This article outlines controversies involving the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in chronological order. It includes allegations of political bias, editorial mistakes, disputed broadcasts, presenter misconduct, and wider institutional failings. The article also covers the BBC's responses to these controversies, including internal investigations, public apologies, leadership changes, and external scrutiny.
Early years 1926 general strike In 1926, the General Council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) called a general strike to protest poor working conditions and impending pay cuts affecting roughly 1.2 million coal miners. Labour Party leaders, including Ramsay MacDonald and Philip Snowden, criticised the BBC for a biased and misleading portrayal of the strike.
Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was coached by John Reith during a national address concerning the strike, which was transmitted from Reith's residence. When MacDonald requested airtime to reply, Reith initially supported the idea. However, because Baldwin was strongly opposed to MacDonald broadcasting, Reith ultimately refused the request.
Baldwin's government blocked the BBC from airing statements from Labour and TUC leaders about the strike. When Philip Snowden, the former Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote to the Radio Times to protest the BBC's treatment of the unions, Reith conceded that the organisation was not fully independent of the government. Randall Davidson, the Archbishop of Canterbury, wished to broadcast a "peace appeal" urging an immediate end to the strike, the renewal of coal industry subsidies, and the preservation of miners' wages. Reith denied the request, concern that Winston Churchill—who wanted to use the BBC as a government tool—would exploit the speech to seize control of the corporation. Reith later noted in his diary that the government "know[s] they can trust us not to be really impartial".
A post-strike analysis conducted by the BBC's Programme Correspondence Department revealed that among those polled, 3,696 praised the coverage while 176 criticised it.
Between the wars In 1927, under a Royal Charter, the BBC became a public entity for the first time, with requirements including impartiality and a ban on staff expressing opinions on controversial subjects.
Prior to World War II, John Reith excluded Winston Churchill from the BBC airwaves.Nick Robinson, 'Winston Churchill's bitter battle with the BBC', The Daily Telegraph (14 October 2012). Retrieved 24 February 2018. At the time of the Munich Agreement of 1938, Churchill "complained that he had been very badly treated...and that he was always muzzled by the BBC".
1930s to Cold War: MI5 vetting
From the late 1930s until the end of the Cold War, MI5 had an officer at the BBC vetting editorial applicants. During World War II, 'subversives', particularly suspected communists, such as the folk singer Ewan MacColl, were banned from the BBC. The personnel records of anyone suspicious were stamped with an arrow-shaped green tag, or "Christmas tree." Only a handful of BBC staff knew what the tags meant.
1930s: Commercial radio controversy Because the BBC had become both a monopoly and a non-commercial entity, it soon faced competition from British subjects who were operating leased transmitters in Europe before World War II. John Reith, who had been given powers to dictate the BBC's cultural output, retaliated by leading the opposition to these commercial stations. Controversy split over into the press when the British government attempted to censor the printing of their programme information.
1930s onwards: Broadcasting jazz In My Father: Reith of the BBC, John Reith's daughter Marista Leishman said that he banned the playing of jazz music on the BBC and that he wrote in his diary that "Germany has banned hot jazz and I'm sorry that we should be behind in dealing with this filthy product of modernity."
Post-war 1950s: Claimed involvement in Iranian coup d'état A BBC Radio 4 documentary in 2005 claimed it had evidence that a radio newsreader inserted the word "exactly" into a midnight time check one summer night in 1953, as "It is now exactly midnight". This was said to be a code word to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, that Britain supported his plans for a coup. The Shah selected the word, the documentary said, and the BBC broadcast it at the government's request. The BBC spokesman declined to comment on a possible connection.
1950s: Independent television controversy Winston Churchill's government passed the Television Act 1954, which allowed the creation of Britain's first commercial television network, ITV. Reith, among others, criticised this in the House of Lords.HL Deb 01 July 1954 vol 188 cc316-415 Churchill explained to his doctor, Lord Moran: "I am against the monopoly enjoyed by the BBC. For eleven years they kept me off the air. They prevented me from expressing views which have proved to be right. Their behaviour has been tyrannical. They are honeycombed with Socialists—probably with Communists".Moran, Charles Wilson, Lord Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940–1965 (London: Sphere, 1968), p. 416.
1964: "Clean Up TV campaign" Mary Whitehouse launched her 'Clean Up TV campaign' in April 1964. In her view, Hugh Greene, as BBC Director General, was "more than anybody else ... responsible for the moral collapse in this country." The campaign of Whitehouse and her supporters soon became the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association. Whitehouse opposed the liberalisation policies pursued by Greene and sustained by his successors at the Corporation. Whitehouse's campaign focused more on the BBC than on ITV.
