But the lady doth protest too much, methinks

From Climate Scepticism

BY JOHN RIDGWAY

Back in March 2023, Deborah Turness (who for the occasion was referred to as the BBC News and Current Affairs CEO, Transparency and Trust) gave a keynote speech which, in a flash of inspiration, she titled ‘Transparency and Trust’. The speech was delivered as part of the Trust in News project, under the aegis of the Trusted News Initiative. To ensure that everyone could see that Turness could be trusted in everything she had to say regarding BBC trustworthiness, the speech was conducted as if she were answering questions posed by the BBC’s own Disinformation Correspondent, Marianna Spring. So a supposed expert on how to tell if someone could be trusted was interviewing someone who just happened to be an expert on how to be trusted. What more could you want?

Well, one could start by asking why Auntie Beeb felt it necessary to go to such lengths to ram home the point that it was the very quintessence of trustworthiness. For many years now the BBC is supposed to have basked in a reputation for journalism of the highest integrity, so why the sudden lack of confidence? What could possibly have caused the new CEO to expend so much corporate rhetoric convincing the public of something the BBC had always taken for granted as part of its world-wide reputation?

Could it be that the recent reality has not been living up to the hype, and that this has come to the attention of an increasingly distrustful public?

Or is it that, in a world of fake news, Turness saw a perfect opportunity to remind us all of the characteristics that supposedly set the BBC apart – its famous impartiality and authenticity?

Well I think the answer comes a little bit from column A and a little from column B. What I believe we are seeing here is a British institution and oracle whose reputation is now more than a little tarnished. It stands accused of taking partisan positions on issues as varied as Brexit, the Covid pandemic, American politics and the Israeli/Gazza conflict and yet it still strives to address a genuine concern for the damaging effects of mis- and disinformation emanating from what it perceives to be ‘bad actors’ reading from ‘playbooks’.

It recognises a threat to society and genuinely believes it is ideally positioned to deal with it, but only after it has first dealt with the ‘fake’ accusation that its own claims for impartiality cannot be trusted. News items are now delivered under the ‘BBC Verify’ banner in order to address mis- and disinformation, but the subtext on every such occasion is that the claim that the BBC is no different to anyone else is just a lie. But is it?

To be fair to the BBC it should be acknowledged that it seems to sincerely believe itself to be impartial and scrupulously thorough, and it can point to a great many efforts it has gone to in order to uphold its hard-earned reputation. Turness does a good job of advertising those efforts in her speech, illustrating throughout by reference to a glossy PR campaign. Trust has to be earned, she opines, and you earn it by being transparent. Which is only true to a certain extent. Trust can be gained by being transparent whenever convenient, but trustworthiness can only be attained by being transparent at all times. So does the Turness concept of transparency render the BBC trustworthy, or is it simply designed to ensure it is trusted?

Take, for example, the BBC’s role in reporting the news throughout the Covid pandemic. What the nation needed, and what the BBC purported to provide, was an independent observer, capable and willing to challenge the authoritarian response to the crisis – whether it be in the form of the supposed imperative for lockdowns, mask-wearing, school closures or a mass vaccination that had little need of demography. Understandably, in view of the novelty of the crisis, expert opinions differed on many issues, and so one would expect that the UK Government’s insistence that it was only following ‘the’ science would be met with suspicion. However, the output of the BBC during the crisis did not carry that flavour.

Indeed, the BBC was as keen as anyone to promulgate the narrative that there was information, as provided by the Government, and then there was the disinformation provided by a multitude of ‘fake’ experts who just happened to disagree with government policy. Is this because the BBC disinformation correspondents had used their technical prowess to examine and evaluate the various claims made, before coming to an impartial conclusion that just happened to endorse government policy? Or might it be because the BBC was alone among news gatherers in attending the somewhat Orwellian titled ‘Counter-Disinformation Policy Forum’, chaired by ministers and senior civil servants?

As Turness says, trust is earned through transparency, and yet the very existence of this government unit was hidden from the public until it was exposed by the Daily Telegraph. The BBC was represented on the forum by none other than Jessica Cecil, founder of the Trusted News Initiative, and yet when asked to explain the purpose of its involvement, the BBC would simply claim only to have been an ‘observer’, before generally downplaying its significance. At no stage did the BBC see fit to inform the public of its compromised position.

Such behind-the-scenes intriguing will be familiar to anyone who has heard of the so-called “28Gate” scandal, in which the BBC claimed that a forum of 28 scientists had advised that a truly balanced climate change debate would require the de-platforming of sceptical views. The reality is that this advice had been received during a secret BBC meeting attended predominantly by environmental activists. In an effort to maintain the pretence, the BBC spent considerable time, effort and tax-payers’ money to fight FOI requests seeking the names of the supposed 28 scientific experts that had advised the BBC. Presumably, somebody had just momentarily forgotten that trust is earned through transparency.

The reality is that the BBC, like any other news-gathering organisation, is fuelled by ideology, for good or for bad. There exists a BBC culture, just as there exists a Daily Telegraph culture or a TalkTV culture. In the case of the BBC, the culture is notoriously intellectual, left-wing liberal in its nature. The same can be said of all of the organisations that have signed up to the Trusted News Initiative, which is, let’s be honest, little more than a liberal-leaning cartel of information trading platforms. But what sets the BBC apart is its ability to leverage a reputation for impartiality and trustworthiness. It is this apparent credibility, and the ability to point to a plenitude of evidence in support of its reputation, that makes the BBC potentially so very harmful. The reality is that it is trusted (although not so much nowadays), but it is clearly not trustworthy; otherwise it would not have so readily betrayed its journalistic obligations to impartiality during the Covid pandemic. And it certainly would have not done so whilst continuing to proudly proclaim a transparency that in reality is so circumspect and selective.

It may be overly cynical of me to suggest this, but the very fact that the word ‘trust’ is now so prominent in the BBC’s branding and self-promotion is reason enough to reserve judgement. In a world that now marinades in information, it can be difficult sometimes to know exactly what’s cooking. So one can understand why the BBC would wish to counteract mis- and disinformation as perceived. But one should remember that all perception is framed ideologically. The BBC understands this, but when it comes to its own reputation, it would rather that the public didn’t. I do not doubt Deborah Turness’s sincerity but she didn’t get to where she is today without gaining an expertise in managing perceptions. However, the next time she involves herself in a publicity stunt that involves a sham grilling from one of her own intrepid journalists and truth-seekers, she might want to choose as her interlocutor someone who isn’t accused of having previously lied on her CV. Yes, trust is indeed earned through transparency, but the trust still has to be well-placed.