What’s the Matter with the BBC?
Recent weeks have not been very comfortable for the BBC. A documentary about Gaza it refused to broadcast was aired instead by a competitor, to critical acclaim. A livestream of the Glastonbury Festival turned into a political nightmare, after a performer led the crowd in a chant of “Death to the IDF”—leading the network to ditch plans for future “high risk” live shows.
But Alan Rusbridger, who spent twenty years as the editor of The Guardian and is now the editor of Prospect magazine, believes the BBC’s problems go much deeper—at a moment when it’s more needed than ever. “The BBC has never really recovered its nerve,” he says.
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