How disappointed I was to hear my former employer, with whom I had 10 happy years, putting out more post-Brexit spin this morning.
The BBC’s Today programme led with Theresa May’s first outing as Prime Minister to the G20.
During it, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said that his country would be ready and willing to make a trade deal with the UK as soon as we have left the EU.
This was rightly greeted by Mrs May as positive news for Britain’s future.
Yet this morning, the Today programme chose to twist the story, leading their bulletins by quoting the Australian Trade Minister totally out of context.
Steve Ciobo said that a trade agreement was “at least two and a half years away”.
That is true, a statement of fact, as Britain cannot sign deals while it remains a member of the EU and, that even having triggered Article 50, it will still take two years to leave.
He went on to talk about the “strong historical bonds” between the UK and Australia and that talks could be completed “quite quickly” once we are free and that preliminary ones were already ongoing.
All of this was, of course, ignored.
Instead, the Today programme implied that we were second-class citizens, and of no importance to Australia at all.
Existing talks between the EU and Australia would continue and be concluded first, the programme said.
Well, yes, for the reasons I have explained, that will be the case, but it does not have the negative implications pushed out by the BBC.
This spinning by a once-respected national broadcaster, which is paid for out of our taxes, is totally inappropriate, although not surprising.
I have to say that criticism like this does not apply to the BBC’s on-line service, which reported the facts accurately, nor to regional BBC services, who, in my experience, report in a balanced way.
The fact is that the country has voted to leave the EU and it is up to all of us to execute the democratic mandate as well as we can for the sake of all our citizens.