ON Saturday, the BBC featured a so-called culture programme covering the Glastonbury music festival, at the centre of which a vile rap act called openly for the indiscriminate killing of thousands of Jews. Singer Bobby Vylan repeatedly shouted ‘Death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]’.
Avon and Somerset police have confirmed that they are assessing coverage of the event to decide whether a criminal investigation will be mounted.
In Two-Tier Keir’s Britain, there is no guarantee of that, but on the face of it Vylan should be in the dock for his call to kill Jews – and so should the BBC senior executives who allowed this torrent of hate to be broadcast live on their platform to millions of people world wide.
This stands out as one of the worst misjudgements in the 100-year history of the BBC, and it is so serious that director general Tim Davie should be sacked for gross misconduct and a flagrant disregard to ensure impartiality. Even culture minister Lisa Nandy has asked for an explanation.
There are no extenuating circumstances. Since the October 2023 massacre of more than 1,000 Jews by Hamas terrorists, Jewish groups have been warning the Corporation that their coverage of events in Palestine has been seriously biased, but precious little has been done to redress the concerns. The BBC response is almost invariably to say – without a scrap of evidence – that their critics are wrong.
How did this horror story happen? It’s because for the BBC, Glastonbury is a sacred event. Every year, it sends a reputed 1,000 staff to Worthy Farm to facilitate the worship. They stay in £400-a- night hotels and write acres of self-congratulatory verbiage about how wonderful their coverage will be.
No one knows how many hundreds of licence fees are lavished on this wasteful extravaganza of self-indulgence, but Glastonbury has been treated by the Corporation as the nation’s single most important cultural event for at least 30 years. My debut article for TCW in 2014 was about the BBC’s coverage of that year’s festival and every critical word I wrote still applies.
It’s been obvious for years that Glastonbury organisers Michael Eavis and his family – condoned by the BBC – have made the festival into a major far-left political event. Sponsorship has been totally dominated by right-on organisations such as Oxfam and Greenpeace and audience flag-waving features constant reminders of that agenda.
In effect, the BBC have used the excuse of artistic merit to ignore their Charter obligation for impartiality, and now that self-righteous complacency has blown up in their face. But they should have seen it coming.
