in a trailer for Any Qustions (quoted in its entirety):
In Any Questions today: the stock markets have fallen. Should we rejoice if greed is bad for us?
Dimblebore’s presumption of a correlation between stock market prices, greed and whatever is ‘bad’ (or good) for us is an awfully simplistic, ignorant view – the sort of view one might expect from someone who doesn’t need to worry about his pension or income, courtesy in part because of the unique way the BBC is funded.
The fact that the US stock market ended up over the week probably escaped him- biased, and stupid.
Andrew
Dimblebore’s presumption of a correlation between stock market prices, greed and whatever is ‘bad’ (or good) for us is an awfully simplistic, ignorant view –
It wasn’t an expression of his view…..it was a question.
If you listen to the programme….you’ll see why he said it.
The sort of questions that the BBC ask reveals their political leanings, as they very often refer to issues that soft-left metropolitan types talk about. The average person, on the other hand, is hardly likely to be thinking about whether the stock market slumping is a good thing because greed is bad for us. But having this as a question gives the BBC a chance to implant the idea that there is a correlation here into people’s heads.
And whatever Reith says, the wording of the question definitely does imply that there is a simplistic correlation. That’s what the BBC does so well — rather than expressing a view outright, they get people used to the idea that the view in question, no matter how ridiculous, is reasonable.
No – I think you’ll find that the question relates to one of the answers given bya guest in the programme.
John Reith –
It’s true that Dimbleby was merely quoting one of the questions – but what a fantastically narrow range of questions they were! Anti-capitalist, anti-American, anti-war, and finally, one very specific anti-Bush question.
And the narrowness of the range of questions was matched equally by the panellists – three liberal / socialist / left-wing talking heads (none more so than the yazzmonster), with the token rightie, Douglas Murray – who spoke more sense than the rest of the panel (and, indeed, questioners) put together.
I think this tedious, self-ragarding programme encapsulated almost everything that’s wrong with the BBC’s ethos and outlook – but that’s the subject of another post, if not an entire website (this one, for instance!).
Cheers.
Ah but this programme came from Totnes where hippiedom is a way of life for the majority of residents.
If you want to see the loony left in action Totnes is your place
Kulibar Tree | 11.08.07 – 2:12 pm
Evans and Plesch were astonishingly left wing.
A bit like the seventies revisited really.
But that meant Douglas Murray could really get stuck-in.
Which he did.
I thought he was winning the audience cheers much of the time…
hence I didn’t find it tedious or self-regarding…..but quite an entertaining punch-up really.
Stuck in the sixth form …
The other trick is that in the questions you constantly associate right-wing things (or what the BBC perceives as right-wing things) such as the stock market with pejorative terms like “greed”, but you don’t do the same with left-wing things like the welfare state.
(This is starting to unravel with the NHS, though, as it has become so bad that you get negative association questions about it now, but then you still get a lot of positive association questions about it, featuring terms such “our protection”, “national institution”, etc.)
John Reith –
I mean that Any Questions itself is tedious and self-regarding – and it generally follows a predictable pattern (not unlike its TV counterpart).
The questions always assume a particular agenda, such as “Are we doing enough to combat climate change?” (but never questioning climate change itself), or “How we can ensure that there’ll never be another Republican president” (the received wisdom being, of course, that George Bush = Hitler) … you know the kind of thing, which gives the usual left-wing majority on the panel the chance to make shallow, populist remarks.
And (so it seems to me) the panel itself usually comprises a 3 – 1 left v right pattern. The token rightie like Douglas Murray, or Peter Hitchens, or Melanie Phillips is always pitted against three others: but when was the last time you had a 2 – 2 split, or even a 3 – 1 right – left split?
As to Murray, there was a smattering of applause from time to time, but I think he was out-clapped (so to say) by the other panellists.
Cheers.
But the questions come from people sitting in the audience.
Perhaps some of them are left-wing.
But then I suppose a lot of people must be – otherwise Labour couldn’t have won the past 3 elections.
AQ is – to my mind – a huge red herring when it comes to BBC bias.
The whole point of it is that the BBC has pretty well nothing to do with it except broadcasting it.
The guests are non-BBC. Dimbleberry was chosen because he was an ITV ‘face’.
The audience chooses the topics.
