BBC 2007 16.03.07

The BBC, so far from being the paragon of impartiality it boasts itself to be, is a biased, corrupt and self-serving institution and its prejudices are aired daily. Everybody knows this, so why does the BBC continue to deny its bias?

Simple: because it depends upon a reputation for impartiality in order to secure the licence fee. Listen to what leading international commentators, and even BBC insiders, say about this....

If you have a TV set, but you never watch BBC, you still have to pay the licence tax or they'll threaten to come round and lock you up. Gerald Warner, of Scotland on Sunday, comments very amusingly on these threats and extortions:

"Imagine if you wanted to shop at Harvey Nichols, but you had to go to Jenners first and pay them £135 for a permit to enter their competitor's premises. By what right does the BBC act as gatekeeper to all 196 other television channels? That is an infringement of Article 10 of the European Convention, guaranteeing free access to information across frontiers."+

Newsnight changed the sequence of events

an 'unfair, unbalanced, unnecessarily personal, and disingenuous' film...

BBC in row over doctored TV footage with Gordon Brown

The BBC was at the centre of a new row over doctored TV footage after it admitted that its

flagship Newsnight programme changed the sequence of events in a film highly critical of Gordon Brown.

Mr Brown's officials have complained to the Corporation about an 'unfair, unbalanced, unnecessarily personal, and disingenuous' film which they claim was altered in an attempt to make him look like a thug.

Newsnight editor Peter Barron has admitted that a sequence of events had been reversed in the film, but refused to apologise. BBC chiefs have defended the film as 'a cross between Louis Theroux and gonzo journalism'.+

BBC and the subtle art of distortion in broadcasting

Time to Review the Status of the BBC

Civitas

Propaganda or Public Service Broadcasting? Time to Review the Status of the BBC

"A BBC documentary, purporting to explore sexual practices in 1940s Britain, distorted its source material so completely that Norman Dennis questions whether we can still regard the BBC as a public service broadcaster." +

PDF
http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/CivitasReviewFebruary2006.pdf

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BBC moderators refuse to remove anti-semitic posting

On the Harry’s Place website, Mark has posted disturbing news of the BBC’s refusal to remove antisemitic foulness from its Radio Five Live website, along with an analysis of its provenance:

BBC Radio 5 Live message board moderators have refused to remove a posting from the 5 Live website, which states that

‘Zionism is a racist ideology where jews are given supremacy over all other races and faiths.
This is found in the Talmud.
There is a law called Baba Mezia which allows jews to lie as long as its to non-jews. many pro jewish supporters will cringe at this being exposed because they know it exists, yet they keep quiet about it, hey frip, jla and co
The Law of Baba Mezia!! Tsk tsk tsk! Its in the Talmud.’

When I brought the mailing to the attention of the moderator, “The BBC Communities Team” emailed back, stating

‘we have decided that it does not contravene the House Rules and are going to leave it on site’.

Apparently, at least three others have also complained to the BBC.+

The BBC spends 2.6 million pound of viewer's tax money on links

...critics suggested they were just another drain on licence-payers money.

And now on BBC2...the 15-second link that cost £700,000

By Lucretia Munro and Paul Revoir - More by this author » Last updated at 09:06am on 14th February 2007

They are supposed to be windows opening on a new and exciting world of television.

But as the latest BBC programme links were unveiled yesterday, critics suggested they were just another drain on licence-payers money.

The corporation has splashed £700,000 on 14 scenes which will be used between BBC2 programmes.

Much of the considerable cost was incurred by sending a BBC team to Cape Town to film three of the 15-second clips.

Apparently South Africa was chosen for the project because it has "better weather."

The introduction of the new segue clips, costing an average £50,000 each, takes the BBC's spending on such links – known as idents – to £2.6million over the last five years.+

Report critical of BBC's liberal bias

... the BBC must not confuse its internal equal opportunities policies with its editorial policies,...

BBC bosses must break free from a straitjacket of political correctness, a highly critical report of the public broadcaster’s impartiality will conclude.

The 80-page inquiry will report today that the BBC’s drama, entertainment and factual output is dominated by a liberal consensus that frequently fails to recognise that impartial coverage is best served by espousing a diversity of views.

BBC coverage of the Live8 concert and the Make Poverty History campaign will be highlighted for criticism. It is accused of surrendering its objectivity to Bob Geldof, the campaigner and musician, and Richard Curtis, the writer of The Vicar of Dibley, during 2005.

The central criticism is that the BBC failed to highlight any alternative views to the campaign, which was highly politicised in its demands for a mass protest at the Gleneagles G8 summit and for debt relief for developing countries.

