SARAH VINE: How ironic that an organisation with a statue outside its HQ extolling free speech should condemn one of its stars for an act of ‘face crime’
Outside the BBC’s Broadcasting House in London is a statue of a slight, jug-eared man wearing an old-fashioned suit and a rather pained expression. His left hand rests on his hip, while his right holds a roll-up. On the wall behind are inscribed the words: ‘If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’
He is, of course, George Orwell, the man (and former BBC journalist) who many rightly revere as the godfather of free speech in Britain. That quote, from an unused preface to his 1945 novella Animal Farm, is characteristic in its elegance and brevity.
Few writers could express an idea so concisely as Orwell. Those words neatly encapsulate the power and importance of a principle that lies, or at least is supposed to, at the heart of British culture.
It’s a principle that this country fought to defend in two brutal, devastating world wars. That is why it is so important that, on this most solemn of days, we continue to honour the memory of those who gave their lives to uphold our liberties. Without them, we would not be the nation we are today.
But with every year that passes, the gratitude seems to fade. The understanding of what is at stake seems to be lost on a new generation who have never known the desolation of war, or the privations of censorship. They take their privilege for granted, and have little concept of how lucky they are.
They also seem to have no meaningful understanding of where tyranny comes from, or the insidious methods by which it can take hold. Freedom is rarely taken away in one clean sweep: it’s whittled away, slowly, almost imperceptibly, until one day you wake up and realise that reality has been reshaped beyond all recognition.
Orwell understood this, and this is what preoccupied him, almost incessantly, until his death in 1950. How, bit by bit, truth and common sense could be chipped away and man could come to believe that, to quote 1984, ‘War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.’
So much of what he feared has proved prophetic. Thanks to the trans-fascism of the past few years, for example, we are now expected to believe that women can become men and vice-versa, that men can become pregnant and women can have penises.
Daring to challenge these contradictions has led to countless people experiencing their own ‘two minutes of hate’.
Which brings us back to the BBC, where last week the newsreader Martine Croxall was condemned by an internal disciplinary commission for stumbling over the expression ‘pregnant people’ during a live broadcast earlier this year. Reading from the autocue, she widened her eyes for a split second and corrected the words to ‘women’.
That fleeting moment was, according to BBC bosses, ‘variously interpreted by complainants as showing disgust, ridicule, contempt or exasperation’ – and as such had violated the Corporation’s rules on impartiality.
Oh dear. That doesn’t bode well for those of us with ‘resting bitch face’. If every woman over the age of 50 who occasionally betrayed a sense of disgust, ridicule, contempt and/or exasperation in her features risked being pulled up by a disciplinary board, the world would pretty much grind to a halt.
Joking aside, though, there is so much that is tragic about this ruling. The irony of an organisation that has a statue of Orwell outside its headquarters as a reminder of the importance of free speech condemning one of its own presenters for an act of ‘face crime’ will not be lost on readers.
It shows what a pathetic, ignorant state our once loved and respected national broadcaster is in, and how out of touch it is with those who pay the licence fee.
The BBC, naturally, has chosen to hide behind the principle of impartiality in its defence. But that’s where the whole thing becomes even more absurd.
Even if Ms Croxall’s response had not elicited an outpouring of support (which it did) from ordinary people, the idea that the BBC upholds the principles of impartiality on which it was founded is delusional, and manifestly so.
Time after time, it has shown that it can’t be trusted with the facts. Time after time, it has shown that it pursues a narrow and clear political agenda – an agenda it uses its reach and influence to promote, not just openly via its news coverage, but more covertly (some might say insidiously) via its entertainment output. Last week alone it transpired that the Corporation’s current affairs programme, Panorama, had edited a Donald Trump speech to give the impression that the American President had incited the 2021 storming of Capitol Hill.
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That’s on the back of Ofcom’s ruling in October that it had committed a ‘serious breach’ of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a Gaza documentary was the son of a Hamas official.
And that is not to mention the historic abuses, such as BBC journalist Martin Bashir’s shameful deception of Princess Diana, laid bare in today’s paper.
Meanwhile, a leaked report by Michael Prescott, a former independent adviser to the BBC editorial watchdog, concluded that the BBC had been ‘captured by a small group of staff promoting the Stonewall view’ of the trans debate.
He also ruled that the BBC’s Arabic service, which is partly funded by the Foreign Office, had tried to ‘paint Israel as the aggressor’ in the conflict in the Middle East, and that accusations against the Jewish state were ‘raced to air’ without proper editorial checks.
In relation to one incident during the war in Gaza, Prescott said: ‘It is hard to conclude anything other than that BBC Arabic’s story treatment was designed to minimise Israeli suffering.’
That is a serious accusation, with serious ramifications. How much of this taxpayer-funded anti-Israel propaganda is fuelling the wave of anti-Semitism in Britain today, or contributing to the pro-Palestinian hysteria on our streets?
That is the kind of toxic, numbskull behaviour you might expect on a platform such as X or TikTok. But from an organisation such as the BBC, it constitutes a clear breach of trust. Not to mention the height of irresponsibility.
It’s also a breach of the contract that exists between the Corporation and the British taxpayer, who helps fund it.
If, as a taxpayer, I decide not to pay my licence fee, I can be sent to jail. What are the sanctions for the BBC executives who preside over the organisation’s failure? A slap on the wrist and a kick upstairs, followed by a hefty payoff? Or, in director-general Tim Davie’s case, an annual salary of almost £550,000 and a gold-plated pension. Talk about rewarding failure.
There is only one conclusion that can now reasonably be reached. Until and unless it puts its house in order, the BBC is not to be trusted, and it should not receive taxpayer funding.
As for its presenters, if they want to express their opinions, either way, that’s up to them. After all, everyone else who works there does. Why should they be any different?
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When my dad died from a brain tumour, I watched powerless as my grieving mum walked into the arms of a manipulative monster who snapped her neck, leaving her paralysed