Mourning the loss of impartiality on the BBC
Like John Simpson, who this week leapt to the defence of BBC “impartiality”, I began my near 40-year broadcast career in BBC TV news. It was impartial then; it certainly isn’t now. I have seen my own visual material presented in an entirely different timeline, totally distorting the actual event that I witnessed, and at no time did the intellectually lazy journalists ask me what I witnessed. I also have seen raw camera material destined for both BBC and ITN come out in completely different forms on air. The bias in both cases was pro-establishment during the Thatcher years.
As we expect politicians to declare an interest, should we not expect ourselves to do the same when asked to comment on a system that has provided succour to ourselves and our families as it has in John’s case?
I believe that few employed by the BBC can have a truly objective view of the BBC’s political and social bias.
We on the outside do not like the PC Stalinism, urban bias, sloppy technical, artistic and journalistic standards that BBC News now represents, and if you really want examples, I can point to a Newsnight interview with the PM on a train. Neither the cameraman, reporter, editor, sub or indeed tea lady noticed that between cutaways and the body of the interview the train direction reversed. It is called crossing the line, it is as basic in TV news as learning your alphabet. That the BBC sought to defend its gross incompetence is again a glaring example of how those within have lost all objectivity about the system that they are in. Precision with words and pictures is vital in a political world that seeks to distort both.
Chris Harnett, Southampton
via Drinking from Home.
Goodness me! A piece in The Guardian attacking the BBC over its bias!! Upon my word!! The Guardian must have turned the corner and become respectable again!
I shall trust it from now on!
Lesson: be circumspect about anything that emanates from The Guardian. There’s usually a reason for it.
No, I’m not suggesting that every single Guardian sub-editor and hack is part of some grand conspiracy. Just treat such output with circumspection, that’s all. Especially if the end result is that one starts seeing The Guardian in a more favourable light.
I also have seen raw camera material destined for both BBC and ITN come out in completely different forms on air. The bias in both cases was pro-establishment during the Thatcher years.
The beeb (and ITN) biased in favour of Mrs Thatcher?
So finally it’s proven – the Earth is flat after all!
Next week: the Sun orbits the Earth!
The “crossing the line” thing seems spurious – nothing to do with bias. I have noticed the same thing in the insurance ads for “sheila” insurance (or whatever it’s called). I must admit it’s irritating, but no more than any other ads.
Pro Thatcher???
Hmmmm…..If I recall the famous “Spycatcher” saga.
I think the Beeb then were saying the Government was trying to put a gagging order on the reporting….
Still it turned out to be tosh in the end.
I don’t think it’s in dispute that the government issued a D notice about Spycatcher.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spycatcher
Or do you mean Spycatcher was tosh?
Until every last record of the Soviet Union and associated Communist government is studied and recorded and published, we shall not be sure whether Spycatchter was tosh or not. And it has to be the Warsaw Pact, because the Soviets were in the habit of using lesser espionages as “cut-outs” – witness the way they routed the attempted murder of the Pope through Bulgarian secret services. What I do know is that respected writers with good sources have made strong cases for at least two British spy chiefs in successive decades – Guy Liddell and Roger Hollis – being Soviet agents. From what we have learned in the last few decades about the reach and success of Soviet espionage, that would not be in the least surprising; and neither would Chapman Pincher’s suspicions that British cabinet ministers may have been in Soviet pay. Think how high in their respective careers Kim Philby and Alger Hiss, Blunt and Harry Dexter White got. And there was worse. Until 1944, the vice-president of the US was Wallace, a man wholly controlled by Soviet agents – as became clear in his Presidential bid of 1948. If the dying Roosevelt had not named the almost unknown Truman rather than him as his running mate, it is a historical certainty, that nobody denies, that there would have been KGB agents running things in the White House. That is just how successful Soviet intelligence was. The old nightmare of “reds under our beds”, so long mocked by people of my own political persuasion, was, if anything, short of the reality.
Speaking of words and their biased use, what does al-beeb mean by ‘improvised bomb’ when reporting the boat attack yesterday in Iraq?
Is that the same as the ‘home-made’ Kassam rockets used by Palestinians?
as opposed to a ready made military standard bomb provided by the Syrians, Iranians, Russians, Chinese or French etc etc presumably
Spycatcher did indeed turn out to be tosh.
I’m not suggesting for one moment the KGB had a few double agents in SIS/MI5,but I think at the time there was the Angelton Affair when the CIA was tearing themselves apart looking for moles and double agents.
But for a more enlightening read I would recommend the Stazi Files ( with the death of Marcus Wolff,this makes timely reading.)
Plenty about meeting with Labour Party members and the NUM (although no names), and how CND was completly subverted in the 1970’s(Bruce Kent standing out as the useful idiot),including the handing over of names of disidents….
Interesting because some of these names are now involved in the “Stop the War” campaign.
Keith Thomas: perhaps, but the Stasi is only one of many secret services. I still reserve judgment. Anyway, did you notice how often Bruce Kent has been turning up in the news of late – and nobody to ask him, “Well, according to Stasi records, you were surrounded and manoeuvred by East German spies and gave them names of dissidents – how do you feel about that now?”