1965: The War Game The War Game, directed by Peter Watkins, is a pseudo-documentary recounting the aftermath of a fictional attack on London with a one-megaton nuclear bomb. Intended for the twentieth anniversary on 6 August 1965 of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, The War Game was banned by the BBC, which said it was "too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting". The chairman of the BBC board of governors, Lord Normanbrook, wrote in a secret letter to the cabinet secretary, Burke Trend, that "The showing of the film on television might have a significant effect on public attitudes towards the policy of the nuclear deterrent". Although the British Film Institute (BFI) approved it for a limited cinema release and it won an Oscar for Best Documentary, the BBC did not screen the film until 1985.
In 2012, John Pilger wrote that, in banning Watkins' film, the BBC was performing "the function of the state broadcaster as a cornerstone of Britain's ruling elite".
1969: Enhanced subscriptions In 1969, Reuters agreed to open a reporting service in the Middle East as part of a British Foreign Office plan to influence the international media. To protect Reuters' reputation, which may have been damaged if British government funding became known, the BBC paid Reuters "enhanced subscriptions" for access to its news service, and was in turn compensated by the British government for the extra expense. Under the plan, the BBC paid Reuters £350,000 over four years.
1971: Yesterday's Men Yesterday's Men is a BBC documentary first broadcast in June 1971Sources vary as to whether the programme was transmitted on 16 or 17 June 1971. about former ministers in Harold Wilson's Labour government who were facing opposition. The programme makers, including reporter David Dimbleby, angered Wilson and the Labour Party, which saw their approach as displaying explicit Conservative bias. According to the official History of the BBC web page on the incident, the Labour politicians were "effectively tricked into taking part in a programme that would ridicule them".Yesterday's Men (1971), History of the BBC In an untransmitted section of their interview, Dimbleby asked Wilson about the money he had made from his memoirs, leading to a furious exchange between the two. Wilson wanted the programme shelved, but it was broadcast with minor changes.
1979–2000 1979: Panorama During The Troubles, Panorama showed masked IRA men manning a roadblock in Carrickmore.Tim Pat Coogan, The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966–1995 and the Search for Peace (London: Arrow, 1996), p. 369. The Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary immediately withdrew their cooperation with the BBC, and the Unionist leader James Molyneaux claimed the filming was "at least a treasonable activity".Coogan, p. 370. The BBC governors issued a statement admitting that filming the IRA roadblock "would appear to be a clear breach of standing instructions in relation to filming in Ireland".Coogan, pp. 369–370. In the House of Commons, the Conservative MP Tim Eggar requested that the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, "contact the governors of the BBC to express extreme concern about the way in which the Panorama team seems to have encouraged the IRA to break the law in Northern Ireland".HC Deb 08 November 1979 vol 973 cc606-13 Thatcher replied that the government contacted the BBC about the programme: "My honourable Friend will know that this is not the first time that we have had occasion to raise similar matters with the BBC. My right honourable Friend, the Home Secretary, and I think that it is time that the BBC put its house in order".
1982: Falklands War During the Falklands War, the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and some Conservative MPs believed that the BBC was excessively even-handed between Britain and Argentina, referring to "the British" and "the Argentines" instead of "our forces" and "the enemy".John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher, Volume Two: The Iron Lady (London: Jonathan Cape, 2003), p. 156, p. 402.HC Deb 06 May 1982 vol 23 cc278-82
On 2 May, during a report for Newsnight, Peter Snow remarked: "Until the British are demonstrated either to be deceiving us or to be concealing losses, we can only tend to give a lot more credence to the British version of events".Cynthia Carter and C. Kay Weaver, Violence And The Media (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2003), p. 25. The Conservative MP John Page complained that the programme was "totally offensive and almost treasonable".Valerie Adams, The Media and the Falklands Campaign (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1986), p. 9. Answering a question from Page on 6 May, Thatcher said:"Many people are very concerned indeed that the case for our British forces is not being put over fully and effectively. I understand that there are times when it seems that we and the Argentines are being treated almost as equals and almost on a neutral basis. I understand that there are occasions when some commentators will say that the Argentines did something and then "the British" did something. I can only say that if this is so it gives offence and causes great emotion among many people". The Sun newspaper published an editorial on 7 May titled "Dare Call it Treason: There are Traitors in Our Midst" which criticised Snow.Carter and Weaver, p. 25. The Daily Mirror came to Snow's defence in an editorial titled 'The Harlot of Fleet Street', calling The Sun "coarse and demented" and that it had "fallen from the gutter to the sewer...The Sun today is to journalism what Dr Joseph Goebbels was to truth".Roy Greenslade, 'A new Britain, a new kind of newspaper', The Guardian (25 February 2002). Retrieved 3 August 2018.