BBC

===MI5 vetting policy===
From as early as the 1930s until the 1990s, MI5, the British domestic intelligence service, engaged in vetting of applicants for BBC positions, a policy designed to keep out persons deemed subversive.<ref name="vetting">{{cite news |url= https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-43754737 |website=BBC News |title=The vetting files: How the BBC kept out 'subversives' |date=22 April 2018 |access-date=22 April 2018 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20180422000203/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-43754737 |archive-date=22 April 2018 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1522875/Revealed-how-the-BBC-used-MI5-to-vet-thousands-of-staff.html |newspaper=Daily Telegraph |location= London |title=Revealed: how the BBC used MI5 to vet thousands of staff |date=2 July 2006 |access-date=22 April 2018 |last1=Hastings |first1=Chris |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180426100703/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1522875/Revealed-how-the-BBC-used-MI5-to-vet-thousands-of-staff.html |archive-date=26 April 2018 |url-status=live }}</ref> In 1933, BBC executive Colonel Alan Dawnay began to meet the head of MI5, Sir [[Vernon Kell]], to informally trade information; from 1935, a formal arrangement was made wherein job applicants would be secretly vetted by MI5 for their political views (without their knowledge).<ref name="vetting"/> The BBC took up a policy of denying any suggestion of such a relationship by the press (the existence of MI5 itself was not officially acknowledged until the [[Security Service Act 1989]]).<ref name="vetting"/>

This relationship garnered wider public attention after an article by [[David Leigh (journalist)|David Leigh]] and Paul Lashmar appeared in ''[[The Observer]]'' in August 1985, revealing that MI5 had been vetting appointments, running operations out of Room 105 in Broadcasting House.<ref name="vetting"/><ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/mi5.bbc.page9_obs_18aug1985.html |newspaper=The Observer |location= London |title=The Blacklist in Room 105 |date=18 August 1985 |access-date=22 April 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190513210628/http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/mi5.bbc.page9_obs_18aug1985.html |archive-date=13 May 2019 |url-status=live }}</ref> At the time of the exposé, the operation was being run by [[Ronnie Stonham]]. A memo from 1984 revealed that blacklisted organisations included the far-left Communist Party of Great Britain, the [[Socialist Workers Party (UK)|Socialist Workers Party]], the [[Workers Revolutionary Party (UK)|Workers Revolutionary Party]] and the [[Militant Tendency]], as well as the far-right [[National Front (UK)|National Front]] and the [[British National Party]]. An association with one of these groups could result in a denial of a job application.<ref name="vetting"/>

In October 1985, the BBC announced that it would stop the vetting process, except for a few people in top roles, as well as those in charge of [[Wartime Broadcasting Service]] emergency broadcasting (in event of a nuclear war) and staff in the [[BBC World Service]].<ref name="vetting"/> In 1990, following the Security Service Act 1989, vetting was further restricted to only those responsible for wartime broadcasting and those with access to [[Security clearance|secret government information]].<ref name="vetting"/> Michael Hodder, who succeeded Stonham, had the MI5 vetting files sent to the [[BBC Information and Archives]] in [[Reading, Berkshire]].<ref name="vetting"/>