People in the UK look to the BBC to explain many of the challenges facing the country today. Yet most are under informed about a raft of issues ranging from: Brexit to immigration policy. So why is the BBC failing in its “mission to explain”? In short, it has failed the necessary precursor – the mission to understand.
Our commentariat has never been better supplied with facts, and yet we have never had such a paucity of public knowledge around complex issues. To counter popular misconceptions, the BBC needs to go beyond fact checking and provide more context. The lack of depth in its coverage of crucial stories is leading to an increasingly partisan general public, and, consequently, a failure to hold those with power to account.
Too much output, too many outlets, not enough time to think
There are four main reasons why the BBC is not explaining the news well. Firstly, BBC journalists are too busy producing news stories to have enough time to think through issues or properly research them. The BBC needs to cut the number of news and current affairs outlets and focus on the quality of the coverage and the arguments being published. It could start by closing BBC News, its 24-hour news channel, and reducing the number of current affairs strands on Radio 4 – pooling resources into fewer shows. It could reduce the number of stories it publishes on its BBC news site each week.
