The BBC keep trying to tell us that they’re not a representation of the Brexit-hating, Boris-despising London left-wing metropolitan elite.
But their actions, on a daily and weekly basis, suggest that’s exactly what they are and what they will remoan, I mean remain, unless we continue to call out their blatant bias.
There were two incidents the past few days that were particularly egregious and suggests the corporation continues to take its critics – and its audience – for fools.
First, the Beeb hired as their new presenter a little-known bloke called Matthew Stadlen.
Now, Matthew isn’t a big name or particularly talented – he hosted the graveyard shift on LBC for a couple of years and, as far as I can see, these days is largely a Twitter irritant.
Actually, he applied for work on GB News before we launched and didn’t get the job.
The BBC Broadcasting House.
Ian West
So not a broadcaster you’d think the BBC would be particularly keen to hire.
Until that is I tell you about Matthew’s politics.
You see, Mr Stadlen is as left-wing as you get. He’s an avowed hater of the government, of Brexit and of Boris Johnson.
He believes the Tories are racist.
And he’s so craven in his support for Labour that he’s recently talked about running for the party as an MP.
So this is the man who the BBC thought should be an impartial presenter for Brits on BBC Radio Five Live, a news station.
You couldn’t make it up. He’d been offered the shifts, announced his new gig on Twitter and even claimed that he was all of a sudden going to morph into a David Dimbleby-style impartial broadcaster.
It was only after massive outcry over the fact that such a man is so deeply political that the thought he could provide impartial coverage of politics was ludicrous that the BBC withdrew the offer.
Nadine Dorries has ordered a review into the BBC.
Steve Parsons
They just don’t get it, do they?
Meanwhile, Nick Robinson ¬– one of those folk who claims to be impartial – suggested he was anything but during a broadcast of Radio Four’s flagship Today Programme.
In a blatantly politicised bid for a gotcha moment during an interview with Boris Johnson’s chief of staff Steve Barclay following the Sue Gray report, the former Beeb Political Editor incorrectly told his millions of listeners that a government cleaner called Emanuel Gomes died of Covid after being “surrounded by people who were routinely breaking the rules”.
In fact, Mr Gomes didn’t die of Covid, but rather hypertension of the heart, according to the official coroner’s report.
GB News presenter Dan Wootton
Image: GB News
Oh, and he didn’t even work at Number 10 Downing Street, but was actually a cleaner at the Ministry of Justice.
While his death was, of course, tragic, it was deeply immoral of Nick Robinson to invoke it as part of the coverage of the Gray report.
Sure, he apologised, because he was wrong and because he was caught.
Dan Wootton has accused the BBC of stoking unnecessary Covid fear.
Ian West
But he showed a desire to bring down the government will blur the editorial decisions he makes.
No wonder a Whitehall source told The Daily Mail…
“It is a total humiliation for Nick and just the sort of cheap and nasty, over-dramatic journalism that has ruined the Today programme.”
And Rebecca Ryan of the Defund The BBC campaign added…
"Are there no depths to which the BBC will not sink in order to try to unseat an elected Prime Minister? There is no balance at the BBC and seemingly no shame."
Is there any BBC presenter who doesn’t harbour these leftie, anti-Brexit views?
I don’t think so. I can’t name one.
In fact, since their departure from the BBC, the likes of Jon Sopel, Andrew Marr and Emily Maitlis have all used their newfound editorial freedom to express personal disdain with Boris and the government.
Not that anyone had any doubt of where they stood after years of biased coverage on BBC News…
By the way, I was thinking over the weekend that from the moment the moment the BBC dropped its daily Covid doom tally at the start of the Ukraine war talk of coronavirus in the UK has virtually disappeared?
So much of the hysteria and fear was stoked by the state broadcaster encouraging unnecessary testing and constant terror.
The Nadine Dorries-ordered review ensuring the BBC is complying with its editorial standards including impartiality requirements cannot come soon enough.
The BBC is bad for Britain. It’s deeply biased. Why the hell should we keep being forced to pay a licence fee simply to watch any television?