says the Sunday Times.
THE BBC is to be forced to promote British citizenship and a sense of community under a new royal charter to be unveiled this week.It will redefine the purpose of the BBC, entrusting it with a far wider brief than its established mission to “inform, educate and entertain”.
You might think that I’d be cheering. I don’t know what the opinion of my co-bloggers will be on this issue, but speaking for myself, I think this new charter is a bad move. We shall be doing well if nothing worse happens as a result of it than it being ignored and laughed at; a slightly more probable result is that the BBC will become more PC.
Don’t think that I don’t see the problem this new Charter is trying to overcome. In September 2004, after the BBC had displayed its usual reluctance to call anyone a terrorist even after the slaughter of children at Beslan, I wrote:
… unlike Reuters et al the BBC is paid for by a compulsory tax on the British people. It goes out under the name of my country. Come charter renewal time, the domestic BBC justifies the license fee by saying that we, the British people, are getting a public good (“The public interest must remain at the heart of all the BBC does.” – Michael Grade, Chairman.) Likewise the BBC World Service, funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the same Vote as the British Council, explicitly presents itself as bringing a benefit to Britain and the world.
But there is no more rock-bottom public good or benefit than not being randomly murdered. The BBC is obliged by its Charter and accompanying agreement to show “due impartiality” between political opinions but this is specifically stated not to mean “detachment from fundamental democratic principles.” The BBC has no more right to be impartial between a victim of terrorism and a terrorist than it has the right to be impartial between a rape victim and a rapist. (Although it must be careful to respect the right to a fair trial of those accused of rape, terrorism or any other crime.)
This website is devoted to uncovering cases where the BBC expresses an improper partiality between parties and ideologies within the covenant, so to speak, and cases where it displays an improper impartiality between those within and those without.
And in January 2005, after the BBC pandered to conspiracy theories about the tsunami, I wrote:
No media service, not even a privately-funded one, should be indifferent to these kind of values. A tax-funded media service in a democracy cannot be, unless it wishes to deny its own justification for existence…..
…if the maintenance of liberal values in Britain and the world matters, that objective being what the BBC claims it is for, then you don’t play neutral to the most basic liberal value of all, the right to continue living without being blown up at random. If neutrality is possible or desirable, why is the BBC not neutral about ordinary British murders?
…
Because, and never mind the name of this blog, in that sense it has no business being unbiased.
So why do I think this well-intentioned new Charter is a bad idea? Because I remember the National Curriculum. It was one of the most instructive episodes in modern British politics. Forgive me for quoting myself yet again; this family of issues is something I’ve thought about many times and I haven’t the time to keep thinking up new ways to say the same thing. Last November I wrote about why you should never, ever have a national curriculum:
She [Margaret Thatcher] was enraged by excessively trendy schools churning out PC semi-literates who knew about whale song but not Waterloo. “I’m not having this,” she said to her officials, “Get out there and make me a national curriculum.” She imagined it as being written on one side of a piece of paper: reading, writing, ‘rithmetic. A key point was always to include major kings-n-battles. Stories of spectacular historical ignorance on the part of schoolchildren were a major factor motivating supporters of the national curriculum.
Inevitably, this mildly repressive tool turned in her hand. Sure as eggs is eggs the national curriculum was taken over by the educational establishment, made monstrously detailed, and suffused with its values. Thatcher herself later admitted that the nationalisation of the curriculum was one of her biggest mistakes.
And sure as eggs is eggs the BBC establishment will take over all these new “purposes for the BBC” listed in the new Charter. The Sunday Times article lists these new objectives as including:
promoting education, “stimulating creativity”, “representing the UK, its nations and regions”, and “bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK”.
Amuse yourself in thinking up ways to make these rather nebulous objectives into tools for expanding the BBC bubble.
Personally, I think the BBC ought to be privatised tomorrow. (Don’t worry, lurking Beebfolk, this needn’t mean melting down all the master tapes of the David Attenborough wildlife documentaries, like you always hint it will. You could even keep the name “BBC”, like they kept the names “British Gas” and “British Airways.”) If, for some strange reason, it is thought best not to feature the immediate launch of a “Tell Sid” advertising campaign for shares in BBC Plc as the centrepiece of tomorrow’s White Paper, the next best thing would be to persuade the BBC to act in the the spirit of the Charter it already has.
UPDATE: Stephen Pollard looks at the other theme of the White Paper, the replacement of the BBC Governors with a “BBC Trust”, promoted by Tessa Jowell as “the voice of the licence-fee payer.” Pollard writes:
Forgive me for spoiling the party in White City, but I have an alternative suggestion — a more direct means by which my views and interests can be expressed.
