The Herald: Iain Macwhirter Unspun banner new

The BBC fitted me like a glove. I worked there for over 20 years and it was a bit like a club for people like me. Humanities graduate, liberal-left, anti-establishment.

Don’t get me wrong. The commitment to impartiality in news and current affairs was almost a BBC religion. It was seen as positively indecent to allow your own political views to influence programmes. You followed the news whatever it was and always gave equal time to both sides.

Indeed, my only real criticism of the BBC journalism was that it tended to follow the news rather slavishly and not generate more of its own exclusive stories. But political bias? Only in the imaginations of politicians, left and right, who always thought the Beeb was ‘agin them’.

What really angers the right is BBC drama and comedy output, which even I find tediously woke at times. I squirm at the politically one-sided comedy on shows like HIGNIFY because it offends against that very impartiality the BBC bred into me. Also, they’re just not very funny any more.

So the threat to BBC journalism is not from Nadine Dorries and Tory culture warriors. They’re pussycats compared with their equivalents back in Thatcher’s day.


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