If you work for the BBC, you dislike seeing the outfit’s name in the headlines. It usually means the BBC is in trouble. No good complaining that much of the British press (to the bewilderment of people outside the country) have it in for the BBC, big time. Nor is it any good pointing out that there are a few politicians with an intense longing to dismantle the BBC altogether. These are facts of corporation life, and always have been.
Its top executives have to ensure it doesn’t provide its existential critics, tiny in number but always noisy and weirdly angry, with ammunition. This time the BBC has handed them a veritable ammunition dump. Having worked for the organisation for 46 years, and watched a number of crises at close range, I’m certain we haven’t endured a storm as bad as this during that time.
Harold Wilson forced out Sir Hugh Greene on the grounds that his programmes were undermining British society.
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