This is a response by Milverton to this rather self-indulgent attempt at humour……I might suggest he represents the views of most people who read this site and puts them across very well and concisely….namely that the BBC is, in concept, a good idea, that in reality it provides much of value but falls down seriously by ‘polluting’ its output with its own political and social agenda and that privatisation is not the answer to providing many vital, and necessary almost regardless of cost, public services.
‘Very nice site, but filling a pothole is a somewhat simpler prospect than filling every second God sends with programming. Forever.
Look, it is plain to see that there are certain parts of the BBC that need urgent action, and those aspects involve what are clearly poor journalistic standards led by a liberal groupthink, and the demands of rolling news, the most evil invention of the post-war period, including the atomic bomb.
Five Live, for example, are, by dint of the sheer amount of airtime dedicated to it, an absolute bastion of unchallenged left wing opinion. From Campbell and Burden on a Monday morning to Stephen Nolan on Sunday night its non-sport output picks up and runs with issues taken straight from the Guardian’s Comment Is Free section to fill in the time between Labour talking points and press releases from left of centre think tanks and charities.
Biased BBC exists to point out these sorts of issues. This apparent conflation of all private sector is good and all public sector bad is simply bias in the opposite direction.
It is noticable that the one BBC employee who is regularly praised here is Andrew Neil. He is the last remaining example, now Paxman has given up the ghost, of the sort of BBC journo I grew up watching. Neil disdains our political classes equally. That is exactly how it should be. I don’t want leftwing bias replaced by rightwing bias. I want evenhandedness. I accept such things are in the eye of the beholder, but the BBC used to be far better at it, if never perfect.
I don’t expect to watch a BBC news programme and see someone who should be impartial and should take professional pride in being so seemingly wilfully abrogate that responsibilty to push their own agenda. It is the anithesis of what the BBC should be.
I’m going to come out and say it. I like the BBC. For the most part it fulfils its remit. It shows many programmes I personally don’t like. My wife does, and my children do. The BBC have to be all things to all people, and away from the news output broadly do so.
No, I don’t think it is realistic for every British Army General, senior police officer or High Court Judge on Doctor Who to be by default black, but nor is it realistic for a one thousand year old alien to be chased around the galaxy by sentient pepperpots.
My point is this. Many of us on this site seem to see ourselves as representative of all of society. For good or ill, and the jury is still out, that simply isn’t the case. There are things on the BBC that simply aren’t meant for me and you. We would disagree amongst ourselves as to the good and bad. The thing that the BBC do for everyone, the news and current affairs, however, are in a parlous state. That is the battleground, not whether lessons can be learnt for the BBC from a potholes hotline. (The answer, by the way, is “No”.)
The BBC doesn’t need a wreath, it needs a Reith. Now, where you find one, perhaps standing next to the modern day Churchill over there, is a different matter.’
Take the point that it`s not all aimed at me.
That said, just heard Peter Oborne ask Geoffrey Robinson for(and I quote) an “impartial” opinion on Osbornes Budget.
(Week in Westminster 11.am Radio 4 22/3/14).
And Oborne knows about the lying, venal political classes-yet he says this to Mandelsons mortgage broker?
Then I heard two minutes of “the News Quiz” with Mark Steel and Jeremy Hardy.
Outrageous sneering patronage of the working classes, albeit by using Grant Shapps bingo twitter as the pretext.
These lefty comedians are every bit as nasty and ignorant of the lower orders, as the biggest Tory caricature of their own creation….but they feign “satire” as the pretext to spout their evil creeds.
And this is what I hate most about the BBC-they`re lazy, they use the same old address book, they`re cliche ridden and provide work for the student politicos and unfunny snobs that infest the BBC these days.
They insult me-and I know too much now(thanks to so many others, but never the BBC these days) to let them continue to slap my face with a wedge of my own money.
They`ve got to go-they need a wreath…and maybe Saviles is still available.
If not, ask a Labour MP to claim one from expenses as they`re prone to doing.
chrisH, well said. I think the same as you and the sooner someone with big enough takes them down and crushes their snivelling snouts into the excrement of their own making, the better.
missing word is ‘cojones’.
