The Conservative view of impartiality

 Huffington Post was founded by a woman on the conservative side of politics and even after its sale retained a liberal conservative ethos. It is now generally regarded as a liberal medium It comes to something when the recruitment by the BBC of a former HuffPost editor as a news editor is regarded as threatening the BBC's tradition of impartiality. I would have thought that it would actually strengthen it, in that liberals tend to encourage the expression of a wide range of views. But of course we are dealing with Bob Blackman who sees anti-Semites and Marxists under every bush, and a leader of the House who would have been quite at home among 18th century Tories. This is what occurred at Business Questions last Thursday:

Bob Blackman 

(Harrow East) (Con)

Millions of people across the United Kingdom depend on the BBC for impartial news being pumped into their living rooms. Indeed, people across the world depend on the BBC and trust it to be truly impartial. I have regularly received complaints about the lack of impartiality, about BBC News and about the bias that seems to be held in particular ways, but there is clear concern about the potential appointment of the ex-Huffington Post editor Jess Brammer as news editor for the BBC. Could the Leader of the House arrange for a debate in Government time on the requirement for BBC News to be impartial, and to reflect the news rather than the opinions of those who preside over it?

Mr Rees-Mogg 

My hon. Friend is right to raise that issue. I think the message to the BBC is that Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion. It is crucial that the BBC is not only impartial but seen to be impartial. The BBC must ask itself, if it is going to make an appointment from the Huffington Post, whether it would make an appointment from the Guido Fawkes website, a similar news outlet, except a rather more accurate one, on the right rather than on the left. I think the BBC would be astonished by my suggestion. Would it make an appointment from Conservative Home or from The Daily Telegraph? It seems unlikely, and therefore it is problematic when the BBC looks at left-wing outlets and thinks that that is impartiality.

I also think that it is more serious than that, because the BBC has a number of dedicated, really good quality journalists, who are genuinely important—the Laura Kuenssbergs, the Martha Kearneys and the James Landales of this world. One has no idea of their political opinions at all, and rightly so. That is the model of the BBC. That is the best of the BBC, and people like that are undermined if Caesar’s wife is seen to be suspect.

If the chamber of the House of Commons had not been so sparsely attended, because of Covid restrictions, there would surely have been an outburst of ironic laughter at the citing of two of those names. There may not have been much recruitment at the top level from Conservative-leaning media, but there have been some seamless moves of senior people to PR jobs under the Conservative ambit. Guto Harri and Robbie Gibb come to mind.

I would like to think that "liberal" is not held to be a term of abuse by the majority of Conservative members, but one does worry.