The BBC has stated openly that it wishes to emulate global success stories like Fox News and the Daily Mail.
LCD’s False Equivalence correspondent contacted the Director General’s office for comment. Unfortunately, the DG was on holiday hunting unicorns with Paul Dacre.
In fact the only person not unaccountably absent was Current Affairs Scriptwriter May Kittupp. ‘I’m very excited by the news!” she said. “The BBC has worked very hard to achieve Fake News Media status.”
This is partly due to a change in emphasis. Boring shows like Question Time have received a populist makeover. QT itself has been remodelled on the Jeremy Kyle Show.
Kittupp’s career path is illuminating. She started in Children’s TV, developing fantastical programmes like Teletubbies and In The Night Garden. She created whimsical characters with repetitive catchphrases in a magical dreamland. Her Current Affairs brief is almost identical.
Kittupp took us through the main criteria of FNM accreditation.
1. Accuracy.
“It’s been very useful to have a reputation for accuracy!” she exclaimed. “The BBC always reports, accurately, the stories it is paid to tell.”
2. Omission.
“In its simplest form, this means not reporting anything that goes against the narrative,” she said. “But the BBC has been very clever by allowing dissenting voices. Which brings us on to…”
3. Contradiction.
“After the dissent, we wheel on some shameless rent-a-gobshite like Bernard Jenkin,” she explained. “I write something for him to say, like, ‘No, that’s wrong, and my opinion trumps your boring analysis any day!’ and off he goes.”
4. Interruption.
“Give them a voice, but don’t let them speak!” she clarified. “I write statements like, ‘But that’s not very democratic!’ and ‘Hang on, the country has already decided!’ for John Humphrys to say whenever an interviewee is about to make a valid point.”
5. Deflection.
“Take the example of institutional racism,” she explained. “We work hard to smear who we are paid to smear. So we discovered that Jeremy Corbyn once shared a platform with an Israeli. That means, whenever Boris Johnson makes a crass comment about women wearing the burqa, we shout, but, but, Corbyn and antisemitism.”
6. Reassurance.
“If all else fails, we tell the people that everything will be fine,” she concluded. “Our usual technique is to exhume Iain Duncan Smith from his tomb in the BBC crypt to reassure the nation.”
“And if we are accused of broadcasting Fake News, we cry Fake News back,” she added. “After all it takes one to know one!”
Indeed. Membership of the Fake News Media is well merited.