November 30, 2023 - 4:45pm
Yesterday, the BBC announced its 43-year-old flagship current affairs programme Newsnight would halve its budget, halve its staff, drop its investigations and focus on “studio-based debates”. The decision had been in the running for years, with declining television audiences and a licence fee freeze forcing cuts. The widespread eulogising, however, pointed to a more symbolic marker beyond the sobering economic reality of news journalism. This was the end of an era, not just for Newsnight, but one too for the BBC.
Accompanying this latest radical restructuring was a more foreboding announcement. Resources from the programme, alongside other cuts across BBC News will now be directed towards new “digital roles”, with the “BBC Verify” team set to expand its capacity and influence.
Since being established in May the unit dedicated to “pulling back the curtains” to create “radical transparency” has courted controversy. Its launch was followed up by widely criticised research fronted by the unit that claimed a quarter of the British public “believed Covid was a hoax”, leading it to stoke panic about the threat of violence from such a sentiment. Despite promising to authoritatively fact-check its content as means to restore trust, many have questioned why its work did not prevent the BBC from prematurely reporting on the Al-Ahli Hospital explosion.
Unsurprisingly, insiders have expressed frustration with its positioning as the new face of BBC News, given it appears to do little other than dress up the basic foundations of journalism as part of some arcane process of “verifying”. As one frustrated Newsnighter I spoke to put it: “The skillset of the members of the verify team are what you need in any news operation,” pointing to a wider internal sentiment that the operation was little other than a marketing ploy.
This pivot towards BBC Verify and a digital-first strategy also reflects a deeper sea change across the world of mainstream journalism. News executives have sought to blame the rise of apathy and mistrust in their journalism on the scourge of fake news and disinformation on social media platforms. BBC News Chief Executive Deborah Turness described this threat combined with AI as “terrifying,” while summits on its danger have become a fixture for the professional development of mainstream journalists. Such a change in reporting priorities is also found in the latest generation entering the profession, with a recent survey of Zoomer journalists placing “tackling disinformation” above “holding government and institutions accountable”.
It’s hard not to see BBC Verify’s marketed focus on disinformation and performative “fact checks” as a futile effort to restore trust. Newsnight, that old symbol of broadcasting prestige that built trust on the authority of its analysis and investigative reporting, casts a long shadow over this newfound purpose. With its resources increasingly directed towards the noise and trends of digital media and accompanying “disinformation”, the old reporting model of the BBC threatens to be inverted entirely.
The corporation now risks becoming defined less by old edict to educate and inform, but instead a moralistic crusade to check the perceived misjudgements of its audience.
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SubscribeAnd yet the fall in Newsnight’s audience – down almost three quarters since Paxman’s retirement in 2014 – illustrates the decline in the trust and standing of BBC News brought about by its own bias. One sided news coverage doesn’t just erode trust. It is also boring, and leaves out much of what is important to people in their own daily lives.
I can’t imagine where that audience will have gone if they were tired of bias and one-sided reporting. Could it be more to do with the fact that literally the entire media industry has changed in that period?
It’s not being bored of bias that turns people off the BBC. They become tired of being challenged and instead retreat to their own little comfortable biased bubbles. They then tell themselves that the other sources are biased, don’t report what is important to the real people and are not to be trusted to comfort themselves in their biased bubble bed.
The BBC is accused of bias from all sides – that is a sure sign it’s doing its job. We will only realised what we had when it’s gone and too late to get it back.
Well then I guess the 99.5% of the population which doesn’t watch Newsnight are in their own comfortable little biased bubble, and the 0.5% who do are enjoying the benefits of being challenged.
Not correct. BBC News (and many other news broadcasters) have been heavily filtering news through a very narrow filter for a long time now.
You imply that they provide a broad view of what’s happening in the world and consider matters from a range of viewpoints. They don’t. Instead, the practice “news by omission” – or as I call it “curated news”. – where they both select what is reported (and what is not) and overlay an editorial/idealogical viewpoint.
Yes, we may sometimes have narrow opinions and inhabit bubbles and echo chambers. But that’s no excuse for the BBC to do so !!! Even more important in that context that they don’t stoop to our level.
I think a lot of the frustration in the comments is precisely because the BBC has lost its way and abandoned so many people who were its strongest supporters and admirers. If they had paying customers, the temptation to do this might at least be reduced.
The BBC seems to have forgotten that its mission is to serve its audience. Whether it likes them or not. Instead, they seem obsessed with trying to “lead” opinion – they probably consider themselves “thought leaders”. But their collective work and intellect isn’t – these days – up to that job. And nor is it their actual job. It’s just the one they think they deserve.
