Who’s Verifying BBC Verify?

With public trust in traditional media at an all-time low, the future of journalism is uncertain. While it remains one of the most trusted news brands in the UK, the BBC has seen public perceptions of its impartiality plummet from 75% in 2018 to just 55% today. One possible solution to the lack of public confidence is the proliferation of alternative media outlets, which provide a counter-narrative by tackling the stories the mainstream considers beneath it. Another possibility is that big media will be forced to undergo a renaissance of objectivity (or at the very least, convince the public of the same). Naturally, the BBC is hoping for the latter. In light of this, it has recently unveiled BBC Verify: a team of 60 journalists who aim to “counter misinformation” and “pull back the curtain” on BBC journalists’ work to produce “radical transparency.”

The news broke last week, but didn’t gain noticeable traction until Monday’s tweet (over 13 million views and counting) from the BBC’s Disinformation and Social Media Correspondent, Marianna Spring. She explains the purpose of BBC Verify as follows:

We are a team of investigative journalists here at the BBC; we are also a new brand, and we are a physical location above the newsroom in London. The point of the team is to verify video, to fact-check, to counter disinformation, and to analyse really complex stories so we can get to the truth of what’s going on.

All reasonable thus far, but Spring moves fairly rapidly onto what really gets her out of bed in the morning:

Why does this matter? Well, mistruths can cause really serious harm to society and to the people in them. And so we want to show you our workings, and really help you understand how we get to the bottom of what’s happening. 

What on earth is a ‘mistruth’? Is it a lie you wish to express in euphemism because you’re frightened of legal implications? Or a truth you’d rather others had the good taste not to repeat?

Spring then clarifies the areas in which the unit is working: 1) Real-time geographic maps. This seems perfectly fine, and a sensible use of technology. 2) Social media:

There are other ways we also are able to interrogate what’s going on, including on social media. I have some undercover accounts that I’ve set up for the BBC’s Americast podcast, and we use these kinds of undercover accounts to be able to really understand polarisation online, and what’s happening on our social media feeds, and what we’re being recommended can affect all of us.

You might wish to pause there and re-read that section. Aside from the fact that such accounts are illegal, Spring is admitting that the BBC routinely uses fake social media accounts (which clearly influence the narrative), to understand fake social media accounts’ influence on the narrative. You couldn’t make it up.

But it is not until part three that Spring genuinely shows her hand by discussing the ‘conspiracy theory movement’:

And then there’s also investigating other mistruths and the real-world harm they can cause. At the moment, I’m investigating the UK’s conspiracy theory movement; I’m trying to understand more about how it’s evolved and intensified since the pandemic here in the UK. I’m looking at the alternative media that finds itself at the heart of this movement, and a conspiracy theory newspaper that’s a part of that as well. I’m looking at the way that alternative media is funded, its impact on local communities. I’m looking at its connections with far-right figures, and also its foreign links … so there’s a real range of journalism BBC Verify will be doing, and you’ll be able to see it online, on iPlayer, across BBC News, on your television and radio, so do look out for it.

It’s worth watching, just to be believed:

BBC News has unveiled BBC Verify to address the growing threat of disinformation and build trust with audiences through transparency.

The BBC's Disinformation Correspondent Marianna Spring had more details on #BBCBreakfast https://t.co/00Nv9Z7Xlm pic.twitter.com/bZ23An2VhL

— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) May 22, 2023

If you are of a generous persuasion, you might conclude Spring was playing a round of ‘white supremacist bingo’ here, as she mentions just about every left-wing trope, apart from ‘white privilege.’ The clear implication of this is that only the Right is guilty of misinformation. I am not remotely of a generous persuasion however, so I’m just going to call it how I see it: while the BBC may very well wish to appear impartial, it has a long history of failing to do so. Twenty years ago the corporation’s own inquiry found itselfguilty of pro-Europe bias. A few weeks ago, the BBC’s political fact-checker, Oscar Bentley, was discovered to be a raving Corbynite who described conservative MPs as “lower than invertebrates.” That’s a little hard to overlook.

BBC bias

While an article of this size is clearly ill-suited as a comprehensive exposé of BBC bias, I shall attempt to give one by limiting its scope to just three areas: Brexit, COVID, and disingenuous headlines.

Unlike anything in recent memory, Brexit epitomised middle-class condescension openly felt and expressed towards the masses. The working man was evidently too thick to appreciate the bigger picture—an argument often actually voiced by Remainers. Civitas, a London-based think tank, published a report entitled “The Brussels Broadcasting Corporation.” They analysed the political leanings of guests on BBC Radio 4’s Today program between 2005 and 2015. The report concluded that only 123 of 4,275 guests discussing the EU were advocating leave—a paltry 2.87%. The BBC reporting of Brexit was in fact so biased that even the BBC admitted they broke their own impartiality rules.

Then there was COVID. Like most media outlets, the BBC seemed determined to be as alarmist as possible. Firstly, there was the incessant demand for reporting deaths for any reason, rather than the much smaller number of deaths specifically due to COVID. Then there were the false claims, such as “whole wards full of children with COVID.” The BBC also managed to avoid discussion of vaccine side effects at almost any cost, something raised by Elon Musk in a recent BBC interview. And even if it transpires that the government was exerting pressure on the corporation during the pandemic—encouraging it to avoid the term ‘lock down’ or to heighten criticism of the Labour Party’s plan B measures—this hardly speaks to a culture of integrity.

Possibly the clearest indication that the BBC is the very last place you should look for impartiality however, are the routine, ridiculous headlines it generates. Take your pick from “Pale stale and male”, “Are our weddings too white?,” “Trans and pregnant: How one man gave birth to his own baby,” “Blackpool woman accessed child abuse images in hospital bed,” (the ‘woman’ was a man) and “Rural racism in Dorset: Why is our countryside 98% white?”

The sad fact of the matter is that the BBC in its current state is egregiously ‘woke,’ anti-white, and anti-British—all of which it has achieved on the public dime. Its spectacular left-wing bias is so evident, it was recently confessed to by outgoing chief Richard Sharp. This is unlikely to change any time soon, which suggests that BBC Verify has little to do with exposing misinformation, and more to do with discrediting truths (sorry, ‘conspiracy theories’) the establishment disapproves of.

This piece first appeared in The European Conservative, and is reproduced by kind permission.

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