It’s a tabloid phrase you’re unlikely to hear often on BBC News, but ‘double-whammy’ seems a fitting description of what BBC staff have faced in yet another week of editorial turmoil and fresh announcements of cuts. 

The Telegraph’s revelations that civil servants have been working on secondment at the BBC, contributing to articles and blog posts misleadingly bylined as written by members of ‘BBC News’ and ‘BBC Verify’, have been met with irritation and bafflement. 

There have been mutterings about the judgement of the executive tier, who somehow didn’t seem to perceive that having Whitehall wonks in the newsroom might give the impression the BBC’s editorial independence had been compromised

There have been mutterings about the judgement of the executive tier, who somehow didn’t seem to perceive that having Whitehall wonks in the newsroom might give the impression the BBC’s editorial independence had been compromised

Many staffers, myself included, didn’t even know this was happening, despite a job advert for the 2027 secondment being posted online. (The time has long passed when I’ve bothered to look at new BBC job opportunities – I’m too pale, male and stale to stand a chance of securing a new posting.) 

For those who were aware, the reaction in the newsroom has mainly been one of defensive annoyance at what is being seen as another self-serving attack on the BBC by a newspaper that is proving to be something of a thorn in the side of my employer. 

After all, it was a Telegraph exclusive that revealed the BBC had edited a speech by Donald Trump that made him appear to encourage the Capitol Hill riot, a blunder that prompted the US President to launch a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the broadcaster.

The view inside Broadcasting House is that this latest Telegraph broadside is unfair in its suggestion the Civil Service secondment scheme has skewed impartiality. During internal meetings to discuss the latest turbulence to hit the Corporation, defenders of........

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