Andrew Neil yesterday delivered a powerful reprimand to Boris Johnson for failing to agree to a head-to-head interview with him. But the BBC had already sold the pass, by letting the Prime Minister be quizzed on Sunday by Andrew Marr, a much gentler interviewer. Having cravenly agreed to that, it could still have let Neil empty-chair the Prime Minister for a whole half hour. But there’s no sign it has the guts to do that.
What’s more, this is not a one-off error by our national broadcaster, which 75% of adults watch, read, or listen to. Time and again, it has allowed Brexiters – both now and in the referendum – to walk over it. Here’s our catalogue of errors.
Not pushing back against lies
The BBC has a bad habit of letting Brexiters lie on air without adequate pushback. Johnson, for instance, went unchallenged when he falsely told the Today programme that any extension to the Brexit deadline would be “at a cost of £1 billion a month”.
And when Johnson wrongly told Marr that this election is happening partly “because we have a Queen’s speech that was blocked by Parliament”, the whopper passed without comment. Even when the BBC does try to push back against the fibs, the challenge is often inadequate. In the same interview, Marr got steamrollered when the Prime Minister falsely claimed there would be no checks on trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
None of this is new. In 2016 the BBC was a prime vector for Johnson’s original £350m lie.
Repeating Brexiter attack lines
This is even harder to swallow when you remember the BBC does know how to criticise. Look at John Humphrys calling the People’s Vote “ludicrous”, or Laura Kuenssberg telling the nation that when the EU “doesn’t like the result, you get the public to vote again until they do”.
Parroting Brexiter’s language – for instance, describing the Chequers proposal as a “deal” when it was only a proposal – has been a trap the BBC has fallen into all too often. In fact, it has done it so often that the Conservative Party could put together a campaign ad of BBC presenters repeating its damning phrases. The BBC did manage to get Facebook to kill the ads on the basis of a breach of copyright, but it should be wondering why the Tories had so much material to work with in the first place.
Inadequate grilling
Part of the problem is the BBC often fails to grill Brexiters. Time and time again interviewers miss the mark, let assertions go unchallenged or fail to ask the killer question. Even the best presenters sometimes fall into this trap.
For example, Nick Robinson – who hosts tonight’s debate between Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn – didn’t challenge Matt Hancock early in the election campaign when he said the Tories would create a dynamic economy. An obvious question would have been: “How can you say you’ll get healthy economy to fund the NHS etc if you drag us out of a market responsible for half our trade?”
Shoddy editing
And when the BBC’s Question Time audience managed to force Johnson to admit it’s “absolutely vital” to tell the truth, the BBC certainly shouldn’t have edited out the laughter. It had to be hauled over the coals by Conservative commentator, Peter Oborne, before acknowledging its error.
Letting Cummings et al set the agenda
The BBC has let anonymous briefings, often seemingly from Johnson’s top aide Dominic Cummings, override stories that would embarrass the Prime Minister – and instead paint him as the people’s Brexit hero.
It also has an unfortunate habit of ignoring important news but falling for Brexiter stunts. When the British Medical Association called for a People’s Vote last year, the BBC didn’t cover it. But when Nigel Farage turned up to throw dead fish into the Thames, we were treated to multiple forms of coverage – everything other than basic fact-checking, which would have noted that the EU has banned discarding fish back into the sea.
What the BBC has done well
One shining light in the BBC’s coverage has been its Reality Check service, which busts a wide range of fishy claims. But having some journalists rebut Brexiter lies while others let them get away with them isn’t good enough.