The toxic BBC

There's a big headline news story on the BBC News website this evening using the word 'toxic':

 

It's a piece by Tom Symonds, BBC home affairs correspondent, and - following on from our earlier post on the subject - pursues what very much seems to be 'the BBC line' on the matter, basing most of its direct quotes on two people with a similar outlook: 

[1] Leroy Logan, founding member of the Black Police Association, who the BBC News Channel turned to first on Thursday night as Dame Cressida Dick's chucking-out broke and who the BBC News Channel then interviewed again just two hours later. 

[2] Shabnam Chaudhri, former detective superintendent with the Met, who the BBC has reported on before under headlines such as 'My 30-year struggle with racism in the Metropolitan police'. 

And Ms Chaudhri is the person BBC Tom pegs his front-page analysis piece around, extensively quoting her complaints about Met racism. 

The BBC News Channel interviewed her yesterday. 

[I've not checked her appearance elsewhere, but I'm guessing she's been elsewhere on the BBC too.]

It's a funny thing. Having largely left off listening to BBC radio, I'm now listening to other radio outlets. On stations like talkRADIO I get a very different sense of the many reasons why Dame Dick might have been worthy of the chop. There's a litany of non-'BBC' criticisms of her out there.

All this BBC focus on stuff about -isms and identity politics isn't what's getting those people's goat.

And that increases my sense that the BBC is trying to speak to [a] people who already think like it and [b] people it hopes to persuade to think like it. 

Tom Symonds, BBC home affairs correspondent, needs to broaden his horizons.