John Reith –
You are being disingenuous: the questions are not chosen by lottery, but by the producer; as are the panellists. And it is a matter of record that the audience for these shows is usually not random, either.
Please don’t try to pretend that Any Questions is just some travelling circus upon which the BBC just “happens” to eavesdrop once a week – it’s rigidly in control: you know it, we know it.
Cheers.
“The audience chooses the topics”
Ah, very good, JR. Now then, assuming the British public to be rather left-wing, does the BBC have a right to go with the flow? If so, what happens to impartiality? If the British public isn’t left-wing, what kind of skewing is going on of the audience participants and how should it be counteracted?
John Reith, it was a question. But why do I need to pay him to ask it? I couldn’t care less what Dimbleby thinks or asks so I don’t see why I should pay him to do either. Those who are interested in Dimbleby’s views, opinions and questions should pay for them, and not expect the rest of us to subsidise them. John, for a person who uses other peoples money you often sound ungrateful. It’s almost as if you consider yourself entitled to our cash.
“In Any Questions today: the stock markets have fallen. Should we rejoice if greed is bad for us?”
Dimbo won’t be rejoicing since it affects his personal fortune and that of his brother. These champagne socialists are such hypocrites aren’t they?
Leaving aside the interesting questions of 1) Who picks the audience? and 2) Who picks the questions from the audience? – in light of JR’s observation – who writes the programme trails? The issue here is not what is in the programme, but the trail itself.
The trail clearly links the notion of stock markets with greed (before posing the question about whether or not we should rejoice about the fall in the market). The latter is a reasonable enough question, but the underlying presumption, presented quite by itself by Dimbleby (entirely free of any context or challenge) is not.
But Andrew – the trail relates directly to something in the programme.
Dimbleby wasn’t making this stuff up – he was selecting an arresting and counter-intuitive point from the programme that would meet the twin aims of a trail: attract people to want to hear more and offer a flavour of what they’d hear if they tuned in.
I think Kulibar Tree has a point about Douglas Murray being outnumbered.
Perhaps they didn’t know Nicholas Evans was such a leftie. But then, I never saw the Horse Whisperer.
Ed – you raise an interesting Q – I will get back to you on that.
What is “counter-intuitive” about a BBC presenter selecting a point which equates the Stock Market with greed ?
As far as the BBC goes, that sort of economic ignorance is “basic intuition”.
Ed
Assuming by left-wing, you’d count people inclined to support Labour, Lib Dems and Greens • that would total around 62% as against 32% supporting the Conservatives and UKIP currently.
(Depending where you were, various sorts of nationalist might be a factor • but lets leave them aside for now).
A representative audience would, therefore, contain almost twice as many ‘left-wingers’ as ‘right-wingers’ by that definition.
Now let’s imagine Any Questions were to visit a mythical town • Erehwon • where the population exhibited traits and opinions exactly in proportion to the national average.
What do you think the Any Questions producer should do?
Select questions in a 62-32 ratio? (‘Go with the flow’ • as you put it)
Even them up to 50-50?
Pick random questions on the basis that it’s the answers that matter and need to be balanced out • and that’s Dimbleby’s job as referee?
http://www.ipsos-mori.com/polls/2007/mpm070717.shtml
Hows about they comment on any question relevant.
Hows about they don’t load the audience.
Hows about HONESTY!!!
The BBC cannot ‘load’ the audiences for Any Questions.
It does not choose the audiences.
Ticket allocation is the responsibility of the host – usually a school, WI or similar organization.
There are a couple of provisos:
one third of the tickets should be offered to the general public on a first come, first served basis.
15 tickets must be offered to the local branches of each of the main political parties.
What proportion of people read the Telegraph and Times compared to the Grauniad and Al-Independent? I think it is about 3 or 4 to 1. Now does the audience of Any Questions reflect that? Of course not. Most of the comrades in the audience have been in by the local chapters of Stop the War, Greenpeace or the Liberal Democrats. Particularly unrepresentative of mainstream view in other words. I doubt that Dimblebore even realises this. It seemed that Murray was more or less on his own in the room on most questions. And I can still hear that appalled gasp from audience and other panel members when Murray dared to suggest that Iran is a nasty regime up to no good. And that final “lighthearted” question about George Bush. Perfect for the reflex anti-American Beeboid mentality.
