Alternative news sites are waging a “guerrilla war” against the BBC in an attempt to promote their own editorial agenda, according to the BBC’s former political editor Nick Robinson.



The Today programme presenter said criticism of BBC journalists and others on sites ranging from the pro-Corbyn Canary to the rightwing Westmonster was so persistent that it was negatively affecting public perceptions of mainstream media.

Writing in the Guardian, Robinson said: “Our critics now see their attacks as a key part of their political strategy. In order to succeed they need to convince people not to believe ‘the news’.”

He added: “Attacks on the media are no longer a lazy clap line delivered to a party conference to raise morale. They are part of a guerrilla war being fought on social media day after day and hour after hour.”



During the Scottish referendum campaign Robinson was booed by pro-independence supporters in press conferences. His successor as political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, has faced similar hostility on and offline, and was accompanied by a security guard at the Labour conference after receiving threats.

On Wednesday the Canary published an article about Kuenssberg that was swiftly debunked.

The article, originally headlined “We need to talk about Laura Kuenssberg. She’s listed as a speaker at the Tory party conference”, said that the BBC journalist was due to speak at a fringe event at the Conservative party conference next week. It said this “raises questions about the impartiality of the journalist and her organisation. Again.”

However, the BBC said Kuenssberg was not speaking at the event, at which she was listed only as an “invited speaker”. The Canary article’s headline was amended to say the journalist was “listed as an ‘invited’ speaker at the Tory party conference”.

Robinson said all alternative websites shared a “certainty fuelled by living in a social media bubble” that reporters and presenters at the BBC and other mainstream media organisations were “at best craven – obeying some dictat from our bosses or the government – and at worst nakedly biased”.

He argued that trust in the UK media was declining and blamed this on the “increased polarisation of our society and the increased use – particularly by the most committed and most partisan – of social media and alternatives to what they call the MSM, the mainstream media.”



He said these alternatives included Wings over Scotland, which is pro-independence; the New European, a pro-EU newspaper; and the leftwing Novara Media, Skwawkbox and Evolve Politics, as well as the Canary and Westmonster.

“They would all be horrified to be compared with each other, since what motivates them is the belief that the other lot are not just mistaken but an existential threat to the future of their country, but they often respond in similar ways.”

He added: “Campaigners on left and right have been looking at and learning from the method behind what some regard as the madness of Donald Trump’s attacks on the ‘failing’ press as purveyors of fake news.



“Paul Mason – formerly a distinguished colleague at the BBC and Channel 4, now a hyperpartisan campaigner for Jeremy Corbyn – told me before the election: ‘We see the media as the enemy navy … we need our own navy.’”

The journalist will expand on his views on Thursday night when he gives an inaugural lecture in memory of Steve Hewlett, the late broadcaster. In the talk he will call on the BBC to do more to engage with people disillusioned with news bulletins and who instead get their news from social media.

Robinson will also urge the broadcaster to promote and celebrate its impartiality, potentially by publishing the BBC’s so-called “producers’ guidelines” that outlines how its news coverage should be impartial, and by revealing the discussions and decisions at editorial meetings.



• Nick Robinson is delivering the first Steve Hewlett memorial lecture on Thursday. Donations to Hewlett scholarships can be made at rts.org.uk/stevehewlettfund

