The BBC is going big on “Doctor Who star David Tennant ‘backs Gordon Brown’“. Tennant, a Scot recently replaced by a younger man, is quoted:
“Clearly, the Labour Party is not without some issues right now and I do get frustrated. They need to sort some stuff out, but they are still a better bet than the Tories.”
Meanwhile, election year sees the start of a new topical comedy show on Radio Five Live presented by Chris Addison, the only person who comes anywhere near to matching Tennant’s recent levels of BBC ubiquity. So, will Addison’s new programme offer a fresh perspective on current affairs, or will it be the same tiresome worldview from the BBC’s left-wing comedy establishment? Addison’s opinions on the Conservative Party could give a clue:
“It’s very difficult, if you were brought up as a child during Thatcher’s period, to ever contemplate being a Tory. There is no way I can physically bring myself to vote Tory. That will stay with me till I die.”
On Twitter a couple of days ago he was asked what he thought about the current government and responded:
“Better than the alternative.”
A little later he tweeted:
“My political leanings are decidedly liberal.”
Which, coincidentally, is the first box you have to tick if you want to present a Sunday morning programme on Radio Five Live.
Update 5.05pm. Perhaps we’ll be treated to some of Addison’s views on Europe. From an interview with him on the BBC’s comedy website:
I am fiercely pro-European. I would very much have liked to see this country join the Euro a few years back. Not least because it would greatly annoy the kind of people that I don’t generally like.
I’m fiercely pro-European as well (OK, maybe not “fiercely”), but I don’t buy into the anti-democratic EU project.
This really deserves to be a big story on bias at the BBC but who do you tell?
BBC IN TWO EMPLOYEES WITH OWN OPINIONS SHOCKER
They can keep their political views to themselves – if you can’t see the bias here than you must be blind.
They can, but since when do they have to? This whole post seems to just be annoyed at the BBC because two of its employees, arbitrarily selected, have expressed private opinions.
What is the likelihood that, weeks away from a general election, a supporter of the Tories who has expressed a lifelong hatred of the Labour Party would be invited to present a brand new BBC programme about topical affairs on Radio Five Live?
Bollocks. The BBC is full of wet liberals like this. THAT is the problem, if you’re not a wet liberal you get don’t get to work at the BBC.
Well, Martin, you might have stats on the leanings of all BBC employees, organised by profession, but I’m afraid that’s not what DB was implying. DB just pointed out that two people within a massive organisation had left-of-centre leanings. That’s not quite the same as “full of”.
Private opinions showing support towards a political party made public by the BBC. This is not “entertainment” but political propaganda – Tenant is not talking about his last days as Dr Who is he? So why is this entertainment? The whole piece is about his support for Labour and his dislike of the tories.
If we need to know his views on politics it should be covered in the political pages.
I don’t know about you, but I was pretty surprised to see anyone supporting Brown. The only real way to get anything out of this story though, would be to examine the number of stories with celebrities coming out in favour of Brown with ones coming out either against Brown or in favour of the Tories, and compare that with the general shape of public opinion. If you just pick out two sources, one interview and one article, there’s a very good chance you’ll find bias regardless of content.
In light of the links in the main post, it might be worth reassessing what a ‘personal view’ or an ‘own opinion’ is & how they gets shared.
The BBC does have some form in using proxy luvvies to punt out views it would be called to account for if posted directly.
And proxy luvvies and their PRs know it. And on whose speed dials are they?
Expect a rash of interesting invitees to anything from QT to CBBC to ‘cip in’ with the odd purely personal comment to a national audience.
I’m not sure what a “proxy luvvy” is, I assume it’s someone you pay to get hugged and air-kissed in your place. But I think what you’re saying is, the BBC has a stack of well-known performers that occasionally express opinions in broadcast interviews that it wouldn’t have its newsreaders or analysts state in that capacity. Is that what you’re getting at?
I expect Addison means ‘liberal’ in the modern sense which is why he is happy for Labour to continue in power. ID cards and lots of repressive anti-freedom laws are just what modern ‘liberals’ love.
Labour is as liberal as the BNP is multicultural.
Phil — oh yeah.
Liberal is now corrupted to mean the noxious big government state runs your life; you are personally tormented by an army of fascistic bureaucrats; and a historically tolerant nation is pushed to the edge of extremist parties.
Meanwhile John Locke, Adam Smith, et al revolve at 78 rpm.
Yes it’s interesting how most self confessed ‘liberals’ are quite often nothing more than collectivists, oikophobic anti west haters, big ‘govermentalists’ etc. They are nearly always highly controlling individuals who try to control as much as they can (little hitler mangement material possibly?) and think that the state should have the answer for everything. Usually there’s not a great deal liberal about ‘liberals’.
And this is under “entertainment” – this propaganda is appauling.