Mark Steel, alumnus of the private school Whitgift? If you look at his Wiki slot you might understand what twisted him.
The agenda of the BBC is World government. If one accepts that the final state of the world will be a world government, then the BBC is merely hurrying things along.
The agenda of the totalitarian left has always been world government. In the recent past, attempts to build such an utopia, resulted in the horrific deaths of some 150 million people in the space of a few decades.
I’m sorry but I must disagree with the thesis that the BBC is a good idea that has gone wrong and can be put right by a modern titan like Reith.
My problem with the idea of the BBC, is that I believe that any organisation which is state funded will always, in the end, become an advocate of more state spending and bigger government. Therefore, I think the notion of an ‘independent BBC which upholds impartiality’ to be fatally flawed.
My second objection, is that I simply do not believe that even a latter day Reith could reform the BBC . It is beyond reform. It is staffed by people who are overwhelmingly from the liberal left . Many hundreds, if not several thousand, of these would have to go if the content put out by the BBC was to be truly impartial, and this will never happen.
I recognise that there are still some programmes put out by the BBC which are of good quality and do fulfill its charter requirements of entertaining, educating and informing, but their number dwindles as the politicalisation of the corporation grows.
In my view, if we in the UK, want to have high quality programmes free from bias, then we need to induce the private sector to make them, by commissioning high quality content backed by tax payers money. The composition of the commissioning body would need to carefully controlled to avoid bias and the companies would have to receive a value of commissions strictly according to their ratings and no more than say 10% of their total income. No tax payers money would go towards news and current affairs programmes.
Of course there is no room for the BBC in this set up.
After a certain point, all bureaucracies cease to serve those who put them there and pay them, and simpley sever themselves.
This happened long ago at the BBC. And the NHS
simpley sever = simply serve
doh…
Now you’ve dashed a few hopes – I have no doubt that I am not the only one who liked the first version better 🙂
we all have to move with the times they say except the bbc dinosuars,did you listen to question time extra time on thursday night at 11.40 pm on radio 5 live with nolan and pienaar after question time,as usual the regular middle class radio 5 live leftie and commie callers were selected to defend the tv licence and slag off america and the west while defending putin and his commie stalinists over crimea,but the tv licence debate really got me with its bias,leftie regular 5 live callers came on like the sychophants there are defending the tv license and saying how great the bbc are,see nolan and the likes of pienaar are terrified of the bbc losing the tv license,bang goes there high wages and perks for one.question time extra time was sick inducing with its bias and lack of impartiality on thursday night,get rid of the tv license and the bias will go with it.
If the running dogs and lickspittles of the vicious and committed communists/socialists in our country and the entire Western world, cared to read some history; particularly the Russian Revolution, they’d realise that they are the useful idiots who were systematically shot by the Bolsheviks once they’d served their purpose.
I agree with most of what you say, but please stop bashing Putin.
Look at things from his perspective. An ugly mob removes the democratically elected (though corrupt) president of Ukraine. The EU and US say this is fine (and to hell with the democratic process). Why?
The Russian speaking majority in Crimea feel threatened by the new and illegitimate government in Kiev.
The local population votes to return to Russia where (and from administrative purposes only) they formed part until 1954. I accept that the referendum wasn’t perfect, but this is about self-determination.
Anyway, Putin (who also saved us from getting involved in Syria and backing Al-Qaeda-led militias) is a pretty good guy and we could do with someone like him here in the UK.
If I may make a small observation. If going over to the private sector is the answer to Liberal/Left bias then can some one explain how the news content on Sky differs very little from the BBC. I have watched Sky news and seen the same wishy washy content. I feel the only way we are going to counter this bias is to have an overtly right wing bias Fox type channel and this is because if the BBC prevailing view is publicly and continuously challenged, eventually we meet in the middle. Just an idea.
‘..the news content on Sky differs very little from the BBC’
True.
But it is possible that when they were chasing me to return, my having zapped the SKY DD along with the TVL one, when I told them I would also not miss their woeful news product either, that feedback may have sunk in with the loss of my voluntary revenue stream.
I also am with those seeking objective professional broadcasting across the board, so a ‘right wing’ counter is no different and hence no better than mixing colours in a paintpot and hoping for a rainbow.
