The BBC's Plan to Appease Nigel Farage

News that BBC executives plan to alter their programming in order to win over Reform voters is the latest sign of a corporation that has become dangerously cowed by the right

“I don’t remember anyone ever saying to us ‘Oh I just don't think we're properly reflecting the Green Party view, or the liberal-left view on this story’,” one former BBC journalist told me last year, when I asked about the political pressure that was exerted on them by senior management.

“It was always just slanted in one direction – which was basically the nativist, authoritarian, Conservative direction.”

Further evidence of this came earlier today after I revealed for Byline Times how BBC executives have drawn up plans to win the “trust” of Reform voters, by altering their news and drama output.

Minutes of a meeting of the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee in March reveal that the Director General Tim Davie, and other executives, discussed plans to change their “story selection” and “other types of output, such as drama” in order to win over supporters of Nigel Farage’s party.

When pushed by Byline Times on whether the BBC had ever drawn up similar plans to win over voters of any other parties a spokesperson was unable to do so, saying only that they were dedicated to ensuring “due impartiality”.

So does the BBC really show “due impartiality” towards Nigel Farage and Reform, or is this just another step towards attempting to appease the very political forces which are most determined to destroy them?

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A Culture of Fear

Internal concern over the political direction of the BBC is longstanding.

BBC journalists I spoke to last year for Byline described a “culture of fear” at the organisation in which journalists became afraid of reporting negative stories about the then Conservative Government, due to external pressure from Downing Street and internal pressure from senior editors and executives.

The culture, which was overseen by editors perceived as having overly “cosy” relationships with Government, followed a two decade campaign by the Conservative party to undermine and neuter Britain’s national broadcaster.

At the centre of the campaign was the former Director of Communications to Theresa May, turned GB News executive Robbie Gibb, who was appointed to the BBC board in 2021 by Boris Johnson.

Gibb, who was described by former BBC presenter Emily Maitlis as an “agent of the Conservative party” is now a member of the corporation’s editorial standards committee, which was set up to ensure “impartiality” at the corporation.

That a man who worked for the Conservative party and helped set up the most biased, hard-right news channel in the country, was deemed to be the perfect person to ensure impartiality at the BBC, tells you an awful lot about the mess it has got itself into.

During that period, senior editors became “terrified” of upsetting the then Conservative Government, which ultimately fed through to its reporters, staff there told Byline Times.

“There was a period which coincided with the aftermath of the 2019 General Election and the Covid pandemic when BBC bosses were absolutely terrified of Downing Street,” one reporter at the corporation told me.

“What the Government, then under Cummings and [Johnson’s communications director] Lee Cain, managed to do was convince the BBC that they [in Downing Street] were the embodiment of public opinion and that the BBC was the embodiment of everything that wasn’t.”

“It got into the heads of a lot of bosses up to and including the Director-General himself – that we were all basically ‘metropolitan liberals’ who weren’t representative of anyone and that we needed to be bloody careful because, if we stepped out of line, then we knew what was going to happen.”

A similar perception still appears to dominate the upper echelons of the BBC, although now the pressure is not coming in response to a dying Conservative party, but in response to an insurgent Reform party.

It is a pressure that Farage appears all too aware of. The Reform leader regularly uses his GB News show to attack the BBC, which he calls a “political actor” which is using “story selection” in order to target his party.

That the BBC is now planning to alter that very “story selection” in order to appeal to Reform voters, suggests that this pressure is working.

A big part of that pressure comes from the real possibility of a future Reform Government.

This belief, as spelled out by Nick Robinson on this morning’s Today Programme, that “Nigel Farage could be our next Prime Minister” is already changing how the corporation deals with the party. For a news organisation that is so dependent on access to power for its daily coverage, the belief that Reform could one day hold that power has real sway over its journalism, especially at the top.

As I wrote at the weekend, I believe the possibility of a Reform Government is being exaggerated by a media that is increasingly playing into Farage’s hands.

However, as long as Reform continues to lead in the polls, BBC executives will continue to lean on reporters to appease the very forces on the far right of British politics that have already promised to destroy them.