Excellent post by Mailman here and I wanted to share the detail more broadly – see below!
“Sorry but the BBC’s issues with impartiality are one of culture, which cannot simply be addressed by adding a few words to a document your staff will never really read.
If the BBC was serious about impartiality you wouldnt need a document like this telling us how awesome you are simply because the BBC would already be impartial.
I mean lets face the truth here. The BBC stopped reporting the news decades ago and instead started reporting its opinion as the news. You want to be serious about reporting the news, get rid of all the BBC blogs which are nothing more than a collection of leftist ideology.
Please do tell us underserving underlings how exactly the BBC will change how it reports Mann Made Global Warming ™, Immigration, Islam, Republicans, British way of life, multiculturalism over night? Actually, lets be slightly more realistic, how does the BBC plan to report on any of these items over the next 10 years?
Sadly, each of the above items I have listed the BBC has shown a marked bias towards. Mann Made Global Warming, the BBC is an advocate. Immigration, the BBC is an advocate for unlimited immigration. Islam, the BBC is an advocate for Islam and censors any and all stories that shines light in the true nature of the beast (anyone seen an in depth analisys of Wilders trial or Theo Van Goughs murder? No, didnt think so). Republicans, how many times did the BBC regurgitate the lie of Palins beautiful son being her grand son? Dont even get me started on how the BBC has treated and still does treat GW. British way of life…the BBC is an advocate for the destruction of the British way of life, after all its unfair to expect all those immigrants to adapt to Britain and fit in.
So yes, please do explain how you intend to change the BBC when so many of the biases I have listed above are so deeply ingrained in to the corporations leftist culture.”
ON BBC EDITORIAL GUIDELINES
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Great post.
For such an influential body, the BBC is a disgrace.
Good point about opining on the news rather than reporting it. That is perhaps a feature/problem with 24 hour rolling news.
As Craig has monitored for a long time and I’ve commented on on many occasions the BBC does not care about balance or impartiality. If it did, it would actually have tools in place to monitor its output so it can prove to sceptics that its not biased towards the left.
The BBC does not keep track of how many left wing guests it has on Radio 5, nor how many times Polly Toynbee appears on the BBC. It doesn’t try to balance attack programmes on the Tories (usually going after Lord Ashcroft or some other high profile Tory whilst ignoring Liebour sleaze) with those on other parties.
The BBC starts from a strong left of centre point, it does attack Liebour, but only from the left.
As an example right now on Newsnight they did a clip of an interview with Ariana Huffington at no point did they point out she runs a left wing hates site, yet made it clear who Glenn Beck works for (Fox).
The BBC thinks its bias is subtle, well perhaps for a drugged up halfwit it might be, but anyone who has a brain can see right through it.
Was Toenails being balanced when he piled on on the bullying charity woman for outing the one eyed twat as a thug and bully, knowing full well one eyed WAS?
Was Toenails being balanced when he admitted on his own blog he went easy on Mandelson for getting caught out visiting a rich Russian billionaire on his yacht when he was EU trade minister yet HAMMERED George Osborne for a similar visit?
The list of bias at the BBC goes on and on, left wing hacks giving their own opinion as fact (Sheena Easton and drugs for example) and when they can’t be so obvious they find some left wing tool to do it for them (like Greg Palast)
Your opening paragraph sums up the result you get when you combine editorial and operational independence with a guaranteed unearned income by extortion. The BBC does not care because it does not have to.
I didn’t post it at the time , but recently on “The Daily Politics”, a guest was introduced as being from a “right- of-centre think tank”.
The other two left-wing guests were introduced simply by their names.
We have all seen this so many times before. Can anyone remember the last time the left-wing BBC described anyone or any organisation as “left-wing” ?
Excellent points Martin !
In addition to Toenails conceding that he went easy on Mandelson, as you mention, in 2008 around the time of the Labour government’s data disc loss incompetence didn’t Toenails or some other Beeboid also admit in a blog or written reply that the BBC consciously `went easy’ on the govt as they `didn’t want to be seen to be attacking an easy target’ at a time when the government faced multiple problems simultaneously ?
prpw,
Funny how that doesn’t apply to the coalition.
Obvious Comparison: see what line the BBC pushes when organisations are accussed of The Raycism!
Somehow, redrafting guidelines and announcing everything is wonderful again is never enough in those cases.
TV news at 10 was a prime example of opinion over fact. Flanders demanding investment not cuts by way of carefully slanting her words as though from others. And as for the US report just blatent denigration of the Tea Party and by inference millions of American voters. And a desperate attempt to convince us that Milliband has the makings of a great leader. He looked and sounded like a third class Marxist student on the make.
