But if you can't stand the BBC or want to see it drastically weakened, you don't need to waste time thinking carefully about these issues. The day after Telegraph published Prescott's note, Boris Johnson, the former prime minister who is now a newspaper columnist Daily mailsaid it would not pay the license fee – an annual fee of £174.50 per household that funds the BBC – until the broadcaster either reveals the truth about how it “faked” Trump's speech or its director-general Tim Davie resigns. That same day, Caroline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, described the network as “one hundred percent fake news” and a “left-wing propaganda machine.”
Over the weekend, “The Auntie” – as the BBC used to be known because of its prudish, familiar and slightly condescending demeanor – exploded. Both BBC News chief executive Deborah Turness and Davie, its chief executive, have announced their resignations. Trump celebrated the news at Truth Social. “These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of the presidential election,” he wrote. “On top of everything else, they are from a foreign country that many consider our number one ally. What a terrible thing for democracy!” On Monday he threatened to sue the BBC for $1 billion.
There are scandals within the BBC. It has a deep and complex relationship with both the state and the people it serves. (The BBC World Service broadcasts in forty-two languages, and the BBC as a whole claims to reach about four hundred and fifty million people each week.) Three of the last five directors-general have resigned after some kind of controversy. But, at least in this century, crises have tended to follow either a glaring editorial mistake or a conflict with external forces, as in 2004, when the BBC came into conflict with the government over the Iraq War. What's unusual about the current crisis is that it was generated, at least in part, from within. According to a message in Guardian And observerPrescott was hired as an adviser to the BBC on the advice of Robbie Gibb, a former Conservative spokesman who is one of five political appointees on the broadcaster's board. Before Gibb joined the BBC under Johnson's government, back in 2021, he helped create GB News, a right-wing cable news channel. For years he has sought to correct the BBC's perceived liberal bias, challenging appointments and questioning its coverage. “Gibb's supporters say he is trying to save the BBC from itself,” the newspaper said. observer reported. “He also said last year that if he doesn't get his way, he'll 'blow up the place.' »
On Monday I spoke with David Hendy, author of “BBC: A Century on Air“, which chronicles the corporation's first century. Hendy, a BBC devotee, likes to compare the organization to a Saturn V rocket. It has “a million moving parts, about one percent of which will fail,” he told me. “And that one percent actually means quite a lot of failures.” Like others, Hendy acknowledged that the systems the BBC has developed to ensure its accountability – its boards and committees, its standards and guidelines – leave it more vulnerable and ponderous when it comes under decisive attack.
He is also much weaker than before. Between 2010 and 2024, under the Conservative government, the BBC cut its budget by thirty percent in real terms, and it is often undermined by politicians on all sides. On Sunday, as the broadcaster came under attack from both the White House and Britain's right-wing press, Lisa Nandy, the Labor secretary who currently oversees BBC funding, offered little encouragement. Nandy said the editing of Trump's speech was “very serious” and expressed her concerns about the BBC operating in an environment “where news and facts are often blurred by controversy and opinion, and I think that creates a very, very dangerous environment in this country where people can't trust what they see.”
In such a climate, Hendy said, it was not surprising that the BBC became overly defensive. “He's afraid to admit his mistakes,” he told me. “This is one of those organizations that is damned if it admits and damned if it doesn’t.” But Hendy also drew a distinction between good faith criticism of a national broadcaster and bad faith criticism. Of Prescott's leaked letter, he said: “It seems to me that the BBC is not trying to make the BBC good or fair by pointing out some of these mistakes or failures. It feels like it's criticism designed to undermine the BBC as a whole.”
