Canker at the heart of the BBC must be ripped out and more bosses must be shown the door
It irks me that it took Donald Trump to get rid of the BBC’s director-general and its head of news.
The President of the United States might not have interfered directly in the affairs of our national broadcaster. But his shadow loomed over the whole affair and he was the wronged party, so I guess justice is served.
But now Agent Orange is threatening to sue the corporation for $1 billion. That’s £761,200,000 in real money, or £32 for each licence payer. Which means me. And you, Sir. And you Madam.
If the old buffoon were to win, the licence fee would have to go up by 20 per cent just to pay off the damages.
You have to wonder why the Government hasn’t acted to bring the corporation under control. It has been clear for years, if not decades, that there is a canker at the heart of our public service broadcaster.
Tim Davie has stepped down over Panorama’s doctoring of a speech Trump gave shortly before the riot on Capitol Hill in Washington. Two sections of the speech, minutes apart, were spliced together to make it seem he was inciting the riot.
It was like a “cut and shut” operation at a dodgy garage, with much the same result: a car crash.
This is not acceptable journalism and Davie, 58, who has had a 20-year career at the BBC, had to go. Deborah Turness, also 58, the chief executive of BBC news, quit too, saying: “In public life, leaders need to be fully accountable.”
So the high heidyins have gone, brought down by Trump’s fury, a whistleblower at the corporation and meticulous reporting by the Daily Telegraph.
Job done, then, right? Well, no. Not by a long chalk.
The two bosses have fallen on their swords but they were symbolic figures. What about those lower down the food chain, the ones who actually brought this calamity on the BBC?
Is the editor of Panorama still in post? Is the journalist who misled viewers by joining up the two sections of video that together told a bare-faced lie?
They too need to take responsibility. If they don’t, they should be fired. As I watched this story unfold, I could not help thinking of the many stellar names that have been associated with the Panorama programme.
They include Richard and David Dimbleby, Robin Day, Ludovic Kennedy, Charles Wheeler and Tom Mangold. What would these heavyweights of journalism think of the programme now?
Perhaps it’s hard to tell from the outside. The “Window on the World” is all fogged up.
So where does the BBC go from here? First, it must replace its toppled executives. And it should not do so from within. The broadcaster is infested with a poisonous mindset.
Only by bringing in newcomers without the BBC baggage can the corporation recover its status as a paragon of broadcasting, and with that the public’s trust. Though finding people willing to take an axe to the dead wood and reset the culture might be a tough ask.
It is such a big and bolshie organisation that taking on the d-g’s job amounts to responsibility without power.
This whole affair calls into question the training journalists now receive. It is more than half a century since I was doing block release courses at Harlow technical college and I don’t know much about the BBC’s journalism training because I have never worked there.
But I do know that the principles of journalism are simple: a) find your story; b) tell it powerfully in plain English; c) stick to the facts that you absolutely know to be the truth – no assumption, no padding, no magnifying – and no larding the story with your own opinions.
Partly, the BBC’s mess is a societal problem. With the boom in social media, we now have “citizen journalists”. (I noticed the other day that far-Right figurehead Tommy Robinson was styled as such a person.)
They are like influencers: little or no training; out to make a name for themselves by whatever means it takes; and always with an axe to grind.
This is the world in which BBC journalists now live. These are the attitudes that sway them. Some, though not all to be fair, are determined to be activists. It is not enough for them just to report news in Britain and the world; they feel they must influence affairs, shape society in their image.
A case in point was revealed in The Times yesterday. Cath Leng, a former chief writer for BBC news, claimed she was forced out in 2023, after 25 years working for the corporation, for her “gender-critical views”.
She also alleged that a BBC News at Ten editor “deferred” to a junior reporter on what language he should use when reporting transgender stories. Leng claimed journalists were complicit in the censorship of such stories.
I hate to say it, but this all started with the move towards recruiting brainy people, as opposed to the turnipheads I grew up with. They (and here I include myself) might not have had a starred First from Oxford, but they knew their communities inside out; and they had a nose for news and the ratlike cunning to bring it home.
I have known plenty of good journalists with Oxbridge degrees. But just as they did not go to elite universities for nothing, they are not content to slave downtable either. They want to be Clive Myrie, or Beth Rigby.
Well, good luck to them. But, as C P Scott, a distinguished editor of the Guardian, once said: “Comment is free, but facts are sacred.”
Journalists of every stripe need to understand and remember that. We are all bound by the rigid rules of properly reporting the news. The real news, not the fake sort.
*****
Kelvin MacKenzie, former Sun editor and night editor at the Daily Express, is Kopping it again.
He was interviewed by the BBC on what he thought of its latest scandal, the shabby journalism that led to the resignation of two of its top executives.
This was described by the Hillsborough Survivors Support Alliance as “an insult”. And officials at Liverpool Football Club were said to be “furious”.
They will never forgive him for the headline in the Sun that said: THE TRUTH. The paper blamed Liverpool fans for the disaster that killed 97 fans in a crush.
MacKenzie, 79, later apologised. But he will carry the controversy like a cross for the rest of his life.
Will he care? Will he hell.
*****
Justice Secretary David Lammy revealed yesterday that 91 prisoners have been freed by mistake between the beginning of April and end of October. At least three, and possibly four, are still at large.
This time Lammy had the grace to inform the Commons respectfully, unlike his shameful performance at the Dispatch Box at last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions.
The backlash has been so fierce that Lammy must by now feel like he has been in a bare-knuckle bout with the Gypsy King Tyson Fury.
Allow me to get a Right hook in before he crumples to the canvas.
He squared up to the Opposition Front Bench at PMQs, shouting and blustering, trying to deflect or dismiss the question of whether a second asylum seeker had been mistakenly released following the freeing of migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu.
Lammy revealed himself as thuggish and a bully. Five times James Cartlidge, Shadow Defence Secretary, asked Lammy the legitimate question.
And five times he batted it aside, coming up with some spurious tosh about how the prisons crisis was all the fault of the Tories and how he had ordered tough new measures to prevent the Kebatu debacle happening again.
He knew that another sex pest asylum seeker was out on the street when he should have been safely locked up. And he was concerned for his job as Justice Minister.
The Tories knew it too but, having lured Lammy into their trap, were too incompetent to spring it. They asked their question once too often and the Speaker shut them down.
The whole episode was the kind of thing that gives democracy a bad name. Lammy, who as Deputy Prime Minister was standing in for Keir Starmer for the first time, should face disciplinary action.
This should take the form first of a monstering from his boss. But he should then be taken to task by the Speaker.
Lammy had the answer to the Tories’ question. He refused to give it to the House. This should be illegal. And no, I don’t mean unparliamentary, I mean illegal.
PMQs are an important part of the democratic process. Anyone who does not respect that process should face a ban from Parliament for a significant period.
And while we are at it, if this does not come within the remit of the Speaker, then we should invest him with fresh powers.
Shouting “Order, order!” just doesn’t cut it any more.
*****
Right, no shilly-shallying. England will win the World Cup of Rugby in 2027. You read it here first.
I have seen enough of our boys and the opposition over these last two weeks of Autumn internationals to know that they have it in them.
The best rival teams are either in decline or in the process of rebuilding. We still have two years to reach our peak and with the players at our disposal, that will be some high point.
It will be marvellous to watch… and long overdue.
RICHARD DISMORE
12 November 2025
