Some things on the regular doom scroll can still give me pause. Not because they’re particularly horrible, or somehow hastening my own desensitisation to every turn of the screw in the decline of liberal democracies around the world. I’m used to that. But it’s the occasional lone voice or appeal from one of the decks of the sinking ship that just stands out. In this case it was a TikTok video of a BBC science show presenter who was tired of being told to keep quiet about things that have no bearing on his ability to educate or entertain.

On Friday evening in Manchester, the audience at a live recording of Radio 4’s The Infinite Monkey Cage heard something they were not expecting. They heard an ending. Not of the show. Not yet. Series 35 is still set to broadcast early next year. Should it continue afterwards, it just won’t be with Robin Ince. After 16 years of co-hosting the show he named and developed with Professor Brian Cox, the comedian is out. There is no punch line here. Just a punch to the gut.

Instead of repeating what he said, here’s the video. You can get it first hand.

This kind of departure will become more common. It rarely happens with a formal dismissal. It begins with pressure. Quiet meetings. Warnings about tone and conduct. Requests to be careful, to be quieter, to keep certain views out of sight. In this case, Ince was asked to self censor about his support for trans people, his criticism of Donald Trump, and other views that were deemed to somehow be incompatible with his role as the comedy relief portion of an educational radio programme. Considering the U.S. has leadership that regularly dismisses science whether it’s about vaccines or climate change, it would seem to me that Ince has been remarkably well behaved. Just not enough for the BBC.

He was offered a choice: Obedience, or departure. He chose to leave. It hasn’t been the first, and it won’t be the last.

This moment does not stand alone. It arrives after sustained pressure on the BBC, particularly from the U.S. president as of late. Loaded allegations of bias from the White House have been amplified by the right wing publications in the UK, and a noticeable lack of comment by the government here. The same “impartial” memo cited by the Trump White House to accuse a BBC Panorama documentary of fabricating that Trump’s own words may have encouraged the Capitol Hill riots of January 6, 2021 (it didn’t) had more to say: It accused (without basis) the BBC’s Arabic service of showing systemic anti-Israel bias in its coverage of the war in Gaza. It also alleged that the BBC was promoting a pro-trans agenda.

Robin Ince would not recognise that characterisation. Neither would Gary Lineker, the long-standing Match of the Day presenter, who was forced out of his role over his views against Israel’s war crimes and acts of genocide in Gaza. Not even the recently resigned director general Tim Davie should agree with this characterisation, having personally stepped in to suppress the documentary, Gaza: Doctors Under Attack. The 100 BBC staff who signed a letter alleging the public broadcaster had constantly given “favourable coverage to Israel” certainly would have a different take.

This memo on BBC’s supposed leftwing bias seems to have been written to be leaked, and that would make sense. Its author is the lobbyist, Michael Prescott, whose company receives large sums of cash from technology and media giants in the U.S. who are also on the Trump campaign’s large donor list.

It was money well spent.

The language was familiar. So was the intent. Discredit the institution. Intimidate the people who work within it. Force conformity through fear. It’s working. This isn’t censorship by law. It’s something quieter, more corrosive. It asks individuals to narrow themselves to survive. It rewards conformity with the chorus, tolerates silence, and punishes empathy when it becomes inconvenient or is aimed at the wrong people.

I kept thinking about all the extremist voices promoting hate and division. They are being given so many platforms, while voices that represent kindness, open mindedness, empathy seem to be scarcer and scarcer. I felt I couldn’t pamper myself with the luxury of silence. — Robin Ince

Institutions do not collapse all at once. They are hollowed out. They lose the people who give them texture and trust. When presenters, editors, and producers conclude that honesty carries too high a price, the public is left with something thinner. Something that can seem safer, but is in substance less reliable. Something less true.

The BBC will continue, for now. The programme may or may not resume after season 35. But there’s been a signal. A warning about the cost of speaking plainly in an age that claims to value openness while punishing those who practise it. In his own words, spoken to his audience on his final night, Ince explained why he could not stay: “I have to accept that I am not what the current BBC expects of their freelance presenters.”

McCarthyism is back in vogue, and it’s increasingly globalised. We have to wonder, how much editorial policy of the nation’s public broadcaster should be outsourced to American political circles across the Atlantic? These are “meet the moment” times, and we’ve already seen a lot of them go unmet. Eventually, the clock runs out of them.

“The strawberry is dead. Long live the strawberry."