What Andrew Marr’s frustration says about the BBC
Andrew Marr is debating leaving the BBC as he feels he may no longer be able to abide by the impartiality rules that govern the corporation.
In an interview with Ruth Wishart, he tells the journalist that he “thinks it will be very, very hard for people like me to carry on being completely neutral and completely sotto voce all the way through.” Last year he described the impartiality rules at the BBC as “very frustrating.”
I admire his candid attitude. As a state-funded institution, the BBC is supposed to abide by Ofcom rules governing what broadcasters can and cannot say. The fact that Marr feels so frustrated hints at a stated preference that the new Director General, Tim Davie, will adhere to the corporation’s founding principles of impartiality.
Marr is not the first veteran BBC journalist to speak out about the rigours of even-handed broadcasting. When John Humphrys left the corporation, he was very vocal about how the institution had acquiesced to far-left progressive ideology and divisive identity politics. Humphrys was not the first to notice this. In a 2010 interview with The New Statesman, former Director-General Mark Thompson stated that since he joined in 1979 “there was a massive left-wing bias at the BBC.”
In 2000, after a stint as political editor of The Independent, Marr was offered what to some is considered the top job in British journalism – the role of political editor of the BBC.
Under Marr’s watch, it is well known that the corporation was hostile to Brexit. According to the think tank Civitas, between 2005 and 2015, of the roughly 4,000 guests on Radio 4’s Today Programme, just 132 supported leaving the EU. It is no wonder that to some critics, the BBC is known pejoratively as the “Brexit Bashing Corporation”.
So, not much in the way of reasoned, balanced debate then. The same can be said for the Beeb’s dismissal of anyone critical of climate change. In 2018, the corporation issued an internal four-page crib sheet informing all its journalists how to correctly report on climate change. Part of that email reads as follows: “As climate change is accepted as happening, you do not need a ‘denier’ to balance the debate.” Going on to say that “…with appropriate challenge from a knowledgeable interviewer, there may be occasions to hear from a denier.” Notice the subtle linguistic sleight of hand with the word “denier”. The word has an accusatory tone. It is an oblique reference to a heretic, a 21st century non-believer.
Or to use a contemporary issue – the Israel/Palestine conflict. We often get to hear how Israel is the initiator and aggressor, but we never get to hear how Hamas use Palestinian children as human shields. Nor are we ever reminded of Hamas’s charter, which explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel – “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it…”
But what makes Marr’s position so interesting is that unlike Humphrys, Marr is a man of the left. During his university years he was known as ‘Red Andy’, joining a socialist club that campaigned for the Labour Party. What does this tell us about the current state of the BBC? In recent years the corporation has lost a string of great journalists: Jeremy Paxman, John Humphrys and one of the finest journalists in the country, Andrew Neil. If the institution is beset with middle-class graduates who are “too woke” for the Cambridge-educated Marr, then we really should be concerned about the state of aunty.
Should he leave, I for one will miss Marr. He is a highly intelligent and well-informed journalist, a consummate professional who possessed the ability to do something very rare – extract answers out of laconic and recalcitrant guests that stubbornly adhere to political shibboleths. I look forward to the moment he finally exits the revolving doors of W1A, opens up and says what he really thinks.