The BBC may have lost its director general, but the rot at the heart of our national broadcaster still festers

His politics are abhorrent, his decorum non-existent, and his vindictiveness endless. What I don’t believe – and never have – is that he tried to violently overthrow the US Government.

You’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise. After all, the BBC reported exactly that in January 2021. And as we all know, the BBC is a bastion of journalistic independence and integrity the world over… or so we were told. Now it turns out they were caught redhanded, having doctored footage to portray the President of the United States – our closest ally – as some kind of monster.

And what’s the BBC’s answer to this? The Director General and the CEO of BBC News – two people most Britons couldn’t pick out of a photo line-up even if they were wearing fluorescent jackets with their job titles written across them – have resigned in disgrace.

Good. They should resign. But so should every presenter who repeated the lie, every editor and fact-checker who approved it, and every video editor who touched that footage.

Yet I strongly suspect that if everyone at the BBC who had a hand in this did the honourable thing and stepped down, Broadcasting House would be a ghost town. The truth is, the BBC is rotten to the core.

Far from being an impartial purveyor of news and a source of national pride, it hasbecome a left-wing, socially progressive think tank staffed by self-styled intellectuals

who studied PPE or some other useless degree at universities steeped in the belief that Britain – and the West in general – are the villains of history.

At every level – from news reports to documentaries, dramas, and comedy – the BBC embarrasses itself daily, churning out drivel that no one wants to watch. Meanwhile, its enforcement officers hound people who choose not to pay for a TV licence to fund this nonsense.

And this isn’t even the first time the BBC has been caught behaving unethically. Martin Bashir faked bank statements to secure his infamous interview with Princess Diana. The BBC aired a documentary narrated by the son of a Hamas deputy minister – propaganda for a proscribed terrorist organisation. And in 2012, they shelved an exposé on Jimmy

Savile’s crimes, which they are also alleged to have helped cover up for years, all to avoid embarrassing themselves.

The Director General and CEO of BBC News resigning is a start. But if we truly want to fix the BBC, it must be torn down to its studs. Until that happens, this national embarrassment will continue stumbling from one humiliation to the next

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Harry Todd is a Conservative Party Member and Agent. He has stood for Council and was on the approved Conservative Parliamentary Candidates list.

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