The BBC Becomes a Scapegoat in Its Attempts to Appease the ‘Coup’ Against It

With its political independence undermined from within – and its continued reliance on the agenda set by right-wing newspapers – the BBC has helped trigger a crisis that now threatens its very future, writes Adam Bienkov

Asenior advisor to then Prime Minister Boris Johnson confided to me that one of the only things in politics Johnson actually cared about was “killing off the BBC”. Five years on, it is a campaign that appears to be finally coming to fruition.

As the corporation came under sustained attack by the combined forces of Donald Trump’s White House and the Conservative-supporting press in the UK – over the BBC’s editing of a speech the American President made on January 6, 2021, when an attempted insurrection took place at the US Capitol – Johnson appeared to smell blood.

Taking to X, he tweeted that, until the BBC’s then Director General Tim Davie “either comes clean on how Panorama doctored Trump’s speech – or resigns – I won’t be paying my licence fee”.