The BBC increasingly appears to be enduring a slow-motion collapse under the weight of market forces and its own hubris. It’s been another rough week for the Corporation, in particular being forced to apologise for broadcasting a documentary from Gaza starring the young son of a senior member of Hamas.
When you add recurring accusations of bias to its irresistible urge to preach – rather than entertain or inform, as it should – plus a succession of avoidable scandals, sometimes it almost feels like the BBC actually wants you to hate it.
The BBC2 documentary Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone was broadcast on 17 Feb, and featured the 14-year-old narrator Abdullah Al-Yazouri, who turned out to be the son of Ayman Alyazouri, a man described as being “Hamas royalty”. None of this was mentioned at the time.
The day after the BBC’s apology on Wednesday the world witnessed the grotesque carnival of Hamas parading four dead hostages – including two children – in black coffins.
A BBC breaking news bulletin reported this with a headline “Hamas says it did ‘everything in its power’ to keep the hostages alive”. Everything, that is, except kidnapping them in the first place. That was supported by three Hamas statements “as context”.
The BBC is an organisation whose obsession with “balance” has mutated from the admittedly tricky position of trying to pander to no one to barely disguised legitimisation of Iranian-backed terrorists.
The documentary has since been removed from BBC iPlayer. But whatever the reason for the decision to broadcast Hamas propaganda – negligence or something more underhand – it reinforces all the worst suspicions about what is going on behind the scenes.
What defines the BBC is a culture of exceptionalism. The establishment of BBC Verify, for example, continues to confound rational thought. How can the BBC justify the expense of a 60-strong team of apparently investigative journalists whose jobs appear to be either stating the bloody obvious or reporting stories that regular BBC staff should be working on anyway?
This week, BBC Verify analysed Donald Trump’s claim that Volodymyr Zelensky was an unelected dictator. Thanks for all the searing insight. It’s about as useful as last year’s calendar.
All this in the same week it was revealed Doctor Who was in trouble, with the last series’ ratings being the lowest since the data was first published in 2014. Amid accusations from Whovians that storylines have become increasingly gimmicky, it’s reported the incumbent Ncuti Watoga is rumoured to be on the verge of quitting.
Although Doctor Who has always been for children, it hasn’t always been childish and preachy. BBC outriders were quickly dispatched in its defence, along the lines of: ‘It’s the viewers on iPlayer that matter’, ‘It’s the under-35 audience we care about’, ‘Doctor Who has always been progressive’, reactions that showcase the paranoia of an institution in a permanent state of wagon-circling.
Doctor Who is the flagship of flagships. It promotes – and reflects – the values of the BBC at any given time.
I don’t much care if it does the Wokey Cokey – the show has featured trans rights, ‘correct’ pronouns and non-binary identity, while targeting anti-abortion campaigners and tackling ablest stereotypes by getting Dalek dictator Davros out of his ‘wheelchair’, but bludgeoning the audience with agendas is profoundly boring.
It insults our intelligence and viewers will vote with their zappers. The BBC could do with appeasing those who actually pay the licence fee, rather than chasing those who never will. Gen Z has little to no emotional or material investment in it.
The lack of a commercial imperative in the BBC – so beneficial in the days of terrestrial broadcasting – has helped create an unwieldy, semi-religious institution ill equipped for its current challenges. It is beholden to groupthink and orthodoxy on issues that do not match the evolving heterodoxy of the public, provoking persistent complaints about its portrayal of British history in its programming or colourblind casting of dramas purporting to be historically accurate. In these cases it isn’t the casting itself that offends, but the intention behind it. You feel like you are being bashed over the head.
The BBC allowed Gary Lineker to effectively write his own code of conduct. The Proms are dumbed down every summer. There’s almost no arts coverage on its television channels at all. Radio 2 can’t seem to get anything right.
Last month it was accused of misrepresenting London-based production staff working on The Traitors as Scottish to meet its diversity quotas. (The BBC has since said the number of Scotland-based staff employed on the reality TV show increased between its first and second series and maintains the productions met rules imposed by Ofcom, its regulator.)
Meanwhile, the BBC’s insularity meant it could not police the conduct of its worst employees. The scandals it so cowardly failed to confront in-house are a litany of hubristic oversights: Jimmy Savile, Stuart Hall, Rolf Harris and Huw Edwards being the very worst of a bad bunch that seems to grow by the year. The cumulative effect for audiences is alienation and disloyalty.
In some sense this is a tale as old as time. In 2016, the Commons select committee concluded that BBC internal culture was “bureaucratic, arrogant and introspective”. Both sides believed the BBC was against them over Brexit. I’m an outlier in that I still cling to the fantasy that public service broadcasting is important. To me, that means the BBC in some form.
Sadly, it looks as if the challenge from streaming services and digital media is insurmountable, ever diminishing the public’s trust with young progressives increasingly seeing the BBC as too conservative and conservatives seeing it as too progressive.
The BBC is in a no-win situation, like a team lining up to face New Zealand’s All Blacks: if you mock the Haka they accuse you of disrespect. If you ignore the Haka they accuse you of disrespect. If you confront the Haka they accuse you of disrespect. There seems no way out.
Even so, so many of the BBC’s long-term problems are of its own making. At least it still has The Traitors (for now).
