For those who would like a little more John Simpson, here's the opening of his Radio Times piece (no link available, so I'm transcribing it directly from the magazine, £2.80):
'The BBC hasn't changed'We're not biased - it's our job to give people arguments they hate
I'm getting really fed up with the complaints and criticisms being directed at BBC News at the moment. Not so much from our usual critics, the hardliners on the left and the right, who habitually claim we're biased because we're not actually biased in their favour. No - it's middle-of-the-roaders who are doing the complaining now.
The great majority of moderate-minded British people have always been the BBC's strongest supporters. They back us because we try to give them a balanced, unexcitable, honest view of what's going on.
But now I find myself reading article after article in the newspapers by people who start off, "I've always been a supporter of the BBC, but...". The basic idea is that the BBC has changed. Once it was even-handed, and now look at it.
Well, I promise you, with the perspective that 52 years of working for it gives me, it's not the BBC that's changed, it's them. Maybe it's because they're so used to social media, and hearing only the kind of views they like, that they're enraged by having to listen to arguments they hate.
At present it's Brexit. Before that it was Scottish independence. People have allowed themselves to be persuaded that there's something wrong with being given open and unbiased information from BBC journalists. Well, I'm sorry, but I don't think any subject is too important to keep our minds closed about it.
"Well, I'm sorry, but I don't think any subject is too important to keep our minds closed about it", says the man who isn't remotely open-minded when it comes to the subject of BBC bias.
