BBC Under More Fire

Yesterday this blog noted that the Daily Mail was urging the now majority Tory Government to go after the hated BBC, on the wholly invented pretext that the Corporation exhibited an endemic anti-Tory bias. As Beckermann’s widow tells Charlie Croker in The Italian Job, It Wasn’t An Accident. The assault on the Beeb is clearly going to become a key part of the Northcliffe House bunker’s attempt to wield influence.

Behold the face of credible authority. Or maybe not

“Voters had endured a blitzkrieg of polls telling them that the country was on the brink of a hung parliament, dominated by a deadly alliance between Ed Miliband’s socialists and Nicola Sturgeon’s nationalists. This prospect was lent seemingly unstoppable momentum by the BBC, most of whose employees appear to be hopelessly unaware of the fears and aspirations of ordinary families” tells today’s Mail On Sunday editorial.

Yes, it was all the rotten Beeb’s fault, says one of the papers that bought into the same narrative last week, to the extent of getting into a panic as those polls failed to budge. So who could the MoS turn to in order to maintain their attack on the Corporation? To show that appearing regularly on its airwaves (and presumably scoring fees for doing so) is no bar to kicking the BBC, the loathsome Toby Young is that man.

Tobes lets us know where he’s heading from the word go: “Time's up for Election night flat earthers at the BBC: For those who aren't members of the centre-left metropolitan elite, the broadcasters coverage was surreal” readers are told, as he asserts “For those of us who aren’t members of the centre-Left metropolitan elite, it was almost surreal watching the BBC’s army of presenters and so-called ‘experts’ on Thursday night trying to wish away the exit poll that showed Labour and the Lib Dems facing a rout and David Cameron on course to remain in No 10”. Really?

So why, further down the article, does he tell “There are some honourable exceptions – David Dimbleby, Andrew Neil and Nick Robinson are all fantastic broadcasters who take their duty of impartiality seriously”? So an “army of presenters” was “trying to wish away the exit poll”, except the main ones were not? Tobes talking propaganda bullshit again.

It gets worse: “The reason the Election result must have come as such a shock to the high-ups at the BBC is because its coverage of Ed Miliband and Labour has been so sympathetic for the past five years”. Really? Has Tobes forgotten London’s increasingly occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson getting an easy ride time and again?

What Toby Young really means is that the BBC serves up news and politics coverage in a way which does not meet with the approval of Himself Personally Now, which, as a Tory supporter, and beneficiary of Tory policies, is entirely understandable. But what is all too obvious, especially when put alongside yesterday’s attack, is that this is another pundit all too ready to buy into the Mail’s petty and vindictive campaign.

Toby Young is an utter disgrace to journalism. So no change there, then.