Hi All. I’m going to be away for the next few days – back next Tuesday. So in the meantime, the space is yours. The BBC; what was the moment that made you realise we have a problem with it…

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65 Responses to Hi All. I’m going to be away for the next few days – back next Tuesday. So in the meantime, the space is yours. The BBC; what was the moment that made you realise we have a problem with it…

  1. rightofcentre says:

    I can`t remember what the exact article was, but I do remember the phrase I typed into Google, it was –
    “the bbc is talking bollocks”,
    brought me straight to this site.

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  2. Redders says:

    For me it was when they made Blue Peter more ethnically diverse and homosexual friendly , and putting Chris hollins in front of me first thing in the morning , the smugness of this idiot beggars belief ,they had the spoilt brat presenting from ascott all week , sickening !

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  3. Cheeta says:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/2204756.stm

    I think after reading this article (which I kept) I first began to become suspicious of the BBC’s rather partial reporting style. Funnily enough on a topic which is now very popular indeed.

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  4. Paul says:

    There is currently so much left-wing liberal bias in the BBC which seems to have been going on for such an excruciatingly long time it is difficult to remeber the exact moment the light dawned. However, top-of-the crop is definitely Jeremy Bowen’s shockingly and depressingly biased reporting against Israel and towards Arabs which finally totally killed off any good feeling I may still have harboured for the BBC.

    I used to be a strong advocate of the BBC but I now absolutely loathe it and long for the inevitable day when it comes crashing down!

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  5. GCooper says:

    Paul writes: “I used to be a strong advocate of the BBC but I now absolutely loathe it and long for the inevitable day when it comes crashing down!”

    It’s interesting (and very possibly significant) how many of us who now despise the BBC were once among its strongest supporters.

    I suppose it’s a sense of having something one once cherished, stolen and debased.

    The tipping point for me, incidentally, was when the entryists
    seized control of Radio 4 and turned it into a stream of Left-liberal propaganda.

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  6. Ron Todd says:

    The today programme which I used to listen to walking to work, they just got more and more unbalanced about Europe.

    Then there was all the police/crime stuff where only white usually working class people were the one that whodunit.

    Then there was the r4 comedy slot which I used to listen to walking home from work on a saturday which became more and more an anti tory tirade. Used to be the party in power was the main target for comedy.

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  7. Nearly Oxfordian says:

    June 1982, beeboids spouting antisemitic crap from Lebanon.

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  8. Pat says:

    The two saints – Shami Chakrabarti and Sandy Toksvig.

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  9. knacker says:

    The elevation of Frei after Alistair Cooke’s death.

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  10. Field.Size says:

    Realising that I could not agree with the BBC line on…..just about everything.

    Then spending an inordinate amount of time shouting at the “Toady” program idiot’s particularly that monstrously smug fool Humphreys.

    Once you stop “listening” and start thinking….you realise that something has changed and rapidly.
    I started by thinking they were deviously bias, then they got fed up of that and came out as the full weight C***s that they are.

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  11. disillusioned_german says:

    Once again: Question Time just after 9/11

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  12. Jack Bauer says:

    Used to be the party in power was the main target for comedy.
    Ron Todd | 25.07.08 – 12:48 pm | #

    Ahh.. your formative years were under the Thatcher/ Major vile, torturing, illegal fascist regimes, I guess?

    You don’t make fun of socialists. That’s Rule 1 in edgy, alternative challenging “comedians.”

    And by “comedian” I mean the talentless jerks who wouldn’t know funny if it crawled up their arse.

    Sir Ben Elton, being their Great Leader. He puts the fun into funeral.

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  13. Anonymous says:

    After the 2005 terrorist attacks in London, the BBC went to the “local community” where the bombers came from and interviewed “random” people that all said that community cohesion was wonderful and everyone got on wonderfully and it was a multicultural utopia and they couldn’t understand how this could have happened. When I saw that, I believed it, I had no reason to doubt it. But then, I watched the American news that gets shown late at night on News 24 and on Sky. The American news was completely different. The people in the American interviews were saying that they all hated each other and wanted nothing to do with each other. The American news seemed a lot more realistic, then I realised that the BBC was lying to us and that its reports were not reflective of reality, but were putting out stuff that the government wanted to be put out (ie propaganda). I later noticed that the American news suddenly disappeared from the schedules on “sensitive” days like this. Obviously the American news contained stuff that the government didn’t want British people to know. Smelt like they were trying to cover something up for the sake of “social cohesion”. This was before I had home internet access and so watching that American news was the only chance I had got to see the news from a different perspective, so I was disappointed when they removed it from the schedules on “sensitive” days, which was the only days when it was worth watching.

