Please use this thread for BBC-related comments and analysis. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not (and never has been) an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or use as a chat forum. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.
, co-author of the wonderful Yes Minister series, has been spilling the beans recently on the bias and attitudes inherent in the culture of the BBC. His latest article was in yesterday’s Sunday Times. Here are some excerpts – the first sets the scene and lists the things that the BBC was, and still is, largely anti- to:
The growing general agreement that the culture of the BBC (and not just the BBC) is the culture of the chattering classes provokes a question that has puzzled me for 40 years. The question itself is simple – much simpler than the answer: what is behind the opinions and attitudes of this social group?
They are that minority often characterised (or caricatured) by sandals and macrobiotic diets, but in a less extreme form are found in The Guardian, Channel 4, the Church of England, academia, showbusiness and BBC news and current affairs. They constitute our metropolitan liberal media consensus, although the word “liberal” would have Adam Smith rotating in his grave. Let’s call it “media liberalism”.
It is of particular interest to me because for nine years, between 1955 and 1964, I was part of this media liberal consensus. For six of those nine years I was working on Tonight, a nightly BBC current affairs television programme. My stint coincided almost exactly with Harold Macmillan’s premiership and I do not think that my former colleagues would quibble if I said we were not exactly diehard supporters.
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-[British nuclear] bomb, anti-authority. Almost anything that made the world a freer, safer and more prosperous place – you name it, we were anti it.
The second excerpt explains the mindset that makes it ‘okay’ for self-regarding Beeboids to shape the news agenda and massage their news stories in the way that they do:
We saw ourselves as part of the intellectual elite, full of ideas about how the country should be run. Being naive in the way institutions actually work, we were convinced that Britain’s problems were the result of the stupidity of the people in charge of the country.
This ignorance of the realities of government and management enabled us to occupy the moral high ground. We saw ourselves as clever people in a stupid world, upright people in a corrupt world, compassionate people in a brutal world, libertarian people in an authoritarian world.
And lastly, a truism of media in general, but of telly-tax-funded media in particular:
The Tonight programme had a nightly audience of about 8m. It was much easier to keep their attention by telling them they were being deceived or exploited by big institutions than by saying what a good job the government and the banks and the oil companies were doing.
Do read the rest (see link above) – there’s lots more good stuff.
Make sure too that you get and read Antony Jay’s significant treatise Confessions of a Reformed BBC Producer (PDF), published by the Centre for Policy Studies.
Thank you to Biased BBC reader Dave T for the link.
:
I don’t know how this is being covered on other networks, but the BBC are starting all their news bulletins about John Redwood’s Competitiveness Commission reports with the words…
The Labour Party has today criticised…
This has happened many times before. Instead of concentrating on the substance of a Tory policy announcement the BBC seem to revel in giving Labour Ministers the microphone to explain how whatever the policy happens to be is making the Tories more right wing than Michael Howard. It is a disgrace. This morning they wheeled out John Hutton to slag off Redwood’s report, without even carrying any information about the report itself or indeed any comment from John Redwood or any other Tory.
Meanwhile, in Tory plan for red tape ‘tax cut’, Biased BBC reader Towcestrian notes there are three ‘pull-quotes’ highlighted in the story – all of them quotes from Labour and the TUC.
– the last pair of which appear to be two versions of the same quote – probably some Beeboid trying to spin it different ways, forgetting to get rid of one of them.
Biased BBC reader Tubby Round has spotted the BBC trotting out John Redwood’s cringeworthy first attempt at singing Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau in Welsh from waaay back in 1993 as suitable library footage for their reports today on policy announcements – a clip that is getting a bit hackneyed even for satirical programmes like Have I Got News For You, let alone for BBC News. By the same standard, every mention of Lord Pillock, sorry, Kinnock, would be accompanied by footage of him falling in the sea at Brighton and audio of his intemperate outburst, as Leader of the Opposition, at James Naughtie that was so scandalously hushed up by the BBC at the time.
Good old unbiased impartial BBC.
in a trailer for Any Qustions (quoted in its entirety):
In Any Questions today: the stock markets have fallen. Should we rejoice if greed is bad for us?
