Fact checking

It looks like this one's going to run and run. Will it end like Tebbit v Adie (civilian casualties in Libya from the US bombing of Tripoli - Thatcher eventually told Tebbit to leave it) or Campbell v Gilligan (over the UK dossier on Iraq's 'weapons of mass destruction', which broke out on Today in 2003 - skirmishing still continues)

Let's characterise this as Dowden v Bilton (though the real wrangle is higher up - Cummings v The UK Media Establishment).  Oliver Dowden, 80 days into his tenure as Culture Secretary, has written a snotty letter to BBC DG Lord Hall; his target is Panorama's programme on PPE shortages in the NHS, broadcast on Monday, presented by Richard Bilton.  Through its usual rigorous journalism, no doubt, the Daily Mail has acquired and shared, partially, a copy of this letter.

Mr Dowden snipes at the BBC's incorrect story that an NHS Trust leader was trying to get Burberry to sort PPE (The BBC has coughed for this one). But the real target of his pugilism, while gammons hold his coat, is Panorama: Has The Government Failed the NHS? The programme's answer was 'Yes'.

It was Guido Fawkes who first went with the line that the majority of Panorama's interviewees were either Labour supporters (bad) Corbinistas (very bad) Corbinistas and union reps (unbelievable) or John Ashton (you cannot be serious). Mr Dowden follows this line, which argues that political balance is apparently required when reporting matters of fact.  He chooses, deliberately, to ignore the BBC's defence of Panorama's reporting, issued two days after the first transmission.

This could be Ofcom's trickiest case to date. For Ofcom, that is.