Where is it said that the mission of the BBC is to serve its audience? And if that word actually appears in some constitution or charter, what is the meaning of “serve”?
I’m using the word “mission” a little loosely, in the sense that any business ultimately exists to serve its customers. Many of us believe that the BBC has become so self-righteous (borrowing a phrase from the Kissinger article today), that it now effectively exists only to serve itself.
The BBC will doubtless keep pretending that it is somehow “special” and “not a business”. But it is. The NHS tries to pull the same trick. They want funding without accountability (in the NHS’s case, it seems to be the government who are considered to be accountable, while the NHS managers taken the decisions and spend the money – I’ve never understood why people don’t question this more critically).
And the alternative to serving its customers is, of course, not serving its customers !
At least with the NHS you do get some very diligent and hard working staff (or contractors) There is no scope for this in the jeering undergraduate common room that is the BBC. Look what their proxies did on 7th Oct if you want to see the sort of “people” they are.
Serve as in delivering non biased truth.
What, then, does the BBC mean when it says it is a public service broadcaster?
If there was ever a time the British public needed the BBC it was during Covid. Our unwritten constitution relies on us having an independent journalistic estate that questions the Government and institutions, that delves down into the evidence and holds a sceptical stance to assaults on freedoms. Instead the BBC lead the Government’s campaign of fear and doubled down on “political Science” and thus ushered in the first period of Fascist government Great Britain has ever experienced. It fortified the suspension of so called “unassailable” human rights, it championed the dismantling of “bodily autonomy”, it celebrated the greatest movement of wealth from the working classes to the global uber rich, It backed the powerful and abandoned the powerless. With nit’s Trusted News Network it took its power global. It was a the very front of digital passports and vaccine apartheid, vastly disproportionately effecting the British Ethic communities. It did not question the sacking of 40,000 social care workers and failed to mention that a reported similar number “jumped ship” before they were pushed. I could go on and on; as a previous vigorous supporter of the BBC I was betrayed, not least as my wife and I were part of the estimated 4 million self employed who were jettisoned to the winds. Why would it fail to question cost or benefits of it’s celebrated lockdowns. It has failed spectacularly in the biggest test of the The Corporations existence and now can have no purpose.
Excellent, measured and thoughtful comment, Ash, with which I am in entire agreement.
I too was a lifelong, vociferous and proud supporter of the BBC against all comers, right up until 2017. The change in its attitude almost immediately after the 2016 referendum, was as though someone had thrown a switch. And when people insist that they don’t see this, I simply cannot any longer believe them.
The sense of betrayal, by a corporation which I had regarded all my life as a trusted friend and source of reliable information, has been truly shocking.
But my view has now hardened, to the same extent as has the BBC’s. I now want to see it broken up, sold, and out of business. Nothing less will satisfy me. It has become an out-of-control monster, funded by coercion of the population it has so grievously harmed.
There’s a mad , but useful bit on Wikipedia that details every list of guests there has been on BBC Question Time.
I got to it through a Remainer banging on that Nigel Farage had been the most frequent invitee in the lead up to Brexit.
But in the lead up, and the post-vote three years of cultivated chaos afterwards.
You hardly ever see anything other than a 4-1 split in favour of Remainers, once in a while 3-2, but more often than this even 5-0.
This happened (I guess) because the BBC stuck to Lib Dem, Scot Nat, Lab, Cons, and comedian or author format in which the Lib Dem, comedian or author, and Scot Nat would be invariably and implacably opposed.
Even afterwards and notwithstanding the official Lab policy of studious ambiguity the Lab rep woul almost always be Remain…and many times the Conservative would be Gauke, Hammond or someone else from the ‘voted Remain but honour the vote’ faction.
I accept this is a relatively minor point, but I think it shows a kind of ignorance, to be honest a studied, wilful ignorance, of bias indicative of many others one can cite.
Over time on what was back then appointment viewing you cannot help but believe it was an attempt to affect public sentiment.
Never once were 3 really passionate and committed Leave people faced with two Remainers.
It seems that the BBC made a better stab at neutrality during WW2
Well said Ash Bishop
The left have to accuse the BBC of bias just to keep up the pretence that it is not biased. I bet they have a rota to take it in turns.
If the left were to be honest and admit that the BBC is their creature change would have to happen
And the left are so used to the BBC echoing their views that when it shows the slightest lean to the right the left see it as an outrage, and proof of a right wing bias.