It all looks increasingly desperate as if they know the game is shortly going to be up and the cosy well paid world of the libbies is about to be smashed by reality and an opposition that hopefully will lack any charity in dealing with them.
Mailman’s message to the BBC is simply devastating, for he reiterates the undeniable truth. Namely, that impartiality is (and never was) possible for the Corporation to exercise.
As he suggests it is the culture of the organisation that prevents it from carrying out its responsibility towards fair and balanced reporting.
Of all the deceitful assertions made by the BBC to the licence-payer, its sham commitment towards impartiality is its biggest deception. Fool most of the people all of the time on this and you have basically given yourself free rein in terms of any other message you want the licence-payer to believe.
The BBC is incapable of introspection and there is not a single reforming soul within it who can be trusted to make it face the cold harsh realisation that it is a monster that exists to suppress public opinion and act in the interests of a particular political philosophy.
Government must acknowledge that the BBC is incapable of regulating itself and that its updating of policy guidance on journalistic conduct serves only to renew the charade.
When a significant proportion of the population ceases to have any confidence in its national broadcaster, or for that matter in any national organisation, that it must be recognised that it is no longer fit for purpose.
The cancer that is BBC bias, which demonstrates every minute of the day that it is no longer capable of reporting objectively, has killed it as an organisation…no amount of reform can allow it to recover the confidence of the viewing and listening public.
ONLY THE ABOLITION OF THE LICENCE-FEE AND A REBUILDING OF A LEANER PBS CAN RESTORE THE PUBLIC’S FAITH.
The BBC is institutionally biased…end of.
One way or another, change is coming.
Another day, another single issue cherrypick to try and whinge about cuts, and today it is… quangos!
These are bodies who introduce a whole extra bunch of folk in the system to duplicate what a another bunch of folk are or could be doing, he says, watching one of 20-odd Beeboids making an odd hand gesture on his mike while saying ‘up and down the shaft… up and down’.
So.. of all the ones they choose to highlight, it’s kiddies on bikes.
Sorry, no. New cuts whinge. Next, a school catering manager, who should not be cut… because she is as important as teachers!
Here’s the thing luv, and Aunty, if there is no more money, there will need to be cuts.
Given the choice, I’ll go for a decent teacher vs. a microwave artist, and make my kids a packed lunch.
There, I have recognised the need for, and made a decision based on reality.
Why the heck are YOU incapable of this, or presenting the subject sensibly with scores of over-paid presenters and reporters (so ditch Sian or Bill, and leave 19 of the fee-drainers in Chile) who do little more than stick mics under the noses of isolated public servants saying ‘not me’.
As an example of BBC-NUJ political bias and irresponsibility, take mass immigration.
1.) Under Labour, BBC-NUJ campaigned, along with Labour, for mass immigration to Britain, accusing critics of ‘racism’, and for many of those years BBC-NUJ ostracized ‘Migrationwatch’.
“Trying to stuff the cat back into the bag” (Melanie Phillips, 2009).
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/5475511/trying-to-stuff-the-cat-back-into-the-bag.thtml
2.) Update to today, and the negative consequences of irresponsible mass immigration into Britain: one example, which even BBC-NUJ can’t igore, although it has to turn to ‘Migrationwatch’ for information:
“Immigrants ‘putting strain on UK school places'”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11536829
A rather appropriately-named ‘Laura Editor’ has been dispatched by senior management, one gathers in the same manner as a 10:10 ‘No Pressure’ PR crisis manager, to smooth things over as the last outing, by Ms. Boaden, rather foundered on her posting and then retiring to the bunker.
See how she does.
The BBC has outlived its Charter.
It was set up in the days of simple broadcasting on just a few channels. We now live in world of narrowcasting, YouTube and Facebook and 500 channel cable & satellite tv.
It doesn’t compute.
The BBC completely distorts the market place.
What has been the most frightening aspect (yes FRIGHTENING) is the BBC acting as an apologist, to this day, for an autocratic left wing socialist executive that ate away at our civil liberties (remember the “tanks on the lawn” episode down at Heathrow where, after sealing off the whole area, they found two immigrants without work permits – only two?) because of a muslim global attack on civilisation (UK Europe USA, Middle East, Mumbai, Bali just in case you forget) and never addressed the real issue.
Paxman is a disgrace, Marr is a complete muppet (angry bloggers – mere name-calling).
The only way out now is to break it up and privatise it. ASAP.
