I am always disappointed but not surprised to read this sort of idiocy.
B-BBC reader Dave Ward responds…
“I am about to send a letter to the editor, but from past experience, this probably won’t get printed!
Dear Editor,
I assume that Steve Downes is trying his hand at comedy writing (EDP Opinion & Comment, 16th May), as I can’t believe his defence of the BBC is meant to be serious. He claims to “Know full well if I’m on the receiving end of biased, skewed reporting” and “Never for a moment have I suspected the BBC of such a crime”. I can only suggest he removes the welding goggles coving his rose tinted spectacles, and looks further. For a start, their daily “The Papers” TV programme – the backdrop for this features a number of titles, and right at the top is the only UK example, The Guardian. If that isn’t more than a little biased to the left, I don’t know what is. The BBC fought a long battle against a FOI request enquiring about the “experts” advising them on climate issues. When this effort failed it soon became apparent why: tinyurl.com/p3nwgml The BBC does indeed produce some wonderful specialist programmes, but their news and current affairs output can no longer be trusted, and the 1,000’s of viewers cancelling TV licences shows I’m not alone in that view. Mr Downes might also focus on what they don’t cover, as well as what they do. It is high time the organisation was given a shake-up.
At one time the EDP was fairly right wing, on account of its circulation area, but since a “night of the long knives” clear out of editorial staff it is now just as left wing as sister paper the Norwich Evening News. Both are part of the Archant publishing group, which we know contains a number of Common Purpose “graduates”, and clearly sucks up to the UEA which has many more. ”
Good to confront those who grovel to the BBC.
He may also like to look at the growing number of signatures that are voting here ?
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/end-the-bbc-licence-fee
” I love the BBC, the costume dramas, blah blah blah.”
The only people who gush that piffle are people who work at the bbc, no one else says it.
The BBC do offer some very good cistume dramas, but let’s have more of them instead the utter bilge like rubbish they invade us with, such as Casuality/Holby City & other dead boring SOAPS. Why are there so many Women News Presenters/Broadcasters and the like-it seems as though the men have all been shoved aside-how many of these women have yougish children who might like to have their Mother at home more often.
Every consumer should have a choice as to the colour-shade of propaganda they choose to buy.
Scrap the Telly Tax.
The whole reason I, like so many others, take issue with the BBC and its bias is that we are forced BY LAW to pay for its unceasing propaganda. Once the license fee is removed and nobody is compelled under threat of legal action to pay for it, the Corporation can say and do what it likes; the question of whether there will actually be enough of an audience willing to pay for such drivel is, of course, why the BBC won’t allow themselves to be thrown to the mercies of a free market.
It’s all about the free money. £3.5bn, unearned, pa via a bullying poll tax on every British subject. Or get taken to court by the BBC.
The BBC should be turned into a digital subscription service without delay. The market will then decide just how much of a ‘treasured institution’ this toxic vehicle for common purpose, multi-culti, pro-EU, pro-CAGW propaganda actually is. Or not.
I agree with you. I would add that all programmes that have been made up to the time that the bbc is privatised, or whatever, must remain the property of all of us; it would be wrong for the bbc to continue to take money off us to watch what we have already paid for.
Added to which we have to endure the vast salaries paid to fairly average people do a fairly average job.
The BBC is as self-serving and morally bankrupt as the Leftism it promotes. It is as intolerant as it is greedy. It is like bringing 100 of the greatest thinkers and artists and innovators together in one room, and sending 99 of them home because they do not read The Guardian.
There are many arguments in favour of having the BBC shut down. The most unanswerable of which is that to have a near monopoly of news and current affairs provision denies the plurality of view that is so vital to a democracy. It follows that the country would be much better served if we had many mores sources of news and current affairs than we currently do. The sheer size, scope and enormous public funding of the BBC operation prevents new companies from attempting to break into the market.
Another point that the BBC must answer is why if they are such good value and so loved by the British people are they afraid of going to funding by subscription? For the full range of their service they could charge £145 pa. If the take up close to 100%, as they imply it would be by their constant refrain of how cherished they are, they would lose little money and have the right to produce whatever programmes they liked and we on this site would have no grounds to object. They would also remove the amoral situation where some folks are being taxed for something they don’t want when alternative arrangements to provide choice are readily to hand.
The bbc also has two other sources of income; over a billion revenue from worldwide sales and several tens of millions from the EU. I think we should all be outraged that the bbc can have a commercial arm and get handouts from the political entity that is the EU.
Half caught licence fee discussion on The Wright Stuff this morning.
‘Wrighty’s’ argument to one caller went something like, ‘The licence fee costs less than buying the Daily Mail every day and I wouldn’t object to you being subjected to their propaganda. Same thing isn’t it?’
Can these people really be as thick as they sound or are they just on a mission to wind me up?
they always come out with the ridiculous argument that forgets the point that is it a CHOICE to but the Daily Mail whereas for the BBC you are forced to pay. It isn’t difficult to work out but it usually escapes the left as they are so petrified they are denied their “free” service to attempt to influence the masses.
Just look at the result of the election being “wrong” – they need more propaganda and not less as they know people in England don’t vote Labour
Self-serving, self-opinionated, arrogant, and wouldn’t Lord Reith turn in his grave. Let’s not hear the word Celebrity used in respect to any of that read the News, or are involved in outside broadcasts-they are doing a job-nothing more, and very paid for it.
Not thick, just devious. Recently (before the GE) many of the BBC radio presenters decamped to the commercial sector. LBC seems to have suffered more than most. I think that if the BBC does fall they will have established themselves elsewhere in order to continue the bias, albeit more subtle.
