- Biased Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) - 11th November 2025
- Flying high - 11th November 2025
- Davie Crockett - 10th November 2025
The BBC has come under scrutiny as never before over alleged bias, and now attention is focusing on Wales, with Nigel Farage posting a video online condemning how a former Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru (Plaid) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is today a senior corporation executive being paid £190,000 a year.
In the video he declares: “Well, what a dramatic day for the BBC, two major resignations, President Trump now even threatening to sue them for what they did.
“The BBC defend by saying, ‘No, no, no, no, no. There’s no bias in the BBC.’ But try this for size: Rhuanedd Richards was the chief executive of Plaid. She worked, during the Labour-Plaid coalition, for the Government of Wales.
“She is now a director of BBC Wales on just over £190,000 a year. This is living proof, right the way to the top, that the BBC is infected with left-wing bias.”
This extraordinary intervention by the leader of the right wing party Reform UK came after the shock announcement that both the beleaguered head of the BBC Tim Davie (who has faced a string of scandals) has resigned as the broadcaster’s Director General (DG), as well as his CEO of News Deborah Turness.
Mr Farage is not the only one to have drawn attention to this unbelievable situation. Huge condemnation of the corporation has hit social media too, with one critic saying there was pro-Plaid bias generally to be addressed in BBC Cymru Wales (BBC CW).
Ms Richards has appeared unflatteringly on the internet before. Emails about her were posted by another Welsh figure who has been at the centre of a storm of controversy at the BBC (Wynne Evans), showing how a journalist at BBC Radio Wales Breakfast had asked: “Would Wynne Evans be available to speaK to us anytime between 7-9am?”.
However Mr Evans was informed soon afterwards: “Unfortunately we won’t be able to come to you tonight for a considered interview and do justice to the story and. for obvious reasons we won’t be able to offer a live interview tomorrow morning on radio”.
Afterwards a bemused Mr Evans told his followers online: “Yesterday I was offered an interview on Radio Wales and BBC Wales News about the BBC process and my new show. I emailed the director of BBC Wales (Rhuanedd Richards) to say I’d be delighted to do the interview ………weirdly after my email to the director they then emailed to say they didn’t have time to do it justice …..also for obvious reasons. I’m not sure what the obvious reasons are.”….
Perhaps the ‘obvious reasons’ refers to earlier controversies. He apologised over an obnoxious “spit-roast” comment – but denied that it was a sex slur .
It all AGAIN puts centre stage the REFUSAL by executives to answer The Eye’s questions about the unbelievable scandals that have engulfed the giant broadcaster.
The high-profile departures came amid criticism that a BBC Panorama (where our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry has worked) programme misled viewers by editing a speech by US President Donald Trump.
An edition of Panorama, broadcast a week before the US election, spliced together clips of a speech by him made on January 6 2021, which suggested that he told the crowd: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell”.
The corporation’s chair, Samir Shah, yesterday apologised for the edit. He said there was an “error of judgment” over the way in which the programme spliced together two parts of a speech by President Trump made before the attack on the US Capitol in January 2021.
Worries have been raised in the past, too, about the corporation’s impartiality, despite Mr Davie declaring in Cardiff soon after his appointment: “If you want to be an opinionated columnist or partisan campaigner on social media then that is a valid choice, but you should not be working at the BBC”.
BBC rules underline this, and announce that staff should also avoid using disclaimers such as ‘My views, not the BBC’s’ in their biographies and profiles, as they provide no defence against personal expressions of opinion.
It seems, though, that taking disciplinary action earlier against him was tempered by the knowledge that there were few alternatives, but the decision has now been taken out of the hands of senior officials
Details of what has happened alarm Phil, and Mr Davie’s position had long appeared untenable.
Politicians apart from Mr Farage have been highly critical of past events. The Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport (CMS) committee Dame Caroline Dinenage, said that the resignations were “avoidable”.
She stated: “…there is no escaping the fact he (Tim Davie) was very slow to act on this particular issue”.
The BBC reported: “This is seismic. To lose both the director general and the CEO of BBC News at the same time is unprecedented. It’s an extraordinary moment in the history of the BBC”.
The Guardian published: ‘In an announcement that caused shock within the corporation, Davie said his departure was “entirely my decision” and it comes as the BBC prepares to apologise for the way it edited a Trump speech’.
The Daily Mail said: “…the scandal-hit broadcaster was this week plunged into a fresh crisis after an internal dossier exposed a string of incidents that demonstrate serious apparent bias in the Corporation’s reporting”.
The Daily Telegraph first broke the story of bias, but the BBC (where Phil was for 23 years) seemed unable to get on the front foot in the face of a deluge of damaging headlines about claims that it was systemic.
It appears there has been a rift between the BBC board and the news division with some arguing the corporation has, for too long, failed to address institutional bias. and others questioning whether what’s unfolded has been an orchestrated – and politicised – campaign against the organisation which has claimed two big scalps.
The BBC allowed the story to fester – and the White House has called a scene in the Panorama programme at the heart of it all “fake news”.
The US President himself made his views very clear by saying in a post on his Truth Social platform, that he celebrated the resignations and accused the BBC of “doctoring” his speech as well as of “trying to step on the scales of a presidential election”.
Ms Richards’ high-profile position, her controversial background with Plaid, and now the Farage video, may feature in a potential legal action brought by President Trump.
He has threatened the BBC with a billion-dollar legal action, after criticism of the way the Panorama broadcast was edited.
The legal letter demands that “false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements” made about President Trump must be retracted immediately.
It has been sent by President Trump’s counsel Alejandro Brito, and gives the corporation until Friday to respond to its demands.
It warns that should the deadline be missed, the President will be “left with no alternative but to enforce his legal and equitable rights, all of which are expressly reserved and are not waived, including by filing legal action for no less than 1,000,000,000 dollars in damages”.
This astonishing action is just part of the fallout from the resignations, amid allegations of ‘bias’.
After the provocative online video, Ms Richards may know this to her cost…
The memories of our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry’s astounding decades long award-winning career in journalism (including his years at the BBC), as he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in the book ‘A Good Story’. Order it now.
Tomorrow – how during that career of 23 years with the BBC, and 42 years in journalism (when Phil was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for him it became clear that politicians and senior officials were mostly concerned with IMAGE – both of how they were perceived directly, and what the view was of the country (which indirectly they could benefit from).
