The Mess at the BBC Will Never End

Last week, the Daily Telegraph—the traditional newspaper of Britain’s conservative élite—reported on the existence of a secret memo that appeared to shatter the illusion that the BBC is an impartial news organization. The memo, some eight thousand words long, took the form of a letter to the BBC’s board and was written by Michael Prescott, a recent editorial adviser to the broadcaster. Prescott is a former journalist at the London Sunday Times. In the letter, Prescott attested that he did “not hold any hard and fast views” on U.S. politics, or on the Middle East, nor did he have any political agenda at all. But, after three years as an adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee, he had been driven to despair by the broadcaster’s refusal to address deep-seated problems with its news coverage. The letter was a tour of recent mishaps, a guide to chronic bias in four distinct but connected zones: the BBC’s coverage of President Donald Trump, racial diversity, gender issues, and the war in Gaza. “From what I witnessed,” Prescott wrote, “I fear the problems could be even more widespread than this summary might suggest.” For those inside and outside the U.K. who resent the BBC, or regard it as smug, woke, and metropolitan-inclined, Prescott hit all the right notes.