What Did The BBC Ever Do For Us?

Bashing the BBC is nearly as regular a game as bashing the banks.

Both are targets too big to miss for governments under fire, or otherwise looking for distraction techniques.

It’s been going on for years.

As far back as 1986, the BBC felt compelled to do a spoof “What has the BBC ever done for us?” advert, staring John Cleese, moaning at the bar having just paid his licence fee (then costing 16p a day).

Various other BBC stars in the pub weigh in to note that it is quite good at sports, documentaries, radio, science, children’s TV, comedy, natural history, consumer affairs and music.

Yeh, but apart from that, says an exasperated Cleese.

“Chat shows?” offers a voice from the pub TV. “Oh shut up Wogan”, says Cleese.

It’s funny.

In a sign of its own malaise, the present government has plainly decided to make it seem like disasters of its own making are really down to the BBC’s reporting, rather than reality.

The trouble MPs always run into with this stuff is that, unlike the banks, people like the BBC.

So far its attacks on BBC impartiality have won it some favourable headlines in the Mail and the Telegraph, but those papers are set up both commercially and politically to oppose the Beeb anyway.

Last year, in response to MPs complaints that the broadcaster has a “left-wing institutional bias”, YouGov asked the public what they thought – 80% said it isn’t left wing at all.

As the Press Gazette reported: “The endlessly repeated ‘left-wing BBC’ narrative fits neither the facts nor most people’s perception.”

So as a PR gambit it looks like a loser.

Especially if Ministers really aren’t equipped for the scrap.

If you haven’t seen it, here is Sky’s Kay Burley (no one’s idea of a secret Communist) dismantling Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer.

I suggest: don’t pick a fight with Kay Burley. If you are going to, do your homework.