The BBC…‘too white, too male, too leftwing’….said Labour’s James Purnell in an interview with The Times (Paywalled)
Well….I may have exaggerated…I leave it to you to filter out the unlikely words though a clue might be this statement from him:
‘Sometimes we are at our most politically successful when we are least inclined to give people what they want.’
Sorry…another typo…not the BBC is most ‘politically successful’ but most ‘commercially successful’….an understandable, easy mistake to make….though Parnell makes absolutely clear….
‘What I love about the BBC is being impartial. Politics was a great interlude but now I’m back where I belong.’………and of course the staunch Labourite has given all that dirty politicking up now!
He does make an interesting remark about the Charter renewal…..the BBC has a campaign to influence politicians…well we knew that, having seen their massed mobilisation to try and prevent decriminalisation of the licence fee dodgers.
Purnell says about the in-joke comedy W1A:
‘It’s funny. I love the fact that the BBC, as its first salvo in the charter review, decides to put on a programme about how ridiculous it is.’
The BBC uses its programming to slip in political and social messages all the time so it’s no surprise to see them using the licence fee to pump out propaganda to allow them to keep raking in the licence fee and spending it on their pet projects…..giving us what we don’t want but the BBC feels we need.
Purnell doesn’t seem keen to use subscription funding…or maybe is just unaware of the technology….you can bet he has Sky at home though.
‘We need a system that allows people to pay easily for something you can’t stop them consuming. There needs to be some kind of deterrent.’
You mean like cutting them off from the service as Sky can do? Easy, no?
Purnell proclaims that the BBC is worth it…40p a day for all you can consume…we must keep the licence fee!
But that surely isn’t the BBC’s job….to campaign for the licence fee…..the job of management is to provide the programmes within the funding framework set up by Parliament…the BBC could advise what they believe would happen under different funding scenarios but to campaign for a particular one is definitely beyond its remit.
It must be no coincidence that the BBC has re-employed their once head of corporate planning and then a senior Labour politician, ‘coolly ambitious and ruthlessly well-connected’, as its ‘doorkicker’ in the charter renewal negotiations:
His role “brings together communications, future media, marketing, policy, research and development and strategy”…his aim…‘to discover, define and deliver the future of the BBC.’
In other words he’s there to keep the money rolling in and the BBC the dominant media provider using his bulging contacts book.
On competition with other broadcasters and print media he claims, as usual, that the BBC improves other sources by forcing them to raise their game…without the BBC we wouldn’t have such quality programming or news.
He claims the USA is a prime example of that with no equivalent of the BBC there (em…PBS?.…’PBS is the most prominent provider of television programs to public television stations in the United States, distributing series such as Sesame Street, PBS NewsHour, Masterpiece, Frontline and Antiques Roadshow. Since the mid-2000s, Roper polls commissioned by PBS have consistently placed the service as America’s most-trusted national institution.)…and presumably no quality television or films or news journalism because there’s no BBC….despite many programmes on PBS coming from the very inspirational BBC…..and all available on T’internet.
He says:
‘I start from what is right for audiences, our polity and the national conversation. I think people having a choice between different types of voices is a really good thing. We want competition and choice.’
No…you don’t James. There was no national conversation via the BBC about Europe, climate change, immigration, Islam or Labour’s part in smashing the economy…..maybe I was right…‘Sometimes we are at our most politically successful when we are least inclined to give people what they want.’
And competition?…. The BBC tries hard to kill off all competition….just look at how it actively campaigned against Murdoch, and still rails against News Corp newspapers…and the Daily Mail….and presses hard to limit Press freedom whilst having Labour politicians protecting the BBC’s own position of dominance.
The important reality is that these aren’t competitors in a commercial sense, or that is not the main reason or the BBC’s assaults on them….the real reason is political…the BBC is leftwing, despite Owen Jones’ fantasy wet dream, and believes it represents a world view that is the correct one…and far from welcoming ‘diversity’ it aims to enforce its own belief system upon the world, without discussion….as with climate change.
News International and papers like the Mail or the Express are targeted by the BBC because they have a more right of centre approach…a more populist approach…they reflect what the Public thinks in the main…and the BBC spends its time trying to re-educate the Public to accept its world view and believes these competing news and media sources are undermining its message….hence they have to go or at least be reined in, controlled.
Diversity? Competition? A national conversation?
Not so far.
