The BBC, whisper it quietly, did not have a good election. Sure, it secured the best ratings for its results coverage, but by then the damage had already been done. All those little mistakes and slips of the tongue - suggesting alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was going to get the majority “he deserved”, Bozo ducking a Brillo grilling, and political editor Laura Kuenssberg’s two howlers - all benefited one side.
So there was a rich sense of irony when the Corporation’s veteran presenter and reporter John Simpson announced “Downing Street is putting out the word that it is boycotting [Radio 4 Today] because of its, and the BBC’s, ‘bias’ against Boris Johnson & the Conservatives during the campaign”. One has to wonder which Today Programme the Bozo boosters were listening to. But that is not the point.
The point is that chief Prime Ministerial polecat Dominic Cummings has embarked upon the next stage in his culture war, and hobbling the Beeb while he is installing “external experts” into positions of power that should be filled by senior Civil Servants (think people from the TPA, IEA, CPS, ASI and PX) should stop the Corporation saying boo about it.
Bozo The Clown will, as usual, just go along with it. Former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger mused “A clever moment for Dominic Cummings {if it's him} to pick off the BBC [and thereby delight Murdoch and many others]. If my timeline is representative, many of the Beeb's natural defenders are shrugging and/or too cross to protest”. There was more.
“Even if they think the BBC had a poor election, that's like abandoning the NHS because it struggled over one winter. By all means call for improvement/reform. Privatisation will lead to a form of UK Fox News. And then how we'll miss it”. One look at Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse) will tell you all you need to know about that.
Abi Wilkinson, who is in the USA and therefore knows all about FNC and the rest of the cable news providers, responded “I think you are right, but left/liberal complaints didn’t begin with the election. The decision to invite on Generation Identity the day after a Mosque shooting, and allow them to push their narrative virtually unchallenged, was a real low point for me”. There has been much more in the same vein.
Refusal to properly address malpractice during the referendum campaign (Ms Kuenssberg effectively taking dictation from Matthew Elliott, Carole Cadwalladr being shouted down on The Andy Marr Show™, Cambridge Analytica inducing desperate efforts to deflect), Question Time shortcomings and Tory plants in its audience, continued pandering to the right in panel makeup, and all the time refusing to admit getting it wrong are examples.
Ms Wilkinson concluded “Doesn’t mean we would be better off without them … but it would be good to see criticisms taken seriously”. Another Tweeter added “Frankly the director general doesn't think they've done anything wrong, so there can be no reform while he is in the job”. It is true that Lord Hall-Hall is part of the problem.
And Matt Prescott summed up the feeling of many: “I used to love the BBC and would have died on the barricades to defend it. Now I feel utterly betrayed by the daily failures to ask hard questions and call out lies”. The Tories have played the BBC like an obedient fool. And in pandering to them, the Corporation has left itself fatally vulnerable.
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8 comments:
The BBC went along (with the tories) to get along. Now it'll be shafted. Quelle surprise.
Which only goes to show the far right won't be satisfied until it controls and can loot everything. Commercialised totalitarianism.
All so predictable. All so very self-entitled public school tory. Ultimately, all so very disastrous for a country on its knees.
Cummings is not "a polecat". He's a gutless coward skulking in the shadows, a tenth rate apparatchik who will be dispensed with when inevitably he becomes too obvious.
Smacks of Johnson demanding even further obedience from the snivelling toadies at BBC. If we thought that Auntie represented Romanian State TV in the 70s and 80s during the election campaign, it's only going to get worse from now. Meanwhile professional gurning Muppet Norman Smith was on hand today to sing the praises of the Tories, claiming that this won't be 'just a.n. other Tory government', that they will listen to the north east (yeah right) and that this departure from Cameron's or May's Conservatives is evident precisely because they want to 'stand up to establishments like the BBC'
Oh irony.
If the tories do make a full frontal on the BBC you can be sure the following will be kept on: Kuenssberg, Neil, Pienaar, Robinson, Maitlis, Davis, Smith, Wark, Edwards, Barnett and the antiseptic Edwards. The rest are dispensable.
If any of that list do exit it isn't difficult to see where they're likely to end up......
I think Tim's just referring to his weasely,shifty appearance, not his personality.
Dear Zelo ,
In an environment of betrayed trust , the reaction of denial of many of the major players in London is revealing . Much of the Labour party hierarchy still has learned nothing through the demise of Scottish Labour and subsequently this election’s breaching of the ‘red wall’ in NE England and N Wales , and without reddress I predict a further breach and the loss of Lancashire & Yorkshire voters next . Like the associated failure of the Democrat’s ‘wall’ in the US the major players have harked back to the source of the denial , regarding the ‘triangularisation’ and ‘Blairism’ betrayal of their support base , apparently unaware that that betrayal is the continuing long standing problem . ‘They’re all the same’ is the legitimate complaint and for much of the Labour Party hierarchy to openly proselytise in favour of the ultimate triviality of a Brexit Remain strategy has led to the vindication of that view . Without an honest ‘people led’ social democratic platform , the Labour Party like the other social democratic parties of Continental Europe is doomed . The failure of Neo-Liberalism must be consistently taken on , at the BBC and elsewhere . Boycott all the profiteer vultures at the NHS and everywhere else that they can be identified ,
Derek
The BBC isn't going to take on anybody in the Establishment. It has been an intrinsic part of the Establishment since its founding almost a hundred years ago.
You can find an impeccably sourced set of reasons why in Tom Mills' book The BBC Myth Of A Public Service (Verso, 2016.)
It has always been a capitalist propaganda unit. Which is why its "news and politics" employees are the most craven weasels of all.
I should hope so, Polecats are quite nice really.
Boris has mooted he may remove the offense of not paying your TV license which is bound to result in millions following his lead and with any attempt to re-coup the funds being impossible. Those at the BBC who sing from the same song sheet / Tory press release) may find their wages slashed. Any who may follow Trump's lead seem not to have recognized one of Trump's most viscous traits- getting rid of witnesses as every WH employee eventually finds and as Julian Assange found by throwing his lot in with the Republicans.
Rupert Murdoch hates the BBC as much as he hates Oz's ABC. James Murdoch wrote that the BBC should be privatized. Lachlan Murdoch said the same of the ABC but was opposed by the late media baron Kerry Packer who recognized a privatized ABC would rip $Millions in advertising from his TV network and besides, he loved the notion the ABC invested in and built up talent with tax-payer's funds who he could then purloin for his network.
Now people are saying whereas Rupert Murdoch is just in it for the money, son Lachlan is a true believer in hard right politics and will be much more ruthless than his father. Beware.
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