Reading the coverage of the BBC and the Emily Maitlis affair, you’d think this sort of thing was entirely new. Maitlis, who left her role as lead presenter at Newsnight earlier this year, caused a furore when she referred to “Tory cronyism at the heart of the BBC” in a speech at the Edinburgh TV Festival on 24 August. People seem to think that in the past the BBC was universally admired and governments left it alone, then Boris Johnson swept in and the trouble started.
If only. I’ve worked for the BBC since 1966 – more than half of its existence. My time has been regularly marked by efforts by successive governments – Labour as well as Conservative – to force the BBC to be their faithful messenger. It started only four years after the BBC’s founding, when Winston Churchill as chancellor tried to make it the voice of government policy during the General Strike, and threatened to close it down when it refused. Neville Chamberlain pressured the BBC not to report on Nazi persecution or interview Oswald Mosley; during the Second World War, Churchill often accused the BBC of being gleeful in reporting British losses.
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