True
Billox – I watched Newsnight for nearly 40 years- listed to bbc radio 4 and 5. Since Brexit it has been unbearable. Stopped completely. it ‘went’ years ago. And yes I miss it. And yes too late to get it back. Paxman was last time they had that centrist credibility. He would have asked ‘what is a woman?’
The suggestion that everyone saying it is biased serves as proof of its neutrality is a lazy cliche. A better question is, ‘Who is happy to get rid of it?’
You will find that the people fighting to retain the current BBC model are overwhelmingly woke, metropolitan types.
Directly or indirectly it employs most of them.
Indeed. The blatant and self-admitted bias of the likes of Emily Maitlis during the Brexit impasse era have led directly to these decisions. Night after night after Newsnight, those seeking to implement the outcome of the referendum were ridiculed and the UK cast as “an embarrassment”.
I first noticed a change in the tenor of “news” programmes during the first Gulf War, when everything the allied powers did to overturn the invasion of Kuwait were presented as disastrous… until Saddam’s vaunted “Republican Guard” turned and ran.
It was a change from reportage to liberal left opinioning. The “studio debates” will continue with this bias and will be watched only by those whose opinions coincide with that bias.
In other words, the BBC has become and will double down on being increasingly irrelevant and although the digging of its own grave started long ago, the requisite six feet under has now been reached.
Whoever appointed – and retained – Emily Maitlis as the anchor of Newsnight consigned it – and the BBCs dwindling reputation – to the dustbin.
They had Lewis Goodall, and that James O’Brien as well. Broadly anti-British, specifically Leavephobic.
Not just a crusade to check the misjudgements of its audience, but a mission to correct, censure and campaign to shut down its COMPETITORS, like GB News. It should not be the role of a broadcaster to check the work of others, but this is precisely the “Ministry Of Truth” role the BBC is adopting for itself, rather than being a proper investigator itself. Cutting back Newsnight is just another move in that direction.
Whilst there is a clear need for verifiying content I’m uncertain the BBC has the integrity any more to appoint itself in that role.
Including, presumably, the ability to lie on one’s CV in order to get a job. Hopefully people remember Marianna Spring and her little lapse.
“Fact checking” appears to be woke little graduates doing some Googling and having a look at Bellingcat before pitching in on the side of the favoured narrative. When the facts look favourable to the broad left-liberal outlook, they will check them. Otherwise, it’s innuendo, silence, bias and agenda-rigging as usual.
Ugh. The last death throes of an industry with one foot in the grave. No one tunes in anymore so let’s try to destroy the credibility of our competitors. Sorry, it ain’t going to work. No one tunes in because you’re awful. Going after substack or Unherd or whatever won’t change that.
Plenty on here to keep them going that’s for sure.
If the government would stop insisting the public pays for the BBC, then it could happily find its market niche and consumers could freely decide whether to support it financially or not.
The government aren’t forcing us. You can opt to not pay and say you won’t watch BBC. The more people who do this, the sooner the BBC will have to compete with other channels in the normal way. It breaks my heart to no longer trust the BBC. I used to love it. But now I’ve realised I can opt out, I will do so next time my licence fee is due.
You still need a licence to watch live TV
Well I’ll look into it more nearer the time but https://www.defundbbc.uk/ looks encouraging to me.
Do you want me to fact check that or should we leave it to bbc verify?
BBC news circling the drain … doubling down on exactly the errors that got them into the mess. It feels like an organisation in denial about the reality the rest of us are living in.
Virtually every statement the BBC make confirms that they “are” in denial”. The days of “feels like they are ” are long gone.
Risks? Stop mincing your words!!! This ship has sailed and sunk in public esteem. All trust is gone. The BBC since 2010 has become a leading servant of and slave to the ever more radical and divisive identitarian cult. Poor Nihal can no longer bear to work with those awful white faces such is the derangement of this credo. The State Pravda has seen a total rapid Orwellian collapse in its value systems. It no longer sees its Charter mission to tell and pursue objective impartial truth on behalf of the people – too many of them are hideously white and biased against The Nine. As Meg says, they have a Different Truth now. It is is now open in and proud of its advocacy of an apocalyptic climate emergency, ditto net zero, the two year horror of lockdown – fuelled by its sick catastrophism – and its promotion of CRT, BLM, PLO – all the Higher Truths of the Progressive Order. Since the Equality Cult mutated wildly post 2010 through all arms of the State, ‘Diversity’ and the Equality cult has become THE core mission and purpose of this Woolworth like relic of the 1920s. It is now poisoning society, something its New Army of 1984 O Briens..aka Verify..will sadly never apologise for (The Bowen Way) nor confirm.
GOOD RIDDANCE!
