You can watch my very rare outing on the BBC today, here. You can see why they keep me off: bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod…
I'm grateful to have been allowed on air by @BBCPolitics, for the second time this year.
But it drives me mad that Farage and the dark money thinktanks are on every day, while it's an event to see anyone to the left of Keir Starmer.
We're considered extremists. They aren't.
But it drives me mad that Farage and the dark money thinktanks are on every day, while it's an event to see anyone to the left of Keir Starmer.
We're considered extremists. They aren't.
Here's my column about how and why I think the BBC falls over. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
The BBC has been phenomenally useless over the government's pandemic failures, to give just one example. Only now is it beginning to cover the scandals that some of us have been writing about for 5 months. It should be leading on this stuff, not trailing miles behind.
The heavy lifting has been done by the @GoodLawProject, @openDemocracy, @BylineTimes and a few of us at the @Guardian. But the BBC, with its far greater resources, has looked the other way, until the pressure became so great that it was forced to allow a small amount of coverage.
Investigative (or even inquisitive) journalism has been replaced by court reporting: who said what to whom, who's in, who's out, what an unnamed source "close to No 10" told me.
I started work at the BBC, in 1985. You would scarcely believe what it was like then: active, pugnacious, determined to nail government lies. In January 1987, Thatcher moved against it, and its journalism more or less collapsed overnight. It has become ever more timid since.
Disciplined repeatedly, it now avoids people who are committed to the kind of journalism it once exemplified like the plague. Having been almost entirely shut out of the BBC, I've turned to other places to discuss the issues it should be covering. In particular @DoubleDownNews
Though @DoubleDownNews is just two people, it has repeatedly cast light on stories that the BBC, with all its might and majesty, has done nothing to expose or explain. It's a shameful situation.
What's missing from BBC News and Current Affairs is not the capacity.
Not the skills
Not the knowledge
It's the courage.
And this is a problem that comes from the top.
Plenty of good BBC journalists are straining at the leash of editorial control. But it gets shorter every year
Not the skills
Not the knowledge
It's the courage.
And this is a problem that comes from the top.
Plenty of good BBC journalists are straining at the leash of editorial control. But it gets shorter every year
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