“I have fought three elections against the BBC and don’t want to fight another against it.”
Margaret Thatcher
You have to grin when you hear the BBC great and the good running round with their fingers in their ears shouting about tight budgets, Hutton and top management being to blame….where have we heard similar before?
‘The Daily Star, though quite accurately at the time, and possibly the only time I have found this awful newspaper interesting, mentioned the fact the BBC had blown millions of pounds on substandard American miniseries while cutting back on home-produced drama, wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds on German luxury cars for executives instead of cheaper British cars, and was dominated by a culture of bureaucracy and waste.‘
And look…..the BBC making up accusations based on flimsy evidence, badly researched, badly edited and libellous programmes.…history is repeating itself.……
‘The Panorama documentary, ‘Maggie’s Militant Tendency’, about the threat of National Front infiltration of the Conservatives, caused a furore.…the documentary, after discussing some of these groups, then decided to accuse both Neil Hamilton and Harvey Proctor of flirting with fascism and dressing in fascist uniforms in their young days. While Proctor in particular was known for his racist views, as well as being outed as a homosexual in his later years, accusations against both men were flimsy and led to a libel case against the Corporation. Mrs Thatcher was furious, though I do believe on this occasion the party’s anger was justified, was turned into a badly-researched and badly-edited programme which was libellous.’
So what’s new? So the BBC has always been suspect professionally and ethically.
Looking back you can see that every time the BBC has got itself into hot water it is because it has tried to change the political landscape by broadcasting highly politicised messages aimed at contradicting and challenging the government of the day…
….or hiding inconvenient facts…such as Labour’s mass immigration plans and the effects that would have on British society or that there has been no global warming for nearly 15 years and there is no proof that CO2 causes it…indeed the ‘proof’ suggests no link….something even the infamous Prof Phil Jones from the CRU admitted.
John Humphrys has usefully illustrated the BBC attitude:
“If we were not prepared to take on a very, very powerful government indeed there would be no point in the BBC existing — that is ultimately what the BBC is for.”
Actually no, that’s not what the BBC is for, it is not some sort of unofficial, self proclaimed opposition…its job is to ascertain the facts not to pass judgement on the rights or wrongs of any situation.
The Falklands are a classic example of the BBC getting the narrative wrong….adopting a stance suggesting that the Argentine invaders were perhaps equally right in their actions as the British.
This is still reflected today in BBC coverage…here is, again, John Humphrys on Today suggesting we hand the Islands over:
‘So the time has come for Britain to negotiate. A deal should be struck which establishes Argentinian sovereignty over the islands while allowing the islanders to remain British and which perhaps shares the spoils of oil exploration.’
As you can see, still deciding government policy for us.
Here is what the BBC admits itself about its coverage:
‘Initially the problem was over the tone of the BBC’s reporting of the combat, and particularly its presentation of information issued by the military. Peter Snow, on Newsnight, began one sentence: “If we believe the British…”. Casting such doubt on official sources enraged the Thatcher Government, and John Page MP described Snow’s remarks as “almost treasonable”.
Panorama [ran its own anti war feature] under the title Can We Avoid War?
There were misgivings about the programme inside the BBC too. Presenter Robert Kee told The Times it had been one-sided. He was promptly dropped from Panorama, and resigned from the BBC later that month.’
Here is what Thatcher thought was at stake…perhaps everything the BBC hates…..
‘Much was at stake: what we were fighting for eight thousand miles away in the South Atlantic was not only the territory and the people of the Falklands, important though they were. We were defending our honour as a nation, and principles of fundamental importance to the whole world – above all, that aggressors should never succeed and that international law should prevail over the use of force.
The significance of the Falklands War was enormous, both for Britain’s self-confidence and for our standing in the world. Since the Suez fiasco in 1956, British foreign policy had been one long retreat. The tacit assumption made by British and foreign governments alike was that our world role was doomed steadily to diminish. We had come to be seen by both friends and enemies as a nation which lacked the will and the capability to defend its interests in peace, let alone in war. Victory in the Falklands changed that. Everywhere I went after the war, Britain’s name meant something more than it had. The war also had real importance in relations between East and West: years later I was told by a Russian general that the Soviets had been firmly convinced that we would not fight for the Falklands, and that if we did fight we would lose. We proved them wrong on both counts, and they did not forget the fact.’
The BBC weren’t above ‘manufacturing’ its own narrative…such as Thatcher only fighting the war to win an election….nor was it above banning anything from the airwaves that was deemed to show Thatcher in a good light:
‘The Falklands Play is a dramatic account of the political events leading up to, and including, the 1982 Falklands War. The play was written by Ian Curteis,
In early July the new Head of Plays Peter Goodchild (whose background was in documentaries, rather than drama) requested considerable modifications to the script, amongst them objecting to the portrayal of Thatcher’s “private and instinctive self” – as opposed to the “bellicose Iron Lady of the public scenes” – and requesting the inclusion of discussions between members of the government about the possible effect of the War on the 1983 general election. Curteis declined the latter on the grounds that none of the relevant people he had interviewed had alluded to such conversations, and that there was no other record of them. In addition, he considered that attributing such fictional dialogue to real people could be libellous.’
