The BBC’s now in a death loop: it grows ever more craven to the billionaires, shifting the political centre of gravity further rightwards, even as the billionaire-owned media claim it’s too ‘leftwing’
The BBC is in turmoil, its director-general and head of news forced to resign after a memo leaked to the Daily Telegraph highlighted editorial malpractice at the state broadcaster’s flagship news programme Panorama. The documentary had spliced together two separate clips of Donald Trump speaking on 6 January 2021, shortly before a riot at the Capitol building in Washington. The speech’s sentiments that day may not have been much misrepresented, but its contents technically were.
But Panorama, and the BBC more generally, have been exposed peddling far worse misinformation. In those cases, there have been precisely no consequences for such out-in-the-open journalistic abuses.
The reason heads have rolled at the BBC this time are not because it made a journalistic blunder – it makes them all the time. It is because the corporation foolishly offered an open goal to the billionaire right and its media outlets. This is just the latest, particularly damaging skirmish in a years-long battle by the right to bring down the BBC – while, in the meantime, ensuring that the corporation turns even more pliant than it already is in promoting the right’s interests.
We are now in a death loop in which the BBC becomes ever more craven to the billionaires, thereby shifting the political centre of gravity ever further rightwards. Much of the British public have been convinced by the billionaire-owned media that the BBC is actually “leftwing”. And as a result, the right grows ever more confident in advancing the billionaires’ self-interested agenda, knowing there will be no pushback.
British politics, as Keir Starmer illustrates only too keenly, is in exactly the same death loop. The billionaires are in charge, whoever leads. The main political battle is over image-laundering: where to direct the hate.
Open-for-business, austerity-affirming Starmer wants us hating chiefly on those who criticise him from the left, such as opponents of his support for Israel’s genocide. Open-for-business, austerity-affirming Nigel Farage wants us hating chiefly on the immigrants. But, of course, both hate the left and immigrants.
If anyone is falling for the manufactured “furore” over Panorama’s latest journalistic gaffe, there are examples of far graver malpractice by Panorama – especially on issues related to Israel and Palestine. These editorial crimes have barely caused a ripple, even after they were exposed.
Why? Because the billionaires love Israel and hate its critics. Israel is their vision of the future: the model of a fortress state in which they believe they can protect themselves from the people whose lives they are destroying around the globe.
Israel is also the laboratory where they can test and refine the surveillance technology, the weapons and the policing methods they will need if they are to keep their own publics controlled and subdued as austerity bites ever deeper. Gaza may be coming to street near you soon.
Here are two examples of crimes against journalism from Panorama that illustrate what you can get away with as long as you keep the billionaires happy.
The first gave Israel cover for the crimes it committed against peace activists trying to bring aid to Gaza in 2010 – thereby setting the tone for subsequent coverage that would ultimately lead to, and justify, the Gaza genocide.
The second marshalled disinformation to cement Jeremy Corbyn’s reputation as a supposed “antisemite” in the immediate run-up to 2019 general election. Starmer would go on to use the confected antisemitism row to seize control of Labour, oust Corbyn, approve as opposition leader of Israel’s starvation of Gaza’s population, and back Israel’s genocide as prime minister.
Death in the Med (2010)
In 2010 reporter Jane Corbin fronted Panorama’s “Death in the Med”, about an Israeli commando raid a few months earlier on the lead aid ship, the Mavi Marmara, in a humanitarian flotilla that was trying to reach Gaza, despite an illegal Israeli blockade.
(The programme now serves as an unwelcome reminder that the “conflict” between Israel and Hamas did not begin on 7 October 2023, as the western media would have us believe. For the proceeding 17 years, Israel had been trapping the people of Gaza inside the tiny enclave while blocking food and medicine from reaching them – what Israel referred to as “putting them on a diet”.)
The commandos attacked the ship in international waters and killed nine activists on board, several with close-range shots to the head. The illegality of invading a ship in international waters was not mentioned by Panorama, nor were the execution-style killings. Instead the programme featured “exclusive” interviews with some of the commandos, largely presenting them as the victims.
Ludicrously, Israel had accused the activists of belonging to al-Qaeda. A central justification for its violent raid was footage Israel had produced suggesting that it was the commandos who had been attacked by the peace activists, not the other way round. Israel also released a radio communication in which an activist could supposedly be heard, shortly before the raid, telling the commandos to “Go back to Auschwitz”. Corbin referred to this as a “warning sign”.
Panorama made no mention of the fact that Israel had seized all media equipment from the journalists and activists onboard the Marmara. The activists were forcibly taken to Israel, where they were held incommunicado for several days. The purpose was clear: to ensure that Israel exclusively controlled the narrative while the Mavi Marmara incident was making headlines.
Early on, the Foreign Press Association in Israel warned that the Israeli military was “selectively using footage to bolster its claims that commandos opened fire only after being attacked”. The Committee to Protect Journalists similarly denounced Israel’s editing and distribution of the footage it had confiscated.
By the time Panorama aired “Death in the Med” three months later, the Israeli-imposed fog had lifted further. Israel had been forced to make a “correction”, admitting that it had doctored the incendiary “Auschwitz” recording and that it had no idea who had made the comment. The voice was from someone with a strong southern US accent, but none of the people on the Marmara with access to the radio were American.
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