“Well, Katya and company will do their best to turn us into good Europeans.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/weekend/team.shtml
seriously – i dont mind that.
i actually WANT more news about what the hell is going on in Brussels and Europe, rather than the Gitmo-globalwarming-BushHitler
ranting that i get on “Today” and “Start the Socialist Week”.
i find the BBCs coverage of European matters to be utterly woeful and amateur compared to what I see on Irish television or in the Irish newspapers.
On that regard that BBC is seriously deficient in its duty to “inform” as per their charter.
“bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK”
hang on a minute – isnt that what the BBC World Service used to do during the Cold War?
so in other words, the past 15 odd years were a major cock-up?
i suppose our Indian friends in New Delhi can look forward to the return of the Queens English on the World Service ? (the removal of which they have complained about)
At least this guy is honest in stating that the West is under attack. But I bet the BBC don’t report him on their sprawling website :
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1247400.ece
It looks as though Bush is forcing his officials to release a lot of the material that was captured in Iraq, digital data as well as documents. Lots of it point to Saddam concealing WMDs, and there will also be lots of evidence of links with terrorists including Al Q.
Even better – it looks as though the info will be put on the web, so the public and bloggers will be able to examine it without the filter of media like the BBC.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/011/970xflib.asp
thanks dumbcisco.
note this quote – and note how the Yanks “get it”
“By placing these documents online and allowing the public the opportunity to review them, we can cut years off the time it will take to gain knowledge from this potential treasure trove of information.”
in other words -use the swarm of the internet to do your analysis of the documents – rapidly.
now thats what i call seriously thinking outside of the box.
oops. i’m anonymous above.
Hugo Swire, Conservative shadow Culure Secretary: “The Government’s plan for future governance is an ineffective and cosmetic exercise that lacks the teeth to deliver an independent BBC for the 21st Century.”
No sign of elimination of this propaganda machine here.
Accordingly, it seems that New Labour is the best hope for the future. Active and hungry socialists are better public managers of State enterprises than lazy conservative socialists, who will keep the juggernaut anyway, and will not cut the size of the State. Therefore, vote for Gordon.
if i’m to believe muslim group A when they tell me inventions should be credited to islam, because they tell me so, why should i not believe muslim group B when they tell me they commit terrorist acts because islam tells them to?
good point.
in fact – its a very good point indeed.
They should also de-criminalise the BBC licence fee – it is absurd that taxpayers pay to prosecute non-payers whereas Sky has to pay its own prosecution costs.
Interesting that the shooting in Salford does not get as clear an explanation on BBC as in The Times – so there are Afro-Caribbean gangs in Salford muscling in on White gangs……………..still it saves them having to buy different coloured hats as in Westerns
Guto Harri as North American Business Correspondent ? What a weird choice – Political Correspondent to Business – what amateurs these BBC types are !
Guto Harri is a BBC political correspondent.
He was born in Wales, the son of the doctor and writer Harri Pritchard-Jones, and educated at Queen’s College, Oxford. He is a first-language Welsh speaker who started his broadcasting career in Welsh-language radio before moving into national radio and television.
Is there a place to post information about other blogs on here?
Sorry to be totally OT, But I discovered this Hilarious “News” Blog this morning and wanted to share:
http://www.goofyblog.net/
Funny stuff
[Gerald]
Archduke
Nice blog, shame about the name. Feel a bit like a BNPer when logging on.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060313/ap_on_fe_st/beer_on_tap
This is goofy news !
“Nice blog, shame about the name. Feel a bit like a BNPer when logging on.”
i know. its meant to be “provocative”
i just got sick to death of that term being bandied about by clueless politically correct politicians and media types.
its kind of my way of saying –
“well, why isnt it wrong to have an aversion to a anti-freedom, reactionary, global supremacy religion that calls me a kuffar and wants to string me up come the islamo-revolution?”
just my little way of turning P.C. on its head.
archduke
just my little way of turning P.C. on its head.
Christopher Hitchens exposed the other side beautifully in this way:
There has been a great deal of nonsense published in the last week to the effect that an alliance with the United States can put other countries like Britain in the position of being “targeted.” Why deny this? I reflect on what was not done at Srebrenica, and on what ought to have been done in Rwanda, and on what was put off too long with the Taliban and the Baathists, and I think what an honor it is to have such enemies. Co-existence with them is not possible, which is good, because it is not desirable or tolerable, either. The Srebrenica memorial stands as enduring testimony to that inescapable conclusion.
http://www.slate.com/id/2122395/
USSNeverdock has a strong TCS article attacking the shame of the BBC. This site is mentioned.
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=031306D