Former Crimewatch presenter Sue Cook has criticised the BBC’s ‘shameful’ reporting, claiming the broadcaster is concerned with ticking ‘woke boxes’.Miss Cook, 73, recognised that the BBC still produces ‘some good dramas’ and also praised its foreign correspondents.But she accused the corporation of not wanting to ‘question anything’, particularly during the pandemic, as she claimed the BBC is no longer the ‘absolute national institution’ that it used to be.‘Sadly it’s not looking very good,’ she told Nigel Farage on his GB News show Talking Pints. ‘It was an absolute national institution and a huge treasure, and I think they still do some good dramas although not quite as good as they used to be.‘You see all the woke boxes being ticked, as the cast comes on.’Miss Cook added: ‘The foreign correspondents are still second to none – people like Frank Gardner and Jeremy Bowen and Orla Guerin are wonderful. But the news-gathering is really quite shameful. And they don’t seem to want to question anything.’Miss Cook co-presented Crimewatch with Nick Ross from 1984 until 1996. She also presented Radio 4’s You And Yours and Making History.She lambasted the BBC for its Covid coverage.‘It is shameful,’ she said. ‘Throughout lockdown did anybody ever ask, “Why?” How are children going to be affected if you’re closing schools? How are university students affected if you’re shutting universities? Knife crime went up. Was there any journalism about that?’‘In my day we’d have found out the truth.’
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