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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\u2019s 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\u2019s sentiments that day may not have been much misrepresented, but its contents technically were.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The reason heads have rolled at the BBC this time are not because it made a journalistic blunder \u2013 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 \u2013 while, in the meantime, ensuring that the corporation turns even more pliant than it already is in promoting the right\u2019s interests.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cleftwing\u201d. And as a result, the right grows ever more confident in advancing the billionaires\u2019 self-interested agenda, knowing there will be no pushback.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s genocide. Open-for-business, austerity-affirming Nigel Farage wants us hating chiefly on the immigrants. But, of course, both hate the left and immigrants.<\/p>\n
If anyone is falling for the manufactured \u201cfurore\u201d over Panorama\u2019s latest journalistic gaffe, there are examples of far graver malpractice by Panorama \u2013 especially on issues related to Israel and Palestine. These editorial crimes have barely caused a ripple, even after they were exposed.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The first gave Israel cover for the crimes it committed against peace activists trying to bring aid to Gaza in 2010 \u2013 thereby setting the tone for subsequent coverage that would ultimately lead to, and justify, the Gaza genocide.<\/p>\n
The second marshalled disinformation to cement Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s reputation as a supposed \u201cantisemite\u201d 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\u2019s starvation of Gaza\u2019s population, and back Israel\u2019s genocide as prime minister.<\/p>\n