Everyone has an agenda when they pronounce about the BBC, but not everyone is open about it, so here’s my declaration of interest. I treasure the BBC. I do so not just because I enjoyed being one of its graduate trainees and presenting programmes on the Beeb. It is one of this country’s institutions that we can genuinely call world class. The BBC is not perfect, but its flaws are greatly outweighed by its many virtues. No other country has a national broadcaster like it and we’d be fools to allow it to be destroyed. A monthly cost per TV-owning household of £13.25 – a single trip to the cinema will often set you back more – is outstanding value for the calibre and range of its output. The aspiration to be fair and balanced in its news reporting and analysis is not always impeccably fulfilled, but in my experience BBC journalists make an energetic effort to achieve that goal and are doing so in an environment in which it has become more and more challenging.
Trustworthy news is critical when so much of public life is being drenched by a tsunami of misinformation and the threat from deep fakery is growing ever greater. This is also a period characterised by intense political partisanship. That makes it more essential than ever that we have a broad church national broadcaster to provide an arena in which people of all political denominations can engage with one another and a place to which the public can confidently turn at moments of national drama. During the pandemic, more Britons went to the BBC than anywhere else for reliable information. During election nights, the BBC is most people’s first choice to bring them the results. It is a binding agent for Britain at times of both crisis and celebration.
As well as presenting the flagship TV news bulletin for two decades, Huw Edwards has in recent years been an award-winning anchor at both elections and royal events. His was the voice that broke news of the Queen’s death to millions. He led coverage of her funeral and then the coronation of her son. So any storm engulfing him was bound to inundate the BBC as a whole.
A lot has happened in the ugly period since the frenzy began with a story on the front page of the Sun. The Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper, which no one could ever confuse with a friend of the BBC, claimed that a “top star” that it did not name had bought sexually explicit images from a young person, now aged 20. We were later told by the young person, in a statement issued by lawyers, that there was “no truth” to the “rubbish” claims. They also suggested that the Sun knew about their denials at the time of publication. The whirlwind was already howling by then and it was carrying a lot of noxious gases. Between that first story and Vicky Flind’s dignified statement on behalf of her husband, there were nasty guessing games on social media and other BBC personalities were assailed with false claims about them. Some feel they were “hung out to dry”. I have no doubt it was horrible for the targets of malevolent trolling, but the BBC’s decision-makers would have been ethically dubious as well as taking a high risk of getting into legal trouble had Mr Edwards been identified without his consent.
The BBC has tacitly acknowledged that it has lessons to learn from how it dealt with the initial allegations about such a prominent presenter after its complaints team first made contact with the young person’s family back in May. It looks like the corporation lacks an effective mechanism for escalating grievances that need urgent investigation and resolution by senior managers. Otherwise, from what we know so far, it seems to me that the BBC has dealt with this pretty much as well as any organisation could when trying to navigate a minefield of legal and moral complexities. It handed over the product of its own investigations to the police. Scotland Yard and the South Wales constabulary subsequently declared their inquiries had found no evidence that any crime has been committed. The corporation’s coverage has been professional. It was the BBC itself that was the first to report three accusations by present or past junior staff members of inappropriate behaviour by Mr Edwards. We should not rush to judgment about that while investigations continue. He is in hospital, suffering from a “serious episode” of his “mental health issues”, according to his wife, and has yet to give his account.
I hear a lot of people complaining that a disproportionate amount of attention has been paid to these events, not least by the broadcaster itself. For night after night, BBC reporters and presenters stood outside its headquarters or sat in its studios talking about the crisis at the BBC. For some critics, this is the organisation being self-obsessive. For some of the BBC’s friends, this is the broadcaster doing its foes’ work for them by self-flagellating. The BBC is always in a bind when it becomes news itself. Had the story not led its bulletins, it would then have been charged with trying to protect one of its own. It is essential for maintaining its ethos and public trust in the BBC that the news division scrutinises the corporation as independently and vigorously as it would any other organisation. The BBC’s self-questioning is an admirable quality and one starkly absent from its enemies in the rightwing press.
The pile-on by them has been joined by Conservative politicians. Rishi Sunak had no opinion to offer about Boris Johnson after the Commons found his disgraced predecessor guilty of serially lying to parliament. Yet when it came to this, the prime minister found time in the middle of the Nato summit to tell reporters that he found it “shocking” and “concerning”. Lee Anderson, the brutish deputy chairman of the Tory party, had the brazen temerity to smear the BBC as a “safe haven for perverts” just days after his fellow Tory MP Chris Pincher was recommended for an eight-week suspension from parliament over allegations of sexual assault. Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, told the BBC “to get their house in order”. Anyone in need of good housekeeping tips wouldn’t be sensible to seek them from members of the party that has generated a deluge of scandals as well as inflicting the premierships of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss on Britain.
Exploitation of the BBC’s travails by Tories is in service of their agendas. The near-term one is about the run-up to a general election that they expect to be extremely tough for them. The Conservatives can usually count on the majority of the newspapers to megaphone Tory messages and take lumps out of their opponents. That makes it highly important to the health of our democracy that our media ecosystem has non-partisan broadcasters. It will suit the Conservative machine if the BBC becomes too cowed to perform its vital function of scrutinising all the parties without fear or favour.
It is not novel for the ruling party to have a combative relationship with the BBC. Winston Churchill battled with John Reith, the first director-general, over coverage of the 1926 General Strike. Margaret Thatcher was furious about the way the BBC reported on Northern Ireland and the Falklands war and her husband, Denis, called it the “British Bastard Corporation”. Tony Blair’s Number 10 had an epic confrontation, which cost the director-general and the chairman their jobs, over the Iraq war. For all that, previous governments have not contemplated dismantling the corporation. It has only been in recent years – since the Brexit referendum – that this idea has advanced up the agenda of one of our major political parties. What’s new today is that there is a significant faction on the right who are not satisfied with merely bashing the BBC. They want to emasculate and even obliterate it as a universal service dedicated to impartial reporting.
Ministers are muttering about a further squeeze on the corporation’s budget. An extension of the freeze on the licence fee would seriously hurt when inflation is so high. Tories have talked of abolishing the licence fee altogether while failing to come up with a credible alternative funding model that would sustain the BBC as we know it. That talk will return in the event, admittedly an unlikely-looking one at the moment, that the Tories secure another term in power.
The BBC is sufficiently robust and popular to weather the storm over Huw Edwards. Another Conservative government could pose a much more lethal threat to its existence.
• Andrew Rawnsley is Chief Political Commentator of the Observer
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