And by the way, Gavin Esler by way of raising Hilary’s profile for us all, is doing a programme or series on the Clinton years. Will he do the same for Dubya? If he does, will it take the same approach?
Abandon Ship! | 11.08.07 – 11:34 pm
What proportion of people read the Telegraph and Times compared to the Grauniad and Al-Independent? I think it is about 3 or 4 to 1.
Another example of B-BBC overstatement.
Average Daily print circulations:
Telegraph – 889289
Times – 635653
TOTAL: 1,524,942
Guardian – 362309
Indy – 240116
TOTAL: – 602425
Online readership:
Monthly unique users:
Guardian – 15.2 million
Times – 8.9 million
Telegraph – 7.4 million
Indy – 0.7 million
Now does the audience of Any Questions reflect that?
The BBC doesn’t choose the Any Questions audience.
I’m inclined to agree with Reith on this one. QT is probably reflecting the broader public opinion and the pannelists braodly represent the range of political opinion: as such I find the program pretty much unwatchable.
In fact QT is probably a good barometer of the country’s slide into the socialist morass. It could therefore have some sort of useful purpose in allowing us to know when things have got so bad that the only option is to emigrate.
Some years ago on a 2 day coach excursion to the Sahara, my friends and I were aware that english passengers were vastly outnumbered by german passengers. Hoewever, the next morning we were oganized into groups to be allocated to the tour guides based on language for a camel trek and we were amazed to find that there were 10 german speakers and more than 50 english speakers (i.e. the silent majority).
It illustrated very powerfully for me how a smaller group can sound like a larger group, as would appear to be the case on Any Questions and Question Time. It’s quite obvious that the panel and audience are somehow filtered to achieve the desired lefty majority in the audience and in the panel.
In daily life whether working, shopping or even on holiday I do not meet PC types in such overwhelming numbers that QT and AQ would imply to be the norm.
I guess we will eventually find out how it’s done, but just like Paul Daniels magic tricks, no one believes it’s real.
Reith, thanks for the analysis. Good try but my point still holds good. Add in the readership of the Daily Mail as opposed to the Mirror and my figures are about right.
BTW I don’t think the audience is selected in the way that some people here think. It’s just that Lefties have vast reserves of energy in their mission to stamp out evil conservative ideas. It’s like the letters page in my local paper – every other day there are letters from various lefty groups (e.g. Stop the War, Respect, Greenpeace, Animal Aid etc), with very few from the other side. The reason for this might be the “silent majority” as described by Bob above. Another is the vicious replies one gets if one writes from a centre-right standpoint. Believe me, I know since I have written to my local paper in support of Israel’s right to defend itself from terrorist attacks and couldn’t believe the nasty letters I got in response. This stops some people from writing and so the “comrades” have an open field to push hatred of Israel, George Bush, Tony Blair, meat eating, nuclear power, Christianity or any oither of their pet subjects.
Bob | 12.08.07 – 11:30 am
Interesting point about how perceptions don’t always correspond to reality.
Kulibar Tree in an earlier post on this thread said:
The token rightie like Douglas Murray, or Peter Hitchens, or Melanie
Phillips is always pitted against three others: but when was the last time you had a 2 – 2 split..?
Well, Peter Hitchens was on Any Questions a few weeks ago and the line-up was –
Denis MacShane (Labour)
Julia Neuberger (Lib Dem)
Dominic Grieve (Cons)
Peter Hitchens
The following week (I think) Charles Moore was on. The line-up then was:
Hilary Benn (Labour)
Peter Tatchell
Nadine Dorries MP (Cons)
Charles Moore
Another 2-2 split.
In June Ruth Lea from the Centre for Policy Studies was on. The line up was:
Ben Bradshaw (Labour)
David Laws (Lib Dem)
Tim Yeo (Cons)
Ruth Lea
Yet another 2-2 split.
So there are quite a lot of them.
Why not have one every week?
Well, the 2-2 split rather assumes that Labour and Lib Dems are on the ‘same side’. When actually they often hate each other and are bitter rivals in some parts of the country.
….contd.
….contd.
Your own perception is:
It’s quite obvious that the panel and audience are somehow filtered to achieve the desired lefty majority in the audience and in the panel.
Yet, as we’ve seen, the BBC has nothing to do with selecting the audience and the panels are often 2-2 splits.
