of the end” (Guardian, Nov 2025):

The BBC’s enemies have taken two scalps and inflicted maximum damage. The shock resignation of the director general, Tim Davie, and the head of news, Deborah Turness, make it look as if the BBC accepts that it does indeed suffer from “serious and systemic” bias in its coverage of issues including Donald Trump, Gaza and trans rights. But in this political coup, only the BBC’s sworn ideological foes think a cherrypicked sample of journalistic errors amounts to “systemic” bias ....

How right Nick Robinson was on Saturday’s Today programme: “There is also a political campaign by people who want to destroy the organisation that you are currently listening to,” backed up by the veteran broadcaster John Simpson, who said Robinson was “exactly right”. Many more need to speak up everywhere. Boris Johnson said he’d stop paying the licence fee until the BBC grovelled. Bravo again for Robinson’s retaliatory tweet: “Hands up all those who think Boris Johnson is well placed to lecture anyone else on upholding standards & admitting mistakes.” (Attackers calling the BBC a bunch of lefties should remember Robinson is a former chair of the Young Conservatives.)