Sunday, 12 July 2015
Murdoch BBC Lies Exposed
The use of the Murdoch press to perform the Tories’ dirty work is nothing new, but as the attack on the BBC is ramped up, the rhetoric has tipped over into forthright dishonesty in an effort to put the boot in. Nowhere can this be seen to better effect as today’s effort from the supposedly upmarket Sunday Times, where ex-Mail political editor Tim Shipman has his name on the by-line of an especially creative article.
“Tories give BBC reform ultimatum … Demands for broadcaster to stop chasing viewers” reads the headline. What, pray, does that mean? “THE BBC will be told to return to its public service roots and do away with highly commercial programmes such as The Voice as part of the widest-ranging shake-up of the corporation for a generation” tell Shipman, before the mildly sinister “BBC bosses will be put on notice this week”.
So what is this about? We read of a “Government green paper”, which is nothing more than a discussion document with no force in law and no guarantee that any of it will ever lead to even a white paper, let alone legislation, and otherwise there is the repeated mantra that the Corporation should “stop chasing viewers”. This is bullshit. The BBC is supposed to produce content that appeals across the board. That’s what we pay for.
Then comes the first whopper: “Last night John Whittingdale, the culture secretary, appointed a board of eight advisers with a brief to conduct a ‘root-and-branch’ reform of the Corporation as part of the process of renewal of its royal charter, which will expire at the end of 2016”. There will not be any “root-and-branch” anything.
Here’s what Whittingdale actually said: “Each member of the independent advisory group brings individual skills, experience and expertise … Together they will contribute to the oversight of the government's review of the BBC royal charter. I look forward to working with them on this important issue”. So there will be an advisory group, nothing more.
It gets worse: the green paper will supposedly “Suggest that the BBC website could be scaled back after complaints that it is killing local newspapers”. This is another blatant lie: as James Harding, now at the Beeb but a former Murdoch editor, has had to point out, what has done for local papers’ revenue is that there are less and less paid-for adverts, because of online sources such as Zoopla and Gumtree.
The BBC does not involve itself in advertising, and so does not abstract from the income stream of local papers. Harding observes “In countries where internet penetration has been higher and faster than ours, and there is no BBC, the impact on the regional press has been as, if not more, severe”. This is just another excuse thrown at the Corporation as a means of attacking it, part of a softening-up aided and abetted by the beneficiaries.
And the chief beneficiary would be Creepy Uncle Rupe - having the BBC cowed at the same time as he brings his bid for 100% of Sky back to the table. The real pity is that a supposed paper of record is being used for this dishonest propaganda campaign.
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3 comments:
With regards to advertising, indeed, as the London Evening Standard has shown (and I used to work for them), The cover price barely covers the cost of collecting it. Advertising revenue covers nearly all of a paper's costs, and when that goes, so does the newspaper.
Murdoch is not doing the Tories dirty work for him. The Tories are doing Murdochs.
What could any party do to ensure Murdochs services at election time, other than destroy the BBC? What do you think he asks in return for the constant attacks on one party over another?
The BBC represents the biggest rival to his TV empire and so he wants it gone. The saddest thing is that the people who bleat the loudest about getting rid of it are the same people who bleat about immigration and European regulations.
They are quite content to follow non-doms such as Murdoch and the Barclay brothers in calling for the destruction of one of the last Great British institutions. And the bulk of independent media - especially talk radio where the presenters are bitter that they don't have a BBC job - are happy to throw in their 2 cents worth.
People get angry that the government sells off nationalized industry, but seem completely clueless to the fact that political parties will harass and defund the BBC as payment for political support. It is bad enough to see things like the post office sold at a fraction of their worth, but to see the BBC vandalized to boost a governments unofficial campaign is an utter disgrace.
I have read elsewhere that the government has a plan to remove the BBC trust and see the broadcasters output perused for content and bias by an appointed body. We can guess which programming will be cancelled or deliberately delayed for review - and we have to realize that while a government censor is tearing through a story looking for problems, the rest of the media will be tipped off so that they can run a counter story and head off any scandal.
That is when we will be able to stop referring to the BBC as a Great British institution and start calling it State TV.
It isn't regional newspapers death that scares Boot Boy Rupe and his gang.
It's the death of newspapers. Period.
Once they're gone, one of his major nazi propaganda sources is gone. Then he'll be stuck with TV only, and as Fox News has shown, YankOz hysteria doesn't come over too well in the visual medium. And any lies it peddles are soon exposed by social media, which he can't control. Hence, for example, Zelo Street.
Long term, the writing's on the wall for thugs like Murdoch. And it's written in large brown letters in his boxies.
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