Miserable Git Whines At BBC

As the Green Paper on the BBC was released - after much of the contents miraculously found their way into a variety of right-leaning newspapers - the organised assault on the Corporation has begun. And over at the Northcliffe House bunker, the obedient hackery of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre have concentrated their fire on a letter in support of the Beeb, signed by many who work, or have worked, for it.

That this is an organised campaign by the Mail is confirmed by a suitable thunderous intervention from Daily Mail Comment, the authentic voice of the Vagina Monologue, titled “A clumsy deception that shames the BBC”, and featuring lines like “Even if they had generated the letter themselves, these celebrities - Clare Balding, Stephen Fry and the rest - receive tens of millions of pounds a year between them from the taxpayer. Are they really qualified to lecture us on whether the BBC is spending too much?” Not that they’re selecting Fry and Ms Balding because they’re gay, oh no.

But the principal messenger selected to carry the Mail’s missive of mean spiritedness is Stephen “Miserable Git” Glover, whose article is headed up with the kind of headline that tells readers what to think at the outset: “Arrogant, naive and just plain dishonest: How BBC bosses tried to fool the licence payer with self-serving celebrities' letter”.

Glover begins by using a little faint praise to damn the Corporation: “By far the most precious asset the BBC possesses is its reputation for telling the truth. Of course there are those like me who periodically accuse it of political bias. But I have never believed that it sets out systemically to distort the facts. It does not deliberately deceive”.

Then he puts the boot in: “So the revelation that its senior management orchestrated a self-serving letter in its own defence and then covered up its own role in the affair – and at the time of writing seemingly continues to do so – is deeply shocking”. Ah, “seemingly”. There’s a lot of this in Glover’s rant: “The episode suggests … purported to be … presumably calculated … appears to have been written … at the probable instigation”.

Then comes the real pearler: “What could have been interpreted as a ham-fisted conspiracy has taken on more sinister proportions. Imagine how BBC journalists would treat a political party or public institution which initiated an apparently independent letter in its own defence, and then denied any role in the authorship”. Like all those Tory-supporting letters from business folk that turned out not to be quite as advertised?

In fact, the BBC was not anything like as hard on the deception practised on behalf of the Tories in the run-up to the General Election. There is nothing sinister about groups of “names” wanting to support the Beeb, unless you’re paranoid to the extent of going on Newsnight and claiming that the BBC is killing national newspapers, and that it is growing all the time (both not true). Glover did just that yesterday evening.

The Mail hates the BBC because it shows up the Dacre doggies’ dishonesty for what it is: lousy, agenda driven, partisan, intolerant, bullying, bigoted and judgmental journalism. No change there, then.