by Chris Harris
Why is it that Channel 4 and ITV are doing the BBC’s dirty work when it comes to holding Nigel Farage and Reform UK to account?
It’s been a rather uncomfortable few weeks for Nigel Farage as his party go from aspiring for power to being a bit part in proceedings, as normal service resumes with the Tories overtaking them. Much of the discomfort has come courtesy of two broadcasters operating without the BBC’s vast financial resources. First came Channel 4 News, working with investigative journalists Verbatim, who secretly filmed two senior Reform figures, James Orr and Dan Jukes, discussing arrangements involving American money and political polling.
The investigation raised serious questions about attempts to circumvent Britain’s political funding rules. Both men stepped down from their positions, although Reform’s subsequent internal investigation concluded that no electoral laws had been broken and that the proposed £500,000 foreign donation had never materialised. As credible as Man City’s claims of innocence, you don’t mark your own homework.
Then, this week, came ITV News, not claiming financial wrongdoing, just revealing wrong ‘uns in the party. Undercover reporters spent months infiltrating Reform’s operations, recording councillors and candidates making appallingly racist, misogynistic and occasionally violent remarks.
Muslims were described as parasites, black children as animals, and Asian families as an infestation. One councillor suggested deporting Asian residents to Pakistan. Others made revolting sexual comments about female colleagues. Several councillors have subsequently resigned. It’s amazing how they never really meant or, as Tice claims, it was just ‘pub talk.’ That is complete balderdash, of course, although who knows what sort of pubs he drinks in, that is, if he had ever been to one.
More damaging still, ITV obtained recordings suggesting senior Reform officials were aware of serious problems within the party. In one instance, Farage was accused internally of protecting a mayoral candidate whom his own communications director regarded as racist.
Farage’s response was predictably to suggest that the establishment wanted Reform out of the picture. Reform insists it rejects racism and has improved its vetting procedures. Mmmm, improved, but still clearly exists.
All of which brings us to the BBC.
According to Ofcom, the BBC spent a whopping £310.5 million on television news and current affairs in 2024 alone. That doesn’t even include its enormous radio and online news operations. Channel 4, meanwhile, operates on a fraction of the BBC’s overall resources, while ITV News also works within a much smaller news operation.
Yet it is these broadcasters, rather than our publicly funded national institution, that have produced two of the most significant investigations into Reform’s internal workings. The media has given Reform such an easy ride. Until the Guardian’s brilliant exposé of Farage’s disgusting and greedy donations, they simply were not held to account. How brittle they have turned out to be, the Guardian article signalling the beginning of the end for them.
Why?
The BBC certainly has no shortage of political journalists, an army of correspondents, producers, researchers and the seemingly inexhaustible ability to send somebody to stand outside Westminster and tell us what another journalist thinks might happen next.
And then there’s Nigel Farage.
The man has been a fixture on BBC political programmes for decades, appearing on Question Time around 38 times by 2024. Not the most appearances in the programme’s history, as sometimes claimed, but an extraordinary amount of exposure for somebody who spent most of that period outside Westminster. A fixture on the BBC.
Of course, he should be interviewed. Reform deserves scrutiny proportionate to its political significance. But there’s a considerable difference between giving a politician a platform and subjecting his organisation to sustained investigative journalism.
The BBC can occasionally produce a combative exchange on Radio 4’s Today programme. But where is its equivalent of these undercover investigations? Perhaps the BBC has become so terrified of accusations of political bias that it mistakes impartiality for timidity.
Perhaps its political journalists have become too comfortable with the Westminster establishment, where access, interviews and maintaining relationships matter more than digging around in the unpleasant corners of political organisations. Or perhaps the corporation has simply become institutionally risk-averse, preferring the safety of political commentary to the expense and legal complications of proper investigative reporting.
If fighting for your lives is why, concern that Reform, naturally anti-BBC, will withdraw considerable funding if they got into power, which I believe is the reason, then the people running the BBC want to have a long hard look at themselves and their integrity.
And there’s common sense. I have always said the original fluctuation in the big Reform support after the election would not last, how could it, why is my political antennae better than the BBC hierarchy? Why are they so scared. I expect the ITV scoop will shame them into holding Reform to account as the odd one out.
Whatever the reason, something seems distinctly wrong.
The BBC is funded to serve the public interest, not merely to report what politicians say, referee arguments between them and provide endless analysis of opinion polls. It is supposed to investigate those who seek power.
At the end of the day, if smaller news organisations can spend months exposing what lies beneath Reform UK’s carefully polished public image, surely it isn’t unreasonable to ask why the BBC, with its considerable resources, hasn’t been leading the charge?
Perhaps the BBC should spend a little less time asking Nigel Farage what he thinks and a little more time finding out what his party actually does.
