As Tim Davie takes over, pro-government bias remains dominant in the BBC
Axing “leftist comedies” is all very well, but what about the real problems?
adjective / in·sid·i·ous / of a disease: developing so gradually as to be well established before becoming apparent
I will preface this article with a brief disclaimer that the biases discussed in this article are, I believe, relatively minute — ‘insidious’ is my adjective of choice, since the actual instances of bias in the BBC are so minor that they barely receive more than a day’s worth of media attention when they come to light — unlike the fabricated examples of “left-wing” satirical panel shows. The BBC remains a bulwark of tolerable journalism; compared to the majority of print and online news in the UK, it is stellar (although admittedly that is saying very little). But I believe these biases should always be discussed to push for the improvement of the BBC’s reporting standards, rather than calling for the BBC’s de-licensing or to “undermine trust in an institution which has been sources of stability over many decades”: it is imperative that we retain a source of news funded independently of both advertising and direct government sponsorship.
A new era…?
This week, the endless debate of the BBC’s bias has reignited after the broadcasting corporation’s new Director General, Tim Davie, announced his intentions to curtail BBC biases. Naturally, these are promising words to hear from a man who twice stood as councillor for the Conservative party; by no means does Davie’s political history invalidate his intentions, but it certainly ought to raise a healthy degree of scepticism when reviewing his progress in the coming years.
In particular, Davie needs to be careful to take action against the covert biases that will undoubtedly continue to crop up during his reign (as they did under his predecessor Tony Hall), and not just the overt ones.
More importantly, he must be careful not to pander to the extreme biases contained in popular narratives that are formed by genuinely partisan (and sometimes borderline propagandist) sources. These narratives may agitate the BBC’s critics but it is imperative that they do not shape Davie’s actions. If so, the BBC risks only developing a worse bias by accommodating the existing bias of the UK’s right-wing print.
The endless debate
The debate of the BBC’s centre-left or centre-right bias has raged for decades. A duel of statistics — e.g. more BBC staff are left-leaning, but more prominent positions are filled by those from the right — might suggest the bias is negligible or that it “cancels out,” but it is, if anything, the subtlety that makes the BBC’s bias worth discussing over the overt biases of print media.
During the last Labour government in the 2000s, claims of a pro-Labour bias were prevalent and accurate (although in the context of pro-Iraq War sentiment particularly, Murdoch’s alleged, indirect role in shaping the BBC narrative ought to be noted for later). Nonetheless, to my knowledge the last serious claim into such a left-leaning bias was the Telegraph’s Peter Oborne’s in 2011 (not coincidentally, barely a year into Cameron’s government). Given Oborne’s resignation from the Telegraph for its poor journalistic standards and his tendency to criticise both sides, his word ought to mean something. At the very least, it counts for more than the usual decrying voices from hard right-affiliated print, online fringe publications and echo chambers which pad a lack of coherent argument against the BBC with Trumpist dysphemisms like “Marxist BBC” or “Al Beeb”.
Since Cameron’s 2010 victory, BBC bias toward Conservatives has been demonstrable. So much so that it was picked up again by Oborne, who this time claimed BBC election coverage favoured the Conservatives. Again, coming from a man who has written for the Daily Mail and Telegraph, this ought not to be taken lightly.
Herman and Chomsky
The reason for the BBC’s bias in favour of the “government of the day” can be partly explained through a look toward Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s “propaganda model.” Although outdated in some respects, as it was written before the popularisation of the internet, many elements of the model remain relevant to explaining pro-conservative and pro-government biases in a “free” journalistic market. One way in which Herman and Chomsky observe pro-government narratives forming is through every media outlet’s basic need to cut costs, which they must do to remain competitive:
Partly to maintain the image of objectivity, but also to protect themselves from criticisms of bias and the threat of libel suits, they need material that can be portrayed as presumptively accurate. This is also partly a matter of cost: taking information from sources that may be presumed credible reduces investigative expense, whereas material from sources that are not prima facie credible, or that will elicit criticism and threats, requires careful checking and costly research.
Government and corporate sources have the great merit of being recognizable and credible by their status and prestige … To consolidate their preeminent position as sources, government and business-news promoters go to great pains to make things easy for news organizations … In effect, the large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidize the mass media.
