BBC sees the light

BY axing some fringe channels and merging others to save £200million, BBC directorgeneral Tim Davie suggested yesterday that the penny is finally beginning to drop.

In this multi-channel, digital age, the licence fee is increasingly unsustainable and the corporation must become leaner and fitter if it is to survive.

There is still a role for the BBC as a taxpayer-funded provider of public service broadcasting, of course. But that relies on its output being fair and impartial.

As its performance over Partygate has shown, too many of its journalists are becoming more like political activists than honest brokers of news.

The Radio 4 Today programme was forced into a humiliating apology yesterday after repeating a false claim from an obscure magazine that a Downing Street cleaner had died from Covid after being surrounded by partying staff.

The information should have been checked. But it fitted the programme’s anti-government narrative, so it somehow slipped through the net.

BBC journalists are entitled to their opinions – but not at public expense.