You will just get more sludge.
FOX isn’t right-wing, their treatment of Ron Paul demonstrates that. They are just as left-wing as any other channel, the only difference being that instead of espousing a large cultural-marxist state like the BBC, they espouse a large state centered around the military-industrial complex, which is completely at odds with the right-wing principles the USA was founded upon.
I dare say that it isn’t possible to have a large truly right-wing broadcaster, because any large private media entity will seek to influence government in a sinister fashion. Perhaps the true right-wing media lies on the internet in the form of small blogs and podcasts, free from state censorship.
It’s a good piece by Milverton, but it doesn’t answer any of the central issues: What is the license fee for? Why is it even relevant in an age of multi-channel subscription television via cable, satellite or online? What is the BBC’s USP, if you will, and why (if it exists at all) does it require – over all other broadcast offerings – a legally-enforced license fee to maintain it?
In short: what does the BBC actually offer as a public service broadcaster that it could not otherwise offer as a subscription-based broadcaster?
Nobody, least of all the BBC itself, has ever answered this question satisfactorily.
If the BBC were a commercially-funded subscription broadcaster it could happily churn out its liberal-biased agenda all day, for all I (and a great many others) would care. It simply wouldn’t matter; it wouldn’t annoy, it wouldn’t be such a source of constant irritation to so many – after all, in such a scenario nobody would be forced to pay for it on pain of imprisonment for non-compliance, therefore nobody need pay it the slightest attention whatsoever, except for those who actually want to.
As things stand, the BBC is a broadcast bully, extracting money with menaces from the entire television-watching public whilst failing spectacularly to even fake any semblance of ‘impartiality’ on contentious issues of politics, climate change, the EU, immigration, etc, etc.
If the BBC cannot manage to fulfil its Charter requirements for impartiality (and I would venture to suggest that on current evidence it quite clearly cannot) then it has forfeited its right to the £3.5bn pa it currently receives as a public service broadcaster.
Kill the license fee now and force the BBC out on to the open commercial market. If it is even half as ‘cherished’ and ‘world-class’ as it likes to (constantly) remind us, surely a happy future awaits it, enjoyed by those who specifically wish to receive it – who knows, it might even start earning the kind of ridiculous amounts in subscription revenue currently enjoyed by the likes of Sky (a yearly sum, incidentally, which completely dwarfs the BBC’s annual license fee heist).
“What is the license fee for? Why is it even relevant in an age of multi-channel subscription television via cable, satellite or online? What is the BBC’s USP, if you will, and why (if it exists at all) does it require – over all other broadcast offerings – a legally-enforced license fee to maintain it?”
Surely these are questions for the Government. It is after all the Government who both sets the license fee and the legislation around its collection.
“…Surely these are questions for the Government. It is after all the Government who both sets the license fee and the legislation around its collection.”
Well, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? The BBC has other ideas. Slippery as ever, it has carefully reframed the question to ‘What is the BBC for?’.
See how this works? The issue becomes not how the BBC is funded, but rather a question of what it should be doing with that money?
This is how the BBC want to fight the licence fee issue as we move towards Charter renewal – by slyly changing the frame of reference to divert enquiry away from asking difficult questions of the legitimacy of a license fee at all, to one instead of content and remit. The BBC want everyone to assume the license fee is sacrosanct; immovable, and therefore not a valid topic for discussion.
Watch over the coming months as the BBC expands upon this theme, carefully ‘nudging’ public opinion towards its preferred agenda.
“…Surely these are questions for the Government. It is after all the Government who both sets the license fee and the legislation around its collection.”
Perhaps I am being naive, but I like to think these questions are for the people who occasionally get a chance to vote for the MPs who form the government.
I demand a referendum on the BBC licence fee – it’s my human right!
I think Milverton has written some excellent posts but I cannot agree with his summary on this one.
“My point is this. Many of us on this site seem to see ourselves as representative of all of society. For good or ill, and the jury is still out, that simply isn’t the case. There are things on the BBC that simply aren’t meant for me and you. We would disagree amongst ourselves as to the good and bad. The thing that the BBC do for everyone, the news and current affairs, however, are in a parlous state.”