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  14. PaulS says:

    I have a horrible feeling that for me it’s going to be tomorrow (Sat) morning when Radio 4 completes its final stage of the deliberate infantilizing of the network, a process started by its dimwit controller Mark Damazer.

    At 10.30 tomorrow morning Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis is due to make her radio debut. Ms Maitlis – we are always being told – is no dumb bimbo but someone who got a double first at Cambridge and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.

    So guess what Radio 4 have asked her to do?

    Material Girls
    Saturday 26 July
    10.30-11.00am BBC RADIO 4

    This summer, two international female style icons turn 50. Adored and imitated by millions, Madonna and Barbie are the queens of re-invention. Emily Maitlis pits eleven-and-a-half shapely inches of one against the equally toned five foot five inches of the other to discover the original material girl.

    …no doubt next week we’ll have Andrew Marr on the cultural significance of his old Thunderbirds toys.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/proginfo/radio/wk31/sat.shtml

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  15. Ron Todd says:

    Jack Bauer

    I also just about remember the Heath/Wilson years I was too young to ba allowed to watch tw3 or anything similar but the comedy that I do remember was reasonably balanced and certainly did not have the shear nastiness of the modern stuff.

    Today even when the comedy is not overtly political the assumption is Tory bad socialist good.

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  16. xlr says:

    It happened for me about 12 years ago or so, when I started to realise the Question Time audience was predictably rent-a-SWP and so out of touch with what I felt. I considered my self a socialist back then so it must have been really bad even then.
    About that time I decided to give up buying a tv licence as well

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  17. NSE says:

    The second Gulf war and the ubiquitous Moozlum-freindly Ragi Omah, where everything reported about the USA and its allies was in quotes and anything Iraqis (and the rest of the Jihadists) said wasn’t.

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  18. John Bosworth says:

    “Question Time” the day after 9/11.

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  19. Maverick says:

    I think I’ve known for a great many years (80’s & 90’s) in one way or other but was in denial. ;p Then as I couldn’t take the ‘hold-on-wait-a-damn-minute’ thoughts and said figuratively NO MORE OF THIS…! Also the fact that BBC weren’t making anything that I wanted to watch anymore as well as stepping up their lefty bullshit propaganda.

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  20. Andrew says:

    God, it was years ago, when it occurred to me, slowly over some long period, that almost all the beboid correspondents — male and female — had high-pitched children’s voices. I take exception to being lectured to by callow bimbos/bimbas who have done nothing in their lives, since university but watch what others are doing and believe they have a right to comment vacuously on it.

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  21. Bob says:

    Does anyone remember that absurd puff piece in favour of the ‘Muslim community’ on the very evening of the July 7 tube outrage, when a lightly wounded passenger from the Aldgate bomb wandered down to the Whitechapel mosque (he just happened to have a BBC team in tow) and was “welcomed in by the faithful and given tea and sympathy”? The whole thing had the look of a desperate propaganda con, and I remember vaguely wondering who the victim was and how he staged the filmed event so quickly, and how the Beeb magically turned up and found time to waste time with such an inconsequential and unbelievable item

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  22. king chillout says:

    I used to listen to the Radio 5 phone-in during the mornings at work, and slowly started realising that the BBC always pushed a view on subjects being debated that was the polar opposite of what everyone in the real world I live in was thinking and saying…..they are still doing it !

    Once you begin to see the bias and the PC and admit it is going on, you suddenly notice it in everything they do.
    I cannot abide watching the new Dr Who and it’s PC riddled stories. I just sit there shaking my head and tutting and it really annoys the Mrs. 😎

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  23. Kuffar says:

    Question Time after 911, no doubt.
    Bastards.

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  24. Jon says:

    disillusioned_german:
    Once again: Question Time just after 9/11

    Kuffar:
    Question Time after 911, no doubt.