“The most common misuse of the testimonial involves citing individuals who are not qualified to make judgements about a particular issue. In 1992, Barbara Streisand supported Bill Clinton, and Arnold Schwarzenegger threw his weight behind George Bush. Both are popular performers, but there is no reason to think that they know what is best for this country.”
http://www.propagandacritic.com/articles/ct.fc.testimonial.html
And the BBC is using the same techniques here. What possible reason can the BBc have for quoting this persons political vews except for promoting Gordon Brown. I find it blatent propaganda. I will complain but I doubt it will do any good – the BBC are determined to back thier man.
I would very much have liked to see this country join the Euro a few years back. Not least because it would greatly annoy the kind of people that I don’t generally like.
You mean like the majority of people who’re forced to pay your unjustifiable salary, you talentless, curly-haired schmuck? Interesting.
It is quite an extraordinary article on Tennant’s views. But to be fair it would be nigh impossible to find an entertainer or actor under 40 who is not a card carrying liblefty. Peer pressure and all that. And ,I presume, it is essential for career prospects particularly given the prevailing BBC culture of liberal conformity.
The sad thing is the BBC has no idea just how very dull it has become.
Hive bees do rather tend to do the same thing.
Name one radio 5 presenter who is remotely centrist or right wing.
There are as many right wingers on 5 as there are snow cannons being used in the ‘snow free in ten years’ Alps.
As for Tenant , he’s a talented bloke but he showed his colours before when he was on ‘who do you think you are.’
Now as you know I am what David might disparagingly call a Fenian, however even with my backgound and position on the six counties I think it is hideous how auntie continuously denegrates the unionist/protestant community in northern Ireland. One example of this was when Tenant did his stint on the Beebs genealogy show. He went back to belfast where his ancestors are from and was presented with his grandads Sash (Orange).
He looked at it as if looking at a red armband with a swastika. It repulsed him.
Now I know there are members of the lodge who would gladly tie me and my coreligionists to the nearest lampost and set their dogs on us but membership of the lodge is not as I see it akin to joining the Klan. Many from the unionist community join to assert their identity peacefully and without malice.
What was sad was Tenants artschool assumption of bigotry and hatred in his grandfather. Our system has trained people to hate themselves and where they have come from.
Tenant is a product of everything wrong with late seventies and 80s education. Indoctrinated in nihilistic guilt burdened socialism. His reaction to call me Dave has nothing to do with real politics and everything to do with brainwashing. They have taken over our schools and now they want to force there crap into our homes.
(I’m feeling especially ranty today) 🙂
Radio 5 lefty beeboids
Nicki Campbell
Vicki Pollard
Richard Bacon
Simon Mayo
Anita Annand
Dotun Adebayo
Gabby Logan
Those are the ones that come to mind, many of them have openly campaigned or attended Downing Street for Nu Liebour fundraisers
Can anyone give a similar list of right wingers on Radio 5?
Go on Scott get your thinking cap on. Name one Tory on five. Equally name one with a scientific background, one with a business or commerce background, one that didnt get all moist when BO won the election.
You’ve got so used to it you think its normal. Its not.
Even beeb 1 has portillo ( if a little late at nght)
Portillo isn’t a proper Tory though, he’s more liberal than half the Labour party.
How much better it would be if he talked in terms of turds and Vaseline, eh, Martin?
If you wish to lecture others on how they should conduct themselves in political discourse, perhaps your pleas would carry more weight if you behaved like, you know, a grown-up?
So, Scott M – do you think that Addison’s justification of his view on our adoption of the Euro “…because it would greatly annoy the kind of people that I don’t generally like” has any credibility. Does that kind of studenty schoolboy logic propel him into the area of “higher political discours” that I presume you inhabit?
Well, it was on a comedy website and it made me laugh. Job done, I’d say.
Scott got nothing useful to say. The BBC are scum vile left wing scum.
Back in the day, when I (please God forgive me) was a temporarily deluded prole for the Labour Party in Barnet, we gathered in the Red Lion to watch the results pour in in ’97.
The biggest cheer came on Portillo’s defeat in nearby Enfield.
Barnet was a bust so workers had been diverted as rumours started on his vulnerabilty.
PORTILLO was the most HATED tory to the party.
Thing is, he couldn’t cope with that personal animus out of office.
Turned his brain to mush. Shame.
Chris Addison is New Middle Class. Like many New Middle Class, he desperately wants to distance himself from his working class upbringing in order to be accepted by his new peer group. So he says things like
would very much have liked to see this country join the Euro a few years back. Not least because it would greatly annoy the kind of people that I don’t generally like.
… which he thinks the middle class public schoolboys in the home counties whose parents have large interests in Europe will find really funny, and therefore like him and invite him to their parties.
the children of ex-miners, the unemployed and Labour union activists with little interest in Europe, whose ancestors died in two World Wars for no obvious reason that helped their lives, would not find that funny. they don’t have many celebrity parties or buy many comedy DVDs so Chris Addison ignores them.
This whole post seems to just be annoyed at the BBC because two of its employees, arbitrarily selected, have expressed private opinions.
Arbitrarily selected from a selective list. However – it’s hardly front page news that actors and media types are heavily into persecuting anyone with an intelligent thought. Their trade is entertainment and facts are boring. That wasn’t bad in Shakespeare or Milton’s time but in what is notionally a “mass democracy” the industry has made itself a means of thought control.
