Excluding the obligatory roll of the eyes, the one gesture I think of when the exhaustingly relevant name Trump is mentioned is the grating, repetitive whining of “Fake News!”. But this simple-minded deflection is seeping into UK discourse, and causing great agitation.
More and more frequently, the far-right rallies their self-righteous, Trump-esque crusade against the institution, and naturally all of her institutional disciples. Currently, target number one is the BBC. But we trust the BBC, right? For all Brits, ‘The Beeb’ existed as an omniscient benchmark for culture and current affairs: News, Radio, Attenborough, Horrible Histories.
We’ve all engaged with it for as long as we’ve known. Yet, it remains impossible to drown out the war cries from either end of the political spectrum. The issue lies in the saturation of the news market. Anyone with a phone can be a journalist; credibility, in the age of misinformation, is like gold dust. ‘The Beeb’ excluded, news outlets are private businesses.
This makes us consumers, not readers, of news. It doesn’t matter if you actually buy a paper anymore (and we all know you don’t), because as soon as you click that headline, your impression is being reported and packaged for sale before you can say ‘Capcha!’. It follows that any story must be packaged to sell first, and inform second.
Narratives are dictated by your Murdochs, Mullens, and Lebedevs. There is no doubt that where journalistic integrity ends, private interest begins. And who wears private interest better than our very own homegrown populist fanatic, Nigel Farage, sworn enemy of the omnipotent institution.
Nigel’s doting admirers at GB News won Reform UK countless supporters by slating the integrity of the BBC, churning out headlines like “BBC accused of breaching impartiality guidelines” or “forced into embarrassing climbdown” on the weekly.
It is agreed amongst the far-right that the BBC serves the invisible leftist overlords, intentionally leading the British public away from the noble pursuit of patriotism. But this assault accounts for more than one frontline; left-leaning media are no strangers to spats over neutrality.
Take, for example, the BBC’s coverage of the genocide in Gaza. I use this term deliberately; the UN itself agrees there is not a shadow of a doubt that these atrocities amount to anything smaller.
So, why won’t the BBC? When asked in 2023, the organisation held the same, banally frustrating line as the Labour government: they will not use the term until the 2024 ICJ case reaches a verdict on whether or not a Genocide is being committed (despite the UN itself being staunchly clear on the matter). This was a critical mistake.
By repeating the same lobbyist-approved script as the incumbent government, the BBC unknowingly walked straight into a political minefield, exposing them to a barrage of accusations; to which they replied with a masterful stroke of public accountability, vowing to ‘do better next time’. But can two things be true at once here? Can the BBC be left-leaning on one issue, and right-leaning on the other? We must accept that no news outlet is neutral.
This may well be because they have revenue targets and competition. But, more fundamentally it’s because they’re all simply collections of individuals, each with their own incentives, goals, and, in some cases, a great political relationship with Russia. And yes, the BBC relentlessly courts controversy, but it is ours to hold accountable.
The pundits take issue: state-run media is, historically speaking, not great at impartiality. And this sentiment is incredibly important because state-run is exactly where we are tripping ourselves up. The BBC is publicly owned (or at least the four people still paying their TV license owned) and distinct from the government, with their own bureaucracy, programming, and occasional prolific sex pest.
But it stands that it cannot be bought or sold: and no, the BBC is not impartial, regardless of their commitment. But, at least nobody has a clue, and it isn’t as blatant as everywhere else.