Paxman says BBC too fawning to royals

Jeremy Paxman (pictured), the outspoken presenter of BBC2's Newsnight, has turned on the corporation for being too fawning towards the royal family - particularly the heir to the throne, Prince Charles. He made his wide-ranging attack on the Radio 4 programme The Archive Hour, which will be broadcast this Saturday, saying: "While the BBC does report royal matters pretty straightforwardly, as it should, there is still a fawning taste, a fawning sense, to the tone of voice it adopts when dealing with the doings of the heir to the throne and his family, for example."

Paxman, who earns £1m a year presenting the Beeb's flagship news and current affairs programme as well as University Challenge, added: "They [the BBC] do not treat them in the way they would treat other members of the public. To which they [the BBC] might equally well reply: 'They are not other members of the public'. But again it points up the essential uncertainty in this relationship and the essential uncertainty of the BBC's view of itself.

"The BBC really thinks and spends a lot of time protesting to the rest of the world that it is an independent news-gathering organisation. But it equally depends upon, and understands that it is a national institution, and the monarchy is the thing that really illuminates the question of the BBC's complete confusion about what on earth it is... It never knows whether it should be reporting what has happened or celebrating what has happened." (Continued below)

He was particularly critical of the BBC's preparations for, and its reporting of, the death of the Queen Mother in 2002. He said it was “unclear whether the BBC was announcing this as a piece of news or in its capacity as mourner-in-chief".