Bias, climate alarmism, and why the BBC licence fee’s days are numbered

“This is our BBC” goes the slogan from a recent addition to Auntie’s burgeoning collection of adverts for herself. And “our BBC” is now so deep in the mire that even the metaphorical hara-kiri performed by erstwhile director-general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness might not save it, at least in its current form.

Donald Trump is holding the threat of a $1 billion lawsuit over the corporation like the Sword of Damocles, despite an apology over the spliced edit of a speech he made before the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. If the president has his way and sues for $1bn, or $5bn as he has suggested, the BBC may well become extinct – our licence fee payments will simply not stretch to that.

But that is a very big “if”. It is far from certain Trump will be able to bring the case to a courtroom in Florida, where he is resident. And in a Florida court, the BBC would be as entitled to the same free speech protections under the First Amendment as any American defendant.

The BBC’s director-general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness both resigned after a report criticised a Panorama programme’s editing of Donald Trump’s speech before the January 6 Capitol riots among other problems | PA

A litany of failings

In any case, the offending Panorama documentary was never aired in the US. Even if Trump gets his day in court, could a jury be convinced the BBC caused him $1bn worth of damage in an election he won convincingly in a country where the programme was never broadcast?

However, the dodgy edit was just the opener in a litany of failings highlighted in a leaked internal dossier by Michael Prescott, a former journalist who until June this year was an independent adviser to the corporation’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Board.

Prescott made many other criticisms of the BBC’s coverage of the US election in addition to the Panorama documentary, which was aired in October 2024. He also accused the organisation of one-sided coverage of the war in Gaza, with the BBC Arabic service condemned as particularly problematic for extensively airing the views of Hamas.

Donald Trump has threatened the BBC with legal action over the editing of a documentary | AFP via Getty Images

And Prescott was highly critical of the BBC’s treatment of stories surrounding biological sex and gender, raising concerns that "LGBTQ desk staffers” were censoring coverage of the trans debate.

He wrote: “The allegation made to me was stark: that the desk had been captured by a small group of people promoting the Stonewall view of the debate and keeping other perspectives off-air.”

With all this apparent bias in New Broadcasting House, it might have been fortunate that a unit called BBC Verify, devoted to “fact-checking”, was created under Turness’s leadership in 2023.

Army of ‘fact-checkers’

To some, the existence of this 60-strong crack squad begged the question of what the other 5,000 or 6,000 BBC journalists do if they are not also fact-checking and verifying. In any case, the defining mission of this supposed bastion of probity is to cut through all the noise and bias – conscious or unconscious – to arrive at the unvarnished and incontestable truth of things.

Yet somehow no one in this army of truth-seekers appeared to spot the dodgy edit, or any of the other concerns raised by Prescott. In fact, the standards of the verifiers themselves come in for sharp criticism.

Prescott notes how one of the service’s first offerings, purporting to reveal an “ethnic penalty” in car insurance, turned out to be so thoroughly wrong the BBC eventually removed it entirely from its website. Physician, heal thyself.

Some defenders of the BBC have dismissed the concerns raised over apparent bias as part of a "right-wing coup" | PA

The BBC has apologised to Trump but claims the Panorama edit was a mistake and that the organisation is not institutionally biased. Many prominent supporters and former employees maintain instead that it is the victim of a shadowy “right-wing coup”.

In the interests of space and sanity, let’s leave those claims to one side and accept the presented evidence that strongly suggests Auntie leans to the left.

Of course, many would argue she has always done so. The BBC tends to attract and recruit like-minded left-leaning metropolitan humanities graduates who share a similar world view. But, in recent years, something does seem to have changed.

To inform, educate, entertain and correct

A fourth core principle seems to have been added to the original three set out by the first director-general, Lord Reith. The BBC gives at least the impression its role is not merely to inform, educate and entertain the public, but also to correct them.

On climate change and energy policy, for example, it routinely presents opinion as fact, and science as “settled”. After years of weeding out sceptical and alternative views, a decision was taken in 2018 that contributions from those deemed “contrarian”, such as the late former Chancellor Lord Lawson, would no longer be invited.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates, a leading proponent in the past for carbon emissions reductions, argued in an essay last month that resources must be shifted away from the battle against climate change, which, he wrote, "will not lead to humanity's demise" | PA

But as the facade of consensus on climate change disintegrates, along with what’s left of British industry, and former alarmists such as Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates turn apostate, the Beeb’s protestations of impartiality – on this and on so many other issues – are on increasingly shaky ground.

According to the Telegraph, which broke the Panorama edit story, the BBC is preparing to launch an investigation to assess bias in its climate change coverage and “review its climate and energy policy reporting after a string of controversies”.

If we sit down to read the Guardian, or to watch Fox News, we reasonably expect bias in one direction or another. In theory, we should expect impartiality from the licence fee-funded state broadcaster.

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But perhaps that is an unreasonable expectation in today’s atomised media landscape, no matter how many fact-checkers, verifiers and self-appointed arbiters of alleged misinformation and disinformation the BBC employs.

A growing number of licence fee payers do not share the view that it is “our BBC” and yet they are obliged to fund it.

The funding model will be reviewed ahead of the expiry of the BBC’s current Royal Charter in 2027. Perhaps the time has come to move to some form of subscription service. At which point, it will be our BBC only if we choose it to be.