The biased British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC. A damning report has claimed that the BBC breached its own editorial guidelines more than 1500 times during the height of the Israel-Hamas war.
After analysing four months of BBC coverage on the conflict across, all platforms, research led by British lawyer Trevor Asserson, which was done with from an Israeli perspective, revealed what they called a deeply worrying pattern of bias against Israel.
Now I have quite a lot of respect for the BBC - amongst other hard core jobs I did, like Beat Up and Price Drop TV, the BBC trained me. I had to adhere to their guidelines and they taught me to be balanced.
I left frankly, because in my view, I believe that they weren't. Working there meant agreeing to a narrative, for example, climate change, which at the time was called global warming, which was believed to be settled science, so no doubt could be cast on it.
Nana Akua reacts to the latest report into the BBC's breach of guidelines
GB News
I, on the other hand, saw things differently and wanted my questions answered.
Take Black Lives Matter, where one of my BBC bosses encouraged me to promote a BLM event on my BBC radio show. I emailed back saying under the guidelines I wasn't allowed because in my view, BLM was a corrupt, far left Marxist pressure group. Well, that turned out to be true.
The guidelines are as thick as your arm and are drummed into you from day dot, so it's a shame they didn't take any notice of them when it came to Israel. It was no surprise to me that the BBC had breached their own guidelines repeatedly.
Remember the Hamas bomb that backfired, that their reporter immediately blamed on Israel?
Well, of course, the report turned out to be wrong from the BBC, because evidence on another broadcaster showed coverage of that particular bomb backfiring.
The report also found that BBC coverage associated Israel with genocide 14 times more than Hamas. Danny Cohen, a former BBC executive, called for an independent inquiry into its coverage and warned of an institutional crisis on their coverage.
Here's the problem - because the BBC are self-regulated so unlike other commercial broadcasters, complaints go via an exhaustive complaints procedure first before they go to Ofcom. And by exhausted, I mean that you will be exhausted by the end of it. I know because I've tried it when I complained about Gary Lineker.
At the end of the BBC process if you're still not satisfied, then you can take your case to Ofcom or Ofcom can investigate the BBC if they feel there's a case, but the latter hardly ever happens. So it means its presenters can get away with comments about throwing battery acid over Nigel Farage and still keep their jobs, and the antics of Jimmy Savile, Martin Bashir and Huw Edwards don't finish them off.
Imagine any of that happening on a commercial channel like GB News. We'd be off air faster than you could say Jack Robinson, but because, heigh ho, they're the BBC, nothing to see here. And that's why so many people are aggrieved paying the TV licence. And that's why viewers and listeners are leaving the BBC in their droves.
On Monday night, GB News beat both the BBC News Channel and the Sky News Channel on average views across the entire day. And I can proudly say that I was on that day with Andrew Pierce presenting Britain's Newsroom. Time for a level playing field, methinks.
Time for the BBC to be held to the same standards as the rest of us. In a statement, the BBC said it would "carefully consider" the report, which has been submitted to Tim Davie, its Director General, and its chairman as well as its board members. A spokesperson for the corporation added that it had "serious questions" about the report's methodology.
And whilst the report into the BBC may not have been impartial, if the BBC wants to have an opinion, it needs to fund itself.