This economic concern applies equally to the BBC, which is under constant pressure to remain efficient in its spending of license fees. Furthermore it is even more rigidly bound to its “image of objectivity” than its peers. The BBC’s adherence to the propaganda model in this single regard can be observed in action through the BBC’s dependency on Conservative officials as sources for statistics. It should be noted that, due to the BBC’s relative independence from further “filters” of Herman and Chomsky’s model, it excels in comparison to print news sources.
Why do so many people believe the BBC is still left-leaning?
A media outlet’s bias is not a relative phenomenon — it either exists or doesn’t, regardless of third parties’ contentions on the matter. However, outlets can appear more biased than they actually are if one first acclimatises to a journalistic source which is more biased in the opposite direction. This effect was observed with the Murdoch-led narrative in favour of Blair’s 2003 Iraq War, which the BBC followed, and is also observable now in favour of the Conservatives. As Oborne summarises:
The British Broadcasting Corporation is bound by rigorous rules of impartiality that do not apply to newspapers — one reason the organisation has often been unjustly accused by those very same newspapers of being biased towards the left.
— Peter Oborne
For an example of the above, compare these two Daily Mail articles reporting on Richard Sambrook’s involvement as a BBC impartiality adviser and Davie’s recent announcement. The Daily Mail saw it fit to write an entire article discussing Sambrook’s recent (at the time of reporting) social media comments which were “critical of the Government,” although his past high-profile criticisms of Tony Blair’s government were not discussed despite being evidence of a much more neutral journalistic attitude than the Mail was letting on.
Similarly, although Davie’s political history as a Conservative is readily available information, this was not mentioned once in Sunday’s Daily Mail’s article, despite the obvious insinuation in the Sambrook article: that one’s personal political views are relevant to one’s ability to judge neutrality. Apparently, this is only worth mentioning when it suits the Mail.
Without the information on Davie’s affiliations, the Mail-reading public is more likely to take Davie’s upcoming pro-impartiality policies at face value than they would have been for any changes implemented under Sambrook, although Sambrook is arguably less “compromised” in that regard. In turn, this inhibits the public’s ability to monitor and judge Davie’s actions in rooting out partisanship from the BBC.
Right-leaning print, such as the Mail and Murdoch-owned print, thus attempts to paint the BBC as leftist, since the BBC’s relatively unbiased journalism presents a threat to print news’ hold over public narrative, when the two contradict. When they can spin BBC actions as left-leaning, they seize the opportunity — but when they anticipate that the anti-bias measures will favour the right in the long run, they remain silent. Print papers therefore attempt to coerce the BBC into following their own narrative more closely.
The article also notes that “As many as 14 Conservative MPs have written to the [BBC] to call on it to fulfil its role of being impartial,” as if this were the only instance of MPs taking a stand against BBC non-neutrality. This implicitly suggests one of two things: either that the BBC bias is entirely left or centre-left, since the criticism comes from the right (who, if biased, would be unlikely to take a stand against a right-bias); or that the right is not biased, and therefore must simply be self-regulating in ways that the left and the moderate BBC are not, and therefore more credible as sources of information and truth. Neither is true, but the narrative of the centre-right’s credibility is what consistently drives them to electoral victories — even when Labour manifestos are fully financed to alleviate public concerns about national debt.
This self-evident selection and omission of information in privately owned media is the kind of thing that shapes dishonest narratives; the danger of these narratives is that the BBC is forced to follow the biases of print media, or else risk appearing biased in comparison by simply reporting in a mode that is relatively neutral or unbiased.
Room for improvement
Certainly, the BBC’s performance over the last ten years could use some improvement (although I repeat my general opinion on the BBC: a bulwark of tolerable journalism). Instances where the BBC strays are often in mimicry of print journalism, undertaken in order to remain competitive with the latter. An infrequent practice of the BBC stooping to the sensationalist standards of print media can be observed in apolitical stories as well as political ones (the latter will be discussed in detail later).
One such example is the BBC’s 2014 broadcast of the police raid of Cliff Richard’s home amid sexual offence allegations, for which Richard won £210,000 in damages. The verdict is crucial, providing evidence of the BBC’s ability to occasionally but severely fail in adhering to journalistic standards, which ought not to be subject to much political or partisan dispute since it is an apolitical issue. It is on the back of this demonstration that I hope to build the argument that the BBC has failed in other areas, and in doing so has particularly favoured the centre-right.
