The
Guardian view on the BBC under siege: Britain must defend its own truth
Editorial
With
Donald Trump circling and Labour ministers wavering, defending the
corporation’s independence is now a test of national will
Mon 10
Nov 2025 19.17 GMT
The chair
of the BBC, Samir Shah, struck a defensive tone in his interview to explain the
mess the broadcaster has found itself in. The impression was of an organisation
under siege rather than one confidently self-correcting. Mr Shah will be busy.
He must find a new director general after Tim Davie resigned. Gone too is the
CEO of news, Deborah Turness. Both resigned after an exhausting rightwing
campaign which cried bias at every turn and was energised by an absurd
transatlantic attempt to paint the BBC as part of a global liberal conspiracy.
A giant
like the BBC will make mistakes. The failure is not owning them fast enough and
moving on. The corporation remains one of Britain’s few genuinely national
institutions – and ministers say it is a “light on the hill” for people here
and abroad. The BBC is the most trusted source of news in the UK, and among the
top five worldwide. Yet awareness of that value has faded as the broadcaster
struggled to articulate a clear civic mission. This is a strategic blunder in
the face of competition from US big tech, which wants to monetise outrage
rather than the truth. Viewed from that perspective the current row over the
editing of Donald Trump’s speech for Panorama is a sideshow. The real fight is
over what impartiality means – and who gets to decide.
For
traditional journalists, it means a balance of verifiable fact and sourced
evidence. For the populist right, it means Fox News-style “both-sidesism”. They
sneer that the BBC is biased, bureaucratic and past its prime. Yet its critics
offer only a marketplace of billionaires’ agendas and algorithmic indignation.
In that framing, the BBC’s safe and steady approach looks less like complacency
than necessity.
The BBC’s
income has been cut by more than 30% in a decade. Despite this, it provides
unrivalled value for money – notably breaking viewing records with its
successful show The Celebrity Traitors. Yet there is still no clear government
commitment to maintaining the licence fee. There should be – and it is a pledge
that ministers ought to be making soon. Labour’s refusal to confirm that the
licence fee is secure after 2027 only invites commercial lobbying from the
BBC’s rivals to push for a “mixed” funding model. Once the licence fee is gone,
Auntie stops being a public good and becomes a market player. It would be the
end of the BBC as we know it.
Mr
Trump’s threatened billion-dollar lawsuit thus lands at the worst possible
moment: the BBC is leaderless, its board inexperienced in crisis management and
its rightwing opponents cock-a-hoop at the scalps they have taken. The BBC
board knows little of modern journalism, yet entrusts editorial oversight to
Tory Sir Robbie Gibb – hardly neutral on UK politics or Israel. With legal
threats, Mr Trump exports his “fake news” crusade, aiming to cow the globally
respected BBC as he has America’s press.
Rather
than remaining silent to avoid offending the White House, Sir Keir Starmer
should stand up for the BBC’s editorial freedom. He ought to recognise media
independence and sovereignty over the infosphere as a national security issue.
Doing nothing will only encourage Mr Trump and his UK allies to do their worst.
The Panorama edit may be a mistake. The campaign around it is not. It is an
assault on democratic infrastructure. The question is whether Britain will
defend its power to tell the truth.
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