I wouldn’t mind if there were things that were not for me and the other people who are regulars here. What I worry about is the constant indoctrination and brain washing by the BBC (‘the best drama in the world’ as I quoted only the other day, oft repeated but without evidence). I worry about the anti-Semitism not just in the news but used in the drama – Israeli killers in Spooks for example; the assumption that climate change is man made and evidence has to be brought into every nature programme; the rewriting of history for example Mrs Thatcher with rants in supposedly comedy programmes like the News Quiz or QI and Gordon Brown who apparently, according to the BBC was the best PM ever and taking down from iplayer anything that suggests otherwise.
A good, thought-provoking piece from Milverton.
A few points:
1. ‘I don’t want leftwing bias replaced by rightwing bias. I want evenhandedness.’
That is a key point and the raison d’ etre of this site (in my view). The BBC’s defenders who occasionally pay us a visit either miss this completely or choose to ignore it.
2. I’m going to come out and say it. I like the BBC. For the most part it fulfils its remit. It shows many programmes I personally don’t like. My wife does, and my children do. The BBC have to be all things to all people, and away from the news output broadly do so.’
I used to like the BBC. However, once you know the bias is there it screams at you from almost every angle of its output, from news through documentary to drama and even children’s programming. It is insidious, it is a form of brainwashing and it is undermines our democracy.
3. The BBC Trust is unfit for purpose. It is little more than an extra layer of management with the same left/liberal mindset. If it was doing its job properly it would have called for an independent enquiry into 28gate and suspended the key players from the BBC until it was complete. They haven’t lifted a finger – either they knew what was going on and so were complicit, or didn’t find out till later by which time they hoped it would all blow over (which it pretty well has). Either way, they are incompetent and need to be replaced with a truly independent watchdog.
I think we actually agree, Deborah.
The BBC sees itself, rightly or wrongly, as the gold standard, yet we see on HBO for example, often far better commercially produced drama. Is that, though, because we tend to only see the best brought over from the USA? For every Curb Your Enthusiasm or Soprano’s there will be many that are rightly consigned to the dustbin after the pilot or first series.
We can, if we are being honest, sit and recite a very, very long list of high quality drama, comedy and documentary series the BBC has produced down the decades. The fact it might not float our boats in quite the same way these days, might be in part down to our tastes, as much as it is down to the programme makers. I rather enjoyed the recent Line of Duty series, which was refreshingly free of political or social messages from the luvvies. It wasn’t exactly I, Claudius or Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, but what is?
It seems clear to me the BBC, be it in its approach to immigration, terrorism, poverty, the welfare state, the public sector, or even dear old Scots independence, are not happy with the way Britain is run, by centre left or centre right. As that is not, and has never been, part of its charter obligations it needs to refocus itself on being a servant of the people rather than the master.
It has become too powerful, and it does need reining in. That could start with something as simple as an on-air aside from a government minister to Nick Robinson or John Pienaar that their red rosette is showing.
Strangely, CCHQ seem far more concerned with tweeting idiotic beer and bingo tweets, just in case Labour had nothing new to throw at them.
What do those who, like me, hear this drip, drip, drip of bias actually want to achieve? The end of the BBC entirely? That won’t happen this side of 2026. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth but the 2016 renewal will go through on the nod. That’s a fact. There will be changes at the edges but the BBC will not be dismantled and handed over to Kelvin MacKenzie or Noel Edmonds. Thankfully.
The reason I wrote my initial post is because I am starting to wonder if a scatter gun approach to BBC bias will achieve anything. Of course, when there is so much, it is bound to elicit many responses, but would it help to somehow campaign in a more structured manner?
Five Live is my particular bugbear, but Question Time and/or Radio 4 comedy would seem to me to be particularly rich seams to mine.
The BBC is not going to slam its foot on the brake and unilaterally decide to change its misbegotten ways. It doesn’t think it is doing anything wrong. The BBC’s motto should really be “Diversity in all things but thought.” It is convinced it is the voice of the people.
Perhaps tackling the transgressions of individual shows might be more productive. The Now Show will be back soon. If ever a cast was more deserving of a figurative kicking it is Punt, Dennis, Benn and their coterie of Marxist fellow travellers.
