UK Special Coverage Britain’s War on Free Expression The UK government is growing ever bolder in its suppression of inconvenient speech. UK Special Coverage (Andrew Aitchison / In pictures via Getty Images) The Daily Telegraph on October 18 reported that since 2018, dozens of British civil servants had been seconded to the BBC for periods of three to six months, during which they wrote news stories and advised on “high-impact, sensitive topics” such as Channel migrant crossings in small boats from France and the Covid pandemic.
Their work appeared in stories published on the BBC News website, sometimes under the auspices of BBC Verify, supposedly an exemplar of rigorous standards whose stated mission is to “counter disinformation” and fact-check untruths. Their salaries were paid by the government whose record they were charged with checking.
Nobody told the audience.