Panorama isn’t interested in scoops. It seems to have a phobia of great journalism in preference for a political ideology all of its own. 

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Yet another BBC scandal. In recent times, the BBC has had to endure so many of them ranging from paedophile cover-ups right through to gender pay gaps that it leads many in the UK to wonder who is running this unique, publicly funded broadcaster which once upon a time was often called ‘independent’. Both the director general and head of news resign on the same day over allegations of bias, following revelations that a flagship documentary program called Panorama misled its own audience. The main thrust of the complaint was that Panorama deliberately edited a speech by Trump in January 2021 which made him look like he was inciting violence in the U.S. capital.

At first glance this seems like the Trump administration flexing its muscles on its main ally in the world which has become weak and happy to play the victim to the playground bully. Can the resignations be taken seriously, or were they forced upon Tim Davie and Deborah Turness to avert a greater opprobrium at what can only be described as an all time low for the BBC?

Conspiracy theorists will of course have a field day on looking at other reasons why this culling of the two top positions in British television had to happen, with some perhaps pointing at the Israeli lobby (given what many consider to be too bias coverage of the Palestinians during the genocide).

But as the internet explodes with anecdotal evidence of BBC gaffes and hypocrisy ranging from when a BBC reporter in NYC reported the collapse of Building seven 20 minutes before it actually went down through to its Middle East editor being a rampant Zionist who has pledged allegiance to Israel – who then is suing a social media commentator who dared to call him bias, most of us are missing the point about this latest story.

The truth is that such a scandal was certain to erupt given how Panorama, as a documentary series, is so badly produced, with such a vociferous political agenda. The show itself has had to weather a number of storms over the years which have thrown a spotlight on it and what its role really is. In my own personal experience of working for the show as a freelance foreign correspondent working on an investigation, while I was based in the Middle East, I was shocked to experience first hand how unjournalistic it operated. It almost seemed to have a phobia of making news stories which affect the lives of millions in preference for hidden agendas on its own political level, sometimes even down to office politics or based on the foibles of those who work for it.

In 2017 I tracked down one of Britain’s largest drug baron’s hiding in Greece which Panorama bosses were keen to get to. But I was shocked to discover that his story, of how he was protected in the 80s by Jack Straw, while he was allowed to become the number one importer of heroin into the country was cancelled, as it didn’t work for the show’s producer who was obsessed with finding an angle which proved corruption within the UK customs authority – based on a previous show which spectacularly failed to prove it. Our man, who had been hiding for over 20 years fearing arrest warrants the UK had on him (unable to enter the country) was ready to come to the UK to talk and even prepared to show Panorama the identities of the top ten heroin importers in the country, some of whom were being protected by the customs agencies. Given Panorama’s reputation for being an amazing documentary show which unearthed huge scoops, I was quite shocked that this was rejected. At this point I realised not everything at Panorama is what it seems and that there were dark, political, nefarious players at the BBC who were using the show as a political tool for their own purposes. Panorama isn’t interested in scoops. It seems to have a phobia of great journalism in preference for a political ideology all of its own, seemingly serving the interests of the deep state.

The fact that Panorama bosses went ahead and doctored footage of Trump’s speech doesn’t shock people like me at all. What is more shocking is that there doesn’t seem to be a watchdog which has any teeth capable of probing the program, and doing a thorough investigation into its operations to find out who is really behind it and what other stunts it has pulled. We need an investigation into the documentary series itself to lift the lid on BBC graft and to hold those to account for the dirty work that it does for BBC bosses (and their bosses who are part of the deep state which actually runs the country).

In 2019, John Sweeney, one of its top journalists, left Panorama under a cloud of shameful allegations about him rigging a show against far-right figure Tommy Robinson. He resigned from the BBC after the right wing activist secretly filmed him which revealed a number of embarrassing things about the journalist who Robinson claimed had approached former colleagues who were offered cash to defame him, based on the journalist’s prepared narrative. At the time Sweeney claimed that the secret filming was really only about his drink problem and that he was subsequently threatened in the street by Robinson supporters, leading him to turn to getting psychiatric help. The show that he had been working on about Robinson was obviously canned. Those with a better memory might counter that the journalist had a history of mental illness which became public knowledge when he had what appeared to be a mental breakdown during a documentary about Scientology. In recent years he has been seen making monologue films sporting a bushy beard ranting about the Russian leader, while adorning what appears to be an orange tea cosy on his head and using foul language.

Is Sweeney a sick man who is free of an institution which has an even graver illness? What exactly is Panorama and how does it work? Now that we have seen its true side and the tawdry extent of its corruption, it is high time that a full investigation is carried out into all of these examples of malpractice to get to the bottom of one of the greatest mysteries in British media. The amount of press coverage that the present scandal about Trump’s speech is getting is disproportionate to the John Sweeney secret filming as the former BBC journalist who called himself a ‘trooper’ just about pulled every dirty trick in the book to stitch up Tommy Robinson which should really tell us a lot about the anti-journalistic culture of Panorama which allowed such dirty tricks to happen.