It is none of my business how this site is run. The commitment of the site owner is deeply impressive. I came here when after years of relatively minor examples Five Live clearly made an editorial decision to buy into the Frankfurt school root and branch. That is when I started to post here rather than lurk. In that time the only thing that has changed is that the BBC is worse, and bias which five years ago would be tucked away on certain shows is built into the flagship news and opinion programmes.
I’ve taken recently to marking the Five Live phone-in when it tackles domestic political issues. I simply tick those put to air who are for, against or have no discernible political axe to grind. It makes for fascinating reading. The budget edition last Thursday morning, for example, put fourteen calls to air, four were neutral, nine were against, and just one in favour of Osborn’s budget plans. Even the one call in favour felt the need to tell everyone he wasn’t a Tory or a LibDem. I wouldn’t get that balance of responses if I asked fourteen people at random in the street. Why, or perhaps more importantly, how, did Five Live? Are we to believe it was just one of those things? Five Live get a surprisingly high incidence of just one of those things.
The other afternoon a Steve Coogan interview about Hacked Off was followed immediately by a guest who was asked his view, but “by chance” was also a senior Hacked Off spokesman. What are the odds? We all laughed at the sheer “coincidence”, and, oh, how Bacon chortled. How long would it take to hit a Hacked Off member if I stood at my front gate with buckets full of ping pong balls, I wonder? Are there enough ping pong balls in the world is perhaps a better question.
There have been many, many awful examples of BBC bias recently, but there is one, seemingly minor, that really underlined the problem for me. It was Claire Thompson (who?) a BBC hack who on International Women’s Day tweeted that she was pushing for even more feminist stories
that day with an aside that she does that every day. Now, what’s wrong with that? In my opinion it is not a low ranking, unknown journo’s job to push her personal agenda on to the air, however much she may feel it to important. If someone that low down the BBC food chain can do that and tell the world, what the hell is the editor playing at? It would be like a broadsheet hack telling their editor “I found a lovely picture of a daisy online. Run that on page eleven, there’s a good chap.”
From Five Live’s Pienaar’s Politics, to Question Time itself, bias has become endemic. If Andrew Neil isn’t in the hot seat the chances of all the political contributors having their feet held to the fire is now vanishingly small.
The BBC has long been an agent of the Left, and well documented as being such since-well, God knows but I`d imagine the days of Mary Whitehouse and Hugh Carleton-Greene.
I happen to think it`s now in the first stages of its extinction. Of course the State will need some mouthpiece for itself..but like British Airways, it can be loosed from the public purse, but keep its “flagship of the nation” tag if it likes.
Ross/Brand may yet be seen to be one of the hammer blows, amidst many others at that time when Left hubris was at its peak with Blair,Brown and Campbell( BBC).
It`s just a fig leaf to promote compliance and social cohesion for the coming Eurabian Project as far as I can tell these days. My information about how the world works, is …and how it`s going…no longer comes from anything tainted by what the BBC says.
Analogue media for the digital age…despite iPlayer etc.
It`s perpetual Left bias makes it the butt of that Soviet joke, which said that under Communism, the future is fixed-and joyful, but it is the past that ever changes and is uncertain.
The BBCs version of history-any history when I was sentient-is always the opposite of my truth…it only divides and distracts the nation-and can`t support itself, except for robber baron tactics to plunder the people of this country.
We deserve better.
Thanks again Milverton for an excellent thought provoking comment. Using this site, what do I want to achieve? Nothing, I suppose, this is my site to let off steam. But one can put in complaints, get on BBC panels, write to MPs etc which drip by drip might achieve a little. I don’t listen to 5Live but programmes like Question Time are a disgrace. I had hoped complaints to the BBC would reduce the bias but the arrogance of the BBC becomes ever more jaw dropping. This is so apparent to any producer’s response on Feedback etc. Would I subscribe to the BBC if it became subscription only? The Daily Mail news site would not provide me with enough detail, might Sky? I think even Sky would have to up their game. Would I subscribe to Radio 4? Support the Now Show? But I would miss Radio 4 News even with the bias; but Classic FM in the morning with even its biased news might still do a lot for my blood pressure. But I think I could live without even the Bake Off. (I struggled to think of a good BBC TV programme that I couldn’t miss). So I suppose my hope is for a subscription BBC with something like Fox News to provide me with my view of the world. But an optional subscription? Would it be like British Gas or and Electricity Board, would most people subscribe out of habit and the left wing indoctrination continue and affect government?
