wrote Melanie Phillips in yesterday’s Daily Mail. Some excerpts:
The departure of Peter Fincham:
[F]eeling is growing that Mr Fincham has been made to carry the can for those higher up the BBC hierarchy, such as the grandly titled Director of Vision Jana Bennett, who was also criticised for showing a “lack of curiosity” once she had been told what had happened.
Moreover, the manner of Mr Fincham’s departure is disturbing in the light of reports that he refused to sign a prepared “Soviet-style” letter of resignation blaming him for the debacle and was summarily dismissed instead.
Cutting the BBC’s core output whilst expanding non-core areas:
Mr Thompson is reportedly about to deal with a funding crisis by emasculating the BBC’s core output, with programmes such as Timewatch or Horizon facing the chop along with distinctive TV news bulletins which would be replaced by a rolling news service. Such action suggests that somewhere along the way priorities have gone haywire.
For while it is taking an axe to its core programming, the BBC is spending vast amounts on highly questionable enterprises.
The BBC’s institutional bias:
At the same time, the very core of the BBC’s claim to the licence fee, that it is uniquely trusted for its integrity, is being steadily destroyed. It’s not just the serial fakery to which it has now put its hands up. It’s the fact that its output, including its journalism, is politically as bent as a corkscrew.
As its own impartiality review concluded earlier this year, the BBC operates in a “Leftleaning comfort zone” and has an “innate liberal bias”, dictating what issues it chooses to cover and how it does so.
It is institutionally and viscerally hostile to America, Israel, conservatism, big business, religion, the countryside and family values; it supports multiculturalism, environmentalism, European federalism, human rights law and ‘alternative’ lifestyles.
Worse still, it sees everything through the distorting prism of this “progressive” agenda. As a result, it views its own Left-wing position as the centre ground, and anyone who disagrees is viewed as a Rightwing extremist.
And Melanie’s piercing conclusion: it’s that Marr again:
In place of the former high-minded disciples of Lord Reith, the BBC came to be run by people who stood for nothing except shallow success. Politically correct to a fault, they therefore enforced the Left-wing group think with even greater zeal.
The inevitable outcome has been that the BBC has all but destroyed the very reason for its existence. With its public service ideal thus fatally corrupted, the loss of self confidence which brought that about has also made it unable to stand up to government pressure.
As a result, it has become all too eager to do the bidding of a Government which scarcely bothers to hide its contempt.
So when Gordon Brown announced there would be no General Election, he ignored ITN and Sky and chose to use instead a soft interview by the BBC’s Andrew Marr – who then announced the decision to the nation from Downing Street for all the world as if he were the Prime Minister’s spokesman.
The BBC has lost its way – and it will take more than the removal of an executive or two for it to find it again.
But do read the whole thing – it’s worth it!
Thank you to Biased BBC reader Richy for the link.