[1] Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury, wished to broadcast a "peace appeal" to call for an immediate end to the strike, renewal of government subsidies to the coal industry and no cuts in miners' wages.

[5] Because the BBC had become both a monopoly and a non-commercial entity, it soon faced controversial competition from British subjects who were operating leased transmitters on the continent of Europe before World War II, to broadcast commercial radio programmes into the United Kingdom.

The chairman of the BBC board of governors, Lord Normanbrook, wrote in a secret letter to the cabinet secretary, Burke Trend, that "The showing of the film on television might have a significant effect on public attitudes towards the policy of the nuclear deterrent".

[22] In the House of Commons the Conservative MP Tim Eggar requested that the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, "contact the governors of the BBC to express extreme concern about the way in which the Panorama team seems to have encouraged the IRA to break the law in Northern Ireland".

[23] During the Falklands War, the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and some Conservative MPs believed that the BBC was excessively even-handed between Britain and Argentina, referring to "the British" and "the Argentines" instead of "our forces" and "the enemy".

[30][31] The day after it was broadcast, the Conservative MP Sally Oppenheim asked Thatcher in the Commons: "Is she aware that for the most part, but not all, it was an odious, subversive, travesty in which Michael Cockerell and other BBC reporters dishonoured the right to freedom of speech in this country?

"[37] In January 1984 the BBC programme Panorama broadcast "Maggie's Militant Tendency" which claimed that a number of Conservative MPs including (Neil Hamilton, Harvey Proctor and Gerald Howarth) had links to far-right organisations both in Britain and on the Continent.

[42][43][44][45] In 1985, the government made an 'unprecedented' public request to stop the broadcast of a programme on extremism in Northern Ireland, in particular it included an interview with Martin McGuiness, then reputedly a member of the IRA—but also of the Ulster National Assembly, the provincial legislature approved by London.

In April 1986 Alan Protheroe, acting on behalf of BBC Director General Alasdair Milne was asked for permission to bug a private detective who said he could access a Criminal Records Office computer.

Combined with this story was a report that the Home Office intended to restrict the broadcast receiver licence fee, the implication being that the government had decided to censor BBC investigative journalism.

[58] The BBC's Head of Editorial Policy, Richard Ayre, looked for ways to allow the continuation of news reporting on the subject, during a time when 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland were a matter of great importance and interest.

In concert with their coverage of the resignation,[65] the BBC but the boot in, publishing a poorly authored profile on Campbell, which featured suggestions of his success stemming from having given up alcohol, other less than relevant details and most unflattering photographs.

The BBC's decision came in for criticism across the political spectrum including from senior politicians such as Nick Clegg, Douglas Alexander and Hazel Blears and public figures like the Archbishops of York[98] and Canterbury,[99] although it was supported by other commentators such as Dominic Lawson.

[141] In December 2010, the BBC broadcast an episode of its TV quiz show QI in which panellists made jokes during a discussion about Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who survived both atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

[147][148] The BBC then offered an apology, though it claimed there was no "vindictiveness" in the remarks and that they were just part of the stereotype-based comedy the organisation espoused, such as when it "make[s] jokes about the Italians being disorganised and over dramatic, the French being arrogant and the Germans being over-organised".

[150] The BBC's then nearly 60-year-old flagship weekly current affairs programme Panorama had aired a documentary claiming that Bangalore-based suppliers of Primark, a hugely successful retailer with 220 stores across Europe, were using child labour in their production in 2008.

It included recent footage of supporters chanting various xenophobic slogans and displays of white power symbols and banners in Poland, as well as Nazi salutes and the beating of a few South Asians in Ukraine.

[158] The BBC's live television coverage of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee River Thames Pageant on 3 June 2012 attracted some criticism in the media, and the corporation reportedly received over 4500 complaints from members of the public about the broadcast.

[171] On 12 November, the BBC announced that its director of news Helen Boaden was "stepping aside", together with her deputy Steve Mitchell, prior to the outcome of an investigation into the Savile child abuse claims.

The BBC responded with the following: "This morning CBeebies broadcast a repeat of an episode of the Tweenies, originally made in 2001, featuring a character dressed as a DJ impersonating Jimmy Savile.

A press release, issued a week prior to broadcast, stated:  "To mark the 150th anniversary of its publication, this documentary explores the life and the imagination of the man who wrote it, the Reverend Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll.

… The Trustees recognised that the BBC had made some effort at a late stage to inform the contributors of the programme's changes … The programme should have gone back to the contributors at an earlier stage to inform them about the new image and to give them adequate time to consider whether they were content with their contributions"[209] While covering a unity rally after the antisemitic massacre at a Hypercacher kosher supermarket in Paris and Charlie Hebdo terror attack, on 11 January 2015, the BBC's Tim Willcox interrupted the daughter of a Holocaust survivor discussing antisemitism in France by saying: "Many critics though, of Israel's policy would suggest that the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well".

[220] In January 2016, the team behind the BBC's Daily Politics show co-ordinated the on-air resignation of Labour politician Stephen Doughty shortly before the start of Prime Minister's Questions.

[236][237][238] On 26 May, Emily Maitlis, host of BBC's Newsnight, delivered a highly critical direct-to-camera piece about the affair, stating that "Dominic Cummings broke the rules, the country can see that, and it's shocked the government cannot...

[239] In 2020, a BBC News at Ten report featured Indian historian Rudrangshu Mukherjee saying that the former British prime minister Winston Churchill was "seen as the precipitator of mass killing" due to allegations of his failure in the Bengal famine of 1943.

It drew particular attention for the inclusion of comments from American pornographic actress Lily Cade, who wrote a blog post after the article's publication calling for the "lynching" of high-profile trans women.

"[269] The report also asserted that while the reference to the slur was included "in good faith" after an "unusually high level of consultation among colleagues", the BBC had failed to acknowledge the disputed nature of the phrase in question and had stonewalled the Jewish community's inquiries into the matter.

[274] In March 2023, Gary Lineker, a sports presenter for the BBC, made a controversial tweet in which he compared the wording in the British government's "Illegal Migration Bill" to the rhetoric of Germany in the 1930s.

[285] Alan Rusbridger, the former editor of The Guardian, also told the NYT that "The BBC lost its sense of proportion" in its coverage of the story, adding: "It gets into this mind-set where it feels it must make up for sluggishness in handling issues by showing a clean pair of hands in covering them.

[293] In an episode of EastEnders aired on 4 March 2024, the BBC drew backlash over the portrayal of Milton Keynes when the character Bianca Jackson played by Patsy Palmer returned to screens in scenes set in her home in the city.