Readers respond to Andy Beckett’s article, which said that the broadcaster is failing to hold the government to account
Andy Beckett is not a writer with whom I would normally disagree, but as a retired BBC journalist and former foreign correspondent, I challenge his assertion that the BBC is not properly fulfilling its role to scrutinise arguments, question consensus and hold power to account (The BBC is finding out the hard way you can’t do ‘balance’ with this government, 19 November).
Where is the evidence that BBC news has played down the excesses and disasters of Boris Johnson’s government? Beckett seems to find it in a Radio 5 breakfast broadcast where the presenter Rachel Burden said there were MPs from right across the political spectrum who have second jobs. She was right. But Beckett further accuses her of having “almost completely obscured” the fact that the vast majority of MPs with second jobs are Tories. What does “almost completely obscured” mean? Either she mentioned the fact or she didn’t. She did.
