Shoulder to shoulder - but shoving hard

There's some surprise in social media this morning that the Daily Mail, in a long editorial, should stand up for the independence of the BBC.

It shouldn't be a surprise. The Mail needs the BBC. Their readership and the BBC's core audience overlap almost totally. And whilst, encouraged by their favourite paper, the readers hate BBC excess, and probably wouldn't mind a reduction in the licence fee, they love most primetime programmes.

At the top, dyspeptic editor Paul Dacre wants a much smaller BBC - he drones on about 8,000 journalists, and wants a clearer run for Martin Clarke's pursuit of online world dominance through prurient photographs. Editorially, he's clearly made a decision that BBC stories sell papers - and has a trusty team who do little else other than sniff for nasty smells from their favourite Auntie. Journalisted is a site that analyses reporter's work since 2007; Martin Delgado, a former BBC sub now reporting for the Mail, has written more about the BBC than anything else in 277 by-lined articles. Paul Revoir, who left the Mail earlier this year, has written more about the BBC than anything else in 1010 by-lined articles. Liz Thomas has written more about the BBC than anything else in 903 articles. Freelancer Miles Goslett has written more about the BBC than anything else, in 271 articles. An unnamed writer clearly watches Susanna Reid 24 hours a day.

I write more about the BBC than anything else, and struggle with the worry that my teasing of the organisation I love gets turned by others into spurious outrage. I console myself with the certain knowledge that taking the mick out of management pomposity is in the BBC DNA, and is probably one of its survival genes.