Enough is enough - BBC’s fresh bias row proves licence fee is a national insult
OPINION: It's getting completely out of hand at the BBC.
Shock - another BBC bias row has erupted overnight, and this time it’s involving BBC Newsnight presenter Victoria Derbyshire. The veteran broadcaster is being blasted by viewers after she was forced to step in to prevent inaccuracies live on air on Tuesday, April 21. During the episode, Conservative MP Matt Vickers condemned Keir Starmer over the ongoing Peter Mandelson scandal. He claimed the Prime Minister “knew” about Mandelson’s connections to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein “before he appointed him, but still went ahead with it”. However, Derbyshire had to cut the minister short, stating that what he told viewers was “inaccurate” information. In a rather unprofessional moment, the pair bickered in a back-and-forth pantomime style, and it makes you wonder what on earth hard-working license fee payers are spending their money on.
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Vickers then said, “They did flag their concerns and the Government went ahead with it,” to which Derbyshire agreed was correct before adding that, according to sacked Labour MP Olly Robbins, it was "his right to make that decision".
In another shocking move, BBC Newsnight guest Dame Margaret Hodge turned to Vickers to say: "Honestly, you have got to stop this bigotry. This is nothing other than bigotry.”
Fans quickly accused the programme of showing “astonishing bias”. It really was a painful watch, and another example of how insulting the ever-rising licence fee is. Something needs to be done: either they need to find a way to lower the ever-rising license fee, or they need to improve monitoring of what presenters say on air, because their standards are clearly dropping when prices are only increasing.
It’s not just BBC Newsnight which has been hit with bias claims. Last week, BBC Question Time was lambasted too, as host Fiona Bruce brought up Mandelson when no one in the audience had mentioned the scandal.
The question remains, why are we paying £180 a year to watch the BBC’s biased rubbish?
A fresh scandal emerges monthly at the moment (for example, Scott Mills, Huw Edwards, Panorama, and Gregg Wallace, to name a few), causing no one to trust the once-reputable corporation. Either scrap the licence fee altogether or cut out the bias.
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