Bashing the BBC, Bashirgate and Boris

 I don't think anyone envies Martin Bashir at the moment. I can only hope that he and his family are not looking at social media or the right-wing press, as they will feel themselves under siege. This is not to excuse Bashir's conduct 25 years ago. He has been exposed - need I tell you what you know already? - as having forged bank statements to facilitate an interview with the late Diana, Princess of Wales. When this issue surfaced last November, I was very suspicious. 25 years to expose such wrongdoing seemed very strange, and the explanations for this seemed unconvincing. It looked to me that the story had broken as a red herring to deflect pressure from the government for its handling of the pandemic and as a handy stick with which to beat the BBC.

Understandably, Diana's sons are deeply upset at the results of the Dyson Report. Prince William has made a deeply emotional speech blaming BBC bosses, as well as a "rogue reporter". Harry has blamed a toxic media culture for his mother's death.  As Jonny Diamond, BBC Royal correspondent comments: "In the past, of course, it's been Harry that's been so angry with the media, William appeared to have made his peace with it, but the second in line to the throne has launched a visceral attack on the BBC, a sign of his deep hurt and deep dismay."

It's certainly ironic that the tabloid press, which upset Harry and Meghan so much that they left the UK, are now attacking the BBC for using tricks favoured so much by those same newspapers. Have we forgotten the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone, Squidgygate and the phone call by Charles to Camilla in which he spoke of how, if reincarnated, he would like to come back as a certain intimate feminine object? And does the Bashir scandal, dating back so many years, invalidate present-day BBC reporting from around the world? Does it render BBC coverage of the Windrush scandal, the negative effects of Brexit and the disgrace of the track and trace system dishonest and fraudulent? Well, there is one man who might think so...

As if you hadn't guessed! Boris has just spoken with concern and gravity on this issue. According to the BBC (the same): 

"The BBC should take "every possible step" to ensure that nothing like its deceit of the Princess of Wales to secure an interview ever happens again, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said".

Boris Johnson, as we know, is just the man to be aware of how harmful dishonesty in journalism can be. He was sacked from The Times for fabricating a quote from his godfather. His career as a columnist for The Telegraph was somewhat spoiled by the fact that he persistently wrote untrue articles about the European Union. He received £275 000 a year for this latter job, describing his salary as "chickenfeed".  Yes, just the man to judge Martin Bashir and the BBC.

. I would be amazed, however, if he and his cronies are not looking at how they can use Bashirgate, to coin a phrase, as another stick with which they can beat the BBC. They have already made several moves in this direction. The first was the appointment of Richard Sharp as BBC chairman. This must have caused Boris great satisfaction, as The Byline Times points out: 

"The newly-appointed Chairman of the BBC has donated more than £400,000 to the Conservative Party since 2001, Electoral Commission records show.
Earlier today, it was announced that former Goldman Sachs banker Richard Sharp is set to be appointed as the chairman of the BBC’s board of directors".

The report goes on to say that Mr Sharp will be leading negotiations with the government over the licence fee. Pensioners beware. And Mr Sharp is not the only appointee in favour with Boris and his pals...

Tim Davie, the new Director-General of the BBC, is definitely the government's man at Wogan House. The Independent rightly says that this is beyond satire:

"How, for example, do you satirise the following? The BBC appoints a new director general whose first act in the job is to tell his staff they can’t go on marches because of the threat of “perceived bias”. Not actual bias, just perceived. Oh, and what do you know, this chap who now runs the BBC and is determined to liberate it from any perception at all that it could be anything less than entirely politically neutral, also once stood for election as a Tory Party councillor and was deputy chair of his local Conservative Association".

Mr Davie has launched a crusade against what the Tories see as Leftist bias in the BBC. We all know about how the Mash Report has been axed, to the delight of the right-wing press. Another of his ventures was the sacking of the junior script editor of Peaky Blinders for unacceptable tweets. Mr Davie is a typical Tory advocate of free speech - for the political Right.

We can be in no doubt that there will be further such measures taken by the Tories at the Beeb. As said previously, the popular satirical BBC programme, "Have I Got News For You" will definitely be in the firing line. The licence fee may well be raised considerably.

To conclude, there might well be another harmful knock-on effect. If the use of forged documents and cover stories is to become banned, it will make genuine investigative journalism very difficult. It will become next to impossible to infiltrate terrorist or criminal organisations or hunt down fugitives from justice. A prime example of such an operation was the entrapment of the gangster, John "Goldfinger" Palmer, by the now-sadly-defunct programme of the 80s and 90s, The Cook Report. Roger Cook, the intrepid eponymous reporter, wrote in 2015 :

"We were initially told our proposed programme was too risky and that Palmer was too clever to get caught. But we weren’t deterred.
We asked two drug barons we had met while filming a Cook Report in Burma’s Golden Triangle to pose as opium growers who needed drug money ‘cleaned’.
It worked a treat. We had Palmer on tape offering to launder $160 million of opium profits for them twice a year, even boasting that his rates were the best in the business".

If deception is to be eliminated, sting operations like this will become impossible. Bashirgate will be a dream come true for everyone who has something to hide, be they politicians, celebrities or criminals.