Tom Slater Tom Slater

Emily Maitlis wants a Remainer BBC

Thank god for Emily Maitlis. Finally someone has had the balls to call out the pro-Brexit, pro-Boris bias of the BBC. It’s been staring us in the face for years, as the Today programme, Newsnight, Question Time and the rest have become ever-more subsumed into the Ukipper deep state, forever deferential to its poundshop fascism.

If that portrayal of our state broadcaster sounds like some wild-eyed conspiracy theory to you, utterly detached from reality, that’s because it is. But that didn’t stop Maitlis – formerly of the corporation, now unshackled from Beeb impartiality rules and with a new Global podcast to promote – from trotting out a version of it in a high-profile speech in Edinburgh yesterday.

Maitlis – a BBC journalist of 20 years, latterly at the helm of Newsnight – gave the MacTaggart memorial lecture yesterday at the Edinburgh international TV festival. Which in recent years has become a forum for ‘impartial’ broadcasters to bash the government. In 2019, the head of news at Channel 4 used the spot to accuse Boris Johnson of ‘aping Vladimir Putin’s media strategy’.

I can’t have been the only one wondering if Maitlis has been watching the same BBC as the rest of us

This time around, Maitlis’s ire was aimed more at her old employer, albeit for indulging the alleged lies of Boris and Co. and failing to stand up to populism. She accused the BBC of ‘both side-ism’, specifically its outrageous tendency to seek out the pro-Brexit side of the argument, and of failing to adapt to an era in which ‘facts get lost’ and ‘constitutional norms [are] trashed’.

Apparently, there are Tory subversives crawling all over Broadcasting House. Maitlis singled out Robbie Gibb, without naming him, labelling him an ‘active agent of the Conservative party’ who is now ‘acting as the arbiter of BBC impartiality’.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in