Charlie Walsham

In a week when BBC bosses unveiled yet another round of swingeing cuts – this time of around 550 jobs in news, nations and TV and radio – you might be forgiven for assuming the Corporation would have more pressing issues on the mind than tackling Islamophobia.  Perhaps naively, I still believe that Britain should be a free country where people are entitled to dislike all and any religion if they so choose But last Monday, the new Deputy Director-General, Rhodri Talfan Davies, informed staff, via the BBC internal website, that as part of the Corporation’s anti-discrimination training, they will have to do a compulsory ‘Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hostility’ online module.

So here we are again – another well-known BBC presenter is facing a growing list of allegations of misconduct, tarnishing the image of the state broadcaster. This time around it’s MasterChef presenter Greg Wallace. In the depressingly familiar pattern of previous scandals, we’ve learned that concerns had been raised repeatedly with the BBC, but no meaningful action had been taken against Wallace until the scandal broke.  My colleagues and I, working in the newsroom as the Wallace story broke, ended up once again reporting on the failings and double standards of my employer, and wondering why our overlords seem unable to learn from past mistakes.

The grandly titled CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs, Deborah Turness, described Donald Trump’s re-election as ‘a dramatic night that changed everything’. She made that claim in an internal email to staff, lauding the Corporation’s ‘unmissable’ US election results coverage.  Her email though raises an interesting question: if Trump’s victory has changed everything, will it also lead to change at the BBC? Among the significant factors that undid the Democrats in the US election was the runaway spread of what Elon Musk calls the ‘woke mind virus’. But while the Democrats seem to have now realised the way they allowed identity politics to alienate their voters, there is no sign yet that our national broadcaster has learned the same lesson.

Coverage of the death of Chris Kaba – and the acquittal of the police officer Martyn Blake tried for his murder – has raised more troubling questions about editorial decision-making at the BBC. Kaba was shot dead during an armed vehicle stop in south London on 5 September 2022. Because Kaba was black, it appears the BBC’s commitment to achieving due impartiality succumbed quickly to the distorting lens of identity politics.

This week, the BBC was accused of breaching its own editorial guidelines on more than 1,500 occasions and displaying a ‘deeply worrying pattern of bias’ against Israel in a report that drew its findings from an analysis of four months of BBC output. Editorial bosses at Broadcasting House have questioned the methodology of the research, which was led by litigation lawyer and pro-Israel campaigner Trevor Asserson. But having worked inside the BBC newsroom throughout the conflict, I have drawn some unsettling conclusions of my own when it comes to the Gaza conflict. To find out how we ended up here, we must return to the beginning.

The BBC’s coverage of the Notting Hill carnival has been almost relentlessly positive. But the rosy view of the festivities was finally shattered this weekend when the Metropolitan Police released a statement confirming the death of two people who were attacked at the event. The force said both killings were now being treated as murder investigations. Smiling photos of the victims – 32-year-old mother Cher Maximen and 41-year-old chef Mussie Imnetu, who was visiting London from Dubai – accompanied the reports, their carefree expressions underlining the senseless destruction of two lives. Why is the BBC so determined to give such favourable coverage to an event with a lamentable track record of violence and criminality?

It’s not a pleasant feeling to know there are colleagues in your workplace who think you should be summarily dismissed and marched out of the building, flanked by security. Yet I learned this week that this is my predicament. As reported by GB News, unidentified BBC employees have been trying to identify me and have me fired for writing in The Spectator. According to one staff member, I need ‘IDing and then sacking’. The stated cause of their ire? That I had been, ‘very happy to breach the terms of (my) employment’, by writing articles accusing the BBC of breaching its own rules on impartiality.

What must it feel like to realise you are part of an organisation that has placed so-called progressive values ahead of evidence, risking real-world harms to countless vulnerable young people?   In the wake of the publication of the Cass review into gender identity services for under-18s in England, I know exactly how that feels. No, I’ve not been moonlighting for the now defunct Tavistock clinic: I work as a journalist for BBC News. Regrettably, I believe there is a straight line between the BBC’s capitulation to extreme trans rights ideologues and the disturbing findings in Dr Hilary Cass’s 388-page report.

As an increasingly jaded BBC hack, I reacted to the creation of BBC Verify last May with temple-rubbing despondency. The definition of ‘verify’ is to ‘to prove that something exists or is true, or to make certain that something is correct’. This is, in essence, the most basic rule of journalism. Yet here we were, having to reassure our increasingly distrustful audiences that we weren’t just broadcasting any old rubbish without checking it properly. Now why might that have become necessary? Regrettably, some areas of journalistic inquiry have been, in effect, ‘cancelled’ at the BBC One need look no further than the BBC’s coverage of Covid-19. The BBC seemed to jettison all pretence at balance during the pandemic.

It’s been a truly surreal, disturbing and darkly comic week at the BBC. Much remains obscured, but one thing is crystal clear: longstanding institutional failings over the way the Corporation handles serious complaints remain unaddressed.  On a more positive note, however, the events of the last few days have again showcased one of the BBC’s most enduring strengths: the willingness of its journalists to turn the spotlight onto their own employer, even a respected colleague. Even when that colleague is Huw Edwards, the face of the BBC, a consummate professional, a master of his craft and, until this storm engulfed him, a smiling, affable and reassuring presence at the heart of the newsroom.

I recall the newsroom conversations during the dark days of the pandemic only too well. They were upsetting at the time. Now, as we see a disturbing rise in excess deaths across the country, the thought of them fills me with horror and outrage.  ‘You do realise these lockdowns and restrictions will end up killing people too, don’t you?’ I would say to senior editorial colleagues with something approaching desperation in my voice. ‘Sure, the virus is a serious threat to a small proportion of the population but the longer-term consequences of shutting the economy down and closing off the NHS will be deadly for huge numbers who were never at serious risk from the virus, people with years of life ahead of them. Shouldn’t we be reflecting that in our coverage?

During Pride month this year a banner has been emblazoned across the BBC’s internal staff website used by every single employee. It features the following text: ‘BBC Pride 2022: Bringing together LGBTQ+ people of all genders, sexualities and identities at the BBC.’ Most people who work at the BBC aren’t concerned about this. But the slogan really should ring alarm bells, because behind its seemingly benign message of inclusivity is a latent political message about trans rights that is undermining the corporation’s impartiality. As a BBC employee I am proud and delighted that the corporation is striving to be a welcoming employer for people from all walks of life, whatever their colour, creed or whoever they choose to sleep with.

As a journalist, it’s never a comfortable feeling when the news organisation you work for becomes the story. But with No. 10 desperate to throw some ‘red meat’ to the green benches — to take the spotlight off the rotting carcass of ‘partygate’ — it was inevitable that the BBC would end up being fed through the mincer this week. The Culture Secretary, Nadine Dorries, lit the touch-paper by announcing on social media (where else?) that the latest BBC licence fee announcement would ‘be the last’, adding with provocative hyperbole that ‘the days of the elderly being threatened with prison sentences and bailiffs knocking on doors’ were over.

I have been a BBC journalist for many years, and in that time I have been committed to impartiality and the corporation’s Reithian values to inform and educate. My despair about the BBC’s one-sided coverage of the pandemic though has been steadily growing for some time. And in early December, as I listened to a BBC radio broadcast, I felt the corporation reach a new low. During a morning phone-in show on 5Live the topic of discussion was Covid jabs and whether they should be mandated, or if punitive action should be taken against those who refuse them, such as imposing lockdowns on the unvaccinated. Setting aside the fact that these authoritarian measures are now considered a matter for breezy debate, I at least expected a balanced discussion.