Last week Thursday seemed to be a 24 hour Labour Party political broadcast on the BBC.
The BBC attacked the Tories on all fronts blaming them and the dreaded Capitalism for the ills of Society..a veritable Pearl Harbour attack launched at dawn on the Today programme:
Wonga pay day loans
Energy prices
Free schools (asking ‘Is there something rotten within the Free school system?)
Miliband’s ‘Predistribution’…now renamed ‘The Living wage’. (Alan Milburn…back to his Labour roots as he promotes Miliband’s policy under the guise of a ‘report’)
Pensioners who live the ‘high life’ whilst the young are abandoned.
Not a bad agenda for a single day.
When you consider what ex BBC journo Robin Aitken in the Telegraph has to say you may consider that the BBC’s innate affinity with Labour politics is a problem:
The BBC can pretty much dictate terms when it comes to the national debate – and it’s a power it exercises in full measure.
This underlines a truth not sufficiently acknowledged – that all journalism is a matter of selection. The running order of the BBC’s main bulletins is not ordained by some higher authority; instead, it is merely the preference of BBC editors. And to understand why the BBC chooses as it does, you have to understand who makes those selections.
BBC selection boards naturally enough tend to go for candidates made in their own image and likeness. Like other organisations, the BBC chooses people who they feel are “right for us”. In this way, the system becomes self-reinforcing. Aspiring young BBC journalists know that they will be expected to show an interest in a particular type of story. So an internal culture is constructed, recruit by recruit, which reinforces an established world view.
The way the day is structured in the BBC’s main news centre encourages an insidious orthodoxy. Each morning, the senior editors meet to discuss the day’s agenda. A consensus emerges, and because the corporation is fiercely hierarchical, the juniors – nurturing their promising careers – take their cue from their elders and betters. Which is why from morning to midnight, from Today to the Ten O’Clock News and right on down the chain to local radio, the same stories lead the bulletins.
This amplification effect is what gives BBC news output such enormous clout. More than 90 per cent of us listen or watch the BBC every week. For many people, the BBC is their constant companion – from dawn to dusk it is the background soundtrack in the lives of millions.
That is why, uniquely among media organisations, the BBC performs the role of gatekeeper to the national debate.
If the BBC doesn’t run with a story then, arguably, it isn’t a story at all.
Impartiality is not an optional extra for the BBC – it is at the heart of its contract with the licence-fee payers.
The BBC used to inspire near-universal trust: it can no longer take that for granted.
‘the juniors – nurturing their promising careers – take their cue from their elders and betters’
For some lowest on the totem on station here today, that has to sting, even if just a bit.
Elders – Yes. Betters – No
Hope this works was sent to me earlier today of unknown origin
http://uk-mg-bt.mail.yahoo.com/ya/download?mid=2_0_0_1_342802_AKoo5C4AAA9fUmObfQAAAMlb4uE&pid=2&fid=Inbox&inline=1
Wouldn’t load the page for me.
If only Robin had spoken out on all this when he actually WAS a BBC employee…the Beeb always make the likes of O`Reilly, Sissons and Aitken sound like embittered old fogeys with an agenda, now they`ve left the loving smothering bosom of Auntie.
Still-well put and cogent.
A very dangerous lying bunch of lefty weasels and woodlice in search of fame and that “amplification” that Robin describes.
Will the BBC EVER do a programme about how the magic happens there at the BBC…say, an editorial conflab about how they choose their stories?
Or is that letting daylight in on magic-and will show them for the lefty Common Purpose footsoldiers( actually in sedan chairs and coolie rickshaws) that they are…”kitmen” in Islamic parlance.
Or is transparency only called for in private care homes alone?…need I ask?
In his book, Can We Trust the BBC , Atktin explains that he was invited to leave the BBC after his criticisms of the biased nature of the BBC at internal policy meetings, became too much for them to put up with.
And speaking of the 24 hour onslaught by the BBC re the Tory agenda.
How come this “Al Madina” school gets the obligatory free pass in regard of its…err…”freeness”.
It`s a Muslim madrassa isn`t it?
So not so free at all-in fact, it`s named after Islams second city-would it save embarrassment for the BBC if only they could translate “Al Madina” into English..you know “cuddly religious people of peace that whitey is always vile about”.
Sorry BBC-keep calling it Al Madina and hope against hope that we think it`s a cake of a cocktail.
