Remember Leveson and all that when so much was made of the dominance of one media giant…..no, not the BBC.
Seems that all that foot stamping and those pious demands for media plurality was just so much hot air.
Apparently Cameron has taken them at their word and gone forth and spread the word, literally, amongst the highest and the lowest in the land.
Cameron has been talking to regional journalists and broadcasters and the Big Boys don’t like it.
Of course as the BBC is by far the most dominant of the news providers with the lion’s share of the audience for news it is the BBC that should be losing out…its stranglehold on the national narrative perhaps being loosened…no bad thing if true.
Cameron talking to local concerns is a good ploy, back to the soapbox almost…but he still needs the national media, so the BBC still has a significant role to play no doubt.
“Mr Cameron’s director of communications, Craig Oliver, who has been editor of the BBC’s 6pm and 10pm news bulletins, is regarded by the broadcasters as a poacher turned gamekeeper. ”
Bloody right-wing BBC.
AIAI – typical Leftist distraction tactic. So AIAI do you think that dominance by a media giant is good or bad? Does your opinion change depending on the political stance of the media giant? If people dislike the dominance of the BBC should they be forced to pay for it?
whoosh………
Is that the sound of you heading for the exit because you have nothing to contribute?
I assumed it was the sound of of the confusion of AIAI as your sensible question would have shot right over his (AIAI’s) head.
Re-reading AIAI’s post I think I originally missed his tone of sarcasm. If so, sorry AIAI. If sarcasm wasn’t intended, my previous point remains.
Sarcasm is a dangerous tool on the web, as I’ve found to my cost more than once.
I must admit, I read some sarcasm into it and accordingly gave AIAI the benefit of the doubt
The Beeboids are, as we all know, devoid of any sense of irony or humour. It’s one of the ways you can always spot them, like the telltale giveaway in those alien takeover sci-fi movies. It’s the little things that always give them away as non-human…..
I have occasionally forgotten to add the /sarc at the end of sarcastic posts, to my cost too.
It makes a big difference when inflections in the voice and facial expressions are not possible.
After all, there is a big difference between, ‘Miliband is doing a wonderful job’ and ‘Miliband is doing a wonderful job /sarc’
Stewart says:
August 24, 2013 at 3:06 pm
The trouble is it is almost impossible to lampoon the bourgeois left ,as no statement, however outlandish, can ever exceed the ones they make themselves
Some people just don’t listen
‘do you think that dominance by a media giant is good or bad?’
Generally, I’d say no. However, while the BBC’s audience is big, I wouldn’t call it dominance. People in the UK are fortunate to have access to huge range of sources of news.
I see the BBC a bit like the Monarchy. You wouldn’t design a meritocracy with an institution in a position of privilege. But it works. As an accident of history, the BBC has and continues to be the dominant reason why a little island like Britian punches so far above its weight in terms of broadcasing.
They system works, its worked successfully for decades, and its is still one of the world’s leading broadcasters. In a way, you’re criticising the BBC for being successful. People tune in to it, and turn to BBC news at the source they most trust.
Does your opinion change depending on the political stance of the media giant? If it was dominant then of course. But the BBC isn’t dominant and doesnt have a political stance.
The article quoted, doesnt only provides unamed sources for the story, and you’ll notice SKY & ITV in the same position.
“People in the UK are fortunate to have access to huge range of sources of news.”
Have you ever tried finding a news programme on the radio when travelling to or from work if the BBC are on strike? There are none, certainly where I live. That’s not my idea of a huge range of sources.
No we are not critcising the BBC for being successful, which of course they are, but only because they receive enormous amounts of public money.
However, being in receipt of public money they have an absolute democratic duty to be impartial, to tell the people the truth , to represent all strands of public opinion, to encourage open and fair debate. We criticise them because they do none of these things and consequently undermine democracy in Britain.
It is far too high a price to pay
“Does your opinion change depending on the political stance of the media giant? If it was dominant then of course. But the BBC isn’t dominant and doesnt have a political stance.”
Top trolling. Does not have a political stance? Have you ever even watched the BBC?
He’s a new troll to this site. Like Scott minus the brains.
Ouch.
I don’t know if that’s supposed to be ironic or whether it really is just the most hilariously warped example of intellectual selectivity I’ve ever seen. Either way, it got a god laugh.
Bloody “Progressive” Cameron.
It’s true: three people (Oliver, Nick Robinson, and Andrew Neil) are proof that the BBC is not overwhelmingly filled with Left-wing people. Pay no attention to all those who have openly tweeted their Left-wing views, stood as Labour candidates, make jokes only about Conservatives and Republican Presidents, accidentally say, “When we win the election”, wax fondly about the halls of Broadcasting House being filled with champagne bottles after the 1997 election, express their love for the current US President, admit that the BBC has had a Liberal bias, censor heretical sentences about harmful green energy policies from statements by the Bank of England boss, hold secretive meetings on how to infuse news, comedy and drama programming with AGW ideology, express exclusively Left-wing opinions when they appear as pundits on political panel shows on US networks, the parade of Left-wing ideologues who have been political or economic editors or top editor of Newsnight, ask a Conservative Prime Minister on air how he sleeps at night, or actually worked as activists for Democrat Presidential campaigns. Pay no attention to any of that at all, because three people balance all of that out. Also pay no attention to all those who have left the BBC to work for Labour, or worked for Labour before coming to be a top mandarin at the BBC: they’re pure but Oliver isn’t.
Sarcasm ends, but disdain doesn’t.
