‘Doing a runner more like it, before he is forced to sort out the BBC, which let’s face it, is very left-wing, when it should be neutral. The licence fee needs to be removed and the whole organisation brought into the 21st century!!’
THAT, verbatim, was the first in the Daily Mail reader responses to the resignation of Tony Hall’s resignation as Director-General of the BBC. In some ways, what more could be said?
His seven-year reign at the top has confirmed and accelerated the BBC’s slide into relentless liberal-left bias across virtually its entire output, including especially in the massively negative coverage of Brexit and the endless plugging of climate alarmism, culminating last week on the BBC1 News at Ten with a series of lead items which were pure propaganda and could have been pulled from a Greenpeace manual.
The extreme distortion of climate reporting was accompanied throughout Lord Hall’s tenure by a major focus on so-called ‘diversity’ and this has become now one of the corporation’s major obsessions. Its hallmark is that nothing is ever sufficient, with a sustained attack on white, heterosexual ‘privilege’.
The descent of BBC journalism under his regime was also typified by the disgraceful BBC complicity in the raid by South Yorkshire police into the home of Sir Cliff Richard in August 2014, culminating in a massive legal damages payout to Sir Cliff.
The BBC defended its crass actions to the bitter end, and even tried to make out it was defending an important Press freedom principle. In reality it showed only the corporation’s arrogance.
Lord Hall’s first major task in his role was working towards the renewal of the BBC Charter in 2016. He utilised the BBC’s massive lobbying resources to ensure that the corporation – despite the massive changes under way in broadcasting –survived pretty much intact, and crucially, with no reform of the licence fee tax.
Sadly, no one in the Conservative Party stood up to the corporation. John Whittingdale, the Culture Secretary – like all his predecessors – balked at radical surgery, particularly with regard to the complaints system.
Instead of making it totally independent, he left most of the complaints handling in the BBC’s hands. The only change was handing responsibility for complaints appeals to Ofcom.
But that was never going to solve anything because Ofcom itself suffers from the same liberal mindset as the BBC, and most of its Content Board (which handles complaints appeals) are ex-BBC staff.
The only hope now is that a genuinely reformist new director-general is appointed. Don’t hold your breath. Current culture secretary Nicky Morgan has already paid gushing tributes to Lord Hall. That says it all.
