‘Insufficiently accurate’: some thoughts on the BBC and the health of our democracy.

‘Insufficiently accurate.’

These two blandly bureaucratic words from the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) reveal a great deal about the current state of our politics, our media, and the health of our democracy. Those may seem like big claims to make based on just two words from an obscure BBC department, but I think I can justify them.

‘Insufficiently accurate’ was the BBC’s surprise finding about a tweet sent by one of its star current affairs presenters, Nick Robinson, concerning Jewish left activist Jackie Walker. In the tweet, Robinson said Walker had said ‘Jews controlled the slave trade,’ an antisemitic trope. Robinson included Labour MP Chris Williamson in the tweet, implying that Williamson wasn’t taking this into account when he said he’d ‘never seen antisemitism in the Labour party’.

The only problem is, Jackie Walker didn’t say it. She made some comments about her heritage (she’s of Caribbean Jewish ancestry), and how ‘many Jews (my ancestors too) were the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade which is of course why there were so many early synagogues in the Caribbean…’ This isn’t an antisemitic trope, it’s a historical fact. Robinson clumsily fashioned Walker’s nuanced, careful, historical comments (from a private conversation) into a crude, antisemitic slur.

Why does it matter? A BBC presenter tweeted something that was ‘insufficiently accurate’. So what?

The battle around Labour’s antisemitism ‘crisis’ has been raging for three years now. Accusations of all kinds have been made, by all sorts of people, and there’s a daily drip of new stories, often arising out of the old ones. Labour have mounted little in the way of defence of any of them, seemingly paralysed by the fear that challenging these allegations will make them appear to be ‘soft on antisemitism’. The slightest suggestion that some, at least, of these accusations may be false, is itself made into an antisemitic offence: ‘not taking it seriously’.

The noise of battle has been relentless and numbing, but it’s had one perhaps unusual quality — it’s had very little material to work with. We’ve seen the same few accusations — #muralgate, #ironygate — recycled countless times, as if the repetition of them made them more numerous or more ‘serious’. In Jackie Walker’s case, the accusations have centred around her ‘slave trade’ comments. Thin gruel, but gussied up into a glittering palace of condemnations, as other Labour voices, notably Chris Williamson MP, have been condemned for supporting Walker. No doubt we will now see condemnations of anyone who supports Chris Williamson, and so a third echelon, a third tier, will be added to the glittering palace. So it goes on.

But the palace is built on a flimsy raft of distortions, exaggerations and falsehoods. It has no secure foundations. And the BBC’s ‘insufficiently accurate’ finding could topple the whole thing.

Consider. A Jewish left activist speaks about her heritage, about Jewishness, the slave trade and the Holocaust. She is perfectly qualified to do so, given her background. She says nothing antisemitic, but is pilloried nonetheless. Suspended, investigated, and routinely called an antisemite by hostile voices within the party.

But then it breaks out, into the wider world. Nick Robinson, who, as a BBC employee, is bound by the BBC Charter in his public statements, decides to weigh in. He repeats the falsehood that Walker said something antisemitic. He gives the accusation the imprimatur of the BBC, a global news brand with a huge audience, a trusted source for millions. It’s now not an internal party matter anymore, it’s a public one: Nick Robinson, speaking for the BBC, broadcasts it to the world, on twitter.

He’s immediately made aware that it’s a falsehood, but he leaves it up anyway. BBC finally (after four months of delay and obstruction) agree that it’s a falsehood. He leaves it up anyway.

A false accusation of antisemitism against a Jewish left activist and, by association, a prominent left MP, made by the BBC.

An antisemitism smear, on a sitting MP, made by the BBC.

Two things immediately follow from this. The first is that antisemitism smearing is a reality. BBC confirm it in their finding. It is no longer possible for anyone to deny that some antisemitism allegations at least have been false. We have evidence of one such now. That debate is over.

The second thing is the role of the BBC in our politics. Their Charter requires them to be, not just accurate, but impartial. A high bar to pass, to be sure, but then they have a huge responsibility, given their reach and influence on our lives.

That responsibility has been abused by Nick Robinson, who has failed, not just to be ‘accurate’, which is the complaint, but also to be ‘impartial’, in singling out leftists to smear with false antisemitism allegations.

The ECU’s finding was released to me on Monday 1st July. At the time of writing, it’s Saturday 6th July. The tweet is still there, there’s been no correction and no apology. Nothing has changed. More than four months after the original BBC smear, it remains live. BBC is still using its enormous power and prestige to lie about leftists, including a serving MP.

I think this should concern us all, not just people on the left. Our democracy depends on the electorate getting good quality, impartial information, and the BBC has a key role to play in that.

If the BBC can lie about this with impunity, what else are they lying about? How can our democracy function as it should if a mainstay of our media can’t be trusted?

‘Insufficiently accurate’ is polite: the reality is dark, sinister and profoundly disturbing.

BBC have some serious questions to answer. Who is going to ask them?