From Rod Liddle in the Spectator:
The BBC. It does not break many stories partly because it does not think that there is a need to do so. Its journalists are part of a profession, not a trade. They sit above the rabble. And are not unduly bothered by how many people listen to them or watch them, unlike the rest of the media (which of course has to worry about such inconvenient data). But they are also in it for careers. Professional careers. And from my time there I can tell you that the instinct, the further up the food chain you go, is to stamp down on stories that might cause offence or controversy – because their jobs might be threatened as a consequence.
No one dares break ranks at the progressive, liberal BBC and say things or report in a manner that will bring instant disapproval from colleagues and pressure to toe the line.
Noam Chomsky is right about that at least…
The way that works, with rare exceptions, is that you cannot make it through these institiutions unless you’ve accepted the indoctrination. You’re kind of weeded out along the way. Independent thinking is encouraged in the sciences but discouraged in these areas. If people do it they’re weeded out as radical or there’s something wrong with them. It doesn’t have to work 100 percent, in fact, it’s even better for the system if there are a few exceptions here and there. It gives the illusion of debate or freedom. But overwhelmingly, it works.
Then comes the question of the individual journalist, you know, the young kid who decides to become an honest journalist. Well, you try. Pretty soon you are informed by your editor that you’re a little off base, you’re a little too emotional, you’re too involved in the story, you’ve got to be more objective. There’s a whole pile of code words for this, and what those code words mean is “Get in line, buddy, or you’re out.” Get in line means follow the party line. One thing that happens then is that people drop out. But those who decide to conform usually just begin to believe what they’re saying. In order to progress you have to say certain things; what the copy editor wants, what the top editor is giving back to you. You can try saying it and not believing it, but that’s not going to work, people just aren’t that dishonest, you can’t live with that, it’s a very rare person who can do that. So you start saying it and pretty soon you’re believing it because you’re saying it, and pretty soon you’re inside the system. Furthermore, there are plenty of rewards if you stay inside. For people who play the game by the rules in a rich society like this, there are ample rewards. You’re well off, you’re privileged, you’re rich, you have prestige, you have a share of power if you want, if you like this kind of stuff you can go off and become the State Department spokesman on something or other, you’re right near the center of at least privilege, sometimes power, in the richest, most powerful country in the world. You can go far, as long as you’re very obedient and subservient and disciplined. So there are many factors, and people who are more independent are just going to drop off or be kicked out. In this case there are very few exceptions.
Don’t be an honest journalist, or at least one with integrity…it’s bad for your career.
I like to read Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times and the Spectator , he gives his readers a good non PC laugh. I can certainly believe what he says above about how the BBC culture stifles any decent from the liberal left orthodoxy that rules the corporation. I can also understand that once you have begun a career in the BBC, with a family to keep, you simply dare not question the liberal left conscensus. But I do think that Rod ought to write a full blown essay on life at the BBC in his most irreverent, non PC style. After all doesn’t he have a duty to amuse us all with his tales of the way the BBC witch hunts anyone who dares to voice anything the liberal left disagrees with and to warn young journalists what the BBC straight jacket is really like? Although seeing as how the over mighty state funded broadcaster employees such a high proportion of UK journalists and how so many of them have been trained by ex BBC staff , only a few may be interested in his warning.
His book Whining Selfish Monkeys (or something like that) is worth reading.
mikef
‘Selfish whining monkey’s’ I read it and was rather taken back at his vitriol against right wingers, a rather different tone to his writings in the Speccie, in fact I didn’t finish it.
Liddle does a good job of pulling all political parties to bits, pointing out the absurdities of PC-straitjacketed Britain, the ‘climate change’ scam etc., but when all’s said and done he is still a Labour man and viscerally anti-Tory – which is presumably how he got to edit ‘Today’.
I like to read Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times and the Spectator , he gives his readers a good non PC laugh. I can certainly believe what he says above about how the BBC culture stifles any decent from the liberal left orthodoxy that rules the corporation. I can also understand that once you have begun a career in the BBC, with a family to keep, you simply dare not question the liberal left conscensus. But I do think that Rod ought to write a full blown essay on life at the BBC in his most irreverent, non PC style. After all doesn’t he have a duty to amuse us all with his tales of the way the BBC witch hunts anyone who dares to voice anything the liberal left disagrees with and to warn young journalists what the BBC straight jacket is really like? Although seeing as how the over mighty state funded broadcaster employees such a high proportion of journalists and how so many of them have been trained by ex BBC staff , only a few may be interested in his warning.