DEFUND THE BBC!
It is biased against the Right, the White and men.
Ooh the BBC’s new motto appears through the mists: “a moralistic crusade to check the perceived misjudgements of its audience”.
Studio debates? What like Question Time with its suspiciously always right-on audience even when there is a Conservative government with a huge majority?
Having tired of reporting the actual news, and subsequently being criticised heavily for the version that it puts out, the BBC has decided to “fact check” (i.e. poison the well) the news of other organisations. It can rubbish other news outlets and continue its bias whilst dressing it up as “fact checking”. Thus it can criticise all other reporting without having to assert/report anything and so end up with the same result.
The BBC used to be a good truthful organisation. Now it is not. It is controlled by one mindset – metropolitan vaguely left – in a rich sort of way – anti British- and pro BLM, Trans, Hamas, etc.Mind you once it succeeds in these wishes they will be surprised when the people it is puffing up turn on them.
It now perceives its role to change the minds of normal people to their (BBC) weird irrational view of the world. It does this selectively . It reports things it agrees with. It doesnt report positive things it disagrees with. And it takes sides – Vis Gaza- it doesnt report it gives opinions.
The BBC is the communications arm of the Establishment… and currently the Establishment has been ‘marched through’ and being (perhaps) culturally over-extended has to insist on people sticking to The Narrative. Otherwise people might start objecting to all the Establishment ideas that are for their own good.
So if you must follow The Narrative you don’t really need any journalistic insight into events… so fewer journalists and more right-think debates.
Those pearls aren’t going to clutch themselves you know.
Oh dear, naughty word filter got me. So:
Just tuned in, out of curiosity as an ex-viewer and also to kill time before the UK Snooker Championship highlights. Omid Scobie puts his side of the story (unopposed), followed by an interview with Russian punk band **affectionate term for a cat that can also be used as a (mildly shocking) alternative noun for female genitalia** Riot. Much as I dislike Putin, the level of sanctimony in the accompanying report almost encourages me to root for him. The snooker is delayed for a biopic of the Late Shane MacGowan and have an early start in the morning.
And so to bed.
Pierre Poilievre has vowed to eliminate the CBC if he’s elected. We’ve heard this promise before from other Conservative leaders so we’ll see what happens. He does sound very firm about it.
This “verification” movement in journalism (we see it even in our local tv news) is nothing but a cheap attempt by the news media to create the impression of rampant misinformation polluting the current events space now that we’ve rejected them as gate keepers deciding what may and may not be said in polite discussion. The truth is the mainstream news has been the primary purveyor of misinformation for years, and is exactly why it has been tossed out the window.
Just tuned in, out of curiosity as an ex-viewer and also to kill time before the UK Snooker Championship highlights. Omid Scobie puts his side of the story (unopposed), followed by an interview with p***y Riot. Much as I dislike Putin, the level of sanctimony in the accompanying report almost encourages me to root for him. The snooker is delayed for a biopic of the Late Shane MacGowan and have an early start in the morning.
And so to bed.
Here in the USA, all the news media are biassed (but don’t admit it). Since there are a good number biassed in different directions, hearing dissenting opinions isn’t hard. The real danger is that people tend to only follow media that provides their preferred bias, so exist in an ‘echo chamber’ that reinforces their biases. This is surely the reason for the mutual hatred between left and right in the USA.
Here in the UK the papers are all biased (have a political stance) and the TV is supposedly not, by law / regulation.
However digitial blurs the line and TV news is becoming marginalised. I doubt the pretence of impartiality in TV can continue.
Consumers have a democratic right to live in their own bubbles if they chose. It’s not up to the state to determine taste.
Most of the commenters here are certain that the BBC is left wing but is it. I am a regular viewer of the BBC news at six and the following SE news. In almost every edition of the two programmes there will be a topic concerned with failure in the public sector. Often a carefully selected human heartache story is included. The reporter is invariably supportive of the story. In every case whether stated or not it is demanding extra government funding. I have never ever heard any reporter ask a supplicant which other government expenditure do they suggest be curtailed in order to fund this one that they are demanding. This “economic illiteracy” (as pointed out by Denis Healy) is very characteristic of left wing viewpoints. Yes the BBC has left wing bias.
All of our old fashion (MSM, Legacy, whatever we call it,) Media never really saw what the digitisation of content would lead to.
I don’t think anyone could have to be fair.
But the move from analogue content to digital enabled a process of disinformation that is never going stop, and can’t be stopped.
TV journalists seemed to think it would only affect newspapers for a decade or so, but don’t think that now.