‘What I love about the BBC is being impartial’
Hugs used to and still does say that often… maybe on the basis that if a BBC market rate does, enough, it becomes true. I think Tone, Chris, James, Ian, Danny, Ted and Alice may have given it a go too.
It’s in their DNA.
Not sure anyone is buying it anymore.
A broadcast subscription marketplace is true economic democracy. You pay for what you get, you get what you pay for. Why does former Labour minister James Purnell want us denied the right to chose what we pay for? Because he is paid (by us) to be chief strategist of the British equivalent of Pravda. The proles must be fed correct thought by the state broadcaster whose charter says they must be independent but whose daily output is indistinguishable from The Guardian. You despair of the dimwits in David Cameron’s league of troughers.
I’m puzzled by the term ‘charter negotiations’ which crops up from time to time.
Negotiation suggests that there are two parties to a potential agreement, the BBC v government? Surely there should be a charter debate where parliament alone gets to decide whether there should even be a BBC?
The BBC’s input to the process should be limited to answering questions posed by parliamentary committees or written position papers requested by the Minister as supposedly professional broadcasters paid as public servants.
Under no circumstances should the BBC be using public funds to lobby for retention of the status quo or, horror of horrors, an ‘enhanced’ role in ‘educating’ the masses in how to think.
When I read Purnell’s quote “What I love about the BBC is being impartial” I remembered it was 1st April.
…..then I saw the date of the article and realised he was serious.
The BBC is an arrogant, supercilious, leftist organisation that thinks it knows what is best for the country and steadily undermines the democratic process. It treats the people who pay for it with contempt. How else can you explain the underlying assumption of Purnell’s piece that we could be so stupid as to possibly believe a word he says about impartiality.
What is striking about the bBC is the sheer arrogance seeping from it.
A clever arrogance from an organisation long addicted to a fixed fee/tax.
Releasing it from the current funding mechanism would surely allow its transformation to a more market driven operation.
Nimbler like Nimble bread! Easy!
Did anyone else find Purnell’s use of the third person, when discussing the BBC, somewhat disingenuous when he is – totally and utterly – part of the BBC establishment?
“News International and papers like the Mail or the Express are targeted by the BBC because they have a more right of centre approach”
Spot on. Left-leaning papers like the Guardian or Independent never get lampooned on BBC comedy shows even half as much as the Daily Mail does.
it always pisses me off when i hear these white left wing morons like purnell and others bang on about there are to many white males working in any institution in this country that just happens to be a majority white country but as we all know due to open boders and mass immigration wont be in another generation or so,you never hear these left wing labour party idiots step down from there jobs and hand it over to a ethnic minority or somebody from a certian religion.it is always attack on the white evil male,the same argument is always made by the left about immigration,they are always in favour of mass immigration but tend to live in towns and villages that have had zero immigration into there all white leafy surburbs.it is not easy being a white male these day knowing that when you go for a interview for a job they might as well stick up a notice saying no dogs,no males,no whites.
Exactly, he’s happy enough to deny job opportunities to white males on the basis of their race and gender, but wants to keep his own job. Hypocritical scrotebag that he is.
Always the multi-culti Left elite move to white Dorset, or live in London’s white enclaves like Kingston, Barnes, Sheen and Richmond. Its about their kids schoolfriends… being the right colour…
Was at a Tottenham game a couple of weeks ago and staying after the game for a couple of pints to let the crowds go led to a late night walk past some of the roughest estates I’ve seen with loads of “rudeboys” hanging around on the corners…..would love to see some of the bbc types live around there in the mess they have helped to create but as you say they live in nice middle class white areas so are untouched by it all
You’re right. Never trust anyone who doesn’t live next door to his opinions.
A variation on this is people hating the Country to which they emigrated – the race hustler Yasmin Alibiah-Brown comes to mind.
40p a day is not a lot to pay for something that you actually want. Anyone buying a newspaper every day pays more.
But…if I want to read the Telegraph I am not forced by law to first buy the Guardian am I?
Not sure of your argument there John W. I refuse to pay for something I do find morally offensive and degenerate. I would pay FIVE TIMES more for ‘true’ editorial independence and NOT the hidden UN Agenda 21 or relying on minority sub cultures that are clearly not English or selling our independence to Brussels for a favor or EU ‘backhander’ payment. The BBC is corrupt.
A reprise –
“Group-think: Can we trust the BBC on immigration?”
By Ed West.
(60 page document in pdf.)
Click to access bbc_immigration_report.pdf