The BBC director general’s plans to “double-down” on its large disinformation operation Verify and to deploy it globally is “chilling,” according to a former news producer.
Speaking at a Royal Television Society event in London on Tuesday, Tim Davie delivered a wide-ranging speech on BBC funding reform with a commitment to expand on its disinformation operations.
“We will double-down on multi-media brands like BBC Verify and deploy it globally,” said Mr. Davie.
‘Address Growing Threat’
BBC Verify was created to “address the growing threat of disinformation and build trust with audiences through transparency” and originally consisted of 60 journalists, including Ros Atkins, the corporation’s analysis editor, and disinformation and social media correspondent Marianna Spring.
BBC Bias
Mr. Keighley, managing director of News-watch, which has been tracking BBC bias for 25 years, told The Epoch Times that the “really chilling thing about it is that they don’t realise the bubble that they’re in.”Mr. Keighley was also the senior publicist of BBC news and current affairs programmes before joining the breakfast television company TV-am, where he was director of public affairs for almost a decade.
“They see this [Verify] now as a central mission of BBC News. This is the chilling aspect of it. They don’t see what they’re doing. They are choosing the issues they think are important to investigate and putting all their weight on that,” he said.
“If you look now at the BBC’s climate change section, it is propaganda, not journalism. It hasn’t been journalism, I would say now for the best part of ten—15 years,” he said.
“News operations should concentrate on getting the truth, getting facts, getting the balance. What the BBC is doing, and they won’t accept that they’re not doing this, but in certain areas, they have got their own prejudices, and they’re following a prejudiced agenda with Verify and leading the charge against those it says, is spreading disinformation,” he said.
“Most journalists working for the BBC, I am not saying they’re all political activists, but they are convinced that the left view of the world is the right view of the world,” he added.
Complaints
Clive Thorne, a lawyer specialising in intellectual property, told The Epoch Times that the “BBC needs to get its own house in order in terms of complying with its impartiality obligations” set out in its charter.“The way in which the BBC handles complaints isn’t really good enough,” he added.
“If you have a serious complaint, you have to go to something called the Executive Complaints Unit, under what is known as stage two of the Complaints Framework. And hardly ever does the BBC find against itself,” he said.
The Epoch Times contacted The BBC for comment.