Dimblebore’s presumption of a correlation between stock market prices, greed and whatever is ‘bad’ (or good) for us is an awfully simplistic, ignorant view – the sort of view one might expect from someone who doesn’t need to worry about his pension or income, courtesy in part because of the unique way the BBC is funded.
Please use this thread for BBC-related comments and analysis. Please keep comments on other threads to the topic at hand. N.B. this is not (and never has been) an invitation for general off-topic comments, rants or use as a chat forum. This post will remain at or near the top of the blog. Please scroll down to find new topic-specific posts.
was on the subject of BBC impartiality, or rather partiality.
The programme features notable contributions from two recent critics of the BBC’s partiality, Robin Aitken, author of Can We Trust The BBC?, Anthony Jay co-creator of Yes Minister, and author of Confessions of a Reformed BBC Producer (PDF) published by the Centre for Policy Studies.
The programme also features contributions from Professor Adrian Monck
Department of Journalism and Publishing at City University in London, David Cox, billed as a ‘media commentator’ and Helen Boaden, Director of BBC News.
I’d like to put up a transcript of the programme, but haven’t had the time to go through it and type it up yet – there’s certainly plenty of meat and grist in the programme for us to chew over. There has been some discussion of this programme already on the current open comment thread.
You can hear the programme on the BBC’s listen again service.
Thank you to Anonanon for the spotting the programme.
, published in The Spectator, is about Alan Johnston, a BBC reporter who was kidnapped in Gaza until released, with the aid of Hamas, or so the media, including the BBC, have portrayed events.
Phillips outlines the web of interconnected groups. factions and individuals surrounding the kidnap of Johnston, pointing out:
But since Johnston was so close to Hamas it is naive to think that Dagmoush would have kidnapped him without receiving at least tacit approval from his powerful patron. And although Hamas said immediately it knew who was holding him, it did nothing for many weeks — although its closeness to the Army of Islam enabled it to stop them killing him.
It was Hamas which had everything to gain from the ordeal of Alan Johnston, its friend whom the BBC was about to transfer out of Gaza anyway — and its strategy has worked brilliantly. Not only did it open communication with Britain, but the idea of negotiating with Hamas is now gaining traction fast on both sides of the Atlantic.
Leading up to her stark and striking conclusion Phillips notes that:
Since Johnston’s release, the BBC seems to have turned itself into a vehicle for Hamas propaganda. Alastair Crooke has been given airtime granted to no other lobbyist, in interviews and one-off programmes giving him unprecedented opportunity to push his views.
This is the BBC whose other Gaza reporter Fayed abu Shamala reportedly told a Hamas rally in 2001 that the BBC was
‘waging the campaign of resistance/terror against Israel shoulder-to-shoulder together with the Palestinian people’; and whose Middle East bureau editor, Simon Wilson, has acknowledged that he met Hamas leaders in Gaza and Damascus to discuss Johnston’s fate — meetings about which the Foreign Office was closely consulted.
Do read the rest – see links above. Damian Thompson of the Daily Telegraph has also blogged about Phillips article, Was Alan Johnston a ‘friend’ of Hamas?.
Thank you to Edna for spotting spotting this first.
as an ‘execution’, longtime Biased BBC reader Dave T pointed out that this (ab)use of the word ‘execute’ is contrary to the BBC’s own BBC News Styleguide (PDF), where, if Robin turns to page 69, Troublesome words, he will find:
Execute means to put to death after a legal process.
Terrorists or criminals do not execute people, they
murder them.
I’ve yet to hear from Robin or any other Beeboid in defence of Robin’s poor choice of description. Come on guys, we know you’re out there!
In ten days time we will remember the partition of the subcontinent into Pakistan and India 60 years ago, followed later by the [later] breakaway of Bangladesh.
To mark this there are several programmes on radio and TV. I declare an interest – I was in army intelligence in Bombay in the days leading up to the end of the Raj – I left on the Georgic, the last ship to leave British India.
Already the remarks by presenters are slanted to suggest that it was the wicked British who partitioned India. Legally this is true – but the fact is that Mountbatten absolutely did not want partition, and along with Nehru and Gandhi fought hard to preserve that great country as one.
