I’m worried about the future of the BBC, and all journalists, under the next parliament

One of the most dispiriting moments in a dispiriting week came at the launch of the Labour manifesto in Birmingham. When Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC political editor, was called to ask a question, what The Sun called a “far-left mob” booed her before she’d even started. Jeremy Corbyn, to his credit, calmed his supporters a bit, but I am sorry to say they lived down to the description The Sun gave them.

Much the same sort of thing happens at Brexit Party, SNP and Tory press events, which doesn’t make it any better. Boris Johnson calls the BBC “the Brexit Bashing Corporation”. Nigel Farage wants to abolish the BBC licence fee.

The Lib Dems took ITV to court about the leaders debates, only because ITV did theirs before the BBC.

Generally, this hostility to the BBC isn’t that new either. Go back a few years and you soon find how much Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit despised the corporation, as did Tony Benn and Harold Wilson in their day.

Still, it ain’t pretty and of course social media gives any political nutter with a keyboard and broadband the opportunity to personally abuse any journalist.

I don’t have much of an answer to any of this, but I must say I am rather fearful of what either Labour and the Tories might do to the BBC and the press more widely whoever wins power.

Our politicians – including those such as Johnson who were once journalists – have rarely acknowledged that the bias most journalists have is towards the truth and against lies.

No wonder we get jeered at by activists. They’re looking for an excuse for their failure to win an argument.

Yours,

Sean O’Grady

Associate editor