The hospital ‘ air strike’ shows perfectly why people turn to the internet and it isn’t for fake news, it’s for news news. The BBC got it wrong and it was footage on the internet that showed it to be wrong almost before the bulletin ended.
The Beeb took another week or so before announcing they had been wrong.
That ‘week’ is worse than the ‘being wrong’ in that inciden (in the wider focus view) as to why traditional media is dying.
In a way it’s like the monks…in medieval times they had a monopoly on knowledge through a monopoly on literacy. We still have monks, but they don’t occupy the same spaces in society next to rulers and law makers that they used to.
Enter Gutenberg; exit Cardinal Wolsey et al.
Well except in Islamic states, yet to undergo the necessary reformation( to separate religious from secular power) that Christianity underwent, taking centuries between the medieval period and the modern era.
But that’s a whole other story.
Whilst a noble aim, is not the problem sufficient time to double check/verify everything can be initially v limited and judgment has to play a role?
The BBC’s ‘More of Less’ is superb, but it has more time to investigate, better assess the evidence and fact check.
More broadly the scaling back of Newsnight probably also reflective of budgetary pressures and the increasing tendency for audiences to go to Podcasts instead. Whilst some News and Political Podcasts are excellent they aren’t subject to the same public accountability and Charter requirements, so we may live to regret this.
That said we all entirely know GB News wouldn’t even try. Confirmatory twaddle for the infantalised.
Largely agree. The BBC is just one of many legacy media organisations trying to deal with huge and rapid change. It’s just the most visible one. And easiest target given the funding model (which is no longer credible or sustainable today).
Sadly, the BBC isn’t really that accountable. If you’ve ever heard a BBC producer responding to criticism on “Feedback” (Radio 4 – a very good programme), you’ll recognise the pattern of denial of any criticism – it’s the media equivlanent of a politician syaing “that’s not a picture I recognise”.
But it is not a noble aim. Where in the BBC’s charter is it given the remit to “fact check” everyone else ?
It feels like a sort of displacement activity by the BBC. Rushing in to some new area where they can make a lot of noise and claim some sort of leadership. Whilst failing to deal with the real challenge – how to replace the licence fee model and working out what their true role is in the modern media landscape where they are certainly not “special” any more or uniquely deserving of special privileges (like passing judgement on everyone else).
I happen to think the BBC could survive and thrive with a more modern, more commercial model – like subscription. But they don’t have the people or nerve to face the future and adapt.
The BBC infantilises its audience far more than GB News, and it demonstrably holds people with counter-opinions in utter contempt.
These are the main reasons for the ongoing demise of BBC News audience figures.
You mean BBC News or the BBC overall? I assume the former as the BBC does a heck of alot more than the immediate News progs.
GB News shuts down, on air, people with counter opinions. It’s a total joke.
You are not required to watch GB News but if you do you must pay for the BBC news. Do you not see the conflict there?
I was referring to BBC News, but the wider BBC output also has its moments.
A lot of its comedy has become tedious and predictable, but then again I’m a grumpy old man so probably not their target audience.
You clearly have either never watched it …. or have reached a conveniently fanciful conclusion. The amount of abuse that many hosts take from appallingly mannered guests like Just Stop Oil – without shutting them down – is highly commendable. The BBC would never allow lively debate like this.
Simply not true.
Welcome an example or two please, on both points? I’ll then go and watch them.
Then a bit of GB news where both sides of a debate were given same air time please too.
I provided you with one already – Just Stop Oil (on Jacob Rees-Mogg’s evening slot (numerous times).
If you watch his evening slot you may change your opinion on GB News – or at least feel less hostile towards it.
‘That said we all entirely know GB News wouldn’t even try’.
Curious has how you verified that “fact”. Passed it onto BBC Verify by any chance?
Go and read Ofcom and see who’s getting into regular trouble for bias and imbalance. It’s there for you to see as a fact.
Given the fact that many of the senior team at Ofcom are ex-BBC employees, it’s hardly surprising …
Yes, it’s certainly a fact that Ofcom like to investigate GB News. That is not necessarily the same thing as GB News being worse than other media organisations being a fact though. Shouldn’t you wait for due process to complete in the Ofcom investigations before pronouncing here ?
Like many here, I’m somewhat dubious about Ofcom’s impartiality and competence based on its record to date. I’d like Ofcom to get their act together and do their job properly and competently. For one thing, they could stop wasting their time on “thought crimes” (the so-called “hate speech”) – a “crime” which cannot exist in a country which supports freedom of speech.
We might also stop to ponder just why the BBC uniquely is only partially regulated by Ofcom, unlike all other media organisations.