47. BBC News and the Reform reality distortion field
The BBC wants to 'restore the trust' of Reform voters by changing its news output to better reflect their worldview.
Previously: The Dead Cat Dilemma
Adam Bienkov at Byline Times has a story today on the minutes of a meeting of the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee that took place in March. They reveal that BBC News’ CEO, Deborah Turness, gave a presentation outlining plans to alter “story selection” and “other types of output, such as drama,” to win the trust of Reform voters.
The CEO, News and Current Affairs provided the Committee with a presentation on plans to address low trust issues with Reform voters. The Committee discussed the presentation. Committee members recognised the importance of local BBC teams in the plan, given their closeness to audiences. Directors discussed how story selection and other types of output, such as drama, also had a role to play. An update on progress would return to a future meeting.
This is the latest example of how the ratchet turns rightwards and news executives bend over backwards to accommodate the desires of the right and far right. Can you imagine a similar meeting at the BBC to address a crisis in trust among Green Party members or dissatisfaction from anyone on the left of politics about the corporation’s news and other output?
Those of us who expressed concerns that the BBC’s news coverage between the years of say… 2015 to 2019 was in any way unduly influenced by the right wing were routinely dismissed as mad conspiracy theorists. Now, BBC News executives are happy to put down in black and white (and publish on their website) that they’re working to mould coverage to suit the tastes of Reform voters.
The members of the Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee are BBC Chair Samir Shah, who was appointed by Rishi Sunak’s government in December 2023, BBC Director General, Tim Davie, the former Pepsi marketing man and unsuccessful Tory council candidate, Robbie Gibb, former GB News executive and ex-comms chief for Theresa May, and Turness, the CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs.
Just last month, Davie made a speech promising to help “tackle the crisis of trust” in British society. But it’s ever more apparent that right-wing complaints about the BBC are heeded while those that come from the left are marginalised and ignored. Reform voters won’t ‘trust’ the BBC unless it morphs totally into a publicly funded version of GB News. The corporation’s attempts to pander to the right will never be enough.
Nigel Farage howls loudly and often about the BBC and the “political establishment” being out to get him, even as Reform MPs and other figures in the party are given luxurious coverage across TV, radio and online. Just this morning, Zhia Usuf, the ex-party chairman who resigned and returned over 48 hours last week, was given kid glove treatment on the Today programme by Nick Robinson (“His first broadcast interview since resigning…”)
Three years ago, in this newsletter, I wrote that the BBC was like a burgled house being circled by arsonists. Now, once again, the executives at the top of the corporation are getting out the petrol and matches to please the very people who want to see it burned to the ground.
What would BBC News output look like if it were to satisfy the hardcore of Reform voters who think the BBC is controlled by a nest of communists out to destroy Britain? Who would it need to have fronting the News at Ten for them to feel it represented their worldview properly? A nightly two-hander by Roy Chubby Brown and Jim Davidson broadcast from a set built based on Nigel Farage’s imagined idea of a working men’s club?
The minutes of that BBC committee represent compliance in advance, a desperate supplication to the demands of a future Nigel Farage government. Farage condemns the BBC as “a political actor”, so the corporation discusses how it might change its performance so Reform and its voters will applaud it. That will never happen. The result of attempting to further contort reporting to encourage Reform voters to trust the BBC will be to quicken the erosion of the trust that other parts of the population have in the public service broadcaster.
The reason the right-wing press keeps howling that the BBC is institutionally left-wing is that the corporation has fundamentally conservative and compliant figures at the top. They will keep conceding to the demands of the right. The reporting around the Hamilton by-election was a good indicator of how the project to please Reform voters is going: Labour won the seat, but the tone of the coverage was about how Reform were the ‘real’ winners. On Today this morning, Zia Yusuf was introduced with a monologue from Robinson about how the thought of Nigel Farage as Prime Minister is “no longer unthinkable”.
The key point in those minutes is the suggestion that BBC News should alter ‘story selection’ to increase Reform voters’ trust in its output. Boil that down to its essential meaning, and you get an editorial agenda that is stretching to resemble the way that part of the electorate wants to see the world. Once you’re talking about trying to please one set of voters, you’re into the business of focusing more on the story part of news than the facts as you find them.
In the run-up to my book, Breaking: How the Media Works, When it Doesn’t, and Why it Matters, out on June 12, I’m publishing an edition of this newsletter every day (mostly excluding weekends and bank holidays). This is number 47 of 50.
Thanks for reading. Please consider sharing this edition…
… and upgrading to a paid subscription:
We’re fucked, aren't we?
Reform is already setting the agenda, both in the print media and on the BBC. They get a ridiculous amount of coverage, given that they only have five (or is it six?) MPs.