WHEN a senior BBC presenter gives a lengthy interview declaring that there is ‘no agenda’ and no bias, and that everything is hunky-dory inside the newsroom, it stinks of deeper agendas.
The profile of Reeta Chakrabarti in the Telegraph at the weekend is subtle-as-a-brick institutional messaging. The fingerprints of the 300-strong press operation are all over it.
Chakrabarti – who also uses her Telegraph platform to plug her first novel – claims that BBC presenters ‘should keep their opinions to themselves’. That she has never felt political pressure from above. She says there is ‘no agenda’. She asserts that the BBC ‘can’t afford to be biased’.
And that is precisely where her argument unravels. Bias at the BBC has never primarily been about pressure from on high. It is about deeply entrenched culture, framing, recruitment patterns, social milieu and shared assumptions. It is about what becomes normal, because virtually everyone in the room shares broadly the same outlook. In other words, confirmation bias on an industrial scale.
For more than 25 years, News-watch has documented BBC bias on the European Union, Brexit, climate alarmism, Israel, socialism, identity politics and much more. The BBC has responded substantively only once to a News-watch report, in 2007. Since then, the reports have been greeted with silence, deflection or ad hominem mud-slinging.
The Chakrabarti interview makes sense only in this framework. As Charter renewal discussions get firmly under way – the closing date for public consultation submission is on March 10 – this is PR puff territory designed to send the message that the Corporation needs more money but should otherwise be left alone.
There is something almost poignant in Chakrabarti’s declaration that her personal opinions do not matter. No doubt – like most of those in the metropolitan media bubble – she believes that her perceived restraint equals neutrality. She has internalised the Reithian ethic of self-suppression. But impartiality is secured not by individual virtue. It requires structural pluralism, genuine diversity of viewpoint, transparency in complaints adjudication and an independent mechanism capable of challenging newsroom assumptions.
The real issue is not whether Reeta Chakrabarti personally believes she is fair. The question for everyone who works there is whether the BBC, as a system, is capable of recognising its own blind spots.