I think you hit the nail on the head yourself: ‘…. the only thing that has changed is that the BBC is worse, and bias which five years ago would be tucked away on certain shows is built into the flagship news and opinion programmes.’ Add to that documentaries, drama and any other kind of programming you like – remember the attendees at the 28gate meeting (for example) were from all strands of the corporation’s output.
So, in other words, it is shot through with leftist bias like a house with dry rot and only something drastic can address that now. Trying to do it programme by programme is pointless – it would be like the old arcade game of thwacking the pop-up heads.
The BBC is staffed by thousands of like-minded individuals. Only a corporate rogering which, sadly, might mean privatisation, can correct the subversive leftist bias which poisons a taxpayer-funded 70% of the nation’s news and current affairs output.
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The case for the BBC is not supported by how good its programmes are. That is a case for its privatisation. You are free to choose buy the Guardian. The BBC is like being compelled by law to buy the Guardian. See the difference?
If you are waiting for a BBC which mirrors your political views exactly I suggest you instead start your own station.
In the mean time is it right I should have to fund a station thats exactly mirrors some elses, in order to recive an broadcast television ?
sorry key board malfunction- there should be a one before elses and a y after an.
Obtuse, Milverton, you clearly don’t see the difference. At no point in my 43 words did I ask for a station that mirrors my opinions. Seems you project your arguments onto people without actually bothering to read what they say. You may be eloquent, but it ends there: no substance.
If Milverton thinks that people on here are clamouring for a right wing BBC he is deluding himself. It is about plurality and abuse of power.
Every now and then (and it is getting rarer) I watch a programme on the BBC that informs/entertains, but this does not change the fact that most of its output, most of the time, corrupts (or at least is intended to corrupt) free inquiry.
Yes I would like to be given a choice, and I know full well why some want to take that choice away from me. The BBC is not a (tax funded) voice amongst many, it is both ubiquitous and totalitarian. It ‘s primary function (these days) is to fund, justify, and excuse an arrogant and complacent Leftist elite for whom a free society is (and always has been) a threat.
The only way the BBC will change, is if it looks at itself. Milverton is correct in the way he describes the main areas of biased output from 5 live, QT, comedy/satire etc. If there was a process for self analysis from the programme editors along the way Milverton measured the balance of programme contributions, it would be easier to make the argument for change. The BBC can defend itself comfortably from a scatter gun approach on bias, however a focus on a few programmes would make it harder for them to ignore.
Yes I did hear something this morning about the State now needing to rescue girls from gangs-this despite those riots being nearly four years ago.
Yet-no adventure playgrounds…no youth clubs…no linden trees on offer to the vulnerable yoof who still mourn Bernie Grant( and how long before HE gets a public enquiry?).
I imagine the BBC think that it`s EDL girls that will need saving now, having watched this film.
As for the ho`s n bitches of Bling culcha…and those hung up like raw meat in the childrens homes awaiting henna for the imams beard?…well…who`s to judge?
As long as the foster carers aren`t UKIP…who gives a damn?
BBC Editor Nick Sutton chooses to keep the Bingo Budget (as they have now dubbed it) alive.
Nothing from him, mind you, about senior Labour figures patronising view that the great unwashed might squander their pensions lump sum.
Of course Labour politicians know only too well what it is like to squander a golden legacy (and not have the BBC bring them to account).
Nick Sutton @suttonnick · 22 hrs
Interesting – @iainmartin1 reports in Sun Tel that this ad “designed in the Treasury & signed off by the Chancellor”
“UK Lawmakers To Decide Whether Watching The BBC Should Be A Crime”
By Neil Midgley.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/neilmidgley/2014/03/24/uk-lawmakers-to-decide-whether-watching-the-bbc-should-be-a-crime/?
More British taxpayers’ money goes to Islam Not BBC (INBBC) Arabic:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-26515589
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