Once in a while, I am invited to do a short interview about finance on the BBC4 Today programme or Radio 5. Obligingly, they send round the radio car (actually a large van with a mast) along with an engineer, and on the counter inside sits the Guardian. In fact, the BBC buys more copies of the Guardian than any other national newspaper.
I have no objections to that per se - as a former associate editor of the Guardian, I still admire the depth of its reporting and comment. But, with notable exceptions, such as the well-informed writings of Jonathan Freedland, much of its Middle East reporting is tendentious and buys into a Palestinian narrative that is a creed on the liberal-left. In itself, that is fine in a national newspaper market that has eight titles and dozens of other journals.
What is more disturbing is that the Guardian is the opinion bible of much of the BBC, from which Britain receives more than 50 per cent of its news. This leaves the Corporation open to the possibility of distorting the international agenda.
Indeed, in recent decades, as the BBC has gone more global with one of the world's biggest online news and analysis sites, its influence over how news is interpreted internationally has become ever greater.
The BBC should have recognised that its imperial role dating from when it could dominate the news cycle would be challenged when the Prime Minister chose John Whittingdale as Secretary of Culture, Media and Sport. In his previous job as chair of the commons select committee on culture, Whittingdale was relentless in seeking to expose wasteful practices at the Corporation and its perceived liberal bias.
The release of last week's Green Paper had the BBC's head of strategy, James Purnell, and head of television, Danny Cohen, scrambling to the corporation's defence. Almost every aspect of its work is under scrutiny, from the way it is funded to the threats it poses to the commercial media sector and the way that it is regulated. The flawed nature of self-regulation by the BBC Trust was exposed by the Jimmy Savile affair when it took a public outcry to spur it into action.
Those who have followed the BBC's reporting of Israel and the Middle East over past decades will have their own concerns. Famously, the corporation fought tooth and nail to prevent the publication of senior executive Malcolm Balen's 2004 report on the Israel-Palestinian conflict produced after the second Intifada. The case for release was fought all the way to the Supreme Court with the BBC spending £270,867 in legal fees to keep the report under wraps.
The battle over Balen paved the way for a long period of mutual suspicion involving the British Jewish community, the state of Israel and the BBC. Irrespective of what happens to the licence fee and the BBC's right to make entertainment programmes such as Strictly Come Dancing, big changes are likely for the BBC Trust.
The Trust is in the unusual position of being both the ultimate arbiter of the way the BBC conducts itself as well as supervising its finances. Recent history suggests it is reluctant to challenge the Corporation. Current BBC chairman Rona Fairhead, plucked from the Financial Times, appears blissfully unperturbed that the broadcaster has become a battleground over reporting of Israel-Palestine and the broader Middle East. Perhaps, we should not be surprised. As a non-executive director of HSBC she also failed to notice the industrial scale tax avoidance and corruption at that bank's Geneva branch.
As the reform agenda is taken forward, the one banker for change is the governance of the BBC. Its shortcomings in investigating itself, ranging from Savile-style abuse on its premises, to left-leaning reporting of the Middle East is legion. It is my understanding that the media regulator Ofgem, headed by former Treasury mandarin Sharon White, would be ready to take on this role. The media regulator already is responsible for monitoring alleged political and reporting standards at the other major broadcasting networks ITV and Channel 4. As an independent regulator, several steps removed from the organisations it regulates, it would be less prone to defending the status quo as has been the case at the BBC. When faced with complaints, the default position for the BBC and the Trust is to be on the defensive.
This is not to say that complaints have been ineffectual. In April 2009, the editorial standards committee of the BBC Trust published a report involving 24 complaints of inaccuracies involving the Corporation's Middle-East editor Jeremy Bowen. It found three examples where language used lacked precision and therefore rendered what he had to say as "inaccurate". But found no evidence of bias. Interestingly, Bowen's promotion to Middle East editor earlier was a consequence of the Balen report and the effort to bring more context to reporting from the region.
It is worth noting that the prolonged conversation between the BBC and the Jewish community already has brought some positives. Reporting of Operation Protective Edge in Gaza in the summer of 2014 was extraordinary painful with the images of death and destruction.
It was also notable, however, that the BBC and other broadcasters sought to provide some balance with dispatches from Israeli cities under siege from rocket attacks. Nevertheless, much of the material released, particularly on the website, does not pass the impartial test.
The fight between the Tory government and the BBC is largely about perceived left-wing bias in reporting issues ranging from the economy to welfare and the environment. But if it brings an end to the BBC policing itself and starts the process of independent adjudication there will be something to celebrate.
