As an increasingly jaded BBC hack, I reacted to the creation of BBC Verify last May with temple-rubbing despondency. The definition of ‘verify’ is to ‘to prove that something exists or is true, or to make certain that something is correct’. This is, in essence, the most basic rule of journalism. Yet here we were, having to reassure our increasingly distrustful audiences that we weren’t just broadcasting any old rubbish without checking it properly. Now why might that have become necessary?

Regrettably, some areas of journalistic inquiry have been, in effect, ‘cancelled’ at the BBC

One need look no further than the BBC’s coverage of Covid-19. The BBC seemed to jettison all pretence at balance during the pandemic. Unverified and often misleading claims about the virus, the efficacy of lockdowns, face-coverings and other non-pharmaceutical interventions were broadcast on a daily basis. When vaccines arrived, the BBC refused to countenance even the mildest journalistic curiosity. In recent days, an all-party group of MPs has accused the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) of knowing about post-vaccination heart and clotting issues as early as February 2021, but failing to highlight the issue for several months. Why did it take MPs to properly highlight this and not the national broadcaster?

So could BBC Verify signal a change of direction? A renewal of impartiality? A reappraisal of recent mistakes? Greater accuracy?

The evidence to date is not encouraging. There is more chance of Nigel Farage joining the Green party than BBC Verify being tasked with properly reappraising Covid claims or scrutinising lockdown harms anytime soon. Regrettably, some areas of journalistic inquiry have been, in effect, ‘cancelled’ at the BBC.

Still, BBC Verify has not been idle. Far from it. With conflicting reports and endless hours of grainy smartphone footage emerging from Ukraine and Gaza to analyse, not to mention Houthi attacks on shipping in the Gulf of Aden, its dedicated and highly skilled journalists have had a lot to get their teeth into. The new department has been staffed with specialists from a range of disciplines who used to work quietly behind the scenes. Some of these unseen experts hoped the brave new world of BBC Verify would bring them on-screen opportunities. BBC managers had other ideas, parachuting in tried and tested correspondents to present the findings of their lesser-known colleagues. So much for transparency.

There was always a risk in creating a verification brand that the impact of BBC mistakes would be amplified. And so it has proved, even when BBC Verify has not been culpable. The most egregious example came last October when a TV correspondent drifted away from the facts and into ill-advised on-air speculation about who was responsible for a deadly explosion at the Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza City, remarking that it was ‘hard to see’ past the Israeli military as the force responsible. (Subsequent evidence pointed to a misfired rocket by Palestinian militants.) BBC Verify was, in fact, much more measured and even-handed in its analysis of the blast but the brand was badly tarnished in the political row that followed.

The furore over the Al-Ahli Arab hospital explosion highlights a critical flaw in the reasoning behind BBC Verify’s creation. What is the point of having a department that attempts, using meticulous processes, to establish fact from fiction, claim from counter-claim when, at the same time, editors are permitted to rush onto the airwaves poorly-briefed correspondents who then fill the information void that typically accompanies breaking news stories with unsubstantiated and inflammatory waffle? The tension between these practices remains ongoing and unresolved.

But a greater tension, one that is fraying the trust between the BBC and the public, and which makes a complete mockery of the BBC Verify brand, is the elevation of progressive liberal dogma over indisputable facts.

Take the BBC’s coverage of the murder of Jorge Martin Carreno. The 30-year-old Spanish man was hit over the head, throttled, then pushed into the River Cherwell in Oxford where he drowned in July 2021. What was highly unusual about this exceptionally violent murder was that it was committed by a woman.

Except it wasn’t. The sadistic psychopath who killed Carreno was a biological male who identified as a woman. But when Scarlet Blake’s sentencing was reported on the News at One there was no mention of this whatsoever. Blake was described as a woman throughout – not even a trans woman.

As we now know, Blake’s new feminine identity didn’t override the murderous impulses far more typically found in men than in women. In a tacit recognition of reality, Blake will be housed in a male prison. Inside the BBC, however, this seems to be less important than being viewed as politically ‘progressive’.

Given the disputatious nature of the trans debate, perhaps the BBC Verify team could be put on the case to settle, once and for all, whether biology matters. They could do a deep-dive into the crime figures, especially violent and sexual crimes, and examine their relationship to biological realities. They might probe the long-term implications of mis-recording offences committed by biological men. They could examine the many research papers showing how real women face disadvantages across a range of metrics because of their biology, not how they ‘identify’.

Of course, this will never happen. The BBC knows biology matters – the Corporation goes to great lengths to make sure women are equally represented in its news coverage. But as an apparent consequence of the Alice in Wonderland political leanings of senior editors, when a male rapist or murderer decides to identify as a woman, the BBC sides with the criminal in using their preferred pronouns.

So despite its much-hyped launch, the good ship BBC Verify is holed beneath the waterline. If the BBC ignores or distorts the facts when it comes to politically sensitive subjects like transgenderism, as shown by its coverage of Carreno, or takes an unbalanced stance in times of crisis, as it did during the pandemic, why should anyone believe it is playing straight with the truth on any other subject?

And herein lies the problem. Deborah Turness – the CEO of BBC News and the creator of Verify – clearly believes transparency and trust will be boosted by showing the public ‘how’ BBC News does its work. Regrettably, she has focused her mission in the wrong place. The real problem at the BBC is the ‘why’.

Why has the BBC swallowed the corrosive and dangerous doctrine of self-ID pushed by extreme trans activists? Why does the BBC refuse to examine its editorial lapses during the pandemic? And why does the BBC seem to place the vexatious values of the progressive left above impartiality?