An Impartiality Crisis in the BBC
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear” reads the statue of George Orwell outside of BBC’s Headquarters in Westminster, unveiled in 2017. Balancing impartiality and free speech within the BBC is not a new issue but this balance has generally been upheld to at least a satisfactory extent – the BBC has employed a range of members from across the political spectrum with few major debates being sparked over an outright bias. However, more recently, increasing questions have been raised over a tendency for the BBC to favour views from the Right to those on the Left – beginning with revelations over the Director-General of the BBC having been a member of the Conservative Party, also including the BBC Chair, who donated £400,000 to the Conservatives and helped facilitate an £800,000 loan to Boris Johnson – and finally erupting with the decision to suspend Gary Lineker over a tweet opposing the Government’s Illegal Migration Bill.
As many have pointed out, it seems unlikely that this suspension would have taken place if the tweet had instead been in support of the Government policy. There are plenty of examples of right-wing tweets sent that the BBC deemed acceptable – not limited to Alan Sugar tweeting a photoshopped picture of Jeremy Corbyn next to Adolf Hitler. Next to some of the tweets and statements made by right-wing members of the BBC, the tweet by Linker seems more acceptable – especially given that the tweet echoed views from actual holocaust survivors on the Government’s policies. Given that the BBC has a problem with political bias that reaches even the top of its directorship, questions have emerged over how the BBC should move forwards from this, and what its enforcement of impartiality should look like.
It must be noted however, that the BBC provides an invaluable role: it maintains a high journalistic standard in the UK; provides free and balanced information for those abroad – especially in countries increasingly clamping down on free press; and acts as a globally recognised high standard representative of UK journalism, among many other roles. Calls for the BBC to be defunded, privatised, or shut down would massively damage the press standard in the UK – the US clearly showing the damaging results of partisan, biased reporting. Attempts to implement US-Style news programmes into UK television have failed, in part as a result of the BBC upholding high standards of reporting.
Reform of the BBC is therefore necessary to uphold its high standard – not an easy goal to achieve, but a vital one. It is clear that both the Chair and Director-General must step down – failure to uphold their own guidelines on impartiality should not be tolerated. Individuals within the BBC must be permitted to share personal views independently, on their own platforms – as Andrew Neil was permitted to do, sharing his views on Climate Change, Brexit, and the SNP, while adhering to impartiality while on the BBC platform. But these standards must be uniform – views from across the spectrum should be treated equally – Gary Lineker should be as free to express views on the government as Andrew Neil was on Brexit. While Lineker’s suspension has been lifted and the BBC is claiming to review its impartiality guidelines, to ensure lasting change, these guidelines should be enforced by a neutral body from the top. The government should no longer have any role in appointing the BBC Board – instead this must be kept in check by a completely independent standards committee.
Controversy over bias within the BBC is an inevitable issue – and a necessary one. But when cases of bias are as clear and obvious as we have seen in the Gary Lineker case, it is vital for the BBC to enforce its own guidelines, even – and especially – against those at the very top of the institution.
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