The BBC is battered and sprawling on the canvas again. As a corporation executive, I lived through a number of these episodes: the Hutton report into coverage of Iraq, which resulted in the resignation of Greg Dyke as director general; and then the Jimmy Savile revelations, which helped force out George Entwistle, even though he had nothing to do with the appalling crimes of history. Now Tim Davie has resigned over the misleading editing of a Panorama programme, and the BBC’s enemies haven’t just scented blood: they have got it.

There is only one response, and that is to get up and fight. As digital nonsense and lies swamp us every day, and tech billionaires in foreign countries decide what we see and hear, there is a stronger case than ever for British content and for journalism that serves the people of the UK – with some of those old-fashioned things such as honesty, accuracy and truth. Despite all the attacks upon it, and the whippings it administers to itself, the BBC is the country’s most trusted broadcaster. Its reach and its universality are why its foes hate it.

But the BBC has to change, too. Some of its travails have been because sometimes it hasn’t been good enough. Its journalism is required by royal charter to be of a higher quality and more distinctive than the market alone can provide; and that isn’t consistently the case. It has fallen for rookie errors – the

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