BBC – Guilt By Association

The obedient hackery of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre has, so it believes, caught the BBC bang to rights harbouring dangerous lefties and allowing its staff to bash Young Dave and Corporal Clegg. As with other anti-Beeb (geddit?!?) knocking copy, this appears under the by-line of Paul Revoir, and concerns the man who brought Doctor Who back to TV, Russell T Davies.

Under the routinely screaming headline “‘Cameron and Clegg are evil’: Doctor Who screenwriter in scathing attack on coalition after BBC funding cuts”, Davies is described as “one of the BBC’s top screenwriting stars”, so the attempt at guilt by association is clear, even though it has taken a day and a half for the Daily Mail to fire up its hate machine.

But, given the frothing response of those commenting on the Revoir article, the attempt to equate Davies’ personal viewpoint with the official BBC line has been successful, helped along by the increasingly hoary suggestion that, during the tenure of Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor, the series was part of some left-wing conspiracy against the then Thatcher Government.

This keeps getting hauled out, although it is clearly McCoy’s personal recollection and the Beeb has expressed bafflement – and the Tory Party didn’t kick off at the time, although it was always ready to lay into the BBC, which Denis Thatcher had labelled “pinko” after Mrs T’s grilling on Nationwide over the Falklands conflict.

Anyhow, why should Russell T Davies not be equated with BBC policy? He works for them, doesn’t he? Well, no he doesn’t: Davies is a freelance, and has been for over twenty years. So his opinions as voiced on Radio 4’s Front Row could only have been in a personal capacity.

So the Daily Mail has once more been selective in its journalism. But the objective has been met, and the boot has been put in on the Beeb once more, so that’s all right, then.