Timing is all, and the timing of last week’s brutal job cuts at the BBC News could have been better. Not just because the director general Matt Brittin was reportedly on holiday, but because the announcement came straight after a new report showed social media platforms and AI chatbots had now overtaken traditional TV channels and websites as people’s first port of call for news.

The same Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism report also noted higher levels of global uncertainty and anxiety – caused not just by geopolitical instability, economic and environmental fears, but by a loss of trust in institutions, and in the news itself.

A world of misinformation, AI slop and fake images has engendered a sense of powerlessness and doom. Bad actors use social media to incite riots and unrest on the streets, from Southampton to Belfast, while western governments desperately try to make up for years of refusing to regulate big tech by banning under 16s from using it.

Has there ever been more need for a public service organisation whose very remit insists on the provision of impartial, fact-based news?

The BBC should not only fight Trump’s ludicrous Dr Evil-esque attempt to destroy it with a lawsuit, but take on his hissing pet cat too, aka the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, whose ownership of X has – not........

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