The BBC has perhaps lost its way. Listening to Nicky Campbell this morning I couldn’t help thinking that the old fashioned virtues of respect, courage, integrity, moderation, justice, wisdom, loyalty, dignity, honour, striving for excellence, humility and sincerity all seemed in somewhat short supply at the BBC in these modern times.
Courage for instance…the BBC lacked the courage to just refuse to play the ‘Ding dong’ song when it has stopped many other less offensive things from being broadcast….the BBC didn’t have the backbone to take a moral stance and ban it outright but surrendered its principles to political pressure from the anti-Thatcher lobby.
As The National Broadcaster with a uniquely privileged position and high expectations demanded of it, the BBC falls short again and again. The death of Mrs Thatcher has highlighted those failings quite starkly.
Within minutes of her death being announced the BBC was already tearing into her reputation telling us that she was incredibly divisive and that there would be celebrations over her death.
Now today on her funeral the BBC doesn’t seem able to rein itself in and maintain a proper respect on such an occasion. They could have restricted themselves to a dignified reporting of the funeral but instead they filled the hours with arguments, snide comments and jokes about her legacy…things about which they have been talking all week and will be talking about for years to come.
As I said I think the BBC has lost its way and forgotten, or doesn’t think it necessary, how to treat some subjects with a degree of respect and dignity that in previous eras would have been expected.
I have no doubt that on the death of Nelson Mandela, whom David Miliband called a terrorist, the BBC will suddenly remember how to act in a fit and proper manner and its presentation will be far more reverential and dignified than the approach it has taken for Mrs Thatcher’s death and funeral.
Yep, it’s that there double-dipping again.
The BBC splashes round in the gutter with the worst of them, but whenever reform is on the agenda, suddenly they’re starting banging on about their unique position as the voice of the nation, untouched by the sleazy demands of the common herd.
Which is it?
Strangely Alan, this post departs from your norm by not including a myriad of links and a multitude of quotes. Is there something we should read into this reluctance to provide sourced evidence to support your claims?
Looking for the ‘missing link’ Albaman?
Try digging around in the extensive archives on this site for some fossilised BBC Backbone….It’s lost it somewhere along the way.
The BBC could have just played “Ding Dong” in full as the song is not per se offensive, instead, as usual, it put itself at the centre of the news by trying to make it about politics.
Regardless of one’s political or moral views it is pretty evident that the BBC has lost its way when scarcely two days go by without the BBC leading its own news agenda. That is either one hell of a broken organisation or it is run by PR types that work on the adage that the only bad publicity is no publicity.
I wonder if song would have got to No 2 if BBC had not lead each ‘news’ bulletin with this rather poor taste protest. If i started campaign to stick dog muck through Millibands letterbox would i get the same coverage?
I noted that the BBC were unable to say that she was nasty to her juniors and assistants….that must have killed them.
But they hardly ever mentioned the personal courage that she had to give a speech at her Party Conference only hours after she`d nearly been killed by the IRA.
And yet-it`s those same IRA bombers that seem to be asked about the damage that Thatcher did to the country, as opposed to the killing and damage that the “Statesmen of Ulster” did to the Grand Hotle and to those poor souls who died so needlessly.
Who else but the BBC?…divisive 95%, courageous?….hardly!
No real courage is waiting until Saviles dead, before redacting anything nasty about your licking of his medallions.
Today the British people showed their respects to a great prime minister. Throughout the past 10 days the BBC was constantly predicting that there would be large protests at the funeral but of course there were virtually none. On the news tonight the BBC had to rumage through the country to find one protest and that we only a small one in an ex mining village in South Yorkshire with a population of die hards who need to move on.
To me this shows just how out of touch with the real views of the British people the BBC is. They actually believe that because almost all of their employees are of the liberal left the rest of the country is too. They need to wake up and realise that they are in a minority and that their decades long attempt to change the views of the British people has been less successful than they imagine in their posh tax payer funded enclaves in London.
However, the rest of us need to guard against further attempts of the BBc to manipulate us into following their line. We need to stop paying them their money and show them that we don’t want them to feed us their biased left wing rubbish any longer.
I agree, I have had to just turn the radio off a view times this week due to the immature and down right untrue leftish propaganda that has been spewed forth. This last week has seen a new low in the behaviour of the usual suspects. The only bright side has been the people I have spoken to that have said that they admired Mrs Thatcher and I live in S Wales.