    Undoubtedly – watching the BBC and its anti-American friends ripping apart our oldest and most loyal ally, made me physically sick. I just could not believe it – the BBC were always left wing since Mrs Thatcher became Prime Minister – but that night will stay with me forever. I felt like shouting – “They do not represent me”

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  25. Jon says:

    Its strange but my best memory of the BBC was listening to radio 4 before I went to work on the early shift and I would hear “the “UK Theme” great uplifting stuff at that time in the morning.

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  26. Allan@Oslo says:

    I remember the BBC’s reporter Kate Adie in Tripoli, Libya, just after Reagan’s attempt (1986?) on Gadaffi’s life following a Libyan bombing in Berlin. Adie did not state that what she could film was restricted (as was always stated when reporting from apartheid South Africa) but, in a very anti-American report, she went on to give a fearful opinion of what Gadaffi might do next. I thought to myself – did I really see and hear what I did? The BBC has been irredeemably anti-British, anti-western and anti-me ever since.

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  27. Pat says:

    King chillout – re morning radio phone ins. Many years ago I think it was Nick Ross that used to host a morning phone in show on Radio 4. I used to play a game then guessing how soon any contributor would be cut off. Any negative mention of ethnic communities, for example, usually elicited the shortest time on air. It was unbelievable predictable.

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  28. James says:

    When Nick Griffin and Keith Vaz were on Newsnight debating immigration. The presenter was utterly and arrogantly biased against Mr. Griffin and the BNP, and was not even furtive about it.

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  29. Davina says:

    Is the infamous 9/11 Question Time kicking about on the internet anywhere?

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  30. Jon says:

    Davina – not sure if there is a video of it – but here is the BBC (Greg Dykes) “apology”.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/1544897.stm

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  31. Davina says:

    Thank you, Jon.

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  32. John Bosworth says:

    Thanks for agreeing on Question Time after 9/11.

    Jon: the Greg Dykes apology means nothing. I communicated my disgust to one of the panel (Yasmin Alibhai-Brown) who was unrepentant. If it happened again, the producers of this dreadful show would do exactly the same thing.

    Perhaps one of our BBC staff readers could sneak a copy of the show out of the archives so we can all be reminded of the true face of benign Auntie – assuming she isn’t wearing a veil by now!

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  33. Bryan says:

    I can’t trace it back to the precise moment I became aware of what the BBC has become, but the ‘documentary’ I saw on BBC World , Israel’s Secret Weapon, on whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, certainly had a great impact because it was such a transparent, gloves off attempt to blacken Israel’s name and whip up anger against the country and sympathy for the treasonous Vanunu. It led to the outraged Israeli government refusing to cooperate with the BBC:

    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Israel%27s+Secret+Weapon&btnG=Google+Search

    The film was broadcast in March 2003, during the Second Intifada, when close to a thousand Israelis were murdered by Palestinian terrorists in suicide bombings and other attacks. The BBC’s pro-Palestinian reporting on these terrorist acts reinforced my opinion of it. I recall one callous BBC hack at the horrific aftermath of a suicide bombing of bus passengers informing us that Israeli officials at the scene were “quick to point out” the lack of a security barrier in the area as a reason for the attack. Hell, why not kick people when they are down? They are only Israelis, i.e. Jews.

    Then of course we had the despicable Jeremy Bowen and his crew laying into Israel during the Second Lebanon War while respectfully reporting only what their Hezbollah masters deemed fit for them to report about the terror group.

    Despicable, vile organization.

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  34. Jason says:

    I think as a teen watching Children’s BBC it slowly dawned on me that virtually all of their male kids TV presenters were either explicitly camp, had a lisp, were black, or all three.

    *cough* Andi Peters *cough*

    Then there was the spiky gelled hair and v-neck t-shirts without which it seemed you were not permitted to enter the Broom Cupboard. All of this gradually made me realize that the BBC was less a public broadcasting service than a “scene” within which you were expected to look, talk and act a certain way.

    A few years later I ran into someone I knew from school who it turned out was gay and had been living in London and whose boyfriend worked at the Beeb. He told me straight out that the vast majority of men who worked in Children’s BBC were gay and that it was very much an “old gays network”.

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  35. Atlas shrugged says:

    I think it started when I used to watch Watch with Mother.

    I could never understand why the programs seemed just to be very light entertainment but at the same time always seemed to be trying to control my thinking.

    Nothing I watched on the TV in general seemed to relate to my own mind. While other children just lapped it up with out a second thought.