Another programme is to dwell on Muhammad Ali Jinnah ‘and his vision’. Jinnah was not originally in favour of partition; he was a completely westernised gentleman in his tailored English suits. He was threatened by the Muslim League, who promised violence if they did not get an Islamic state. In an attempt to keep India whole, Gandhi and Nehru said that Jinnah could be at the top of the new government but Jinnah was trapped by the Islamist militants.
The consequence was upwards of 2 millions slaughtered; 300,000 killed later in the nascent Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) by West Pakistan (now Pakistan) forces, who used widespread rape as a weapon of suppression. And the death a few months later of Jinnah himself – can anyone doubt that he died crushed by the awful consequences of his surrender to the fanatics?
And consider what India might have become if it had stayed united – instead there were two wars, continual fighting over Kashmir, the degradation of Bangladesh, the tottering state of Pakistan and borders armed like an iron curtain dividing areas, such as the Punjab, which for centuries had been one. What a cost to satisfy the greed for power by the Islamists.
But will this history be presented in these programmes, or will the British as usual be cast as villains?
Bernard is right to ask this question – there is likely to be a great deal of glossing over of the trauma of the partition of India. For those of us born since then, knowledge of the partition of India into three pieces – what is now India and the then Pakistan (in two pieces, West and East, hundreds of miles apart, destined to fall apart from the get go), is limited to the historically aware – and on current evidence such historical awareness seems to pass much of the youth-obsessed BBC (and other broadcasters) by, never mind their tendency to revisionism when it suits them.
There are lots of good sites on the web describing these fascinating and horrific events. Googling for ‘Partition of India’ leads to links such as Partition of India on Wikipedia and this graphic BBC picture gallery of photos by Margaret Bourke-White. Wikipedia also has an article on the Bangladesh Liberation War that serves as a useful starting point on the break-up of West and East Pakistan into modern day Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Please let us know in the comments or by email to biasedbbc@gmail.com of any shoddy or partial anniversary coverage that you see or hear.
, near the end, Jeremy Paxman announced:
Well, that’s all from Newsnight tonight. Before we go, a correction to our markets, the Dow Jones was actually, aw, this is bad, up this evening, not down as we reported. How do we manage to get it so wrong so frequently on the markets?
Well, I don’t know Jeremy, but I could hazard a guess or three! Then:
It was the 100th anniversary today though of the foundation of the Boy Scouts though.
D’oh! It’s just the Scouts these days Jeremy – girls are members too you know! (And what was with that second ‘though’? or was it a “D’oh!”?).
There are now said to be 28-million of them, all as Baden-Powell promised, smiling and whistling under all circumstances. There are 40,000 of them camped out at Brownsea Island in Dorset.
D’oh! There are 40,000 of them camped out at the World Scout Jamboree 2007 in Hylands Park, Chelmsford in Essex, with 300 lucky Scouts participating in the Brownsea camp re-enactment on Brownsea Island in Dorset…
Goodnight.
Well, at least you got that right Jeremy. Well, the night part anyway.
We then cut to film of Peter Duncan, the Chief Scout, hand raised in Scout salute, saying, as the titles roll (as is the way on hip-and-happening Newsnight these days):
Join with me, in saying, “On my honour, I promise that I will do my best…”
…then Parum-pum-pum-pum he’s silenced and the Newsnight theme starts at full blast – omitting the rest of the Scout Promise as the film and end credits continue to roll.
Now, the Scout Promise is:
On My Honour, I promise that I will do my best
To do my duty to God and to the Queen,
To help other people
And to keep the Scout Law
…which is sufficiently short that Newsnight could have included it in full within their end-title sequence, yet, in common with other BBC news coverage that I saw, they chopped it off after ‘do my best’.
It’s enough to make one wonder if the BBC has a problem with the concepts of doing one’s duty to God and to the Queen, helping other people and keeping the Scout Law (which is equally straightforward and eloquent). Surely not.
A wiggle-woggle to Chuffer for spotting the first Scout promise abridgement.