Talking of Mandela, let’s put to bed once and for all yet another historical myth perpetuated by the Left:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/9997714/Margaret-Thatchers-vital-role-in-ending-apartheid.html
‘When the two emerged, he paid tribute to the role she had played in helping to secure his release, saying that “we have much to thank her for”. On visits to London after Mrs Thatcher had left office, Mandela continued to make a point of seeing her to thank her for the role she had played. She had done more to promote peaceful change in southern Africa than all her predecessors combined’.
great link, thank you. I knew much of that but not all. Isn’t it funny how everything that the Left hold against her is either wrong or misinformed: when I meet people who say they hate her/know someone who hates her/she did this/she did that I almost literally rub my hands together before ripping them to pieces.
Tonight’s bBBC NorthWest Tonight had surveyed all the local town halls and reported that 24 flew the Union flag at half-mast and 8 didn’t (I believe these were the figures). So of course they visited or gave statements from the 8 that didn’t, in the interests of balance of course.
They then went to the Liverpool ‘Thatcher is dead party’ where a tiny group of whingeing Scousers gathered to celebrate. No respect, but the bBBC did, however, show a little moderation as the reporter said that they wouldn’t get the microphones too close to the party as the Scousers were too foul-mouthed to broadcast.
Yes, Beeboids are politically aiding and abetting same Scouser whingers, to opportunistically now blame Margaret Thatcher for Hillsborough.
Beeboids are not found politically exposing Scousers such as Hatton:-
‘Daily Mail’ (2009)-
“‘Thatcher’s mother should have believed in abortion’: Firebrand Derek Hatton’s ‘obnoxious’ slur on former PM.”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1113682/Thatchers-mother-believed-abortion-Firebrand-Derek-Hattons-obnoxious-slur-PM.html#ixzz2QoMCd163
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That’s why I try to avoid bBBC NorthWest these days. Every week they fabricate some ‘news’ story about the Hillsborough ‘revenge’ campaign, each further distorting the events. According to the bBBC there were only 96 Liverpool supporters at Leppings Lane, minding their own business until Mrs Thatcher ordered the Yorkshire Police to crush them against the fence. Although, if you believed the gossip in local pubs, the entire million population of Merseyside were at Hillsborough that day, but none of them was pushing to get in.
mac cartoon-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/coffeebreak/cartoons/mac.html
Richard Bacon in particular seemed very upset and disappointed at the turn of events.
Louise Armitstead @larmitstead 17 Apr
BBC, which Mrs T detested, can’t quite admit that people on streets are clapping & throwing flowers. Dimbleby desperate for protests.
richard bacon @richardpbacon 23h
@larmitstead what crap
I found Peter Allen’s contribution completely decent. An apolitical homage to Margarat Thatcher.
What was truly ghastly was ‘Dr Kate Williams’ Royal Historian.
A complete moron, obviously very anti-Thatcher and pro Argentina. Possibly a peculiar choice for the BBC to have on this day.
She said (roughly 20 mins in Alan’s link) that the reason for a near state funeral was because she was the first female Prime Minister.
No. It was because she was a titan who put the great back into Britain, you stupid pygmie historian.
Peter Oborne was excellent, and NC did a great interview with him.
On a personal note, I defied all of Margarat Thatcher’s strictures on economic prudence and flew over at the last moment from Barcelona to mourn and remember this Great Patriot.
A hugely moving day and one simply could not have lived with oneself had one not paid the unpayable debt of respect and gratitude this truly great woman deserved.
I tried to watch Margaret Thatcher’s funeral on TV but, as it turned out, I had a lot of things to do and could only snatch brief moments here and there.
Maybe I was just being over-sensitive – this was the BBC and I was perhaps “looking” for things and perhaps reading too much into things but the programme had barely started when Dimbleby referred to the Falklands War and then immediately added “or ‘conflict’ as it is now officially termed”.
The inference being that a “conflict” is not as grand as a “war” – Thatcher won a trifling conflict… not an actual war.
As I say, I may have been being over-sensitive but it just seemed a strange thing to say.
Perhaps not quite as strange as his later recounting of Lady Thatcher being quite flirtatious with men, though.
Time and place, Dimbleby. Time and place.