How the BBC is 'Falling for Farage'

A new exclusive Byline Times report reveals how the corporation is enabling the far-right of British politics

Nigel Farage is a longstanding critic of the BBC. The Reform UK leader – alongside many on the Conservative party’s right flanks – has impugned the corporation, describing it as “rigged” and “dishonest.” The far-right now challenges the very notion of publicly owned media, with Reform’s manifesto pledging to scrap the license fee altogether.

As Byline Times has forensically covered, there are serious concerns about bias and political interference within the BBC. But if anything, it’s been in favour of Reform and a catalyst of Britain’s broader shift to the right.

As far back as 2014, the BBC received nearly 1,200 complaints alleging bias towards UKIP during election coverage. More recently, Byline Times has reported on the corporation amplifying right-wing lies spread online by Elon Musk, axing an innocuous podcast about heat pumps on distorted impartiality grounds, and consistently platformed mouthpieces for Tufton Street’s opaque right-wing think-tanks.

Investigative journalist Iain Overton this week covered the BBC’s recent U-turn on plans to broadcast the harrowing documentary Gaza: Medics Under Fire pending an “ongoing review” into its coverage on the conflict. That review is linked to a related controversy around a different documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, which prompted backlash from the Israeli Embassy. It adds to criticism about the BBC deploying ambiguous one-sided language to describe the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

And today, Byline Times Political Editor Adam Bienkov reported on the BBC’s explicit plans to win over voters of Reform UK. Minutes of a meeting with senior BBC bosses reveal plans to alter “story selection” and “other types of output, such as drama” in order to win over supporters of Nigel Farage.

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BBC Bosses Draw Up Plans to Win Over Reform Voters by Changing News and Drama Output

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It’s possible to appreciate the value of public service broadcasting while also acknowledging that the BBC is increasingly struggling to fulfil that crucial role. The BBC serves as a crucial counterweight to the private monopoly press that dominates the rest of the news, and its duty to the public interest has rarely, if ever, been as important as it is today.

Byline Times most recent print edition – Falling for Farage – dives deeper into how Britain’s political and media class have served to ‘mainstream’ the far-right. In this edition, we explore what Reform UK is, who makes up their coalition, why people vote for them, and perhaps most importantly, how the mainstream press has boosted this brand of far-right politics into the mainstream.