“this was the thinnest of gruel, yet Paxman ludicrously sought to intimidate participants with this paper-tiger evidence” 

“oil companies are evil, and are run by people without children or any relatives at all, who are only interested in loadsamoney, and therefore can have no interest nor valid views on the future of the world’s environment”

The BBC is an arrogant, opinionated and corrupt monopoly which needs to be broken up before it inflicts terminal harm on our freedoms and democracy.

The BBC should, by the terms of its charter, produce balanced, fair journalism which shows no favours, takes no sides, allows the broadest possible spectrum of opinion to be heard, and leaves the audience to make up its own mind.

The BBC is falling scandalously short of these goals. In the process it is warping the minds of our nation and inculcating a dangerous inability to understand and judge the important political issues of our time.

Look at the relentlessly childish reporting from America, where the weight of biased journalism has led to the almost routine acceptance that George W Bush is stupid. You might not agree with what he does, but stupid he ain’t. The BBC’s reporting of the fighting between the fiendish, merciless, medieval and uncivilised Hezbollah Muslim maniacs and the only democracy in the region made it seem as though there was some reason to support the mindless and random targeting of civilians by Muslims with rockets.

The evidence for BBC failure is so abundant, it is difficult to know where to start. I could talk you through every single news bulletin published by the BBC to back up my assertion. The BBC is routinely unprofessional and incompetent

No justification
Let me give you three examples from this week’s output. Firstly, there was the Panorama Soccer Bung “documentary”, in which, tabloid style, the BBC sought to traduce the reputations of the innocent with a bullying litany of accusations the justification for which existed only in the dirty minds of the reporter and editors.

Secondly, BBC Radio 4’s Today programme couldn’t wait to join in the scary, fascist, totalitarian attempt by neo-Labour ingratiates at the Royal Society to squash freedom of speech over the climate change issue.

And lastly, NewsNight, BBC TV’s flagship current affairs programme, led by arch bully Jeremy Paxman, trashed anyone who suggested that human activity might not be changing the climate.

Paxman also went along with the Panorama apparatchiks. In a discussion segment on NewsNight, after the ludicrous Panorama broadcast, he took at face value the vacuous, evidence-free reporting that managers of Premiership football clubs had pocketed bribes in transfer dealings.

Make them look foolish
Paxman later sucked up to the NewsNight editors’ plan to make those trying to argue that humans weren’t inducing global warming look foolish, while those on the other side of the argument were given support.

The BBC had been relentlessly trailing the Panorama bung programme for days.

Panorama must have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds of licence fee payers’ money setting up the programme, so, not surprisingly, it sought to get the biggest possible audience. When I listened to the trailers, they seemed extremely thin, saying the Premiership managers were involved but not adding much more. That seemed strange, but I just assumed that the programme itself would be a blockbuster.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

After months of trying, using some foreign bloke with 4 names who had minor contacts in football across Europe, they came up with absolutely nothing of any moment. A few blowhard soccer agents had plenty to say, but no evidence to offer. They leant on the affable but dimwit son of Bolton manager Sam Allardyce. They even borrowed £50,000 in cash from a bank, dramatically counted it out in a hotel room, but couldn’t find anyone to bribe with it.

Thin gruel
I shall be writing to the Director General of the BBC, to find out just how much of our money was spent on this irresponsible and cruel attempt to implicate the innocent by nudge-nudge/wink-wink journalism, which would make the News of the World feel proud. I shall also ask why Jeremy Paxman was induced to suspend his natural journalist instincts while fronting the NewsNight discussion afterwards. The evidence of his own eyes and ears must have told him that this was the thinnest of gruel, and yet he ludicrously sought to intimidate participants with this paper-tiger evidence. Did the programme editor force him to go along with the pretence that the Panorama emission had produced hard facts?

Then we had the Thought Police from the Royal Society saying that the ExxonMobil oil company should stop funding organisations which disagreed with the conventional lefty wisdom that humans are inducing global warming, and we must succumb to their statist politics in order to save our lives and civilisation.

Silly interviewette
The silly, under-prepared interviewette on Today just rolled over when Lord May from the Royal Society attempted to take over the interview by bullying the spokesman from ExxonMobil with outrageous suggestions that the science was proven and anyone denying it should be silenced.

The fact that climate scientists, as opposed to scientists like Lord May without specialist knowledge of climate, don’t agree with this was just forgotten. It took a whole day for the Today programme to react, and give air-time to an academic who pointed out that science was all about freedom of speech, and that all aspects of arguments must always be heard. Nobody had enough knowledge to veto discussion.

Lord May, the previous day, had the audacity to suggest that his opponents were fiddling data to disprove his theories, when anyone who has spent any time at all reviewing the conflicting opinions knows that it is the warmers and their allies who twist data, justifying it with the self-righteous assertion that it’s ok for them to do this because they are trying to save humanity.  If you doubt my word, Google “hockey-stick” and “climate change” and look what happened there.

Ole swivel eyes
And then NewsNight offered poor mad George Monbiot, who says warming deniers are as bad as holocaust deniers, to peddle his poison on climate change. Doesn’t it make you think that blowhards like Monbiot must have pretty thin evidence to descend to such bullying holocaust insult tactics? And if you don’t think that, then look at his weird, Tony Benn eyes. Nobody with swivel eyes like that can be playing with a full deck.

NewsNight helped out the mad one by setting up interviews with two of my favourite commentators, Melanie Philips and Julian Morris. But when pursued by Monbiot they could only reply along the lines of, well I’ve read stuff on this and I don’t agree. This didn’t come across forcefully. If they’d quoted climate scientists, that would have had more impact.

Morris had also committed the cardinal sin of being partly funded by an oil company. Everyone knows that oil companies are evil, and are run by people without children or any relatives at all, who are only interested in loadsamoney, and therefore can have no interest nor valid views on the future of the world’s environment

Why not interview experts?
Then NewsNight had a “discussion” segment, with a scientist from the Met Office who was certain about the human climate link, paired with a spokesman from a U.S. enterprise organisation. Again the layman from America didn’t come across as strongly as the British scientist. The NewsNight editors knew this, otherwise they would have recruited a U.S. climate expert, like Professor Richard Lindzen of Harvard University who actually knows about this, and who would have made mincemeat of the Brit, not to mention Jeremy Paxman.

The BBC has so much power that it gets away with tarnished performances with little or no protest. There is a need for urgent action. Firstly, the outdated license fee regime should be stopped as soon as possible. It cannot be right that the country’s principal media organisation depends on public taxation.  Advertising revenue should be the main source of income. The BBC empire should be broken up. The main entertainment channels should be sold off. The radio and Internet output ditto.

Potential jewels in the crown like Radio 4’s Today show might be able to survive on private subscription. I would certainly be willing to pay for this, particularly if it became balanced and fair as a result.

Call Me Dave
The Tories, who have been one of the principle victims of BBC reporter’s sophomoric bias, should make BBC reform a priority when it assumes power. Neo-Labour` is about to finally collapse under the weight of its incompetence and arrogance. But with Call Me Dave at the helm relentlessly ditching principles and seeking to offend nobody, I’m not holding my breath.

 Neil Winton – September 25, 2006