[NB: Although I did find an article from a fringe publication suggesting the Richard “witch hunt” was inspired by homophobic speculations on the singer’s sexuality, this has not been part of any popular media narrative, may not have occurred to most viewers, and I can find no evidence that it played any role in the legal enquiry and verdict. If it had played a role, one would expect that to have been reported at least once in the media. On that basis, even if there is truth to the theory, I am comfortable calling this an “apolitical” journalistic issue, as far as the law and the public eye are concerned.]
Left-wing comedies
So, what exactly does Davie mean when he intends to reinforce a “universal public service … that serves and represents every part of this country”? Does he mean to adhere to a higher standard of journalism than they have already reached?
The Telegraph has it that Davie intends to “axe left-wing comedy shows” that are “unfairly biased against the Tories, Donald Trump and Brexit.” Certainly, BBC panel shows such as Have I Got News for You display a general centre-left bias — but what Davie and the right-wing print are evidently missing is that these are satirical, topical programmes whose bits are drawn from the weekly news, which is generally dominated by government action. Since the opposition is, by nature, incapable of consistently performing action as newsworthy as the policies drawn by the government, one would expect satirical sources to currently be more critical of the Conservatives than of Labour. This is, in fact, the exact curse of holding office and the reason satire is so reviled by totalitarianism: satire demands relevant topics to be the butt of its jokes, and the government is often the most relevant topic of all.
Still, I accept that HIGNFY has been especially critical of Brexit in a capacity not fully explained by the above — although it should be noted the BBC is aware of this Remain bias and did take action to prevent a potential pro-Remain bias in the run-up to the European elections. While the programme frequently hosts politicians from both sides (a double edged sword that often subjects them to ridicule as well as giving them a platform to shed their lizard skins and prove they are human after all), and has attempted to include a variety of opinionated comedian-guests, it has not always managed to strike a balance.
One explanation might be that liberalism and satire go hand-in-hand — if this is the case, I am adamantly in favour of Conservative comedy panel shows getting the green-light, since I have always advocated equal opportunities for the disadvantaged. Philip Pullman, on the other hand, argues that satire is inherently conservative as it “relies on a common acceptance of moral standards which it mocks its targets for falling away from”—though Pullman’s use of the term is closer to the concept of “centrism” than the centre-right party.
Regardless of the reasons, what is typical here is the right-wing media’s relishing of destruction — a pattern following global conservative attitudes to the EU, the NHS, the WHO, etc. This is my primary concern with the (albeit limited) news of Davie’s intentions — to me, it speaks more of pandering to bitter voices than it does to measured concern. Why else the love for scrapping? Certainly, at times a cancellation is unavoidable, such as when Jeremy Clarkson effectively blacklisted himself from the BBC by assaulting a colleague, but this was an instance of violence after repeatedly getting away with controversial (rightist) jokes and remarks during broadcasting. Another example was when HIGNFY ex-host Angus Deayton was fired after his costars felt his public scandal had made the show redundant. As with Clarkson, his sacking did not take place simply because he was disliked by a certain political demographic.
So why should the BBC scrap entire shows just because the right wills it? Given that “free speech” and “cancel culture” are continually used as right-wing talking points, the hypocrisy behind this desire is staggering. If free speech were truly their primary concern, would they not prefer to improve on the popular formula the BBC have built through more varied inclusion? Ian Hislop and Paul Merton don’t pull punches for any party, but it’s not like the show would suffer from an equal wit from a Conservative satirist—one which might be better at harassing liberal targets than Hislop or Merton.
Yet more concerning than this is that it is the first we’ve heard from Davie — and, while purely based on the conjecture of unnamed Telegraph “sources,” is apparently the central issue to the BBC’s bias in Davie’s mind. Not the complaints in line with Oborne’s, nor the editing of footage, nor the polemicism, nor the omission of inconvenient narratives to placate the right — all of which are far more concerning sculptures of political bias than left-wing comedy shows which, let’s face it, aren’t going to be watched by anyone who doesn’t find immediate humour in the content, and therefore aren’t going to have much sway over the political landscape. Curbing biases which influence politics directly ought to be the priority for Davie and the BBC.
