Is there a coup going on at the BBC, as many of its staff suggested in a meeting yesterday? Of course there is. Not only is that apparent in plain sight, as senior staff are toppled for what are, in truth, relatively minor errors, but the fact that they have been brought down by the BBC Board is clear. Deborah Turness, in particular, seems to have suggested that with her defiant comments.
Nor should we be surprised. The far-right agenda does, as Tim Snyder suggested in his book On Tyranny, require that truth be delegitimised. This always starts with attacks on independent truth-making institutions such as the press, academia, and civil society, as we have seen Trump do. And then, when facts have been made contingent, experts suspect, and history negotiable, the institutions that once served as referents lose authority, which is the fascist aim.
As Hannah Arendt put it in a 1973 interview:
The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.
Of course, those pursuing what appear to be closely coordinated far-right agendas, funded by the ultra-wealthy, are staging a coup against the BBC as a consequence, precisely because, for all its faults, it is one of the most trusted media organisations anywhere. Taking down the BBC is their ultimate prize, and that is why Trump is going for it. One little mistake, and they are seeking to discredit it in its entirety, to replace it with their falsehoods. If the BBC's staff did not think there was a coup underway, they should not be working there: it is their job to spot such things, and we should believe them.
And why is it happening? That should be obvious. It is so that the economic and political power structure of the wealthy can benefit. When truth is unstable, accountability fades. Financial interests, corporate media interests, oligarchs and party machines can act in the shadows, manipulating narratives while avoiding challenge. A media environment deprived of factual anchors becomes fertile ground for rent-seeking, propaganda and exclusionary politics. We should, in that case, be worried.
First, this process corrodes democracy. If public debate lacks shared facts, then it becomes a contest of shouting rather than reasoned argument, and power wins by force or by spectacle rather than persuasion.
Second, it deepens inequality. Those with the resources to shape narratives, whether they be big tech, media empires, or wealthy interest groups, gain the advantage, whilst ordinary citizens become passive and deliberately ill-equipped to challenge the dominant story.
Third, this then undermines state capacity and accountability. When facts are disputed, then budgets, taxation, public services, and regulation become contestable. The logic starts with the claim that we cannot trust the data, and then we cannot trust the press. It is just a stepping stone to the claim that we cannot trust the state. Private capture of the interests of the state follows, as it already is in the USA, and public institutions are rapidly hollowed out, as is clearly the aim at the BBC.
Fourth, this, of course, fuels extremism and exclusion. A disoriented public becomes susceptible to simplistic stories of victimhood, enemy creation, nostalgia, and strongman solutions. These are being played out everywhere.
The fight at the BBC is, then, existential. For all its faults, the BBC is on the front line of the fight for the truth. That means that it, its journalists and the idea of public service broadcasting within transparent institutions must be reasserted now, despite any reservations we have.
Second, we must reform the media economy. We must confront disinformation. Regulation, public funding and new models of non-profit journalism are part of the answer.
Third, we must democratise truth-making. Citizens must be equipped not only to receive information but to question, investigate and test it. Media literacy must be elevated from a niche educational topic to having the status of a core civic competency. Media studies used to be thought of as a joke: it isn't. It is vital to democracy.
Fourth, tie the truth to economic justice. The faithful commitment to factual reality is not separate from debates about who pays tax, who controls markets, and who shapes the public sphere. If truth collapses, then how we understand public revenue, state capacity, and redistribution collapses too. A politics of economic justice must reclaim the terrain of fact and reason.
Finally, we need to mobilise political agency. This is not a technocratic exercise. The fight for truth is a political struggle: against oligarchic media owners, corporate capture, and authoritarian impulses. Our politicians must act, and if they do not, we should. We have a right to know.
We live in a time when the assumption that there is truth, that facts matter, and that the media can tell something approximate to the real world is under sustained assault. The fascist agenda does not always manifest as marching boots; as often it works by eroding the factual world and the shared civic space. Arendt's warning remains urgent: once the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world is being destroyed, politics becomes unmoored.
The challenge for us is clear. The need is to restore and defend the ground of factual truth in our media environment. We must tie truth to economic and social justice, rebuilding state capacity, media independence and civic literacy. We must ensure that democracy is not an idle ritual but a lived reality grounded in reason, accountability and shared reality. In doing so, we reclaim the conviction that truth matters, that people matter and that the state and society can work for all.
Those who care about economic justice, media justice, and democratic reform must recognise that truth is not a luxury. It is the essential foundation of the politics we say we want and the politics we desperately need.
