Even centrists like Andrew Adonis are losing faith in the BBC over Brexit

It’s cloistered and handsomely paid executives may not recognise it yet, but the BBC is facing a crisis. It is fast losing political friends and risks slipping into irrelevancy as tech oligarchies come to dominate our digital future.

For now, though, it seems pretty pleased with itself. “Research shows,” it boasts on its website, that “the BBC is seen as by far the most trusted and impartial news provider in the UK.” Whilst true, this rather overstates the case. The Ipsos Mori survey the BBC cites asked how biased or impartial different news sources are, and, yes, the BBC just about came out on top. But counting neutral responses as “don’t knows”, and including only those who think a news source is either bias or impartial, would put ITN and Channel 4 News ahead. This isn’t surprising because that’s what Ofcom found in its latest news survey.

But let’s not get too bogged down in the numbers. These are just vague impressions of the politics and professionalism of the BBC and its rivals, and whilst the broadcasters and broadsheets are unsurprisingly some way ahead of the tabloids and social media, there’s not a great deal between them. The BBC’s slim lead likely reflects both its historical reputation and the central place it still occupies in our national culture. Neither, though, are as secure as they might seem. There are warning signs.

When I started researching the BBC a decade ago there was still something of a taboo on the left around criticising the broadcaster, which was seen as constantly under threat from Murdoch and the right. This always seemed foolish to me. Not only because I don’t think we should ignore reality for the sake of political expediency (the BBC is a small “c” conservative organisation and always has been), but also because the aspects of the BBC the left wants to defend have been steadily eroded by the right over the years. The defensive posture has not been effective.

In any case, that taboo no longer exists. In my experience the BBC is now widely thought by supporters of what is likely to be the next government as part of the establishment and as systematically biased against them.

Well they would say that wouldn’t they? Except that this claim is supported by scholarly research which suggests not only that the BBC is consistently pro-government in its news reporting, but that it leans more to the right under Conservative governments than left under Labour. And we now have a Labour Party that is more left-wing than any point in its history, and a BBC that has drifted rightwards and is regularly parroting attack lines against the party, with scant regard for balance or accuracy.

This has been taking place in a context in which conservative figures have held key editorial positions at the BBC. Andrew Neil and Sarah Sands, James Harding, who recently stood down as director of news, and Nick Gibb, who moved from BBC political programming to 10 Downing Street, to name a few. Not reassuring for those who want an independent and impartial BBC.

Even centrists, who have traditionally been its strongest supporters, are losing faith. The Blairite peer Lord Adonis has been trouncing the BBC on Twitter, claiming it is biased in favour of Brexit, and the journalist Peter Jukes has announced he will be boycotting the BBC for its use of the right-wing blog Guido Fawkes as a news source, and its failure to cover allegations against the Leave campaign. Even the wider industry seems to quietly accept that BBC journalism is not quite up to scratch. For this year’s BAFTAs the BBC has received no nominations for news, and just one for current affairs.

A few years ago I said I thought the BBC’s institutional need to both serve elite interests and maintain public trust would at some stage become untenable. I think we’re now reaching that crisis point. Unfortunately it’s happening at a time when the BBC badly needs public support and the public badly needs a BBC that’s up to the job.

This isn’t just about journalism and political bias. In its recently published annual plan, the BBC emphasised the urgent need for digital innovation, with younger people now spending more time on Netflix than BBC TV and the iPlayer combined. And last month James Harding argued that the rise of digital media today is analogous to the birth of broadcasting in the 1920s, suggesting this would mean creating a British Digital Corporation to serve the public interest in the digital age. On this much at least I agree with Harding. But were we to grant the BBC a privileged position in our digital media ecology, we would need first need to see fundamental change at the BBC that will address its systematic failings.

The Media Reform Coalition has recently published a set of draft proposals on the future of the BBC, produced by a working group I chaired. We argue that the BBC needs to break with its statist model and become a digital public network and platform, but also that all and any governmental influence over the BBC must be abolished, with the BBC instead being democratised and radically decentralised. This is an agenda for 21st-century public media. The only question is, when the Conservative Party and the interests it represents collapse under their own contradictions and incompetency, will the BBC have any political friends left that still think it is worth saving?

Tom Mills is the author of ‘The BBC: The Myth of a Public Service’