I agree completely with the points made and the anger expressed in the posting and the comments on this thread. Unfortunately, there is no chance that the BBC will be affected one iota by this or that the coalition (or the opposition) will curtail, let alone recognise, BBC bias. There is no appetite (quite the reverse it seems to me) for the Conservatives in Name Only to take on the BBC – and that’s the only direction from which any realistic action would stem. As with the AGW scam, there is too much at stake for those in a position to influence events. The billions (of our money) thrown at, for instance, carbon trading, wind farms and climate “science” departments cannot be ignored. As Hal Lewis said in his APS resignation statement
http://thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/1670-hal-lewis-my-resignation-from-the-american-physical-society.html
the financial consequences of climate “scientists” resiling from their fraudulent “science” are too much for them to bear. In the same way, the consequences – from the BBC and its MSM friends at the Guardian, Indy and FT and the metropolitan chatterati – for a sustained and meaningful attack on the BBC by the Conservatives would be too much to bear.
The only solution – and it might not succeed – is for websites like B-BBC to continue to point out the BBC’s feet of clay and for individuals to “bear witness” in their daily lives (at the risk of boring their families, work colleagues, friends and neighbours) by taking every opportunity to comment on the disgrace that the BBC has become.
I see Yentob is the latest to be disposed of in the usual lucrative, for him, manner. Vast payoff no doubt plus a huge pension pot.
Typical behaviour by a regime that fears for it’s privileges and power.
Al ancien regimes do it and it rarely works. It is tantamount to admitting that things are wrong and that the opposition is becoming difficult.
Make a few small concessions in the hope that this will be enough. It won’t and now is the time to keep up the attack.
As Only Winding points out, al beeb is beyond saving and the only way to remove the cancer this organisation has become is to cut its funding off completely.
The BBC is sick, yet this Government continues to exhibit the lack of backbone that mystifies us. Grow a spine and do what needs to be gone Government. Cut the BBC’s funding NOW!
Mailman
So now the contradiction 🙂
The BBC could be made better but it will be a radical transformation;
1. Get rid of all blogs.
2. Realise their place. As they are funded by the tax payer the BBC needs to understand that it does not need scoops. Leave that to the commercial news stations who need to make money to survive.
3. Instead, concentrate on the story. One of the problems in todays society is that everything moves on so quickly…but with its neigh £4billion budget the BBC can afford to get in depth and investigate stories that the other MFM either cant or wont.
4. Watch and learn from Fox. THere is a very good reason why Fox News continues to be America’s most trusted news outlet, they allow all sides of arguments to be explored and go after stories the MFM wont touch.
5. Fire the majority of lefty news hacks and their support teams and hire other reporters with different cultural views to those that exist in al beeb (ie. hire someone from the right for a change!). Fox does this and is all the better for it! They could start by rehiring Dr Bellamy, whp’s fatal mistake was to doubt man as being the sole cause of Mann Made Global Warming ™.
6. Get rid of all those bs entertainment programs! Al Beeb doesnt need to pay anyone £6million for a contract! Again, al beeb does not need to make money!
7. Put money back in to proper documentary programs that casts aside todays throw away society attitude of “if it aint sexy it aint on tv”.
8. Disband the BBC trust and place control and oversight where it should be, OFCOM!
9. Stop sending a million reporters and staff to do a job that one reporter, camera crew and a couple support staff can do!
Chances of any of this happening? NIL!
Mailman
10. Oh, forgot one of my pet peeves, REALITY SHOWS! Right, if the BBC absolutely must produce a new reality show to find tomorrows leading actor for a west end musical…then FORCE the company staging those shows to charge no more than a tenner for each and EVERY seat in the house!
If rarks me up no end to find that a tax payer funded organisation such as the BBC is engaged in making money for a commercial enterprise in the West End where the vast majority of seats will never be less than £20 and certainly no less than £50 for the best seats in the house!!!!
Al Beeb whinges about the loss of culture in todays society…well do something for the average family who doesnt have a couple hundred pounds lying around to see a west end show with!!!
Oh…that was a bit of a rant 🙂
Mailman
Today’s Honest Reporting, Media Backspin post ‘Complaints From Both Sides’ Is No Rationalization for Lousy BBC Coverage is well worth reading.
The calibre of response/debate from the plethora of £300/400…800k pa ‘market rate talents’ crawling out from under the BBC rock is laughable.
This is a great post. It is fair and accurate and echoes reality… No one can say the BBC is impartial. In fact it is worse, it is killing more balanced organisations through its monopoly. The only trouble is those organisations don’t receive a blank cheque from the UK tax payer.
I do believe as it stands it is beyond repair and as another comment has mentioned here, it needs to be broken up into accountable organisations which offer a quality public broadcasting system. Period.
When is someone in the government or public eye going to tackle this monolith?