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Of course, one of the other beneficiaries is GB News, which Gibbs was an editorial advisor for before it launched.
Anyone who thinks GB News is less generally biased needs to take a course on critical thinking.
And that in itself should have disbarred him from being a BBC Board Member.
Absolutely correct!
Exactly. And who appointed Gibb to the BBC? Johnson, as a way of helping to wreck it.
He should be removed now. Of course, Nandy says she can’t do it, the rules blah blah blah.
If labour is really on the BBC’s side, they’d find a way to do it. Of course, that would require a bit of political courage and determination.
Not really Starmer’s thing that is it?
Can we hope that the one possible slight upside is that the `BBC will give far less air time to Reform. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/12/reform-uk-pulls-out-of-bbc-film-amid-trump-speech-edit-row
It matters because the replacements may be worse.
That suggests a problem with how the replacements are selected, and who has the influence to choose.
The replacements should be best for the viewers, not politicians, nor the rest of the media.
The fight back can begin by treating Trump’s threat of legal action with the utter contempt that it deserves. The pre-action letter sent to the BBC was so badly drafted that it is possibly the most ridiculous legal letter that I have seen in over 45 years in legal practice. If one of my assistants had drafted such a letter I would have advised them to consider a career outside the law. Apart from the fact that there is no evidence that the clumsily edited piece was ever broadcast in the States, how can Trump claim that he has suffered any reputational loss given all the legal findings in relation to the January 6 events and that, even after the clip was shown in the UK (where none of us had any vote in the Presidential election), he went on to win the election. If he tries to sue in the UK he will find that any litigation would be fundamentally flawed because it is so obviously out of time.
Despite this, how the BBC and DCMS react to this empty threat will be most telling.
A great deal to agree with. Thanks.
incredibly, the lawyer’s letter includes the word ‘salacious’ — do the USA have a different meaning for that word?
🙂
So, unsurprisingly, it’s all bullshit and bluster from Trump.
So the BBC needs to do what American media companies haven’t done so far, and call his bluff.
[…] point is, we need a media we can interrogate. Lose that, and we are in deep […]
“…the BBC is on the front line of the fight for the truth.” In Scotland, the BBC is where truth dies. There are numerous examples of the lies BBC inflicts on Scots daily.
A recent example:
In October 2025, the BBC published a story under this headline: “Over £1m spent on sending Scottish ferry staff to Turkey”
This referred to up to 13 staff being sent to Turkey to monitor the building of 4 ferries ordered by the Scottish government. The staff travelled there from time to time over a period of 3 years from 2022.
It was a blatant lie. The cost of sending the staff there? £23,000 including flights, accommodation and subsistence. The rest of the money was the employees’ full time salaries over that period which they would be paid whether they were in Scotland or Turkey.
“The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen” Hannah Arendt, but that free press can’t be allowed to lie at will.
Fighting disinformation in Scotland is to fight the BBC or, failing that, stopping the consumption of its output.
Accepted
I do, of course, support the idea of an SBC as much as I support the idea of Scottish independence.
I accept that you do support both.
Unfortunately, your 5 point improvement plan will have no traction with the BBC in Scotland even if it is taken on board elsewhere in the UK because the BBC’s job here is not to impart news or to inform the public; God forbid that the Scots be told the truth about our own country.
The BBC is camped here to help keep Scotland within the union therefore no protests or appeals to the BBC to change its ways to ensure truth, impartiality or accuracy will work. Its stock in trade here is disinformation, lies and undermining Scotland in every way it can; it’s just one of the British State’s colonial institutions designed to exert control over Scotland and the Scots.
The BBC is a festering sore on Scotland and the British State’s lackey and mouthpiece here. Only by becoming independent once again and ridding Scotland of both the British State and the BBC will we be able to demand, and receive, a truthful, impartial public service broadcaster.
I accept this is the case on Scotland: it is not for the UK as a whole, and Scotland will need a propper public sector broadcaster in due course, so lessons need to be learned.
Watching the debasement of the BBC has been like watching a super-nova in space – you know that it happened a million years ago and all we are seeing is a past event making itself evident to us at long last. The BBC transgressed its standards way back, probably before when Birt was in charge. I’ve had to sit through bitchy Eddie Mair interviews of Jeremy Corbyn, Laura Kuenssberg’s love ins with Boris Johnson, ex-Tory MPs posing as ‘journalists’ and presenters………..this list goes on, even before you mention Savile.
