The real problem with the BBC’s partygate coverage

As a journalist, it’s never a comfortable feeling when the news organisation you work for becomes the story. But with No. 10 desperate to throw some ‘red meat’ to the green benches — to take the spotlight off the rotting carcass of ‘partygate’ — it was inevitable that the BBC would end up being fed through the mincer this week.

The Culture Secretary, Nadine Dorries, lit the touch-paper by announcing on social media (where else?) that the latest BBC licence fee announcement would ‘be the last’, adding with provocative hyperbole that ‘the days of the elderly being threatened with prison sentences and bailiffs knocking on doors’ were over.

Up until then, social media had been awash with calls for Boris Johnson to step down. Satisfyingly for the orchestrators of ‘Operation Save Big Dog’, many of the usual suspects took the bait and leapt to the defence of the BBC . Writing on Twitter, Gary Lineker described it as ‘the most treasured of national treasures’.