DT we heard you the first time
DT. That’s worthy of repeating. 🙂
I’m actually surprised that Al-Beeb moved their left wing operation to Manchester and not Calais a year or two back, as every single news programme see’s their incompetent lazy staff interviewing such paragons of holy virtue as “Doctors without borders” and various other hard left agitators over and over and over again….There’s public opinion to what is occurring over on the French border, and then there’s the BBCs….Never the twain will they ever meet, but the BBC don’t concern themselves with that – It’s the Guardianita world view of things and that’s all we’re getting..
The BBC doesn’t break stories when it has a wide open goal to aim at – for instance they had the chance to blow wide open the Rotherham/Rochdale muslim rape scandals when they secretly filmed Nick Griffin talking about it. They obviously thought that Griffin’s “hate speech” was far more important than the safety of 1000+ young girls. We all know how that turned out, don’t we?
Lobster.
No end to the story of a footballer ( white male ) and his relationship with a fifteen year old girl who by all accounts was ‘up for it’ . Yet Rotherham barely a squeak.. nothing to hear or see here, move on, look there’s a white English paedo!
Yup-a with Griffin in 2004 to Cologne in 2016, via Savile in 2012…the liberal media like to squabble about hair partings and whose personal organiser wasn`t totally in order. It also-without any accompanying derision or mockery from its licensed and approved jesters-prosecutes the MT for “failing to ensure Mr De Menezes safety, as it shot him dead”.
Yet no laughter-Adam Johnson gets vindictive time added for “failing to be a responsible role model”.
As if the liberal great and good have never met a footballer or seen how a teenage groupie might behave if indulged.
Yet no comedy ensues…serious face, more in sorrow than in anger.
The word “profess” used to be linked to “faith”…and BBC hacks and Guardian panty liners need not ever be given that word “professional”-unless we give it to Goebbels and Riefenstahl, both of who did THEIR evil,works with some style “passion” and commitment.
As opposed to the lazy suet sock as applied to the chavs or what to think in polite company.
Thankfully we`ll do exactly the opposite to what the liberal tossings want.
Vote to leave the EU and give The Donald a landslide.
To see Alec and Sturgeon caddying around the biscuit tin that Trump will have them in, and to personally settle with all who wanted him banned from the UK…with , say no visas for them or their descendents since die-now THAT would be making the political into the personal-the Left used to LIKE that!
All those BBC and Channel 4 scum are a threat to the US and indeed the world…let them stew until Donald forgives the liars…
It’s interesting that Chomsky’s critique was aimed squarely at a US press establishment which he saw as right-wing. In other words, this is Chomsky attacking the group-think and reductionism of the “right” which is, according to him, a by-product of Chomsky’s epitome of evil: “capitalism”. I think even he must be surprised how successful the Western political class, successfully infected with an arrogant and know-nothing leftism, has been in producing an apparently more effective luegenpresse than was evident in the 60s and 70s. Then the media just restricted debate into the narrow confines of what the establishment agreed might be up for discussion in a relatively few matters. Now what can be debated fairly freely is even more restricted because the matters of importance to the political class have expanded in tandem with the extension of the state – and thus the influence of that class – into far more areas of life. If they do nothing else a vote in favour of brexit and the inauguration of President Trump might administer a rude shock to our rulers – for a time anyway.
My definition of a profession is where you have to go through a period of training, pass exams, be a member of a professional body, be guided by professional ethics and subject to disciplinary rules which may result in being excluded from the profession. Therefore, politics and journalism are not professions.
I had a dispute with the late, unlamented, Scott, a year or so back. Naturally, he maintained that his trade (journalism – of a kind) was a profession. I, brought up in a stricter world, clearly, maintained that it was not and that the definition of a professional was much as you have said – the final point, that they can kick you out if you break the rules, being the clincher.
It certainly always used to be the case that official documents such as a passport application form had to be signed by a member of a ‘profession’ and that meant doctors, lawyers and others governed by a code of conduct (however illusory).
Standards have slipped, it appears, and Grub St’s finest are now included on the list of ‘professionals’.
Heaven help us all!
GC, Well said !
My understanding of a profession is more or less the same as Grant’s. I have no problem with professionals becoming politicians, I would encourage it, but the last thing we need are professional politicians. As for journalists, I would be more inclined to listen to them if they admitted that they weren’t a profession.
POA strange password error shows up when I try to login
but when I move to a new page I see I am logged in anyway.
Melanie Phillips has a similar article
but whereas Liddle takes aim at BBC groupthink, Melanie Phillips target is climate sci-ctivists groupthink publishing.
quoted on GWPF from the original Times article
Many CAGW Climate topic papers these days seemed stamped “Narrative propaganda not science” eg the New study in the Lancet claiming that by 2050 millions will be dying form a climate induced fruit shortage.
Such papers are unlikely to be replicated but it seems their purpose is just to provide fodder for DramaGreens like BBC to hype the narrative..as they do in dedicating this weeks BBCwsRadio edition of Science in Action to the topic