Abstract
The role of messenger has traditionally been a dangerous one: now the BBC is being shot at. In this fractious, divided nation, each side of the Brexit row has turned its rage on Broadcasting House. Leavers attack a complacent, left-liberal organisation that cannot countenance departure from the European Union; Remainers decry news reporting that is infiltrated by right-wingers, obedient to a Conservative government and promoting the fantasy that the UK will survive.
Perhaps you wondered why the BBC uses the phrase “crashing out”, if not to suggest that leaving without a deal would be self-evidently destructive. Did you hear the presenter say “when we leave the EU”, as if the process were inevitable?
The BBC is used to criticism. In the 1980s, disciples of Margaret Thatcher developed politically useful lines about “the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation”, while the left presented evidence of the establishment background of those in charge. These generalisations were not altogether inaccurate: many of us outside the BBC imagined that the journalists were lefties and the governors appeasers of the ruling elite, thereby creating a kind of equilibrium.
Today we can thank the echo chambers of social media, where participants don't care much for opinions different from their own, for creating a new and toxic level of abuse. It's as if the BBC is responsible for the state we are in. Critics ascribe political motives to reporting, embrace conspiracies, offer much noise and little reason. Top of the charge list is the BBC's failure to challenge Brexiteer promises of £350million a week for the National Health Service: no matter that objective listeners and viewers may recall such figures being questioned from the start.
A more nuanced analysis, gaining traction in the world beyond social media, is that the BBC is engaging in “false balance”. In its efforts to demonstrate “due impartiality”, news programmes wheel out “for” and “against” views on every matter, even where the evidence for one side is overwhelming. The locus classicus is an interview with Nigel Lawson in which the former chancellor, invited to discuss the cost-effectiveness of green subsidies, challenged global warming itself.
The certainties of climate change – the BBC may as well have invited a flat earther to dispute the global nature of our world – now extend to Brexit. That it will be a disaster has become a matter of fact: many Remainers seem to believe it is wrong even to give airtime to the contrary view. If Leavers are allowed on, then their every assertion must be revealed to be false.
To help the BBC, commentators quote with approval an aphorism about the demands of journalism: “If someone says it's raining, and another person says it's dry, it's not your job to quote them both. Your job is to look out the f⋆⋆⋆ing window and find out which is true.” The words, delivered by a member of the journalism faculty at Sheffield University, have sent a generation of young reporters in pursuit of the truth. They are vivid, inspiring and totally irrelevant to the Brexit debate.
That is because the discussion about Brexit relates to the weather next April. We are in a world of forecasts, rather than of fact. The idea that journalists can bring us a single “truth” about this territory is dangerous.
There is a limit to the efficacy of what critics label “Punch and Judy” debates. They can become bogged down in claim and counter-claim, offering little new light. But before we abandon them, we might remember that they remain the basis of our legal system. By hearing different versions of events, juries strive to reach a truth. Sometimes their judgment surprises us, for few matters are as black and white as the BBC's critics would claim.
Now and again, a writer on Twitter risks opprobrium by having an original thought. The Times columnist David Aaronovitch could be accused of having a vested interest, for he contributes to the BBC. But his warning deserves a wider audience: “It is fair – and necessary – for people to critique the BBC. It listens and its journalists are sensitive – maybe over-sensitive – to criticism. But this constant total sledging of the Beeb from all directions is going to end in tears.”