What kind of journalism should the BBC do and not do? (10)

What kind of journalism should the BBC do and not do?

What exactly is the sort of journalism that the BBC “can’t and shouldn’t do”? Of all the questions prompted by the announcement that the BBC’s head of news is to leave by the end of the year, this is the one that matters.

• Newly enshrined in the BBC charter agreement, which came into force this year
•  “ensure controversial subjects are treated with due impartiality in our news and other output”

Personally, I feel that the BBC is not and never will be impartial, but half the problem is that the BBC and its critics both think this is what it should be trying to do. True impartiality would mean having everyone's views, from Nazis to anarchists to ISIS, given equal weight. Absolutely nobody thinks that's a good idea. Instead what the BBC does is treat everything lying within the spectrum of acceptable elite British opinion with more or less equal weight.