For all its faults, the BBC’s capacity for critical journalism should be celebrated | Simon Jenkins

Ministers hate the BBC for understandable reasons, but Britain is all the better for it

Good news. The system is working. Britain’s largest media organisation by far, the BBC, has ministers howling for its blood. The ancient beast is wandering through the bush, wounded by the Martin Bashir affair and trumpeting its regrets. Tory ministers are taking potshots at it with headlines, eager for preferment in Boris Johnson’s next reshuffle.

We know what happens next. The BBC sings another verse of “less...