Another terrible day at the BBC

Thursday started badly at the BBC and quickly got much, much worse. First, there was BBC Breakfast with Charlie Stayt and Naga Munchetty. Stayt was interviewing Robert Jenrick, Secretary of

State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, about the delays in the roll-out of the vaccine. Jenrick had a very large British flag and a portrait of the Queen in the background and

Stayt sneered, “I think your flag is not up to standard size government interview measurements. I think it’s just a little small, but that’s your department, really.” Cut to co-host Naga

Munchetty, giggling like a schoolgirl at the daring of it all. How brave of Stayt to sneer at a minister and, above all, at the British flag. 

As with everything else in Britain today, responses were bitterly divided. Many loved Stayt’s remark, his disdain for the minister and for the flag, the irreverence of it. “Well done Charlie

and Naga,” tweeted one fan. “It’s about time someone started openly mocking Robert Jenrick and his mates over this recent flag frenzy.” “Naga Munchetty’s laugh is precious too,” said

another. “BBC journos, RESIST!” It’s perhaps worth noting how many of those who liked Stayt’s put-down were Remainers. 

Others were simply appalled: “The BBC is a disgraceful, anti-British organisation. Stop paying for it,” “Just BBC presenters sniggering about our flag and Queen. Nothing to see here.”

Another tweet came from Sir Robbie Gibb, the former Downing Street communications director: “This BBC Breakfast clip reveals a sneering and cynical attitude towards our monarchy and flag

that shows it’s not just about where people are based, the BBC has a wider cultural problem.” Mark Wallace, Chief Executive of ConservativeHome, tweeted, “What a bizarre thing for the BBC to

sneer and snigger at. What’s wrong with ministers of the British government having the flag and the monarch on display?” Andrew Neil added: “Sometimes the BBC forgets what the first B

stands for.”

This was just the latest episode in the BBC’s war against the Government.  There was Kirsty Wark, live on air, claiming that Michael Gove had compared Brexit with the Fall of the Berlin Wall

in a speech at the German Embassy. Pure fabrication, for which Newsnight never apologised. There was Emily Maitlis’s broadside against Dominic Cummings, also on Newsnight (“Dominic Cummings

broke the rules, the country can see that, and it’s shocked the Government cannot”). There have been too many cases of stacking flagship programmes like Daily Politics and Newsnight with

interviewees from Novara Media and other outfits of the far-Left.  

There is a general sense among many viewers that the BBC is increasingly on the side of Remain, Meghan and Harry, Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, people who desecrate war memorials

and tear down statues. All these are divisive issues in contemporary Britain. More and more people think they know where the BBC stands and they have decided it’s not on their side.

It was precisely to try and turn this around that the new Director-General, Tim Davie, told news presenters and reporters to be careful about what they say online. Then, also on Thursday, he

announced that the BBC would begin moving some news operations (including Today and Newsnight programmes) out of London. This would symbolise a less metropolitan feel for the BBC. News

programmes would be paying more attention to Britain’s Brexit heartlands. 

This was a typically wrongheaded gesture by the BBC. First, how had they got themselves into this mess in the first place, where they are so widely seen as partisan, shrill, sneering?

Second, they don’t need to waste precious resources parachuting over-paid presenters and executives into Leeds, Salford and Birmingham. What they need to do is change the mindset and be more

impartial. Why is that so hard?

Of course, this is not true of everyone at BBC news. Presenters and reporters like Ros Atkins, Katty Kay and Christian Fraser, Mishal Husain and Fergus Walsh, to name just a few, do a superb

job of presenting news stories in an informed and impartial way. But some do not. They seem to be out of control and this must be the fault of their producers, editors and, ultimately, the

head of news and current affairs, Fran Unsworth. 

To openly sneer at the size of the British flag in a Government minister’s office confirms the view of countless licence fee payers that the BBC is unpatriotic. For this to happen on the

very morning when the Director-General was about to announce a major initiative to try and win back the British public is at the very least counter-productive. The BBC has never seemed so

out of touch, so incapable of asking the right questions about the big issues, so biased. And now it looks as if they not only need a new head of news but also a new Director-General who can

sort this out.  

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