“Socialists” have always hated the “class” they were suposed to represent.
“I have known numbers of bourgeois Socialists, I have listened by the hour to their tirades against their own class, and yet never, not even once, have I met one who had picked up proletarian table-manners. Yet, after all, why not? Why should a man who thinks all virtue resides in the proletariat still take such pains to drink his soup silently? It can only be because in his heart he feels that proletarian manners are disgusting. So you see he is still responding to the training of his childhood, when he was taught to hate, fear, and despise the working class.”
George Orwell : The Road to Wigan Pier.
This is totally ridicolous. Why is what David Tennant thinks news?
I have written to Ian Hunter, BBC Managing Editor Online for an explanation, and also to Ray Snoddy.
It might be a small thing, but it is a classic example of institutionalised bias.
This is a non-story. It is irrelevant. If they MUST do this story, it should be a broader one about “celebrity” supporters of something similarly banal with a balance of views.
Ryan – well done on keeping “Biased BBC” on topic. While I may agree with DT’s comments as they appeared in a third party publication, the way that the BBC reported them on its website should be considered in that particular context.
(I object to the manner in which certain Biased BBC commenters object to the comments, but am happy to support people who stay true to Biased BBc’s stated aims rather than their own agenda)
ScottM
I would be more convinced of the BBC’s preparedness to give space to alternative viewpoints to the never ending liberal consensus if , for instance , it was prepared to entertain those views so well expressed by the writers on such as the Brussels Journal.
I would suggest you read the series of essays by Takuan Seiyo under the title “From Meccania to Atlantis”.
Serious writing on topics the BBC runs a mile away from.
Don’t be such a hypocrite Scott – you have just flagged this up earlier.
“BBC IN TWO EMPLOYEES WITH OWN OPINIONS SHOCKER”
How can you agree with both sides at the same time – are you a liberal democrat?
“I object to the manner in which certain Biased BBC commenters object to the comments, but am happy to support people who stay true to Biased BBc’s stated aims rather than their own agenda”
Well bully for you!
Peter Watt is the big story attacking the Mong over his leadership. Silence on the BBC about it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/default.stm
Scott, You still haven’t had a stab at name the Tory.
If Tories were a zoological grouping David Attenborough would do a series on them, because they are so scarce in the public eye. Mind you he’d probably blame the lack of sightings of Tories on global warming.
ryan, the reason for the article is public interest: celebrity with millions of fans in left-leaning political view shocka!
Fair enough, right? Plus, David Tennant and Doctor Who is topical, the story has not a jot to do with the up-coming election, could have been published 2 years ago.
As such we can expect the BBC news editors to behave the same way if they knew Coldplay dimwit Chris Martin was a [url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/apr/01/mainsection.topstories2]Cameron supporter[/url].
Well, Coldplay/Cameron link was known in 2006 at height of Coldplay’s fame, but where was the BBC article specifically about Chris Martin and Cameron? I can’t find it.
Just the Guardian article. But of course the BBC journalists NEVER read the Guardian. So how would they have known?
Martin said,
The BBC is full of wet liberals like this. THAT is the problem, if you’re not a wet liberal you get don’t get to work at the BBC.
That was well put & an example of good statistical thinking.
Chris Martin doesn’t work for the BBC. Whenever the vile BBC scum come out of their holes to support the one eyed mong they are doing it using their position paid for by the state. We don’t allow civil servants to express a political opinion using their office (well Liebour have changed that now) and the BBC is no different.
You lefties just don’t get it do you? If the BBC were right wing or a right wing party got public money you’d be up in arms.
The problem with the BBC is it is infested (like rats in a cellar) with the worst sort of human being born, the liberal.
“It’s very difficult, if you were brought up as a child during Thatcher’s period, to ever contemplate being a Tory. There is no way I can physically bring myself to vote Tory. That will stay with me till I die.”
Which is funny because I grew up during Thatcher’s (PBUH) term of office in a northern town plus I saw the miners strike close up and do you know what it made a lifelong tory out of me ! I only started voting UKIP when “Call me Dave” appeared on the scene.
Lets just remember though that Addison is just signaling to other people at the Beeb that he is one of them and to keep in mind for any jobs that might be going. The problem I fear is that “Call me Dave” actually believes the electorate contains a large number of Addisons all unwilling to vote for him unless he changes everything.
Heartily endorsed, 1327. I witnessed the thuggery of socialism first hand in South Yorks at the time. Mind you, I had already been a fan of Maggie since 1976.
BBC reports its leader:
“Gordon Brown says leadership challenge was ‘silliness'”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8450375.stm
Get the picture?:-
‘Storm in a teacup’
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article6982198.ece
Chris Addison on Radio Five show was just cracking a joke at people who buy £3 clothes from Asda. So much for his “support” for the poor and working class…
“Fisking Dr Who”
http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2010/01/fisking-dr-who.html
Cheers George.
Hilarious. Time Lord Out-Lorded.