The Today show’s [08:55] guest editor, Tamara Rojo, the artistic director and lead principal dancer of the English National Ballet, unwittingly nailed the problem with the BBC on the head as she talked of the way funding of the Arts is done in Europe…nearly 100% coming from government. Thus she tells us the Arts don’t have to bother with producing anything that the Public want, they are completely out of touch with that Public with little creativity, little care for the audience, producing what they like for the like-minded people that they want as an audience. This single, guaranteed source of funding not only makes for a very closed off, insular Arts’ world but is open to being politicised, to being propaganda and to the manipulation of the People.
The BBC is in even more of a powerful position in that its funding, though reliant on the government, or perhaps rather Parlaiment, at the end of the day, is not only free from the pressures of having to be raised as the commercial broadcasters have to, ie producing programmes that people want to watch and thus attracting advertising, it is free from government pressure, or free to totally ignore any pressure and complaints….and thus is not only totally unaccountable to the People who pay for it but is also free to attack and undermine any government it sees fit to [Labour sees the BBC as its own party broadcaster and defends it and its privilege regardless of sense], again totally unaccountably…the BBC Trust as was, being reliably onboard when it came to complaints and Ofcom seemingly also unwilling to hold the BBC accountable for its failings….the BBC of course itself famously unwilling to accept criticism however valid and backed by evidence.
Being free from government control is a good thing, but only if the BBC is under proper and effective oversight, and it is not. It is pretty much unaccountable and free to shape the news, current affairs and entertainment programmes as it likes in order to peddle a world view that those in its very homogenous, insular echo-chamber, populated by like-minded people, all celebrate. It is free to load its programmes with messages, political, social, historical and economic, that buttress its world view and discredit, undermine and demonise those who it sees as a threat to its world view and dominance…hence Trump and Farage are freely protrayed as racists and Nazis with little to no real debate about their actual views, Brexit is a product of ignorance and bigotry whipped up by Russian propaganda, sceptics of ‘man-made’ climate change are denounced as dangerous lunatics who have to be silenced, social media [ie people being able to circumvent the MSM’s control of information and thought] is dangerous and full of hate, thus it must be controlled [ironically by the government that the BBC insists it itself must be free from]. Of course that is an attempt to maintain the likes of the BBC’s dominance of information and which is why the BBC is so keen for you, or rather for those in government, to be persuaded that there is a new era of fake news, a ‘post truth’ era that needs regulation and control of social media with the added message that it is the BBC that is the only provider of news that can be trusted to be honest and accurate [how many lols do you want for that?]. Journalists of course pre-Trump and Brexit were the most respected and trusted people on earth no? The Left invented and weaponised the so-called ‘post-truth era’ in order to control the Right wing press and social media broadcasters and writers.
‘Fake news is nothing new, though technology has allowed it to be disseminated further and faster than ever; its prevalence in Britain is unclear; and many of those who bang on about it, from politicians to the mainstream media, have an incentive to inflate the threat.’
The irony is that it is the BBC that is out of control, entirely corrupt as it fills the airwaves with very one-sided propaganda much of which is ‘extremist’ in itself…such as the dangerous promotion of mass immigration of people with very different values and beliefs to our own and uncontrolled, open borders, the cheerleading for Marxist terrorists now hijacking the Labour party, the support for Muslim extremists and ideology, the drive to destroy the reality of British identity and the idea of Britain as a nation with culture, character and history to be proud of, the BBC’s willingness to serve a foreign master, the EU, and to sell out the British people and their interests, peddling pro-Remain messages at every turn, painting Brexit in as black a light as possible…and of course then there’s the BBC’s interesting take on the Middle East, its history and where the blame lies….just how much time do you have?
There is very little in the BBC news that you can take on trust and at face value….it, and nearly its other programmes, peddle a message, a ‘liberal’ extremist message that is utterly intolerant of any other views.