In-depth: The pro-governmental bias
The issues I will henceforth discuss — that is, the more problematic biases in the BBC (once again I stress their relative minuteness compared to other media outlets) — are those which I hope will be the actual focus of Davie’s impartiality push. These issues are undoubtedly not the only instances of bias over the last decade, but merely the irrefutable ones that have come to my attention. The instances are subtle — sometimes enough to fly under the radar of uncritical members of the public, but not enough to avoid the eyes of particularly keen netizens or experts—but are nonetheless significant. They are significant because, unlike the majority of claims of BBC bias, they are not simply founded on the opinions of popular figures like Oborne, Marr or Medhi Hasan; because they are not simple statistical analyses of the political beliefs of BBC staff, which one would expect to precipitate a bias; but because they are displays of the bias itself, in action.
Editing of footage and imagery
The first of these examples is the editing of footage that may have been of embarrassment or detriment to Boris Johnson, which has been noted by audiences twice to date. One occurrence was the removal of laughter at Johnson’s expense during a Question Time highlight clip.
Certainly, broadcast time is even tighter than usual for highlight reels, and an audience’s reaction might seem like two seconds wasted to an editor — but even through this simple decision, the BBC exposed a central tenet of its broadcasting philosophy: that the planned, press-friendly mitigation touted by government officials is more important than the reactions of its citizens. Bear in mind this wasn’t a biased, left-wing audience laughing at Johnson, but one carefully selected to reflect diverse and balanced opinions (that is, in theory).
Worse, this edit suggests that Johnson’s immediate embarrassment (which was cut along with the laughter) was considered less important than the poised, collected answer that he intended to present. In a minute sense, but nonetheless setting a bad precedent, the BBC enforced a government narrative over the truth.
This slip-up thus imitates Orwellian revisionism; to understand the psychological significance of laughter being replaced by simple applause, consider why sitcoms have historically run laugh-tracks to keep their audiences in the appropriate mood. The second of applause following the laughter which was not cut (due to Johnson’s speaking over the applause) gave the impression that the audience showed patriotic appreciation of Johnson, rather than the ironic appreciation of the question being asked. This is bias at its most insidious — not at its worst, but most insidious — so subtle it was not detected prior to deliberate scrutiny of citizens on Twitter.
[NB: We could argue that broadcasting might benefit from an absence of laughter or applause (i.e. to better allow audiences to form their own opinions) but given that we lack the technology to remove audience reactions from a broadcast in which audience participation was central, such arguments are in bad faith when employed in defence of an error where a public reaction — a misleading reaction — was in fact still broadcast.]
Still, in isolation, one could probably forgive this offence. It was, I stress, certainly not calculated to produce the precise “Orwellian” effects I have described. But nonetheless the effects were real. Perhaps worse was the substitution of 2016 footage in place of the 2019 Remembrance Service, during which a “scruffy-looking” Johnson placed a wreath “upside-down.” Though the BBC did provide a reason for this mistake, it is incredibly far-reaching and does not adequately explain what was certainly a difficult mistake to make.
It is convenient that this is another mistake in Johnson’s favour, reinforcing his “patriotic” image to his supporters. But when the BBC makes mistakes concerning Corbyn, they often work to make the ex-opposition leader appear unpatriotic. One such example was the editing of a photo of Jeremy Corbyn against a backdrop of the Russian “Kremlin”. Channel 4’s conciliatory claim, by the way, that “Mr Corbyn’s hat only appeared taller because of a perspective distortion caused by Newsnight’s curved background screen,” should be taken with a grain of salt. You can tell that the video comparison itself is a kind of best-case scenario, where the hats line up as neatly as possible, but not the centres of the images — this is because the image is skewed in this demonstration and not curved, masking the manipulation.
As such, it is very difficult to determine the extent of the editing; even so, the background choice and colour balancing makes the whole scene look like something from HIGNFY. When compared to another BBC image scandal which seemed to favour a Conservative cabinet member, a general laxity toward reporting standards of imagery is definitely there, even if these are just few isolated cases. And political imagery is, of course, extremely important and central to propaganda—hence why every school in the UK rightfully teaches its pupils to identify antisemitic propaganda published by the Nazis. Even if the BBC’s graphic department did not set out to vilify Corbyn and deify Sunak, it is bad enough that the images were approved by enough staff members for them to make it to broadcast in a legitimate news programme.
Polemicism
Regrettably, because it is often steered into the narratives of right-wing print, the BBC is also not immune to the occasional bouts of polemicism.
