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The BBC is currently leading their news bulletins on accusations from Donald Trump’s campaign against the Labour party of “blatant foreign interference” in the US election.
The substance of the allegations, such as they are, stem from a now-deleted Linkedin post by a Labour official, encouraging party staffers to travel to the US and campaign for Kamala Harris.
In reality, the fact that Labour staffers should campaign in the US election is nothing at all unusual. Activists from all UK political parties have campaigned in presidential elections for decades.
It is also not unusual for British political parties to align themselves with parties in the US. The Labour party has long been a sister party of the Democrats, while the Conservative party has long been aligned to the Republicans.
Indeed, just recently a series of senior Conservatives, including former British Prime Ministers Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, traveled to the US, to endorse and support Trump himself.
Reform leader Nigel Farage, has also repeatedly campaigned for the Republican candidate.
Trump himself has also not been shy of getting involved in “blatant foreign interference” in other elections, having repeatedly endorsed Boris Johnson for Prime Minister.
Despite all this, Trump is justifying his complaint on the basis that in her original Linkedin post, Labour’s Head of Operations Sofia Patel suggested to party staffers that they would “sort your housing” if they traveled to the States.
Trump has alleged that this amounts to unauthorised campaign spending and the effective financing of foreign campaigners in the US election.
This is strongly denied by the Labour party which insists that staffers traveled in their own time and did not receive any financial support from the Democratic party.
So why is this still a story, and why is the BBC joining almost every other news organisation in the country in leading on it?
After all, just because Trump wants to make something a story, doesn’t mean that a publicly-funded broadcaster should comply with his every wish.
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The truth is that it is journalistic laziness and sensationalism. It is far easier (and politically safer) for an increasingly cash-starved BBC News operation to fill its bulletins with a confected row between Trump and Starmer’s Labour party than it is to actually do the hard yards of reporting on the many real and complex issues that actually affect peoples lives back here in the UK.
Just like the corporation’s endless coverage of Starmer’s free Taylor Swift tickets, which stands in stark contrast to its complete radio silence on the much more serious issues of corporate finance and lobbying of Starmer’s party, the BBC has taken the easy option of ramping up coverage of a sensational Trump press release, rather than any of the issues that actually matter.
While it is understandable that news organisations looking for clicks will want to focus heavily on any story relating to Trump and the UK, it is less understandable that a public service broadcaster like the BBC should do the same.
And while the BBC’s huge focus on this story may seem harmless to some, with just a matter of days to go in this very close election, giving so much oxygen to such a complete non-story really could matter.