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By 
Dr Jenny Taylor2025-11-11T10:00:00+00:00
As the BBC faces mounting allegations of bias and a potential $1billion lawsuit from Donald Trump, Dr Jenny Taylor says the corporation needs to remember its Christian roots and get back to valuing the truth 
Source: REUTERS/Hannah McKay
Outgoing Director General of the BBC Tim Davie. He and Chief Executive of BBC News Deborah Turness resigned following accusations of bias, including in the way the Beeb edited a speech by US President Donald Trump
The BBC faces an existential moment.
As the finest – and perhaps freest – media institution in the world faces the wrath of Trump over its biased editing of his speech, it is time for an apology. But will we get one?
The Beeb has been caught red-handed, doing – and still denying – what Christians have been saying for decades: creating division and cultural decay in its news and current affairs output. This is more than mere “error”.
Not only has journalist Michael Prescott’s Memo to the Board proved bias in at least three of its running stories – Gaza, the trans debate, and racial diversity – but their flagship current affairs programme Panorama actually doctored footage of a Trump speech the very week of the US election. They deliberately made it look like he had incited a riot against his own Capitol.
I was taken in. So were millions across the world.
Still none of this even gets close to what Christians such as former Today editor Robin Aitken have been saying for literally decades: that the BBC has “systematically destroyed the foundational beliefs and practices which informed the lives of previous generations.”
He said this in an interview with me in 2019, following publication of his book The Noble Liar – the third in a series he wrote following his constructive dismissal from the organization after a 25-year career.
Robin had written to all the BBC Governors in 2004, just like Michael Prescott did in May last year, and instead of being taken seriously, was called a “f****r” to his face and literally pensioned off. He was just 50 years old.
Bias is almost impossible to prove, he says. But now it has been.
And yet even in the face of incontrovertible evidence, the reaction among BBC elders has been defensive, even paranoid. Former Foreign Affairs Editor John Simpson tweeted ludicrously: “The BBC is facing a coordinated, politically motivated attack.” Even worse, Nick Robinson, presenter of the Today programme said, live: “… there is genuine concern about editorial standards/mistakes. There is also a political campaign by people who want to destroy the organisation that you are currently listening to. Both things are happening at the same time.”
A whole raft of commentators have rushed to defend the organisation without it seems the faintest sense of what has upset viewers and listeners for decades.
As Donald Trump prepares a $1billion lawsuit for defamation, the writing seems to be on the wall – at last. Our national “Auntie” – who once fussed over the nation’s virtue and reputation – has been found for the whole world to see, not just to have dropped her bloomers, but to be a malign old crone wreaking havoc.
There is now a chance for some serious soul-searching
Consider the damage done to prospects for the Middle East by BBC Arabic’s so-called “journalists”. The Memo says that while the BBC’s main news website posted 19 separate stories about the hostages take by Hamas on the day of its terror attack, on BBC Arabic there were none. There were no articles critical of Hamas on the BBC Arabic site, and just four on the English site.
This is similar to the complaints I personally received from pastors in Northern Nigeria about the BBC Hausa service, as long ago as the early 2000s: that the service was being used as a platform to incite division. Independent research later proved bias, and while stopping short of calling this incitement, clearly created false equivalence between Islamist and so-called “Christian militias” – when the Christians were being systematically slaughtered. The BBC ignored this, despite its motto: “Nation shall speak peace to nation.”
The BBC’s complaints procedure is an internal structure – to protect its reputation. In fostering a privileged world sealed off from the rest of us, it has now become an international laughing stock.
According to a new book Seismos by Dr David Landrum, one of the signs of ideological capture is “resistance to critique: Criticism of the ideology is often met with defensiveness or hostility, hindering open dialogue and constructive engagement.” He believes that like any malfunctioning machine, it should be switched off.
There is now a chance for some serious soul-searching, before that happens by default. The BBC might even call to mind its Christian origins.
Lord Reith and the first Governors dedicated it to “as a Temple of the Arts and Muses to Almighty God…” In an inscription that still sits above the old entrance foyer at Broadcasting House in Portland Place, it says “It is their prayer that good seed sown may bring forth a good harvest, that all things hostile to peace or purity may be banished from this house, and that the people, inclining their ear to whatsoever things are beautiful and honest and of good report, may read the path of wisdom and uprightness.”
For generations of university-educated graduates who have gone on to make careers at the BBC, this is mere ideology. But that is to confuse ideas with the truth that informs them. Christianity while being a belief system, a guiding star, a plumbline for truth, is based on something that comes from outside any cosy, corruptible man-made systems.
Truth is everywhere to see, like rain, not just something we make up. Sorry BBC but whether you like it or not, truth is a given and we can trust and lean into it. It may function like an ideology but unlike an ideology, it has self-correction, repentance – and redemption – built into its very heart.
Let’s hope for all our sakes, that the gentle Jesus Christ rather than Michel Foucault who taught that all discourse is power, can help the BBC in its hour of need.
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