If you hoped he’d seek truth and spread a little enlightenment you’d be disappointed, if you believed in his integrity you’d be disillusioned, if you thought he’d bring balance and the judgement of Solomon using wisdom gleaned through decades of mingling with Kings and commoners you’d be disabused of that soon enough.
It is an unfortunate fact that Jonathan Dimbleby is as corrupt, as deceitful, as stupid, as intolerant, as prejudiced, as the rest of us may, or may not, be.
He talks grandly and urgently of freedom of speech, of troubling times, of voices silenced, of living in the darkest of times, he talks of intimidation and bullying, of the threat to British values, of witch-hunts and hate speech. But it’s all a front, a fraud. His moral grandstanding, his pious babbling is all a lie. All this talk of values, of liberty, of freedom of speech is merely a vehicle to deliver his real message, one of course close to his heart and wallet, about the ‘threat’ to the BBC due its charter renewal and the dark forces that seek to detroy it. This isn’t about freedom of speech and liberty and British values, it’s a tawdry exercise in propping up the BBC’s privileged, entrenched and powerfully dominant position in the media world.
Dimbleby knows the BBC is under threat because…
News Corp and its ilk have a vested financial interest in reducing the BBC’s scope and influence in the hope that the edifice will tumble, leaving a gaping hole in the market for them to fill. They and their cronies in Westminster care not a jot for balance or fairness, but are doing their best to shape the outcome of the negotiations over the renewal of the BBC’s charter – effectively its licence to broadcast.
Oh yes, the old enemy…Murdoch and those ‘cronies in Westminster’…by that he means the ruling Tory government, just elected with a decent majority (against all the predictions of the BBC so-called political experts!) whilst of course Dimbleby has never been elected to his position from whence on high he lectures us all…..a Dimbleby dynasty, handed down from father to son(s)…so much for democracy and all that.
Dimbleby suggests that the power of the BBC is a good thing, a vital thing, when social media is an unregulated and yet powerfully influential player in politics and society now…
In this climate, public service broadcasting is arguably more important than ever but, ironically, under greater threat than ever.
The BBC has become the most influential public service broadcaster in the world. It sets a benchmark for all broadcasters – public and commercial. That is why you should be very worried about what is happening to it.
Now all that’s a bit odd really when you consider what the BBC gets up to…as just today Allison Pearson reports ….My Leftie hell on Radio 4’s Any Questions
She tells us that…
I soon realised with a sinking heart, however, that the audience in the school hall was outrageously biased.
How could it be, when almost all of Cambridgeshire and, indeed, East Anglia, is true blue that the Any Questions audience appeared to be composed mainly of Corbyn fans?
I do blame the BBC, which has to take some responsibility for broadcasting a current affairs programme which gives such an erroneous snapshot of the national mood.
After the recording, the show’s excellent host, Jonathan Dimbleby, sighed heavily and told me it was a constant problem.
He and the whole AQ team found it immensely frustrating that Tories simply did not show up on the night to add their voices. The producer said it would cost £5,000 a week to pay someone to assemble a politically balanced audience.
The BBC needs to take action so that its current affairs output better reflects the views of all of the people who pay its licence fee.
Oh the irony…a BBC programme run by Dimbleby that has an audience packed out with hard-left activists and Dimbleby has the cheek to say that the BBC is an essential bulwark against such manipulation of the media sphere by very vocal and aggressive groups. The fact is the BBC is the default goto organisation for anyone with a grievance against British society…be they Irish or Islamic terrorists or embittered left wingers who hate the nasty party or black race-baiters….you want a platform to air your grievance, however unjustified?, the BBC’s the place to go.
All the more ironic as Dimbleby says this..
In institutions across the western world, the “hecklers’’’ veto is growing in frequency and volume.
Remember this is a BBC that essentially banned Lord Lawson from the airwaves because he didn’t submit to the intimidation and bullying of the climate alarmist ‘consensus’, the BBC supinely crumbling after being bombarded with complaints from foam-flecked climate ‘hecklers’… a BBC that allowed itself to fall under the spell of climate activist Roger Harrabin and his mate Dr Joe Smith who effectively silenced climate change sceptics and drove them off the BBC airwaves. So much for freedom of speech and respecting the right to be heard.
Dimbleby goes on to build on his claims about the threat to the BBC…
Today its enemies are more powerful than ever. Some are ideological, some are commercial. The former are to be found at their most ferocious on the backbenches of the House of Commons. Then there are the enemies in the media, who are not so much driven by ideology as profit. Principal among these is News UK, owned by News Corp, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch.
He goes on to whinge that the culture secretary has dared to raise the question of BBC reform…
The culture secretary, John Whittingdale, produced a green paper (open to public comment) that made his agenda pretty clear. It asserted that today, “the BBC is just one voice among many” before going on to ask if the corporation has “become too big, and if so, should it be more focused?” This is what a lawyer might describe as a leading, and a loaded, question.
Dimbleby finishes on this note…as ‘western civilisation is imperilled’...
In this dysfunctional world, the BBC, like other public service broadcasters across Europe, has a vital role. It is a unique forum. It would be a tragedy if any government, wittingly or unwittingly, were so to tamper with the BBC as to turn it into merely “one voice among many”.
Oh, by the way, when he talks of ‘western civilisation being imperilled’ he doesn’t mean by millions of Muslim migrants, terrorism and the looney left but by the Tory government and its alleged attacks on the rule of law, freedom and democracy.
Interesting though that Dimbleby believes that the BBC should be the single most important media voice in Britain and not merely a ‘voice among many’.
Fascinating that, arrogant, imperial, just a touch fascist maybe. The BBC über alles. No wonder the BBC seems so in awe of Frau Merkel and her migrant miracle message.
I would imagine, well no, facts prove, that the BBC itself is one of the major threats to western civilisation, a civilisation that it seems to hate and seeks to undermine and malign at every opportunity. Dimbleby and his dishonest and self-serving tract illustrate perfectly the conceit, arrogance and delusions peddled by the BBC as it seeks to protect itself from scrutiny and accountability.
You have to ask how it is that a major BBC figure, one so very senior within its ranks, is allowed to pen such prejudiced and biased comments that attack not only commercial rivals who have to earn their pay and not have it handed to them on a plate, and also attack the government itself. If that does not breach just about every code on bias and impartiality I’m not sure what would.