. Mark Thompson writes:
Judging by some of the headlines over the past week, there are people out there who think the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism.
Like all the best conspiracy-theorists, though, they don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story. But let’s put the myths and rumours to one side and take a quick reality check.
A bit off, calling Andrew Marr a conspiracy-theorist like that.
Mark Thompson tries to fob us off with weak answers to the easier points.
For example the BBC view on christianity. Most beebers are probably anti-christian, but the BBC do actually cover a lot of christianity – for example their morning services, songs of praise, etc. I don’t think any other religion gets this amount of coverage. Yet.
But they do have a strange attitude to islam. Almost a fetish. The most bizarre and extreme example of this was the episode of “Balamory” – a kids’ programme – where the children from a scottish island visited – a mosque ! They have never visited any other place of religion before nor since.
Part of the reason for this is that islam does get in the news a lot and its alwayd bad news. Terrorism, death threats at home and abroad, beheadings – or just low-level trouble-making like the veil stuff at various schools. The bien pensants at the BBC think that they can “balance” this bad coverage by some “positive” coverage – so we get all kinds of rubbish that mostly fits the description of “product placement”.
Here in Yorkshire we got bombarded with stuff about how much money local muslims were raising to help the pakistan earthquake recovery. Like a lot of propaganda this backfired and non-muslims gave very little to the earthquake appeals.
I think his view on political impartiality is also wrong – two easy examples are John Humphrey’s “when we win the election” and the decision to send hecklers to a tory conference (and not a labour conference). Also the BBC have decided that the BNP are “beyond the pale” and get some kind of special pillorying treatment – even though they are a legitimate political party with elected councillors.
Another point for MT to answer – few people dounbt that multiculty is on of the BBC’s received truths.
The BBC even commissioned an opinion poll on multiculty about a year ago – but the questions were horribly skewed to produce the right result. They did not ever define “multicultural” or “multiculturalism” nor did they explain whether the words were adjectives to describe a country of actually a political policy.
One question was something like: “would you rather live in a vibrant multicultural country like the UK or have major surgery without an anaesthetic” ? Well not quite but the questions were loaded.
Just for the record, Jack, it was James Naughtie who blurted out “when we win the election…”
Naughtie then went on to say, whilst conducting an interview with a BNP member who said that he (Naughtie) was a member of leftist-liberalism, that “you know nothing of my political views”.
Oh yes we do, Mr Naughtie.
DG Mark Thompson:
” Some papers argue that the BBC is
systematically biased against Christianity and in favour of Imlam.”
Would the BBC then transmit this?-
‘” Two Million Terrorists” for Britain’ by Carol Gould (30 Oct.)
http://www.frontpagemag.com
Chuffer – yes I wondered just after my posting if it was the right culprit.
When there is an issue in the news the BBC will often go to interview locals affected by it EG; if there is a factory closure they will go to that area and film the folf about.
But they never interviewed a Muslim veiled woman in the street.
“the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism.”
Straight from the horse’s mouth. I couldn’t have summarised it better myself.
Whatever Mr Thompson may believe or wants others to believe, the BBC’s output is the only evidence you need, and it is piling up in heaps.
DG Mark Thompson:
“Some papers argue that the BBC is systematically biased against
Christianity and in favour of Islam.”
Would then the BBC transmit this
US cartoon? –
http://www.coxandforkham.com/archives/000966.html (26 Oct.).
Corection to reference:
http://www.coxandforkhum.com/archives/000966.html (26 Oct. Minneapolis taxi controversy.)
2nd correction Apologies. Eyesight problems?
http://www.coxandforkum.com/archives/000966.html (26 Oct. Minneapolis taxi controversy.)
The reason the BBC does not “define” multiculturism is that they know that as soon as you do exactly that, it falls apart with hardly a push from dissenters.
better leave it as a wooly, emotive notion of “togetherness” in the eyes of the general public.
Of course when the BBC does decide that Mc has failed and the public need to be weaned away from it, they will then start defining it -so it can be discreduted – with features such as “What is Multiculturalism?- we discuss its Pros and Cons”
In the meantime the policy of cultural suicide continues unabated by the evidence of MC huge failures.
Alan
The taxi issue is already here.
A taxi firm contracted by the BBC is employing islamic drivers who are refusing to pick up blind passengers from the BBC who have their guide dogs with them.
Will try and find the link.
And before jr/Nick and the other BBC cohorts launch off.
It happened, and it happened to a woman who is the legal officer to the RNIB who has lodged a complaint with the taxi firm and presumably the BBC.
I look forward to the BBC reporting this matter and even more so to the BBC booting this taxi firm out.
the BBC is far harsher on the Bothas of this world than the Castros or the Nasrallahs or the Ahmadinajads. Wonder why?
Because PW Botha stood for the white man in darkest Africa while Castro merely destroyed a country on account of his mad ideology and I’monajihad merely wants to destroy Israel and America on account of his own brand of madness?
Any communist or enemy of Israel and America is a friend of the BBC. And Botha committed the unpardonable sin of repressing one of the BBC’s favoured victim groups.
Actually, I found PW Botha detestable – as a man as well as a tyrant. Anyway, that is beside the point – when the BBC treats Castro like they treated him, then we will be somewhere.
Actually, there is no better evidence of the BBC’s contempt for Christians and Christianity than Songs of Praise. Day after day, week after week, month after month, it treats Christians like simpletons, ignoring every intelligent Christian in the country (come on – when did it ever feature, say, John Polkingthorne?) in favour of “heartwarming” stories whose message is, believe in this nonsense and you will be happy, since morons are of course happy. Not to mention the constant bows to Political Correctness, the presentation of unattractive and often heretical happy-clappy modern items, the frequent syncretism. Songs of Praise is idiot time simplified for sub-idiots, and speaking as a Christian, I have been less offended even by Rageh Omar’s barely disguised Muslim propaganda in that abortion about the miracles of Jesus.