NORMALLY there is nothing BBC News likes to do more than go into overdrive over any misdemeanour that takes place in another part of the building.
An orgy of self-flagellation — designed to convince themselves of their own sacred independence — sees the bizarre spectacle of BBC journalists standing outside the BBC HQ, reading a statement from the BBC management into BBC cameras and broadcast across the BBC network.
It usually happens every couple of months or so.
The flagship luvvies of the organisation take to social media to hand-wring about some failure or other.
But this week there has been silence.
No navel gazing, no doorstepping of Director General Tim Davie in his silly trainers.
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No tweets from the doyens of reportage like John Simpson.
No BBC Verify segments verifying that the BBC has been caught red-handed deceiving its viewers.
Wild-eyed socialism
This week there has been guilty silence, because it is the hallowed BBC News division themselves in the dock.
A devastating leak revealed that BBC management has been sitting on evidence of BBC News’ horrific pro-Hamas bias in reporting on the Middle East and straight-up deception of its licence-fee-paying viewers over Donald Trump.
Finally, last night there was a sniffy little email from Deborah Turness, the CEO of BBC News, to her staff lamenting that they had become a story this week in “some quarters” — but that massively plays down the rot exposed at the heart of Corporation.
You expect it from the cringeworthy BBC comedy wing: The Right are the butt of every good joke while a lame impression of a lefty is included for so-called balance.
And it goes without saying in the drama department: Baddies are always extreme right-wing terrorists and never Islamists.
Or the motive for crimes is always corporate greed, not wild-eyed socialism.
Even BBC Sport was infected before old lefty Gary Lineker was finally eased out of the Match Of The Day chair.
But BBC News was always more careful.
There are many brilliant, fair and balanced journalists at the BBC.
But the overall beast of BBC News has sadly fallen foul to the same groupthink and liberal-knows-best cancer.
The fakery led viewers to see Mr Trump urge his supporters to go to the Capitol and ‘fight like hell’ instead of his actual call to protest peacefully
It’s subtle sometimes: A curiously worded headline on the massive BBC website.
But other times less so, with wall-to-wall coverage given to the failings of the evil Right and errors by those with the correct views explained away or disappeared from the bulletins all together.
Presenters need to get better at hiding their uncontained glee whenever they get the chance to kick Donald Trump. Or Boris Johnson. Or Robert Jenrick. Or Nigel Farage.
And it can take days or even weeks for a scandal involving Labour to be picked up from the papers by the BBC unless they are forced into it by the sheer scale of the Government’s latest cock-up.
But now we have it in black and white.
Fakery at home and pro-Hamas propaganda abroad.
The leaked memo from Michael Prescott, the ex-independent adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Board, is dynamite.
Not so much a smoking gun, but a cannonball blasting a gaping hole right through Auntie’s smug, holier-than-thou, woke, tedious get-up
Not so much a smoking gun, but a cannonball blasting a gaping hole right through Auntie’s smug, holier-than-thou, woke, tedious get-up.
The episode of Panorama broadcast as Americans prepared to go to the polls last November deliberately spliced together different sections of Mr Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021, when rioters mobbed the US Capitol.
The fakery led viewers to see Mr Trump urge his supporters to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell” instead of his actual call to protest peacefully.
That goes beyond an editorial take — it crosses into outright fakery and deception.
And what’s worse is that the bosses knew about it.
Before the row blew up this week with the leak of Prescott’s memo, the contents of it were shared internally in his role advising the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee.
But trendy Tim Davie and his right-on sidekick Debs seemingly did nothing.
And while it may be easy to go through another round of parliamentary inquiries, of strongly worded letters and fresh — but futile — calls to rethink the telly tax, that is not enough this time.
‘Outright lies’
Like it or not, the BBC is a player on the global stage.
The late, great Sir Terry Wogan once said: “The BBC is the greatest broadcaster in the world.
“It’s the standard that everyone measures themselves against.”
Not only have the BBC embarrassed themselves with this sorry saga by Terry’s standards, they have embarrassed Britain.
“Trust in the media is at an all-time low because of deceptive editing, misleading reporting, and outright lies,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson tells me.
“This is yet another example, of many, highlighting why countless Americans turn to alternative media sources to get their news.”
Supporters of the BBC always insist that the soft-power of the Beeb is a benefit to Britain akin to the Royal Family around the world.
If that is the case then that makes this scandal — which has now drawn the ire of the White House — all the more damaging.
JAB TRICK
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It makes the silence of Davie and the downplaying of Deborah all the more unforgivable.
This is no longer a damage-limitation exercise for the state broadcaster but a damage- limitation exercise for the whole state.