Of course, a generalised “BBC bias” is not when presenters have political views of their own, nor when they voice rational and factual refutations to bad-faith talking points, even ones made by a political party. The BBC has always exercised its right to push incompliant politicians for answers and to dispute their claims. “BBC Bias” is not even when one figure’s arguments reveal a personal bias, since every left-wing Emily Maitlis has a right-wing Laura Kuenssberg or Andrew Neil to balance the equation. Given that Neil has run rampant for years, while Kuenssberg has literally falsified claims of assault from leftists and broken electoral law without apparent consequence, that Maitlis and “left-wing comedies” have become the sole focus of the right’s concerns about bias is telling.
Although Neil and Maitlis display their biases in ways that are still productive at getting answers and challenging claims, some rare examples of BBC journalism breach into the territory of outright polemicism. John Ware’s work for BBC Panorama is one such example, not because his anti-left programmes were conceived, but because they were not restricted in ways that anti-right journalism always is.
In one episode, Is Labour Anti-Semitic?, John Ware led a polemic against the Labour party, made worse only by the fact that the Labour antisemitism issue needed and still needs to be discussed in a healthy capacity. The problem is not that the victims of antisemitism in the party should not be listened to, nor that the perpetrators should not be punished, nor even that the documentary did not bring up significant points of failure within the party. The episode’s failures were in refusing to challenge any of the viewpoints that antisemitism was ubiquitous and enabled by malicious intent from party leadership:
Within the programme in question, Panorama featured eight key witnesses alleging ubiquitous anti-Jewish racism within the party. The programme-makers were, however, presumably aware that hundreds of active Jewish members of the party are on record offering a very different perspective. The complete exclusion of their voices on such an active controversial subject amounts to a gross breach of the BBC’s impartiality requirements.
A few success stories of expelling antisemitic members were glossed over and painted as instances of authoritarian leadership over the issues, where this was not relevant. Direct and reasonable quotes from Labour party statements were presented, but not examined to demonstrate consistency with the successes, and the Labour official brought in to discuss the issues was only spoken to once.
Another way in which the episode failed to tackle the real issue was in noting the difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, but failing to examine the distinction, and even going to lengths to mislead. In one montage, clips of genuinely antisemitic signs such as “Israel is the disease, we are the cure” were juxtaposed against merely anti-Zionist ones such as “Well done, Israel, Hitler would be proud” (of the Israeli military’s treatment of Palestinian citizens) and “Zionism is the real terrorism.” Zionism remains a contentious issue:
Advocates of Zionism view it as a national liberation movement for the repatriation of a persecuted people residing as minorities in a variety of nations to their ancestral homeland. Critics of Zionism view it as a colonialist, racist and exceptionalist ideology that led advocates to violence during Mandatory Palestine, followed by the exodus of Palestinians, and the subsequent denial of their right to return to lands and property lost during the 1948 and 1967 wars.
Given that the left tends to oppose colonialism and racism, it is unsurprising that many would oppose Zionist or expansionist settlements. And Israel-Palestine is a difficult and complex issue—but rather than address and attempt to educate on these nuances, Panorama saw fit to simply vilify the issue to silence critics of Israeli military policy with threats of antisemitism:
The two ‘expert’ witnesses, Alan Johnson and Dave Rich, whose views have been vigorously contested in public debate by other experts, were instead left unchallenged in the programme. For example, Alan Johnson’s account of antisemitism on the Left has been criticised by Professor Jonathan Rosenhead, emeritus professor at LSE, for confusing antisemitism with anti-Zionism. The programme failed to even make reference to any such opposing views or perspectives.
The episode also makes sweeping claims that Jeremy Corbyn’s “fringe” ideology “was becoming the mainstream.” However, no attempt was made to link this claim to the question of antisemitism, but its very inclusion in Panorama’s narrative was an attempt to make leftist policies in general seem as insidious and dangerous as antisemitism. (Furthermore, the claim of “fringe” becoming “mainstream” is evidently false with the revelations of sabotage within the Labour party prior to the 2017 election.) That such an upsetting discussion of bigotry was transformed into an attack on the party’s left wing is a display of how partisanship within the BBC can slip through.
