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Hold The Front Page – BBC Biased! Shock, Horror
Contrived Contrition By Andrew Marr Might Help License Fee Decision
Then Expect Business As Usual
In A Sane World, BBC Would Be Privatised, Monopoly Ended 

“keep your views out of our news” 

This week the blind and the deaf finally learned that the BBC is hopelessly biased and is failing to fulfil its charter duties of balance, openness and fairness.

Readers of my BBCWatch column will wonder why this admission has taken so long. But they will not be holding their breath for any action that will reform this rotten, overbearing, and corrupt broadcasting monopoly.

The media this week is full of “leaks” apparently from the likes of BBC apparatchiks like Andrew Marr and Justin Webb, who have suddenly been persuaded to don sackcloth and ashes and flail themselves publicly for their sins.

Woe is us, they say according to the leaks, for we have been guilty of much political correctness and lefty bias. We have shamed the BBC by reneging on the charter obligations. We have lied about the European Union, education, and Muslims. We have betrayed the great British middle classes.

Pardon my cynicism, but isn’t the timing of all this a bit obvious. The negotiations are under way, nay, coming to a head, for the government to decide on the BBC’s latest license fee mandate.

Unprofessional, gutter press standards
And why these high profile figureheads were saying mea culpa, BBC News was carrying on regardless with its unprofessional attitude and gutter press instincts.

Take the issue of General Sir Richard Dannatt’s supposed undermining of government policy over Iraq. On the morning when the Daily Mail published its interview with the General, I remarked over the breakfast table that Dannatt would be out of a job before the end of the day. But in an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme that same morning, Dannatt made it absolutely clear that he had been misquoted, and hadn’t said that the presence of British soldiers was a red rag to the Iraqi bull. He carefully pointed out that this might have been true in certain exceptional circumstances, but not overall. Dannatt answered all the questions straight down the line of government policy.

Job saved
I called across the breakfast table “Job Saved!” Prime Minister Tony Blair was able to say later that day that there wasn’t, in Dannatt’s words, a cigarette paper, between the two.

This wasn’t good enough for the BBC. It could see that a good story was being shot down. So it just ignored its own interview, and carried on as though the leader of the British Army had in fact rebelled. The ludicrous John Simpson, whose shelf life as a reliable reporter ended about 20 years ago and who thinks that he is a policy maker not a journalist, was interviewed on the 10 o’clock news in the evening as though Dannatt hadn’t recanted in full.

Earlier this week Matt Frei, another would-be policy maker (left-wing of course) was at his egregious worst with a report from Washington that sought to trash the Bush administration rather than report the facts, and ended his piece to camera standing in front of the White House with the words “……the people behind me are losing their nerve”. This despite the fact that his report hadn’t mentioned anything about this, and that “loosing your nerve” is unknowable and judgemental. What kind of journalism schools do people like Frei and Simpson go to?

Dump the license fee
Now is a great time to face up to some facts and dump the license fee, that relic of an age when the great and the good ordered us about and dictated what we could listen to on the radio and watch on TV. The state-funded BBC makes the British look childish. No other sophisticated western democracy would allow its government to dominate the news like this.

Let’s grow up and get rid of it now.

The BBC might have been an impressive organisation once. But now it is sloppy, rotten and bloated. It has come to the end of its useful life. Britain needs competing news outlets, not a monopoly.

The light entertainment, chav-friendly part of the BBC should be sold off and left to be funded by advertising. If it is really world class, the BBC News TV and Radio current affairs programmes will survive from subscription income. Local radio stations should be sold to the private sector. Dump things like Asian radio, and particularly News 24, which has been corrupting BBC news cover in the Middle East, sucking up to anti-western opinion there in order to safeguard income.

Some people might think that reforming the BBC is not that important. After all, nobody will die if it carries on in its corrupt, biased and incompetent way.

I beg to differ.

If the British insist on retaining this relic of a bygone age, when governments still felt they could veto the people’s access to news and information, they will always be suckered into ignoring the uncomfortable, negative facts of political life.  

BBC poisons debate
The BBC perpetuates the myths that fit in with a leftist view of the world. These subjects are closed and are never up for discussion in the presence of the anointed - those chosen few chattering away in Islington and reading, and believing, poison sheets like the Guardian and the Independent.

Global Warming, the Minimum Wage, Economic Freedom, the National Health Service, State Education (the last two as long as the limousine liberals can opt out for themselves and their children), Illegal Immigration, the Conservative Party, Islam, America, and Israel - all these problems or issues have been solved by the left and can never be debated, according to the conventional wisdom at the BBC.

So human induced Global Warming is a fact and action must be taken to solve it. An effective Minimum Wage doesn’t cause chronic unemployment. Economic Freedom favours only the rich. The National Health Service works. Vouchers for education? Outrageous. Can’t do that. Illegal immigration is really the exploited seeking asylum. The Conservative party is suspect. Islam is a peaceful religion and worthy of respect. America (at least when governed by the Republicans) is a would-be coloniser and an evil force in the world. Israel is bad and homicide bombers are victims. All these myths are perpetuated by the BBC, our state-controlled media service.  

Subscription fee
e are told that BBC TV and radio news output is the best in the world. If this is so, why not end the license fee and allow the BBC to raise money by selling subscriptions to the public. Surely with all this excellence, the middle classes would fall over themselves to sign up and pay. I would for one.

That will also mean that at least 90 per cent of the leftist presenters and reporters will be surplus to requirements as the subscription-paying middle classes will insist that the journalism reflects the truth, which most of the time is rather to the right of centre.

This will save me a fortune in telephone calls to the BBC’s complaints line, and I won’t have to say anymore “Hey, BBC, get your views out of my news”.  

 Neil Winton – October 25, 2006 

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