    By the time I was 7-8 in the sixties BBC programs such as Blue Peter came across to me a deeply mind controlling, and seemed to bare no relationship to my personal understanding of reality or other people.

    By the time I was a teenager watching TV had become a deeply painful experience which I avoided as much as possible except for sports coverage.

    By my twenties on the rare times I even glimpsed a soap opera I would start shouting at the TV and trying to stop others from being brainwashed.

    By the time of the BBC news coverage in the early 80s during the Thatcher years the BBC in particular had become my own personal public enemy No1. I became convinced that the organization had completely lost the plot and was a danger to humanity. My already very low opinion of the BBC then, has even more radically declined since.

    Now I am firmly of the opinion that the BBC is profoundly evil in all and every sense of the word. Also that it is directly responsible for messing up my country and at least half of my life, that of my fellow country men and my own extended family.

    My fathers first and fatal heart attack I believe was partially brought on by his absolute hatred, distrust and loathing of the BBC. Even though he tried his best not to show it.

    Sounds paranoid. You bet it is. But just because you are paranoid does not mean the bastards are not out to get you, or indeed you do not have a very good reason to be paranoid.

    When it comes to the MSM, being paranoid is the only rational, sane and sensible thing to be.

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  36. ady says:

    Here’s a cracker.

    Hanging about with fat bastards can be bad for your health.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7524944.stm

    Nothing about gays or blacks at the moment.
    Only lifestyle-nazism is encouraged at ra BBC.

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  37. Ron Todd says:

    Jason

    Totally agree with you about childrens tv. I cannot imagine any hetrosexual man wanting to work on childrens tv.

    Atlas

    Yes you do sound paranoid.

    Weak
    petty
    childish
    vindictive
    spiteful
    greedy
    frightened

    But not evil.

    If we are to attack the BBC do it in a rational manner. Do not give them the chance of an easy defence by dismissing us all as nutters.

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  38. Sue says:

    Mine wasn’t exactly one moment. But anyway.
    Many many years ago returning home after a spell in Israel I was astonished at the way the BBC worded their reports on events in the region. I couldn’t help noticing what was happening.

    Through subtle but relentless bias a gross misrepresentation of the truth was being fed to the unsuspecting audience. It began slowly. Whenever a violent incident occurred the news invariably began with an announcement of Israel’s response; if the Arab provocation that had led to it was even mentioned, it was as an afterthought.

    The impression was deliberately being given that Israel’s defensive measures were unjustified acts of aggression. There seemed to be a complete misunderstanding of the situation there that gained momentum with the intifadas and reached a crescendo during the war in Lebanon.

    My heart sinks when I hear these slurs.
    Misinformation has infected our society and now most righteous Brits are unwitting antisemites, but in denial because racism is considered beyond the pale. Zionist is generally accepted to be a pejorative word.
    Thanks BBC.

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  39. meggoman says:

    disillusioned_german:
    Once again: Question Time just after 9/11
    disillusioned_german | 25.07.08 – 2:14 pm | #

    Me too.

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  40. Allan@Oslo says:

    Is the infamous Question Time following 9/11 available anywhere?

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  41. Will says:

    For me, my awareness of media – not specifically BBC – control dates to the Rhodesia/Zimbabwe talks at Lancaster House about 1980.

    The protracted negotiations were extensively reported in all the media and detailed every twist of the horse trading between ‘The Apartheid Regime’ and ‘The Blacks’.

    Eventually, a deal was reached. The VERY NEXT DAY, it emerged – or we were allowed to know – that ‘The Blacks’ consisted of two parties, Zanu and Zapu. The ‘Black’ consensus was a sham, the two parties held radically different opinions. There then followed a power struggle culiminating in an election in the new Zimbabwe which Robert Mugabe’s Zanu won.

    The rest is history, but I remember feeling duped by the media who failed to report the complexities of the the ‘Black’ camp, instead portraying the ‘struggle for independence’ as a simple contest between oppressed blacks and the oppressive white regime.

    I’ve never fully trusted the media since then. Landmarks mentioned above are all familiar to me, tho’ I never saw the 9/11 Newsnight as I’d long since abandoned BBC News by then.

    Incidentally, I also remember thinking of the Zimbabwe 1980 elections ‘hope they enjoy it, it’ll be the last free election they get’. I’d no idea I was so prescient.

