[interestednovice]

I’ve always trusted without question that BBC News as an organisation is fundamentally impartial, even if the majority of those working there probably have a similar view on the world as a whole.

The reporting of this conflict, however, has involved a lot of serious missteps that the likes of ITV News or Sky News have not found themselves making.

There could be an argument to suggest that the merged news channel simply isn’t working and the operation does not have resources it needs, which has resulted in these issues, but the resources available to the BBC still dwarfs every other British news organisation, so I’m not sure that point holds up if I’m honest.

I know we have to avoid political discussion to stay within the remit of this site, and I respect that, so I will be careful that I’m not making a comment that goes over the line.

However, you make an interesting point. Politically, the BBC always comes in for criticism for domestic coverage from one side or the other (it simply always has done) but it’s best defence to that has always been to say that it is genuinely impartial in coverage and to demonstrate that on an ongoing basis through it’s output. Then nobody can really claim, genuinely, that its coverage is unfair.

As soon as you lose that objective high ground, either deliberately or “by accident” through poor editorial judgement, then the ability to make the impartiality argument goes away. This immediately then becomes a crisis because objectivity is the foundation of BBC News.

The merged channel should work, as you say. They have fewer people, and certainly fewer experienced people, but compared to other media outlets they have “enough” not to be making careless errors. So why these errors are mounting up is, really, inexcusable. It has got to the point where poor quality lower third captions, sloppy opt-outs and so on are impacting output quality so consistently that “the brand” (the level of viewer trust) of BBC News is being seriously eroded.

A BBC Manager out there somewhere really ought to do something about this, and fast.

But to finish on a positive note: still, despite all the issues, as others have said the BBC still thrives on reporting on a genuinely breaking international story. Their top quality reporters are excellent, and something of the DNA of old BBC World News and BBC NC is still there in the organisation. They can, when they pull out the stops, still cover rolling news exceptionally well. It’s a reminder of how valuable the service is.