, co-author of the wonderful Yes Minister series, has been spilling the beans recently on the bias and attitudes inherent in the culture of the BBC. His latest article was in yesterday’s Sunday Times. Here are some excerpts – the first sets the scene and lists the things that the BBC was, and still is, largely anti- to:
The growing general agreement that the culture of the BBC (and not just the BBC) is the culture of the chattering classes provokes a question that has puzzled me for 40 years. The question itself is simple – much simpler than the answer: what is behind the opinions and attitudes of this social group?
They are that minority often characterised (or caricatured) by sandals and macrobiotic diets, but in a less extreme form are found in The Guardian, Channel 4, the Church of England, academia, showbusiness and BBC news and current affairs. They constitute our metropolitan liberal media consensus, although the word “liberal” would have Adam Smith rotating in his grave. Let’s call it “media liberalism”.
It is of particular interest to me because for nine years, between 1955 and 1964, I was part of this media liberal consensus. For six of those nine years I was working on Tonight, a nightly BBC current affairs television programme. My stint coincided almost exactly with Harold Macmillan’s premiership and I do not think that my former colleagues would quibble if I said we were not exactly diehard supporters.
But we were not just anti-Macmillan; we were anti-industry, anti-capitalism, anti-advertising, anti-selling, anti-profit, anti-patriotism, anti-monarchy, anti-empire, anti-police, anti-armed forces, anti-[British nuclear] bomb, anti-authority. Almost anything that made the world a freer, safer and more prosperous place – you name it, we were anti it.
The second excerpt explains the mindset that makes it ‘okay’ for self-regarding Beeboids to shape the news agenda and massage their news stories in the way that they do:
We saw ourselves as part of the intellectual elite, full of ideas about how the country should be run. Being naive in the way institutions actually work, we were convinced that Britain’s problems were the result of the stupidity of the people in charge of the country.
This ignorance of the realities of government and management enabled us to occupy the moral high ground. We saw ourselves as clever people in a stupid world, upright people in a corrupt world, compassionate people in a brutal world, libertarian people in an authoritarian world.
And lastly, a truism of media in general, but of telly-tax-funded media in particular:
The Tonight programme had a nightly audience of about 8m. It was much easier to keep their attention by telling them they were being deceived or exploited by big institutions than by saying what a good job the government and the banks and the oil companies were doing.
Do read the rest (see link above) – there’s lots more good stuff.
Make sure too that you get and read Antony Jay’s significant treatise Confessions of a Reformed BBC Producer (PDF), published by the Centre for Policy Studies.
Thank you to Biased BBC reader Dave T for the link.