Balance

Picture this: you’ve got chest pains, you drag yourself to the GP, and she says, “Looks like angina, we’ll need to run some tests.” Sensible, measured, grounded in training. But then, in the interest of balance, the receptionist wheels in Dave from next door, who once watched Casualty in the ’90s, to offer his counterpoint: “Nah mate, it’s probably wind. Grab a Rennie.”

That’s the BBC’s idea of balance. One expert, one bloke with opinions – job done. The result isn’t enlightenment, it’s a Punch and Judy show where facts get whacked over the head by nonsense and the audience is left wondering which puppet to cheer for.

This is where Jesse’s law comes in. The law says that when you see your GP, you tend to trust what they tell you – even though they could be wrong. The solution in real life is to seek a second opinion from another doctor, not to grab a random stranger off the pavement. Yet the BBC insists on the stranger every time. In trying to avoid bias, it turns authority into a pantomime, giving ignorance the same weight as expertise.

It’s like demanding every weather forecast include a flat-earther, just in case the public feels meteorology is being “rammed down their throats.” If the Met Office says “rain tomorrow,” the BBC will find Sharon from Facebook to argue it’s a conspiracy by Big Umbrella.

The problem isn’t that the GP might be wrong – or the expert might be fallible – it’s that the BBC confuses scrutiny with counterpoint. Proper scrutiny means asking another expert whether the diagnosis holds up. What the BBC does is invite Dave to contradict the GP, which doesn’t sharpen the truth, it just muddies the water.

The question isn’t whether everyone gets a turn with the microphone – it’s whether what comes out of their mouths bears any relation to reality. Until the BBC realises that, it’s not public service broadcasting, it’s cabaret with added confusion.