The BBC has been blasted after damning polling showed trust in its journalists has plunged by more than a third in just 17 years.
Top pollster Matt Goodwin today took to the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, to share YouGov polling on trust in the BBC.
He said: “‘I trust BBC journalists to tell the truth’ 2003 81 percent 2008 61 percent 2012 57 percent 2018 50 percent 2020 47 percent 2023 … ? YouGov data.”
The figures have since provoked a debate on the role of the BBC licence fee which comes amid a row over its recent coverage of the Israel-Hamas war erupting in Gaza.
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Responding to the polling, Reclaim MP Andrew Bridgen attacked the BBC for operating under the pretence of impartiality.
He told Express.co.uk: “BBC impartiality is now regarded as an oxymoron. The biggest power the BBC has is the power to decide what is the news.
“As someone who has been effectively cancelled I know that whatever I say about vaccine harms, excess deaths or the sexualisation of children in schools will never be reported, regardless of the wider public interest.”
The Brexiteer MP, who defected to Reclaim from the Conservatives, added: “The power of omission is the BBC’s weapon of choice.”
Meanwhile, Defund the BBC campaign director Rebecca Ryan warned that the BBC “taking the word of terrorists as gospel” was the “final straw for many Britons”.
She told Express.co.uk: “It is no surprise that trust in the BBC’s reporting is plummeting. The standard of journalism at the BBC has never been lower thanks to constant bias and the pushing of divisive agendas. And now our national broadcaster is taking the word of terrorists as gospel.
“The BBC’s reporting of the Israel-Hamas conflict has been shameful, and last night’s reports parroting Hamas claims that Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza has to be the final straw for many Britons.”
The campaigner added: “Despite Hamas being officially designated as a proscribed terrorist organisation by the UK Government since 2021, the BBC has refused to name them as such. It is not the BBC’s job to misrepresent legal definitions in order to push for one side over another.
“And it gets worse. BBC Arabic, the BBC’s subsidiary in the region – which is funded by British licence fee payers, has questioned whether the Hamas massacre at Kfar Aza kibbutz even took place, and its reporters have openly backed Hamas, calling the terrorists ‘freedom fighters’ and attacks on Israel ‘a morning of hope’.
“Is this what the Tory Government that refuses to get rid of the TV licence calls ‘soft power’?”
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Also commenting, political expert Štefan Auer said it was sad to see. The associate professor of European Studies said: “That’s sad. I remember looking up to the BBC. I still do, actually, but this is not a good look.”
Mr Goodwin’s post comes as the BBC is embroiled in a major row over its coverage of a recent explosion at a besieged hospital in Gaza, with Israel and Hama blaming each other for the deadly blast.
BBC News had initially shared details of the strike by parroting what was later described as Hamas “propaganda” by former Culture Secretary and Tory MP Nadine Dorries.
Sharing an X post from Daily Express senior political correspondent Christian Calgie urging his followers to “compare and contrast the way the BBC reports Hamas’s claims, versus the way they report Israel’s denial,” Scott Benton MP said: “Time for the licence fee to go.”
And Tory MP Mark Jenkinson simply shared the post with the hashtag: “#DefundTheBBC”
It comes after BBC veteran John Simpson defended his employer’s decision not to call the Islamist group terrorists, despite them being proscribed as such by the British Government – leading to the UK’s first-ever Jewish Defence Secretary Grant Shapps to slap him down.
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