Given a national profile (see above) where left-wingers outnumber right-wingers 62 to 32…..it’s odd that it’s the right that’s complaining about the AQ panels and audiences.
Another ‘perception’ example is instructive:
From hanging out on this blog quite a lot, I formed the view that there must be a heck of a lot of MMGW sceptics around the place that are invisible to the MSM. It’s by far the majority opinion here.
Yet when MORI asked people whether they strongly agreed with the proposition:
Human activity does not have significant effect on the climate
Only 4 per cent did.
So the climate change sceptics here are a bit like the Germans on your bus.
http://www.ipsos-mori.com/index-news.phtml
JR, I note that the ipsos-mori findings are based on interviews of a panel selected by
To register for Tipping Point Or Turning Point?, please complete this form and we will email you when it is available for downloading.
Will they struggle to get a truly representative sample from a self-selecting, IT owning & literate group?
(I am not claiming that this would overturn the 22/69 rejection of Human activity does not have significant effect on the climate)
& are not the AQ & QT audiences similarly skewed?
Will
You’ve misread the page.
The “to register for…..” stuff isn’t to register to be be questioned for the survey, it’s to register to get a PDF of the final report.
The poll methodology is spelled out a bit further down the page:
Ipsos MORI interviewed a representative sample of 2031 adults aged 16+
……interviews were conducted face to face, in home, on 14-20 June 2007….etc.
“Indeed the BBC’s own 2007 report on impartiality found that 57% of poll respondents said that “broadcasters often fail to reflect the views of people like me”.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2240427.ece
Left-wingers have descended in their droves on shows like Any Questions. Other lefties have noticed this, even if JR hasn’t (or pretends he hasn’t), and so as it has become a place where they know they can promote their views. You would get a completely different audience if such a show was organized by The Daily Telegraph, or The Daily Mail.
So the idea that the audience reflects most of Britain, and that Britain has twice as many leftists as non-leftists is ridiculous. You certainly can’t assume that everyone who votes Lib-Dem is left-wing. Even though a lot of their policies are left-wing, they have always had, and still have, a lot of support from people who don’t identify themselves as left-wing, but who don’t like the Conservatives.
And Labour itself only got enough votes to get into power by explicitly repudiating a lot of its left-wing policies. Sure, it tries to bring a lot of them in by stealth, but they and everybody else knows that no explicitly left-wing party would ever have a chance in the polls, which doesn’t make sense if the country really was over 60% left-wing,
And even a large percentage of Labour voters don’t much like the trendy issues that urban educated meejah lefties think are important. You go up North and talk to the average Labour-voter-on-the-street. They can’t stand much of what passes for policy in the Labour party these days, and by JR’s standards they’re a redneck, but even though their views have more in common with Conservatives they’ll never vote for them because of their perception of them as heartless job-wrecking toffs.
And then there are the 40% of people who don’t vote. I don’t say they’re mostly right-wing, but I doubt that they’re mostly left-wing.
As for Mori polls, JR cherry-picks his surveys carefully, as there are numerous polls showing that a large proportion of the public identify with right-wing policies. There are even various polls showing that the 40-50% of the public are doubtful about MMGW.
JR.
Alright, time to give it a go.
For a start, there ought to be a practically even split between “Conservative” and “Labour” talking points. Why? Because the BBC shouldn’t be reinforcing the last election result, which was after all a vote on the Government of that time, rather than a declaration of permanent loyalty. The fact that there is an official opposition ought to be recognised because they hold the balance that remained after the last election result- it is fair to say that unless politics changes seismically this approach holds water. It’s reasonable to assume that a change in public opinion from that time (which must be allowed for) would benefit them primarily (look at opinion polls three months ago, for instance).
Now, for the Liberals and Greens, it would be fair to concentrate questions on policies that make them distinctive, assuming they are distinctive. This means policies that neither the Conservatives nor the Labour party hold to. Really, in many ways from a Conservative perspective, they are stalking horses for the Left (sometimes they can work against Labour, but mostly they benefit them). By concentrating on their distinctives, it would enable people to judge if they are really serious parties rather than just ways of insulating the Left against Conservative politics. You wanted to leave aside the BNP and UKIP? Not too fair really- these are splinter groups off the more nationalistic low-Tory vote. Especially UKIP, but at heart the BNP would mostly have been happy with Thatcher. I have no problem admitting that, whatever Con HQ might protest to the contrary (or the BNP, as they appeal to the working classes)- you can see how it doesn’t work in their favour to have these splinter groups attacking their patriotism, but how, given the opprobrium heaped on nationalists, how they can’t fight back.
