The fall from grace of the BBC

The enemies of the BBC have suddenly become legion.

Only a few months ago all the BBC had to worry about was the right of centre bloggers who had picked up on its institutional left wing bias. It was defended on the left by bloggers, I would argue, for much the same reason.

The main stream parties all paid homage to Auntie, even those who knew the in built political bias.

But then the BBC started to lose its key friends.

The WMD row with Labour caused the loss of key personnel, and the creation of the BBC trust.

Then the poor performance of ITV and its commercial fellow travellers emphasised how well funded the BBC really is.

The Ross and Brand scandal lost the BBC a lot of friends, and made everyone very familiar with how much the 'talent' is paid.

But then came the killer blow. The recession, or as the BBC tried to call it the Downturn ( as always instinctively helpful for Labour ), has made the competition the BBC gives everyone else a key issue.

The key here is that other journalists now see the BBC as putting them out of a job. James Murdoch has sounded the attack and everyone else is keen to pile in.

The Conservatives have been dropping menacing hints for a while, as you might expect, but now even Labour are piling in - perhaps to gain favour with news international.

The BBC is just running out of friends, just at the time of maximum danger.

Many of us who have regarded it as a direct threat to our democracy will not be sad to see it go under.

Update: The Times says makes a simialr point - and goes into detail about how the BBC lost the support of its former employee and now Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw here.

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