As we’ve noted before, the problem isn’t social media, it isn’t some dodgy ‘news’ site in Macedonia, it’s the main-stream news organisations which have an aura of respectability and trust about them which they can exploit to push fake news to people who trust them….even the BBC’s own Amol Rajan has noted this:
Fake news isn’t the big problem in news. The big problem in news is…the news
I’ve written several blogs here about fake news, a phenomenon whose supposed rise has coincided with my time as media editor. Correlation not causation, let me assure you.
In summary: fake news is nothing new, though technology has allowed it to be disseminated further and faster than ever; its prevalence in Britain is unclear; and many of those who bang on about it, from politicians to the mainstream media, have an incentive to inflate the threat.
It’s also a distraction from the real issues, which are the editorial selections and judgements that comprise the news. Getting news right – choosing which stories to cover, and how to cover them – is a constant challenge. No programme editor ever goes to bed thinking “We got everything right today”.
But doing the stories that really matter, and getting them right, is a much bigger challenge to the integrity of news in Britain than the alleged threat from fake news.
I’m not sure why you had to throw Macedonia in there as an archetypal source of fake news on the web?
Our brave brothers and sisters over there have their own troubles not dissimilar to our own.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-04/will-macedonia-be-removed-map-2018
Macedonia as a factory for fakenews
Hyped up by a BBC report, and a new CNN report
and previously on Channel4
https://www.channel4.com/news/fake-news-in-macedonia-who-is-writing-the-stories
Thanks, I didn’t realise the usual suspects were now doing Fake news about fake news factories.
The influence of public money leading to a monopoly is obvious in al beebs drama output. Once upon a time we sneered at American tv. Now look at the sheer quality of their output. Could al Beeb ever have made “thrones? ‘ no chance – safe medical stuff and historic remakes now being embarrassingly coloured up to tick the ethnic box.
London is full of privately funded musicals with expensive full houses.
Why should the state fund arts? What is the investment return for the taxpayer? If al Beeb was any good it would be self funding. They’d reply – more to art than money. The tax man wouldn’t use that attitude with me.
Wouldn’t it be nice if al Beeb adopted an equality of out put – labelling programmes as left right or centre. Yes I know there is no ‘right’ output but supposing there was a scheme where at least a third of the output was ‘right’ orientated. But I suppose beeboids couldn’t recognise that concept
“What is the investment return for the taxpayer?”
No return in that fancy Shakespeare stuff, is there?
No programme editor ever goes to bed thinking “We got everything right today”.
Has he never listened to Feedback? Or Newswatch. Or submitted a complaint? Surely all those interviewed editors aren’t liars?
Yes, at least the vast majority are.
My friend had a brilliant idea for a play once and we tried to get Arts Council funding. Our relatively solid theatrical CVs seemed irrelevant; they just wanted to know what colour our skin was and whether our work promoted ‘diversity.’ If you were from a certain part of the country with the right colour skin, you were more or less guaranteed to get funding, regardless of the quality of your project.
“Nearly 100% coming from government”
Not for performing arts that have to sell tickets it isn’t. In the case of the Royal Opera House, for instance, the subsidy accounts for only 25% and allows the less well off, music students etc, to buy tickets for as little as £4 in some instances. The ROH could probably survive without a subsidy, like the Glyndebourne Festival, but IMO, access to Europe’s well established finer achievements should not be confined to the rich.
Commercial musical theatre is not a valid comparison; the overheads and economics are entirely different.
I have no argument with the case against the BBC however. The licence fee model became outdated years ago.
It always amuses me when the ‘anti-elitist’ brigade whine about the so-called working classes being unable to afford the ‘elitist’ ticket prices for theatre productions and should therefore be eligible for subsidies to make these ‘elitist’ productions more accessible.
It never occurs to the anti-elitists that these same ‘working classes’ are paying similar prices to watch their favourite Premiership team.
DavidW makes a good point I think. It would be sad if the only entertainment available to people who are financially stretched (and that might include a young family of four looking for an entertaining evening out) were increasingly inane offerings at the cinema.
Not sure what you mean by “these same ‘working classes’”. They are not all the same.