Wonder what you think of the comments by Peter Sissons, the veteran newsreader who announced his retirement last month, claiming and accusing producers of being too mired in political correctness to do anything about it?
Writing in The Mail on Sunday today, he says: ‘At today’s BBC, a complaint I often heard from senior producers was that they dared not reprimand their subordinates for basic journalistic mistakes – such as getting ages, dates, titles and even football scores wrong – it being politically incorrect to risk offending them.’
I think this in less than half the story. It is not the sheer amateurish of much of the current output, it is the visceral leftist bias that lies behind it. Not so sure Sissons can see that aspect of the problem. Thoughts?
Could it perhaps be simply down to the fact the BBC prefers to employ people on the basis of their skin colour, far left political views, foreign sounding names, hatred of Jews and a liking for hard drugs and teenage boys rather than people who know what the FCUK they should be doing?
@Martin – …and that Peter Sissons was a professional, erudite, non partisan dude of the highest order?
David
There is a lot more to Sissons' article – for instance his clear statement that he and others cannot question the notion of climate warming or the stupid idea that "the science is all settled"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1199104/Peter-Sissons-BBC-standards-falling–bosses-scared-it.html
The Sissons article does tiptoe round the elephant in the room — the BBC's inherent leftist bias — and much of it is self-justification for his wearing of a burgundy-coloured tie to announce the Queen Mother's death.
However, Sissons is still worth reading, notably for his comments on the global-warming scam, and the BBC's refusal to allow any alternative viewpoint.
The Sunday Telegraph has an article which refers to the BBC "following the Coulson story with suspicious relish."
But all of these journalists, and indeed politicians, have to be cautious in their comments, in order to protect their careers.
There is only one solution to the BBC's ability to intimidate and distort the whole political and media environment in this country.
The next Conservative government should abolish the TV licence fee outright, in its first week of taking office.
"The next Conservative government should abolish the TV licence fee outright, in its first week of taking office."
Sorry not a chance. As conservative front bench spokesman Ed Vazey says.
"I can happily cast self-interest aside and speak genuinely of my love and adoration for the BBC. I believe that it is fantastic and that most people in this country regard it as a great organisation and as family. The family analogy is important: we give the BBC the nickname “Auntie”, and, by and large, we like the BBC, but we also feel free to criticise and have rows with it. Sometimes, those rows are incoherent—rows for the sake of having a row, as most of us have in our own families."
http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2008/10/abolish-licence-fee.html
A story about mass immigration and education problems, which even get into the 'Guardian', does NOT get an airing on the BBC's 'Education' page:
"Segregation in schools fuelled by 'white flight'"
'The Guardian':
"Schools in parts of England are becoming increasingly segregated, deserted by white parents if they find their children becoming outnumbered by pupils from ethnic minorities, a report by a thinktank set up to promote community cohesion has warned.
"Councils should consider allocating school places using lotteries in some inner-city areas to tackle a growing phenomenon of 'white flight' in the education system, the Institute of Community Cohesion (iCoCo) said.
"Its study, which focused on 13 local areas including Bolton, Sunderland, Oldham, Hounslow and Bristol, concluded: 'Many of the schools and colleges in the areas we have studied are segregated to a greater or lesser extent and the evidence available to us at a local level suggested that this was generally worsening over recent years.'"
It seems from the Mail online that the full article by Sissons is "no longer available". I wonder why that would be.
I wanted to get the full details before commenting on it. Would the BBC by any chance be flexing its muscles and threatening to spend our cash suing Sissons or The Mail? I wonder.
The next Conservative government should abolish the TV licence fee outright, in its first week of taking office.
Don't think so. Ed Vaizey loves the BBC.
What more could you expect from David 'pseudo-Blair' Cameron, and his modernizing programme which has turned most of the Tories into carbon copies of New Labour. Amazes me there are still people around here who can't see through his charade – read Peter Hitchens' The Broken Compass.
George R
Dunno about the education pages – but the white flight story got a lengthy prime time airing on 5Live this morning
Ed Vaizey is a silly little prat.
Peter Sissons' fuller comments on BBC are not available online, but appear in print edition of yesterday's 'Mail on Sunday', in the 'Mail 2' section.
Here is part of his conclusion:
"When there is so much of importance to pack into news bulletins in an increasingly complex and troubled world, I wince when great swathes are devoted to entertainment stories. I am glad I got out before the Michael Jackson stuff got into full swing.
"Twenty-five years ago, Neil Postman, a prominent American academic, wrote his seminal work, 'Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourses in the Age of Show Business'.
"He wrote of George Orwell's '1984' and Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World', and the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell was right: that people would come to adore the technologies that undo their capacity to think, and that the truth, far from being concealed from us 1984-style, would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.
"Is anyone doing that sort of thinking at the BBC?"
['Peter Sissons is currently writing his memoirs.']
'Daily Mail comment':
"BBC increasingly utilising selective truth over big stories"
[Extract]:
"It is hardly surprising the distinguished journalist Peter Sissons left the BBC with such bitter feelings about its increasingly warped editorial values.
"He says, for example, that no stories are allowed which question the causes of global warming, and issues such as the Queen not being invited to the recent D-Day commemoration are downplayed for being 'part of a Daily Mail agenda'.
"His experience chimes with our own revelations on Saturday that a John Ware documentary about 'broken Britain' was relegated to a 'graveyard' slot for fear of offending the Government. *"
[* This has to be searched out at 11:20 pm, this Thursday, BBC 2.]
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1199299/BBC-increasingly-utilising-selective-truth-big-stories.html#ixzz0LAlxaVQl&C
Spin, smoke and mirrors.
I read Campbell (spinmaster) was 'working' at the BBC.
Perhaps this is the article here.
PS: Climate Resistance covers the same article here
They extract the following quote which is worth highlighting
The leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas, went into the Westminster studio to be interviewed by me on the BBC News channel. She clearly expected what I call a ‘free hit’; to be allowed to voice her views without being challenged on them.
I pointed out to her that the climate didn’t seem to be playing ball at the moment. We were having a particularly cold winter, even though carbon emissions were increasing. Indeed, there had been no warming for ten years, contradicting all the alarming computer predictions.
Well, she was outraged. I don’t have the actual transcript, but Miss Lucas told me angrily that it was disgraceful that the BBC — the BBC! — should be giving any kind of publicity to those sort of views. I believe I am one of a tiny number of BBC interviewers who have so much as raised the possibility that there is another side to the debate on climate change.
The Corporation’s most famous interrogators invariably begin by accepting that ‘the science is settled’, when there are countless reputable scientists and climatologists producing work that says it isn’t.
My emphasis.
The question surely is: Why did she expect a free hit?