The BBC increasingly appears to be enduring a slow-motion collapse under the weight of market forces and its own hubris. It’s been another rough week for the Corporation, in particular being forced to apologise for broadcasting a documentary from Gaza starring the young son of a senior member of Hamas.
When you add recurring accusations of bias to its irresistible urge to preach – rather than entertain or inform, as it should – plus a succession of avoidable scandals, sometimes it almost feels like the BBC actually wants you to hate it.
The BBC2 documentary Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone was broadcast on 17 Feb, and featured the 14-year-old narrator Abdullah Al-Yazouri, who turned out to be the son of Ayman Alyazouri, a man described as being “Hamas royalty”. None of this was mentioned at the time.
The day after the BBC’s apology on Wednesday the world witnessed the grotesque carnival of Hamas parading four dead hostages – including two children – in black coffins.
A BBC breaking news bulletin reported this with a headline “Hamas says it did ‘everything in its power’ to keep the hostages alive”. Everything, that is, except kidnapping them in the first place. That was supported by three Hamas statements “as context”.
The BBC is an organisation whose obsession with “balance” has mutated from the admittedly tricky position of trying to pander to no one to barely disguised legitimisation of Iranian-backed terrorists.
The documentary has since been removed from BBC iPlayer. But whatever the reason for the decision to broadcast Hamas propaganda – negligence or something more underhand – it reinforces all the worst suspicions about what is going on behind the scenes.
What defines the BBC is a culture of exceptionalism. The establishment of BBC Verify, for example, continues to confound rational thought. How can the BBC justify the expense of a 60-strong team of apparently investigative journalists whose jobs appear to be either stating the bloody obvious or reporting stories that regular BBC staff should be working on anyway?
This week, BBC Verify analysed Donald Trump’s claim that Volodymyr Zelensky was an unelected dictator. Thanks for all the searing insight. It’s about as useful as last year’s calendar.
All this in the same week it was revealed Doctor Who was in trouble, with the last series’ ratings being the lowest since the data was first published in 2014. Amid accusations from Whovians that storylines have become increasingly gimmicky, it’s reported the incumbent Ncuti Watoga is rumoured to be on the verge of quitting.
Although Doctor Who has always been for children, it hasn’t always been childish and preachy. BBC outriders were quickly dispatched in its defence, along the lines of: ‘It’s the viewers on iPlayer that matter’, ‘It’s the under-35 audience we care about’, ‘Doctor Who has always been progressive’, reactions that showcase the paranoia of an institution in a permanent state of wagon-circling.
Doctor Who is the flagship of flagships. It promotes – and reflects – the values of the BBC at any given time.
I don’t much care if it does the Wokey Cokey – the show has featured trans rights, ‘correct’ pronouns and non-binary identity, while targeting anti-abortion campaigners and tackling ablest stereotypes by getting Dalek dictator Davros out of his ‘wheelchair’, but bludgeoning the audience with agendas is profoundly boring.
It insults our intelligence and viewers will vote with their zappers. The BBC could do with appeasing those who actually pay the licence fee, rather than chasing those who never will. Gen Z has little to no emotional or material investment in it.
The lack of a commercial imperative in the BBC – so beneficial in the days of terrestrial broadcasting – has helped create an unwieldy, semi-religious institution ill equipped for its current challenges. It is beholden to groupthink and orthodoxy on issues that do not match the evolving heterodoxy of the public, provoking persistent complaints about its portrayal of British history in its programming or colourblind casting of dramas purporting to be historically accurate. In these cases it isn’t the casting itself that offends, but the intention behind it. You feel like you are being bashed over the head.
The BBC allowed Gary Lineker to effectively write his own code of conduct. The Proms are dumbed down every summer. There’s almost no arts coverage on its television channels at all. Radio 2 can’t seem to get anything right.
Last month it was accused of misrepresenting London-based production staff working on The Traitors as Scottish to meet its diversity quotas. (The BBC has since said the number of Scotland-based staff employed on the reality TV show increased between its first and second series and maintains the productions met rules imposed by Ofcom, its regulator.)
Meanwhile, the BBC’s insularity meant it could not police the conduct of its worst employees. The scandals it so cowardly failed to confront in-house are a litany of hubristic oversights: Jimmy Savile, Stuart Hall, Rolf Harris and Huw Edwards being the very worst of a bad bunch that seems to grow by the year. The cumulative effect for audiences is alienation and disloyalty.
In some sense this is a tale as old as time. In 2016, the Commons select committee concluded that BBC internal culture was “bureaucratic, arrogant and introspective”. Both sides believed the BBC was against them over Brexit. I’m an outlier in that I still cling to the fantasy that public service broadcasting is important. To me, that means the BBC in some form.
Sadly, it looks as if the challenge from streaming services and digital media is insurmountable, ever diminishing the public’s trust with young progressives increasingly seeing the BBC as too conservative and conservatives seeing it as too progressive.
The BBC is in a no-win situation, like a team lining up to face New Zealand’s All Blacks: if you mock the Haka they accuse you of disrespect. If you ignore the Haka they accuse you of disrespect. If you confront the Haka they accuse you of disrespect. There seems no way out.
Even so, so many of the BBC’s long-term problems are of its own making. At least it still has The Traitors (for now).