The document singles out two examples of programming that flouted BBC impartiality. It criticises, but does not name, Lorraine Heggessey, the former Controller of BBC One, for agreeing to show an episode of The Vicar of Dibley this year that featured a one-minute clip of the Make Poverty History video. BBC rules state that the corporation must not

There is criticism of the decision to transmit programmes about the making of Live8, towards the end of 2005, because the documentary was made by Brook Lapping, a production company owned by Ten Alps, in which Geldof is shareholder and company director. This relationship was not highlighted in the programme.

All campaigns, even those such as Make Poverty History, which was endorsed by all political parties, should be subject to critical scrutiny, the report said.

The document will also emphasise the need for the BBC to commission a broader range of drama and factual output, highlighting the controversial BBC Two drama Shoot the Messenger, written by the black author Sharon Foster, as an example. The programme was described as “the most racist film in the history of the BBC” for a storyline that was, in part, unashamedly critical of problems in the black community.

The document concludes that the BBC must not confuse its internal equal opportunities policies with its editorial policies, and that it should recognise the range of opinion that exists in Britain. Impartiality has to be measured over a range of programming, not just within a single programme.+

BBC 'risked safety of troops'

The BBC was accused last night of risking the safety of British forces in Iraq after trawling for information on troop movements in the war-torn country.

Politicians reacted in disbelief to the revelation that for over two hours yesterday, the BBC News website carried a request for people in Iraq to report on troop movements.

The request was removed from the website after it sparked furious protests that the corporation was endangering the lives of British servicemen and women.

But according to accounts last night, a story on a major operation by US and Iraqi troops against al-Qa'eda somewhere north of Baghdad contained an extraordinary request for information about the movement of troops.

Last night the BBC confirmed the wording of the request was: "Are you in Iraq? Have you seen any troop movements? If you have any information you would like to share with the BBC, you can do so using the form below."

The BBC confirmed last night that this form of words had appeared on the website from "late morning" until early afternoon. +

BBC: 'The ultimate self serving metropolitan monopoly'

You really do have to leave the country to appreciate fully how pernicious the BBC’s grasp of the nation’s cultural and political soul has become.

Great capital city. Shame about the awful BBC

But worst of all; much more, much more baleful than any of these irritations, is the political, cultural and intellectual hegemony exercised by the ultimate self-serving metropolitan monopoly, the BBC. Much worse because, unlike mayors and snobs, its domination of the rest of the country is so complete and so permanent.

On a recent trip back to Britain, I happened to hear on the BBC an interview with Helen Mirren, shortly before her Oscars triumph. Amid the usual probing sort of questioning that is the currency of celebrity journalism (“How do you manage to look so young? Is there anyone since Shakespeare who has come close to matching your talent?”) one particular gem caught my attention.

Dame Helen was asked how difficult it had been to play such an “unsympathetic character” as the Queen, the eponymous heroine of her recent film. She replied, quite tartly, that she didn’t find the Queen unsympathetic at all and launched into her now familiar riff about how she thought Elizabeth II really, surprisingly, quite agreeable.

It was a little incident, a small crystal in the battering hailstorm of drivel that pours daily through the airwaves. And yet to my mind it signified something so large. It had nothing to do with politics or Iraq or America. It was so telling in its revelation of prejudices and presumptions precisely because it was on such a slight matter as the sensibilities of an actress.

It betrayed an absolutely rock-solid assumption that the Queen is fundamentally unsympathetic, and that anyone who might still harbour some respect for the monarch — or indeed for that matter, the military or the Church, or the countryside or the joint stock company or any of the great English bequests to the world — must be some reactionary old buffer out in the sticks who has not had the benefit of the London media’s cultural enlightenment.

More than that, the question — all fawning and fraternal and friendly — contained within it an assumption that, of course, every thoughtful person shares the same view.

You really do have to leave the country to appreciate fully how pernicious the BBC’s grasp of the nation’s cultural and political soul has become. The groupthink and assumptions implicit in almost everything broadcast by BBC News, and even less explicitly by much else of the corporation’s output, lie like a suffocating blanket over the national consciousness.

This is the mindset that sees the effortless superiority, at every turn, of benign collectivism over selfish individualism, exploited worker over unscrupulous capitalist, enlightened European over brutish American, thoughtful atheist over dumb believer, persecuted Arab over callous Israeli; and that believes the West is the perpetrator of just about every ill that has ever befallen the world — from colonialism to global warming.

I’m often told, when I take on like this, that I’m ignoring the quality of BBC output. But I spent almost a decade in the employ of the BBC and I can say, without demeaning my gifted colleagues at The Times, that it has probably one of the highest concentrations of talent of any institution in the world. But that, of course, is the problem. It perpetuates its power by attracting and retaining an educated elite that is distinguished by its unstinting devotion to collectivist values. I’ve no doubt it does what it does very well. It is what it does I object to....+