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  42. Jack Bauer says:

    …no doubt next week we’ll have Andrew Marr on the cultural significance of his old Thunderbirds toys.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice…/wk31/ sat.shtml
    PaulS | 25.07.08 – 2:43 pm | #

    Ho, ho. Of course, Thunderbirds is racist. No black puppets.

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  43. Bryan says:

    Is the infamous Question Time following 9/11 available anywhere?
    Allan@Oslo | 26.07.08 – 12:32 pm

    I don’t think so. The question was put here a few months back and nobody could come up with a link.

    But here’s a link to Greg Dyke’s apology, provide by jon at 9:46 pm yesterday:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1544897.stm

    Isn’t it amazing how the BBC files these serious issues under ‘entertainent’.

    Funnily enough, though it used to be impossible to find a video of the BBC’s propaganda piece, Israel’s Secret Weapon, which I discussed at 10:38 pm, it’s now freely available on the net. I wonder which enterprising BBC person originally put it online, all in the interests of freedom of information, of course.

    Maybe they’ll do the same with the Question Time show. Right!

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  44. Bryan says:

    Will | 26.07.08 – 12:34 pm,

    One man one vote, once.

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  45. Allan@Oslo says:

    I would really like to see the 9/11 QT again. I should request it under the Freedom of Information Act.

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  46. Original Robin says:

    I used to dislike the BBC, but now I hate it.
    They dont realise that other people have different information to them, or experience about a subject they report on eg;the EU.

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  47. Bryan says:

    Allan@Oslo | 26.07.08 – 1:36 pm,

    I’m sure the BBC must have “lost” the tape by now. Or maybe they just destroy these records after a few years.

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  48. Bryan says:

    Just had a sudden thought. (It happens sometimes):

    Maybe some member of the public somewhere is sitting on a recording of it.

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  49. David Preiser (USA) says:

    Atlas shrugged | 26.07.08 – 12:51 am |

    You’re not too far wrong, I think. I don’t know anything about the shows you watched as a child, but I’ve seen enough of the more modern stuff to know what you mean. We have Barney in the US, which actually used psychological techniques to get their messages across. The producers studied up on a few tricks to influence the audience.

    This is not paranoid talk, this is scientific fact. Purple is known to have an affect on people’s behavior. They paint rooms all lavender and similar shades, and this has been proven to calm down excited children, and some criminals. There is also the cultural heritage of royalty and respect. Even more obvious is the use of melodies which the children will already know, but substituting the producers’ own themes and messages. That trick is 1000 years old at least. There is also the old manipulative trick of showing all the kids coming out of school hanging their heads, weary, melancholy. They are in the adult world, and feel stressed. They do a chant, and Barney appears (just like in that Star Trek episode). Immediately, they are happy, smiling, full of energy. The transformation is complete, the source of the positive change is clear. “I love you, you love me.”

    The reason I’m boring you with all this is that Barney was produced by Lyrick Studios (originally a British/International arm of Jim Henson Productions), which is now owned by HIT Entertainment, the same people who make Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank Engine. The Chairman is currently Greg Dyke. I think you know where I’m going with this.

    I wonder if the shows you’re talking about had similar bedfellows?

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  50. Jason says:

    David Preiser (USA):
    Atlas shrugged | 26.07.08 – 12:51 am |

    You’re not too far wrong, I think. I don’t know anything about the shows you watched as a child, but I’ve seen enough of the more modern stuff to know what you mean. We have Barney in the US, which actually used psychological techniques to get their messages across. The producers studied up on a few tricks to influence the audience.

    When I watched Sesame Street as a kid in England it struck me how obsessed they were with the concept of “cooperation” and how many of the scenes and sketches were geared towards drumming that concept into our heads. Me have cookies, you have milk, that sort of thing. Knowing what I know now about leftists and ideology, I’m given to thinking they were consciously pushing a socialist, collectivist agenda.

    Mind, I still have a soft spot for Sesame Street, the older ones from the 70’s and 80’s anyway, when the music they featured was great. One two three four five, six seven eight nine ten, eleven twelve…I was just watching a clip of the pinball song on YouTube the other day. When kids TV is done well, it’s magical. It’s just a shame that so many of those who have such talent are also unable to stop themselves thinking of kids as blank canvases upon which to etch their own ideologies.

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