BBC is just way way better at it, way more subtle, having been doing this for 100 years. When push comes to shove they toe the line just like Russian or Chinese media. RT just doesn't have the same funding or talent to make stories more sophisticated. Obviously, the gov must hide any links to BBC to maintain the appearance of free press. But I'm sure pressure is exerted one way or the other, for example:
> From the late 1930s until the end of the Cold War, MI5 had an officer at the BBC vetting editorial applicants.
Looking at how UK and EU now outright banned Russian TV and media, I think it would go unnoticed if they started removing or just not hiring certain inconvenient journalists. Certain thoughts are just forbidden these days; it's career suicide to even doubt the gov line, just like during covid when it was practically forbidden to question gov measures or vaccines.
The BBC sometimes expresses a fairly conservative world-view (I mean conservative in the traditional sense, not populist like Boris Johnson) which sometimes happens to broadly align with the government's perspective. I think the BBC often seeks the outsider perspective, but seldom centres it.
The current UK government is not as enthusiastic about the BBC as they might be; and the BBC's senior management treats its relationship with the government as something to be managed.
The BBC is not a monolith. Even if the government was able to unduly influence some people inside the BBC, that influence wouldn't extend to much of the BBC's output, because frankly the BBC is not very good at operating as a single joined-up entity.
> From the late 1930s until the end of the Cold War, MI5 had an officer at the BBC vetting editorial applicants.
Looking at how UK and EU now outright banned Russian TV and media, I think it would go unnoticed if they started removing or just not hiring certain inconvenient journalists. Certain thoughts are just forbidden these days; it's career suicide to even doubt the gov line, just like during covid when it was practically forbidden to question gov measures or vaccines.