Sunday 22 March 2015

The bias of our broadcasters - the BBC - again

My apologies for yet another post about the BBC, but as one who has very fond childhood and teenage memories of BBC radio particularly (television was another story, but mainly because we lived in the middle of a wood underneath a mountain: television pictures resembled at best a blizzard and at worst an alpine white-out) the Corporation's departure from anything approaching balance, much less impartiality, on so many issues, is becoming now not so much a national scandal as a threat to liberty itself.
Those of us who might be called moderately socially conservative, traditionalist in religion without falling into the profoundly unorthodox trap of fundamentalism, and who are politically on the socially responsible, somewhat 'Cobbettian,' right, have experienced to our cost this barely hidden BBC agenda with its relentless promotion of issues such as women's ordination and same-sex 'marriage,' and a general and deeply embedded institutional bias to the adolescently 'transgressive' and destructive in cultural terms and to the unthinkingly 'liberal- left' in politics.
The latest 'progressive' causes to be promoted include the uncritical acceptance of highly controversial interpretations of those curiously related threats to individual freedom - indeed, freedom of thought itself - 'homophobia' and 'islamophobia,' not to mention an increasing evident editorial line in favour of those pressing, often in highly emotive, selective and misleading terms, for the legalisation of assisted suicide. At times, it seems there is no part of the 'Judeo-Christian' heritage which the programme makers and news editors of the BBC do not seek to undermine and discredit.
The BBC has a very proud past, and many and diverse achievements to its credit, but there has been for some time evidence of an ever growing tendency to use its editorial judgement, not only to report events, but to influence and manipulate them. That this 'Guardianisation,' as it has been described, is funded, in effect compulsorily out of taxation, by the licence-payer, should be a matter of deep concern to all who value free debate and access to a wide range of opinion and balanced information. 
There are those, of course, who would wish to destroy the BBC in favour of a rampant, populist commercialism in broadcasting which would be, if anything, even worse than the existing situation. However, unless the BBC shows a willingness even to recognise that a problem exists, and to begin to set its own house in order, for the greater good of our national cultural and political life, that would seem to be the almost inevitable outcome.
This is Andrew Bridgen M.P., writing in The Telegraph [here]:
"...The BBC has a budget more than double the size of the Foreign Office – and is an empire of an organisation. I believe serious questions must be put to the BBC at Charter Renewal about their agenda and their transparency.This must be done without fear of its monolithic PR machine, which wields so much power. “Auntie”, as she was once affectionately known, is no longer with us. Instead we are faced with one of the last vestiges of corporatism, a leviathan that seeks to change our national culture and which holds even our highest elected representatives in contempt. The BBC has shown it is willing to ride roughshod over our democratic processes, so it must be tackled..."


3 comments:

  1. We are living in a strange world. I had lunch with a friend, a former journalist, last week. He was disgusted by what the modern media has become. He was trained to report the facts and keep his personal opinion out of things; the naked bias that is now de rigueur appalls him. It seems to me the word 'reporter' now longer applies; they should be called 'interpreters' for no story passes through them unfiltered. The power wielded by this group that have been appointed by and are answerable only to themselves is profoundly undemocratic and deeply disturbing. And the chances of those elected by the people doing anything to change the situation is slim for they, quite frankly, seem terrified of doing anything that will earn them the displeasure of the media.

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  2. We have this problem in the United States with the mainstream media. No real news, just ideological spin, and entertainment.

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    1. Really. The MSM is dead.

      Weirdly, however, the progleft lost the internet.

      Huffpo?

      Fail.

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