A more extensive “catalogue” of the documentary’s evidenced failures in impartiality and accuracy can be found here. The episode, by the way, is still on iPlayer — it is the oldest episode still available to watch, bar a few historic episodes from the 20th century, despite all other episodes being removed after a year. A previous episode by the same reporter, John Ware, titled Labour’s Earthquake received similar criticisms but is no longer available to watch. If such polemicism will cease under Davie as a trade-off for “axing left-wing comedies,” I’ll happily take it — I know which side will be getting the better deal.
Selection and omission
As mentioned earlier, the centre-right majority is particularly finicky about how the “leftist” BBC conducts journalism regarding the right’s interests. But they do not also take up arms when the BBC is shown to benefit the right and thus minute centre-right biases are not problematic for the BBC. Selective reporting occurs unwittingly when the BBC follows the right-wing dominant narrative of print media.
For example, the BBC has never launched an investigation into antisemitism within the Conservative party. The simple reason for this is that right-wing print doesn’t care about this issue — it seeks only to exploit antisemites on the left and equate leftism with antisemitism, in order to discourage left and moderate voters (who are often intolerant of racism and antisemitism) from voting against the Conservatives. Thus, the BBC follows the right-wing print narrative in order to blend in and appear unbiased, as described earlier in the article. But by doing so, the BBC unwittingly enabled itself in the occasion of the Ware Panorama episode to be a proponent of rightist views. Even the episode’s title is an unprecedented and biased suggestion that would subsequently occur to (and influence the views of) people who did not even watch the programme but saw its title in passing, discouraging Labour support from moderates.
Peter Oborne drew attention to the BBC’s failure to press the Conservative party during the 2019 election. In addition to the editing of footage, the Conservatives have been allowed to pick and choose where and how to appear on the BBC, directly manipulating public opinion by removing the “impartial” BBC’s ability to moderate and challenge Conservative claims. After refusing to appear opposite Andrew Neil, PM Boris Johnson was allowed to appear opposite the much more lenient interviewer Andrew Marr, who Oborne notes:
… barely managed to confront these lies, and it’s noteworthy that the BBC only allowed the prime minister on the air because, after the attack, “it was in the public interest”.
While the BBC was vigilant against a potential pro-Remain bias caused by HIGNFY, they do not always apply the same rigidity to Conservatives. In 2017, Theresa May refused to appear in TV debates, but was hosted in casual, humanising interviews. The BBC is unfortunately rather powerless to this; its only option is to refuse to host uncooperative politicians at all — which it ought to do. What may be tempting is a requirement for party leaders to appear in certain debates; the problem with this is that politicians would never pass anything to hold themselves more accountable, and also that a requirement actually opens the potential for worse biases in future, should the BBC ever become totally compromised.
In another example of selection/omission bias, a report that Conservative ad campaigns on Facebook were more misleading than Labour’s was hidden in an article under the headline “General election 2019: Ads are ‘indecent, dishonest and untruthful’.” Thus, when there is a narrative bias against Labour — such as in the antisemitism scandal — the party in question is held accountable and the specificity of a “Labour” failure is highlighted. When there is a bias against the Conservatives, this pressure is less rigorously applied.
Conclusion
With the evidence presented, I believe that the BBC’s slight bias toward the Conservative party has been quite evident since 2015 in particular. This is not evidence of a systemic right-wing conspiracy or anything irreparable, but of a general pro-government attitude to BBC reporting that exists regardless of party, and also a general adherence to right-wing narratives which distorts apparent BBC neutrality.
Just as the front-line of the NHS’s continual defensive against privatisation is fought on battlegrounds of efficiency and “customer” satisfaction, the BBC’s main threat is not the explicit threat of government disapproval, but the ratings the network uses to justify its own existence. It doesn’t matter, and never will matter, to the BBC’s survival whether it maintains impartiality; what matters only is that its perceived impartiality is bought by the populace. The more wary the populace (and, in particular, influential voices capable of swaying them) become, and the less interest they demonstrate in its productions and broadcasts, the more defenceless the network will be to de-licensing.
But that doesn’t mean we should stop talking about the BBC’s insidious bias; if anything, it is more reason to hold them accountable for their failures to combat right-wing narratives, and insist that the corporation stands in defiance of these narratives rather than working with them. If Tim Davie can make that happen, I will be surprised and impressed — and I hope that others will keep their eyes open to ensure his changes are in the interest of truth and neutrality, and not undertaken to only appear as such at the behest of the right.