We really need to get to the heart of the matter, here. What is the point of having a State broadcaster in the UK in 2015? What are the advantages of having a State broadcaster over having a completely independent, commercial broadcast media?
This is the question that never gets asked or answered.
To whom is state Broadcaster useful or necessary? To you, or to the media elites, to the ‘privileged classes’ (aka left wing luvvies) and their friends?
We have to drill down to the very basis of the BBC’s ‘right’ to exist and if we can’t identify any basis that are economically, socially or politically coherent for the majority of the UK in 2015 then I suggest we let go of the whole notion of a State broadcaster and set the BBC loose onto the commercial subscription market.
So, what is a state broadcaster for and who benefits by it?
“To whom is a State broadcaster useful or necessary?”
You hit the nail on the head Phil Ford as usual. Add the fact that its tax funded dominance has the consequence of suppressing the growth of alternative views of the world and you have your answer.
When the BBC decided to actively lobby against the free press its totalitarian vision became very apparent. Far from being an enabling medium the BBC is a cancer draining the life out of our culture.
Its best formats are decades old, and if it were not for Andrew Neil its political coverage would be appalling. You only have to see the phrase “BBC Drama” to know that it will be Guardian reader crap (c1930) telling you next to nothing about life in Britain today, just as broadcasters in the Soviet Union told you next to nothing about what was really happening in the USSR.
What freedom of thought there is in this Country of ours exists despite not because of the BBC.
A State broadcaster that slanders and lies against the nation of Israel time and time again and never reports any of it’s many achievements that are worthy of news headlines see http://www.verygoodnewisrael.blogspot.com is actually dangerous to the public good. It incites hatred which inspires violence against Jews. See http://netanyalynette.blogspot.co.il/2012/09/2008-false-evidence-against-israel.html
Re historic child abuse (Telegraph)
Norfolk Chief Constable Simon Bailey, the NPCC’s lead on child protection, said: “The referrals are increasing on an almost daily basis. The numbers I refer to today are a snapshot in time.”
Out of the 1,433 suspects identified, 216 are now dead.
Mr Bailey said that out of these 1,433 suspects, 666 relate to institutions and 357 separate institutions have been identified by the operation.
He said 261 are classified as people of public prominence, of these 135 come from the world of TV, film or radio, 76 are listed as politicians, 43 from the music industry and seven are from sport.
————————————————
Quite a lot from TV then . . .
Who’s for betting the BBC also have a monopoly regarding those being investigated from the ‘world of TV and radio’ then?
i mean its simple,those from gerry hayes to the bishop stephen lowe to all the other creeps like owen jones who bty is on question time again tonight !! tell us it would be worst than the black death is the bbc was to go have a very big vested interest in defending the bbc and its called money,yes.all these lot who are never of radio 5 live and the bbc pocket a nice little appearence fee,1st class hotels for there stay and taxis back and forward to the bbc studios even if is 50 yards travelling distance from there hotel,not bad heh.
How interesting!
It seems two BBBC bloggers responded to the article in a similar manner. My line started with how unfortunate it was that it appeared on another “We” day on Today.
I have a bulging file of published letters in the particular paper, but would concur that its stance in a strong Tory area does not reflect that general view, and long for at least one columnist who does not ascribe to the left of centre view on politics since the demise of Martin Mears.
It did have an excellent reporter on political matters in Chris Fisher, who I found extremely balanced. His comments on the death of Tony Benn, someone he knew, were, shall we say, less than complimentary!
Once I thought that that the BBC was a world enclosed in a liberal/left, faux elitist bubble, completely unaware of any bias. But gradually I have come round to the realisation that they are fully aware of it and are quite happy to use the corporation as a propaganda tool. They quite obviously believe themselves so secure in their position that they openly sneer at any opposition to their worldview. This isn’t just sneering at the Conservative Party or UKIP, or even anybody who dares oppose the lies and half-truths propagated about the state of Israel, but to the whole of the general public who pay the license fee.
Yet there is a need for completely unbiased news service and a platform for robust debate. That is what the BBC should be for. I also think the BBC has done great things in the past in the field of education and supporting the arts. It’s just so sad to see what it has become.
“Once I thought that that the BBC was a world enclosed in a liberal/left, faux elitist bubble, completely unaware of any bias. But gradually I have come round to the realisation that they are fully aware of it and are quite happy to use the corporation as a propaganda tool.”
Don’t forget that they earn a good living from the current arrangement. You (are forced) to give them money and they spend their time making programmes which tell you what a good arrangement it is to have a big State employing people like themselves – from their point of view what is not to like.
The only fly in the ointment is a government that might change this arrangement, hence their obsession with getting a Labour government (each and every time), but of course this desperation for a Labour government undermines any justification for being tax funded, because it is self-interested lobbying (putting aside the issue of whether a Labour government [a bigger more intrusive State] is a good thing for the Country or not) which from the point of view of a BBC executive matters not just so long as they maintain the current arrangement.
The BBC is an exercise in closing off options on the grounds that it may disturb their abuse of power.
“Its stance in a strong Tory area does not reflect that general view”
@ 60022Mallard – So I’m not alone in my thoughts! As you’re no doubt aware, this has changed dramatically since the imposition of “Joint Editorship” under Nigel Pickover – or “Pickover what’s left” as he has been described… There is now little difference between the EDP and the Norwich Evening News, in both content, and the views of the readership – at least, those who get published in the letters page. I now have a pretty good idea what not to include when writing, but even then it’s quite normal for submissions to be selectively “chopped” – ostensibly to fit the available space, but often to change the meaning. I have even had my words replaced with something completely different! I really don’t know why I continue to buy it…