We know Craig Oliver must be a Conservative on some level – despite Nick Robinson’s protestations not to have had an inkling of his political views after years of working with him (anyone who trusts Robinson on these things is a fool) – is the one who berated Norman Smith about a reflexive Leftoid mindset from BBC News. He should know, after all. So now anyone claiming the BBC doesn’t have an overwhelming tilt to the Left can call Craig Oliver a liar as well as Peter Sissons. Can we retire this argument now?
Nick Robinson is not a Tory despite many attempts by leftists to paint him so. He may have been a Young Conservative at university but he has openly renounced that association many times.
During the Blair years Robinson was called ‘Toenails’ for a good reason.
David Prieser. Brilliant rebuttal of the three presenters ( non left )making BBC balanced.
That whole post – sarcastic or otherwise – depends on whether Cameron himself is ‘right wing’.
“It’s not our job to broadcast televised press releases!”
Unless they happen to be from a favoured charity / think tank / single issue pressure group
How about Occupy
The Anti-Fracking eco fascists?
Every single press release and public statement of the Labour party…..
Perhaps Cameron realises just how outrageously biased the BBC is? Surely he has absolutely no obligation to speak the the BBC/Guardian Comintern
Dear Dave,
The BBC loves Twitter. Might I suggest that you communicate with the BBC only by Twitter in future. Something like this
David Cameron @David_Cameron
OMG BBC!! ur report on our Eastleigh candidiate was a right get-up!!!
If they diss you at any point , block them.
So Cameron should act like Paul Mason in other words.
BBC once again showing its hypocrisy.
Again, News International deserved no sympathy for Leveson. You can’t go hacking phones and emails on celebrities or dead schoolgirls and expect to hold the moral high ground. Likewise the public was right to oppose the BSkyB deal, especially after the phone tapping came to light.
But the fact is that the BBC and its supporters often don’t hold it or themselves under the same scrutiny. When the full extent of Jimmy Savile’s actions were realised, and when the BBC was shown to have dropped the Newsnight report a year earlier – not to mention several other internal investigations over the decades previously that went nowhere – their integrity wasn’t called into question by the left. Nor was it when they later ran the story that heavily implied Lord McAlpine had committed child sex abuse (ironically it was the Guardian that cleared his name). Instead, they were accused of ‘poor crisis management’ and nobody seemed bothered that the DG was allowed to resign just a few months into his job with a severance pay of several hundred thousands pounds of tax-payers money – nor that the female news commissioner kept her job, but two male underlings lost theirs, in what appears to be a clear case of institutional sexism.
Cameron is doing the right thing, and I very rarely say that, by applying the rules that the BBC and Labour themselves demanded of them fairly and consistently across all of the major news outlets. The BBC and the Guardian assumed they would be beyond these laws because they’re left-leaning which is often incorrectly seen as ‘impartial,’ but they’re finding out that’s not the case. It must be a bit of a culture shock to discover that they actually have to be culpable for a change.
And equally the BBC’s thirst for holding people in power to account seems to vary with just who it is that’s under the gun.
If Cameron *really* wants to avoid scrutiny from the BBC, he just needs to put on a white coat and the BBC will never trouble him again. One hospital in Staffordshire alone managed to kill more citizens than the Falklands, Afghanistan and both Gulf Wars combined, but the BBC has ruled that this is just one of them things. Nothing to see. Dullsville.
As Mrs Merton would say, what is it about the bloated, arrogant, unaccountable NHS that appeals to the BBC?
Two points.
1. No journalist nor media output has the slightest notion what morality is so I would never believe any of them when the claim the ‘moral high ground.’ I suspect many of their readers/listeners feel the same.
2. NI did NOT touch any ‘ dead schoolgirls ‘ phone. That was a Guardian lie. They have admitted it. Unfortunately it seems that was the one day the BBC did not garner all its news from that one source.
I have never had much faith in Cameron as he is ‘Blair-lite’ and was, even before the election. Anyone who thinks the country wanted another Blair once Blair had gone was deluded hence the Coalition instead of a Tory government. WTF Cameron thinks the public want is a mystery to me and, I believe, to him too.
Worth pointing out that no ‘real’ hacking or phone tapping was done at all….by anyone (except maybe the real hackers and the security services respectively).
So the BBC is unhappy that Cameron is snubbing them in favor of local journos? He’s only doing what the US President tried during His 2012 re-election campaign. Nobody at the BBC made a peep about that, so it must be okay.
Amusing to see in the Guardian today Brian Cathcart (leading figure in the Leveson inquiry)complaining about infringements on press freedom over the NSA spying revelations – specifically the detention of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald’s boyfriend at Heathrow.
Lots of commenters pointing out the sheer hypocrisy of the Guardian… How it campaigned and cheered as News International journalists were arrested and newspapers closed down, and then wanted state-control of the press through Leveson.
Exactly the same accusations could be levelled at the BBC. They were hand-in-hand with the guardian over Leveson, and also over the detention of Miranda.
In short, they want laws restricting the freedoms of right-wing press, but they shouldn’t be applied to the left-wing press who, in their eyes, know what is in the public interest and should be left alone.
“In short, they want laws restricting the freedoms of right-wing press, but they shouldn’t be applied to the left-wing press who, in their eyes, know what is in the public interest”
The enthusiastic way in which the BBC attacked the free press is symptomatic of its essential corruption – the scrapping of the BBC cannot come to soon. They are not simply greedy (show me somebody on the Left who isn’t) they are totalitarian. They take it upon themselves to determine what are acceptable thoughts.
It is not the beautiful people who read the autocue who are the problem – it is the ugly Fascists who write their scripts. The BBC seek nothing less than complete conformism to Party thinking.
écrasez l’infâme
“Hacked Off’s double standards on press freedom”
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/08/the-guardians-double-standards-about-press-freedom-are-coming-back-to-haunt-them/?