A former BBC executive states explicitly why it’s great to be a bureaucrat

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By Andrea Widburg

It’s old news by now that the BBC defamed Donald Trump by misleadingly editing his January 6, 2021, speech to convey the impression that Trump was demanding that his supporters act violently at the Capitol. To give that impression, the BBC had to cut out almost one hour of his speech and seamlessly graft together two entirely unrelated statements.

When Trump threatened to sue, two of the BBC’s executives reluctantly resigned. Eventually, the BBC, after hemming and hawing a bit, offered a sort of apology, conceding that, well, yes, that’s exactly what it had done, and promising never again to broadcast the offending footage…but insisting that this bit of jiggery-pokery was just a mistake, with no malevolence involved:

On Monday, BBC chair Samir Shah accepted an “error of judgement” had been made on the documentary and that the edited speech gave the impression of a “direct call for action” – and said the BBC would like to apologise for it.

That’s one step better than the classic non-apology apology (“I’m really sorry…you’re mad at me”), but not much.

The one thing that the BBC has refused to do is to cough up money for having edited footage in such a way that it made it appear that Donald Trump was trying to foment seditious violence. In a news appearance, Lord Tony Hall, who once was the BBC’s general director, claimed that it was totally unfair to make the BBC pay for its sins because that would just harm the British public, which is forced to pay a tax funding the BBC for the privilege of owning a TV:

HALL: No, no, should not happen. And, I think, I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t know about Floridian state law, but my view is that this should be, if necessary, you’ve got to get their advice on how you keep this going forward. But I can’t see any, well, I would never, I don’t think we should agree to any money being paid to Donald Trump. You know, you’re talking about license fee payers’ money, you’re talking about public money. It would not be appropriate.

INTERVIEWER: Why is it when things go wrong at the BBC that the handling of mistakes always seems so bad? I mean, you’re no stranger to scandal, you’re involved when the Panorama with the late Princess of Wales and Martin Bashir went on. Why is it that the handling of mistakes is often so slow and so bad?

HALL: I think the slowness response to a lot of these crises is right. I think the BBC also needs to find out ways of talking about what it does, positively does, for the public and people realizing just what a lot of things the BBC does do, despite the scandals and despite some of the headlines.

Look, the BBC is a basic part of how we define ourselves in this country, and I think the issue there is how we continue to, of course, respond to the issues that come up, and the BBC is a very open organization in that respect. How you deal with that quickly, how you deal with that properly, without any defensiveness, that’s really important.

But I also think it’s really important that we get across the positive things that the BBC is doing for this country and the positive things that it’s doing for viewers and listeners and licence fee payors.

If I read that correctly, what Hall is saying is that the BBC cannot be punished because the organization just passes those costs on to a public that is forced to fund it. And you know what? He’s right. The problem is that he thinks that’s a good thing.

Hall’s response also provides the answer to the interviewer’s next question, which essentially asks why the BBC keeps doing bad things (and the Panorama interview scandal is a big deal in Britain). The answer is that, as Hall made clear, the people working for the BBC suffer no consequences. Yes, maybe the occasional head rolls, but for the most part, no matter what the BBC does, it’s always business as usual. It’s untouchable because, as with all bureaucracies, the taxpayers, who cannot take their money and go away, end up paying the price.

The same is true in America, of course. When our institutions grievously violate people’s trust and rights in ways that justify legal consequences, the individual bureaucrats walk away. Even if a few get fired, if what they did appealed to leftist sensibilities, they end up having cush paid gigs at news outlets or get massive book deals (which always have the smell of money laundering about them). The only ones who suffer are the trapped taxpayers.

Thankfully, especially now that the Public Broadcasting System has been cut free from government funding, at least our media outlets are still private institutions. So, when they defame Trump or other conservatives, they must cough up their own money, something that encourages their shareholders to go elsewhere.

americanthinker