The BBC continued in its anti-Tory vain and its coverage of the extremely political miner’s strike (Scargill trying to bring down the government) and the IRA were highly controversial……eventually resulting in the sacking of Alisdair Milne (whose son is Seumas Milne….over paid, over promoted Guardian …well, troll, might be a fair description).
In 2001 the BBC once again took upon itself the role of peacemaker and set its cap against the Afghan War despite its obvious rights.
This is the ever forthright, yet again, Humphrys on Afghanistan:
‘…..the lives lost were a pointless and avoidable sacrifice…..The cynical view, perhaps the realist one, is that they might as well have stayed at home.
NATO will pull out of Afghanistan because the cynical view is, they have fully come to recognise all of that [Afghan is complicated, backward, tribal place.]. The truly cynical view is that all these soldiers, more than 320 of our own, who have died, have effectively died in vain and why waste another 4 or 5 years for still more to die on a hopeless mission?’
The BBC carried this anti-war stance over into its coverage of the build up to the Iraq War and of the war itself.
The BBC made false allegations about the government lying in its Dossier which set out the case for military action and as a result Greg Dyke, BBC DG, lost his job.
The BBC have never accepted they were wrong and continually rewrite history so that now they openly state that they were right and Hutton was wrong. They are wrong.
I would contend that the BBC’s stance on Iraq and Afghanistan has cost British soldier’s lives, Afghan civilian lives and has extended the war immeasurably by turning public opinion against it and made the government reluctant to spend the money to provide the necessary kit to protect the troops and to provide the necessary number of troops to do the job and see it through to the end.
When the BBC decides to play politics it has real consequences. It costs lives.
Moving on into more recent events the Savile affair saw the ‘open and accountable’ BBC attempt to cover up a scandal…and failing miserably….resulting in the debacle we have now.
Whilst that was about ‘internal’ politics if you like….to do with the image and reputation of the BBC, the later Newsnight programme that intended to ‘out’ a Tory politician as a paedophile can only be judged as once more the BBC entering the political arena…..it’s judgement went out the window as it saw an opportunity to not only attack the Tories and smear them but also to taint Mrs Thatcher’s image if only by association.
It was a chance they couldn’t resist and threw caution to the wind.
The BBC has of course other strings to its bow when it comes to political intervention….tackling ‘Austerity’ and government ’cuts’ as well as promoting Labour’s Plan B, seem to be top of the agenda at the moment…..along with quiet encouragement to strikers and rioters to ‘protest’.
The BBC spending £300,000 hiding the Balen Report which reveals if it had any anti-Israeli bias in its reporting hardly shows a nature that regards ‘openness’ and ‘accountability’ as a necessity.
Is BBC News killing Jews? Does its coverage of the Israel/Palestinian conflict incite anti-Semitic attacks? We’ll never know what Balen concluded…because the BBC hid the report. Why? Just what did it say that’s so bad?
Its refusal to reveal who attended a meeting run by the CMEP, which is essentially a pro AGW advocacy group run by the BBC’s Roger Harrabin and climate activist Joe Smith, hardly demonstrates good faith….the BBC’s complete coverage of global warming was radically altered to adopt a ‘pro man made global warming’ stance was effected by this meeting….so just who attended?…what were the vested interests?…..because they certainly were not the ‘scientific experts’ that the BBC claims they were…being environmental activists, businessmen and media types.
The whole raison d’être behind the BBC’s existence is that it provides impartial, accurate and fair news and information to the Public…essential in a democracy…even more essential in a time when the internet makes so much unsubstantiated information available.
It should have been the BBC’s job to quash the rumours about McAlpine…set in motion by the irresponsible, showboating Tom Watson (even though he is making claims about someone else apparently…though he remains silent on the matter for now), instead it fanned the flames and indeed intended to place McAlpine on the bonfire themselves.
The BBC is a left wing organisation through and through…regardless of Mark Thompson’s announcement that that is no longer the case, it still is….anti-Thatcher, anti-Tory, pro-’progressive’ social policies:
“But we were not just anti-Macmillan; we were anti-industry, anti-capitalism, anti-advertising, anti-selling, anti-profit, anti-patriotism, anti-monarchy, anti-Empire, anti-police, anti-armed forces, anti-bomb, anti-authority. Almost anything that made the world a freer, safer and more prosperous place, you name it, we were anti it.” Antony Jay, Telegraph, July 2007
Can anyone say anything has changed?
If the BBC is failing to be impartial and balanced in its reporting then the very reason for its existence disappears….We may as well have a commercial station that pumps out whatever its owner orders it to.
Can it’s attitude be changed? Can it be made to broadcast impartial news?…if not why should anyone be obliged to pay the license fee any longer for something that they can get from Sky by choice, and a lot more choice at that….or ITV or a myriad of other options on the Internet? Adverts? Have you not seen how many adverts the BBC puts out for its own programmes?…even ‘Today’ becomes a ‘trail’ for Panorama or Newsnight or similar programmes more often than not.
As Patten says…time for a ‘radical overhaul’…though probably not what he had in mind.
