The BBC and the Sad Death of Establishment Journalism
How even the values of the BBC are decaying in the rotting landscape of modern media
Last year the BBC did an interview with controversial influencer Andrew Tate. To those of us who find Tate mildy troubling and wonder what his popularity says about the dynamics of the online world we all half live in, you might think this would be a good thing. A serious journalist would probe what he has said, seek the truth honestly.
Yet that is not what happened. Instead the BBC reporter who turned up, who evidently despised Tate, came armed with a bunch of clipped quotes from decade old podcast appearances and soundbites in order to get Tate to admit to being a misogynist or a generally terrible person. When Tate responded, inevitably, by saying those clips had been taken out of context and asked if she had watched the full interview, she had no response.
The entire interview was painful, Tate appeared undented and the reporter seemed transparently disingenuous and emotionally invested in what she already thought instead of seeking to find answers. It was reminiscent of Jordan Peterson’s viral “so you’re saying” interview with Cathy Newman on channel 4 in which Newman repeatedly brazenly misrepresented everything Peterson said in order to corner him into some incriminating soundbite.
To be clear, I am no fan of either of these figures. Not in the least. But interviews like this were key to Peterson’s massive rise to fame. Cathy Newman was so disingenuous she made him look smart and composed. The actual merit of his arguments had nothing to do with it, it was like watching a verbal sword fight between a knight in armour and a kid with a plastic spade. Peterson’s fans lapped it up, he became a culture war hero.
The Tate interview likewise undoubtedly did nothing but reinforce his fans view that the media hate him irrationally and are intent on incriminating him, that they have nothing of substance to offer and that he is heroically defending himself.
The basic problem lies in the gradual loss of the idea that truth is at the centre of journalism. Of course, this is not actually acknowledged because on the BBC you constantly see articles about “fact-checking” and “misinformation”, ideas that feign to make objective judgements. These reporters still believe in truth, but what they have not observed is that the truth is the truth, not what they happen to think about it.
Yet the problem is that truth is a moving target, especially in a world full of value judgements, and as a journalist truth ultimately lies in the principle of show don’t tell. There is a necessary humility to the reservation of value judgements in favour of allowing things to be what they are. The duty of a serious journalist is to show the world in as many aspects as possible, to shine a light on things more fully so that it can be seen for what it is.
This is the foundation of the values of the BBC, represented by impartiality and the idea of undue prominence. The BBC does not take political or cultural sides, and it does not overly promote individuals or brands that might dilute its incentives.
This is in some ways nothing short of miraculous. To anyone raised on the partisan news of the US these ideas are non-existent, and the BBC has at times been a global standard of journalism, the centrepoint of the core of the value of serious news reporting.
Yet the madness of the cultural landscape and the climate of social media has taken its toll even on the BBC. Undue prominence is slipping away, if not gone. The BBC currently runs literally daily articles about Taylor Swift, functioning essentially as an arm of her marketing department. These are never critical, only praise. If I open the BBC homepage right now there are two articles about Swift, this is a daily feature. The BBC is publically funded, it does not have to rely on Swift’s popularity for clicks and views, but it is as blinded by the cultural fog as everywhere else. Last year they were literally running articles telling you how to get tickets for her tour. This is not “journalism”.
The same is true with news reporting. The idea that the style of writing the BBC adopts should refuse to commit to sides has increasingly been abandoned by the belief that if one side is right, this does not really matter. The BBC increasingly uses the idea of “misinformation” as a way of closing the idea of alternative narratives and conflating interpretation with fact. They adopted clear government positions on lockdowns and vaccinations, a situation that seemed to significantly break a dam in the way they approach certain topics. There is a right interpretation, and it now comes with the news.
Of course, the idea of truth is lost in the woods in the landscape of the modern world. Culture is a deeply confused place. Part of the issues with the BBC results from a kind of paranoia about the effects of social media. Much of the obsession with “misinformation” is rooted in a belief that people are constantly believing the wrong thing, and like the Andrew Tate interview, there is a clear belief that if you simply show rather than tell, the public will believe the wrong thing anyway. The truth now has to come with a label making sure you don’t get misled, an obsession that ironically ends up smuggling a mistruth through the door, and an attitude that ironically makes conspiracy theories more appealing not less.
Some have celebrated the death of legacy media, although it is not clear that what it is being replaced with is any better. While there may be more information out there, said information is filtered through the channels of an appalling attention economy. The same dynamics that make Taylor Swift absurdly popular are those that make Trump popular, that make figures such as Alex Jones or Andrew Tate popular. They rise to the top of an economy that has nothing to offer but that which everyone else is clicking on. Being controversial and being popular become synonymous, and value has nothing to do with it.
There is some hope, somewhere. To take a completely different arena, I recently read a book called “Fifth Sun” by the historian Camilla Townsend. In an account of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, Townsend recounts the events of Cortez’s arrival by reconstructing the narrative using Mexica sources, shining a light on the beauties of the society and the horrors of the conquest.
Yet this is not “woke” history. Townsend is not wanging on about colonialism or white oppressors, dividing the world into puerile categories. She shows, rather than tells. She is illuminating an aspect of a narrative that has not always been told, and in doing so exposing the simplicities of previous tellings, showing the beauties as well of the horrors of Aztec cultures. It is learned, scholarly, and movingly written.
This seems like an odd example. But Townsend represents the living tradition of the belief in truth. She is not shoving her own categories onto history, and she is not simply engaging in a “woke” statue toppelling attitude to the past. This is revisionism at its clear best, as illumination instead of as ideological alteration. She is seeking truth, and in doing so illuminating things previously not seen, showing history in its complexities, letting value judgements emerge rather than being enforced.
This is sadly rare, but it still exists. Academia, like journalism, may be in peril (as I write this there is an “international academic symposium” going on in Melbourne about Taylor Swift, backed by seven “universities”, not critically examining her fame or seriously considering what she might represent, be it good or bad, but basically operating as a juvenile fanclub, literally including a friendship bracelet-making workshop at the opening, and I know about this because its about Taylor Swift, so naturally it is on the front page of the BBC, the entire thing a spectacle of the appalling state of “academia” itself), but reading Fifth Sun is a genuine reminder that the possibility of doing better is not so far away.
If we applied this attitude to journalism, as the BBC has done at its best, we would live in a more truth filled world. But it requires a level of accountability that seems to be slipping away, and where such values are going to come from in an age where everyone seems blinded by the fog of the online world is hard to answer. We can do better, and we should. Truth is a target we can never fully hit, but the values that prioritise it as our aim are what matter more than anything, and we should remind ourselves of them before we slide any further downhill.