In a few months, Tony Hall will step down from his position as Director General of the BBC and it's clear that his successor is likely to be a political appointment.
BBC executives and journalists have already shown their willingness to appease the Conservatives with increasingly rightwing content. The BBC routinely and regularly provides a platform for people such as Rod Liddle, Guido Fawkes blogger Paul Staines, Toby Young and author Lionel Shriver, who caused a storm when she attacked the move towards greater diversity in British publishing. Meanwhile, former UKIP leader Nigel Farage has appeared on BBC programmes more than 30 times despite being a man without a party.
The actor Laurence Fox, who appeared in the 'Inspector Morse' spin-off, 'Lewis, caused a furore after appearing on the BBC programme, 'Question Time'. I am not going to quote him in full because his remarks really are too tedious and bigoted to repeat (at the time of writing the BBC had received more than 250 complaints). Now, it's not clear why producers asked the actor to be on the programme in the first place but his views certainly garnered headlines. And that's a problem. When white producers allow click bait to govern their editorial policy, it is people of colour who are the losers. Anyone who read some of the barrage of racist, bigoted comments on Twitter after Fox's appearance would see the truth of this.