Wonder what Al Makkah translates as…a ballroom I expect…or victim support group/Al Shabab Daycare centre?
F666 Off BBC-it`s no free school-it`s a state sponsored madrassa…so tell Clegg to shove it eh?
Agreed.
State schools can be renamed as Marxist madrasas.
The main interest of the BBC and Labour on this story is support of the teacher’s unions and LEA’s. I’m sure that the BBC would much prefer it if the story was about a non Islamic Free School. Infact that they are running with this shows just how powerful within the liberal left the teacher’s unions are. Normally the BBC would have left anything that reflected badly on Islam well alone, so the teachers must command a great deal of influence within the state funded broadcaster.
Ah yes teachers must have qualifications.
Like my mate, doesn’t have a degree but brilliant mathematician who sailed through his actuarial exams. Couldn’t possibly teach Maths to A Level standard, could he, not being qualified an’ all.
As ever Unions and their supporting droids are about protecting entrenched interests.
Teachers who are qualified simply get a microchip into delivering state mantras and parrot-speak.
They are now third rate toadies who haven`t really got over the defenestration of the Blair Creature( as St Peter Hitchens calls him).
A bunch of useful ciphers who can`t teach at all-which is why the private schools won`t touch them with a barge pole, but will wait to employ rugby players for P.E…i.e people who DO things-don`t simply skim the thoughts of a Blunkett, a Byers or a Balls..let alone a Crick, a Chomsky or a Sutherland.
And Gove is captive to much of it still despite real progress.
The Left were quite right to create these wannbe TV Blue Peter Presenters, and turn them into condom dispensers-albeit without any capacity to give change( maybe the maths department excepted.).
And-as I`ve said elsewhere…I`m a teacher! I should know!
Where`s headmaster then? Sorting out self-esteem classes for me I bet…or is he merely pretending?
Don’t forget the free Labour party political broadcast given to Ed on watchdog 2 weeks ago and the non-existant party political broadcast given to the Tory party last week.
Don’t seem to recall Anne Robinson asking Ed about the green taxes he introduced contributing a sizeable chunk of the energy price increases.
Doris wrote:
“So you are in favour of Wonga? Screw the poor.
You want high energy prices. 10% is not enough.
You want unqualified teachers running schools on religious lines. Because qualified teachers think…
You don’t believe Britain is becoming more unequal. Because you know better than anyone else without any substance.
Pensioners paying 40% tax should be treated the same as those paying none with all the benefits. Treat everyone the same except the unemployed and young who shouldn’t get a penny.”
But these are all opinions. OK for the BBC to report them, as long as they report contrary views.
But where, on Wonga loans, do we hear about the Wonga loans that Gordon Brown and currently Obama have taken out, putting future generations in hock?
Where on the BBC have we had a full expose of Labour’s crackpot ideas about an energy price freeze, that will result in a collapse in investment in new infastructure, the lights going out, and ultimately the inevitability of a much bigger price hike?
What do you mean by “qualified” teachers? Does the possession of a PGCE certificate guarantee excellence or higher quality thinking? Is is not possible that others who have had experience of other walks of life have much to contribute to the classroom?
Has it occurred to you that “equality” has become an obsession in our society, and a concern with quality would be a much better way forward for all?
Has it occurred to you that many pensioners paying 40% tax have saved rather than spent, and are now getting a pittance on their savings. What is the justice in asking them to pay more, given that they are already contributing more through higher rate taxation (which now kicks in at a relatively modest amount)?
These are alternative points of view to what you and the BBC have put forward. My point is not to say that these are the only ones that should be expressed, but that the BBC as a publicly funded organisation should be impartial, present the news factually, and expose us to a variety of opinions instead of their dreary unthinking Marxist mantras in their editorialised serving up of the news.
Well said.
Seconded
Millburn ..aaargh……..paxman summed this git up in his book………….running the NHS his only previous business experience was running a lefty bookshop , called Days of Hope but known locally as Haze of Dope!
Mystic Ed .take note!
I`ll not have that!
Tha Fenham dope den of his influenced local councillors like Cunningham, Poulson pals etc enough to get him his first jolly as North Tynesides Cultural attache(travel and tourism/business detachment).
But he comes from a council flat and single mum stuff-file under token lefty victimhood a la Alan Johnson.
Indeed-had he not done so-he might have had to earn a living for himself…and being a victim entitles you to the public tit…as long as you hold views the BBC and patronising types like Toynbee approve of.