So, regarding the questions, there should be a 50-50 divide, with one each for the Green/Lib and BNP/UKIP element. Regarding the guests- 2 Lab, 2 Con and a 1 Green/Lib or BNP/UKIP.
You’ll probably say that I have over-promoted the nationalists. Here is where discretion should come in. Obviously, a concerted campaign has been made against nationalists- they are a dirty word (not least thanks to a certain BBC hidden camera, as I recall). This has little to do with their basic popular appeal, which often is proven wherever they aren’t impeded by some calculated bad publicity, or the fractiousness that comes from being outsiders. Basically the UK political system is dualist- some people have found ways of subverting that but philosophically it would be mistaken for the BBC to follow them. It’s a first past the post 50-50 system, that’s been tampered with by ideologues (the gang of four with Jenkins et al specifically came along to create the space for such a re-allignment). The fact that the BBC regards nationalists as beyond the pale is in fact one of their central problems in connecting with middle Britain.
The key point to recognise is that British politics swings on a pendulum, left to right, right to left. To balance you have to get this 50/50. Forget the pressure groups (or at least their intentions)- remember the balance. Also part of the discretion should be for the BBC to avoid those who would be high up in the list of hoped for defectors from either main party- ie. the “wets” on either flank. When included, they should be balanced against an opposition “wet”.
That’s all for now. What I’ve described is far from being the current BBC approach, I think.
Of course no one in this country will dare say that sub-prime has largely come about as a result of:
1) Planning regulations in the US that caused the artificial housing shortages that we also have in this country, which are the ultimate reason for high house prices in the first place.
2) US banking regulation that forces banks to loan to people with really low incomes to buy said artificially costly houses that they are not actually able to afford: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act
The US press picks it up, of course: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.sowell08aug08,0,522262.story
But then the US doesn’t have a state pseudo-monopoly on news that’s stacked full of economically illiterate neo-Marxists.
But let’s not try to actually understand anything, because then smashing up capitalism might not make so much sense after all.
I suspect most people of harbouring ill-thought out centre-right/liberal politics insofar as they are political at all.
The Graun/Indy/Beeb politics really is that of a hardcore minority. It certainly helps when you control the choke points in the media and academia!
Of course the deluded libertarians are an even smaller minority and certainly more marginalised and remote from the general population.
Good post Lurker – sounds like the BBC staff at large 🙂
“The key point to recognise is that British politics swings on a pendulum, left to right, right to left. To balance you have to get this 50/50.”
No you don’t – “right” and “left” are vague, almost pointless terms. Not least when Labour has taken much of ground of the centre right and the Conservatives are wooing the centre left.
Balance is about appropriate representation of different viewpoints, not some crude seesaw act balancing abstract concepts of “right” and “left”.
Your solution is pretty odd, to say the least: discard the results of the last general election on the rather specious grounds they only represent a comment on the government of the time.
Then marginalise the Lib Dems – and presumably their voters too – because you’ve decided they are a stalking horse for the left and then beef up the share of voice of more right wing parties like the BNP and UKIP (in the BNP’s case, no MPs and just 10 councillors and in UKIP’s case no MPs and just 5 councillors) because their policies are more distinctive.
Sounds suspiciously like an attempt to redraw the political map along lines you’d personally prefer.
I guess, for John Reith The Mail and The Sun don’t count; their readers must pay the BBC without expecting their views to be broadcast. And how many of the gazillions of The Guardian on-line readers are actually in the UK, comrade John? Perhaps the BBC should charge them, not us who are paying the propaganda tax in the shape of the licence fee?
The BBC doesn’t choose the Any Questions audience.
John Reith | 12.08.07 – 10:43 am | #
However, it certainly does choose the ‘Question Time’ audience. My husband (an occasional poster here) applied to be a part of the Question Time audience when the programme was being filmed near us. He was required to fill out a form and was rejected on the grounds that he was a member of a political party (UKIP). There clearly is a ‘vetting’ process for ‘Question Time’, and I would be very surprised indeed if there was not one for ‘Any Questions’ as well.