But your actual point – the media’s influence on and in a stable society, an authentic democracy – that point is not lost on me at all.
It’s just that I am so disappointed and angry because I find it all totally unacceptable as it is. And now, Sky is sniffing around ITV which puts C4 news under threat. The loss of that would be more to me than the loss of the BBC. That really would be the end as far as I am concerned. The BBC’s goose is already cooked. Only time will resurrect it. And it won’t be in our time either.
I said previously that I was glad the head of BBC news had gone. She vehemently denied that her department was biased, when it clearly is (as you pointed out). Maybe she has other strengths and maybe a period of reflection will open her eyes; I hope so.
The Murdoch Sky company has made a bid for ITV News.
Labour has sanctioned reducing the role of the Competition Commission.
When will Fox News UK version be on the air?
Murdoch has not owned Sky for a long time.
I think Sky News is, overall, pretty good and better than the BBC on occassion. ITN is not.
I have the impression that there is an internal conflict at the BBC over Gaza and the rest of Palestine. The official line has been biased in favour of Israel. But the journalists will have seen the evidence and be aware of information posted on Al Jazeera and their own contacts. People like Orla Guerin, Jeremy Bowen and Lyse Doucet don’t pass judgement on Israel but the images they show make the point I feel they would say if allowed to.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/jul/02/more-than-400-media-figures-urge-bbc-board-to-remove-robbie-gibb-over-gaza#:~:text=The%20signatories%20also%20include%20111,reporting%20of%20Israel%2FPalestine%E2%80%9D.
The link tells us 111 BBC journalists among others said about “concerns over opaque editorial decisions and censorship at the BBC on the reporting of Israel/Palestine”.
We can recall Gary Linaker saying what many people thought about the ‘boats’ and being taken off air for the BBC to find solidarity among the other staff and they had to back down. It amazed some of my American friends.
The ‘rebels’ won’t always win and the BBC may well broadcast things which some of here think are lies but it is not a reason to throw out the whole institution.
I agree with your post and I repeat a comment I have made before. We can bring in electoral reform, a curb on funding and a tighter constitution but until we curb the power of the billionaire owned media, it may not make the difference we desire.
I understand that media literacy is taught in Finnish schools; it should be here. I’ve got somewhat fed up with BBC news but happily pay my licence fee in hope of a more independent phase informed by ethics rather than fear of censure and funding worries. That hope is fading now.
The BBC has many faults in its news reporting. It is, however, far less biased than any other MSM outlet and definitley less so than GB News. It needs reforming, not scrapping.
I agree completely.
The question then is, in the one-eyed “post truth” age of misinformation, disinformation and lies to make Goebbals proud, how can truth be made king? One asset is that populism for all it’s braggart swagger is not that popular – it relies on division and fragmentation amongst those who build. So how can this be overcome?
I try to answer this, every day.
Richard is too generous in saying that, “For all its faults, the BBC is on the front line of the fight for the truth”.
On the contrary, I think one of the main goals of the BBC is to make sure that people don’t know what’s going on in the world.
This is clearly true in the case of economics (as this blog demonstrates every day) but also of foreign affairs (where its job is easy due to public ignorance and disinterest).
In my view, BBC presenters and correspondents are paid vast amounts of money to hide the truth and disseminate establishment propaganda, especially in these two areas.
But fortunately we can now learn much more about what’s really going on thanks to the internet and the access it gives us to disinterested experts and well-informed observers such as Richard.
Of course the BBC needs to imprcve its act.
But what do you want if you do not want the BBC?
We could hope for a media called ‘Facts BC’, where all the available facts were displayed alongside verifiable evidence, and viewers were invited to make their own judgements, where media techniques were illustrated and debated for their ethics, where politicians’ donations and affiliations were publicly displayed, and the personas concerned called on to justify this….this list is long. In our society ‘facts’ need not be ‘what the powerful say’.
That would be unreadable / watchable of course.
Agreed wholeheartedly. We need an apolitical, truth-based update of the long-abandoned Leveson 2 and this time, make it law. But making it law requires a complete rethink of how UK politics works, starting with an equitable voting system which reflects public opinion, and treats the lobbyist donations for what they are: legalised bribery and corruption.
Oh, and while we’re at it, UK must listen to the people of the Celtic nations and provide a legally viable secession plan if they vote for independence. They’re bright enough to know that a legally-binding, written constitution that represents public opinion is a sine qua non, so why not England too?