Now we know what had been suspected for some time, that the BBC is seriously at risk of dismemberment by alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, aided and abetted by his compliant coterie of ministers, and of course his chief polecat Dominic Cummings. The departure of Lord Hall-Hall from the Director General’s chair has merely served to emphasise the encroachment of political interference on the Corporation.
To no surprise at all, ITV political editor Robert Peston has told that “the prime minister and his chief aide, Dominic Cummings, more than give a damn about who runs the BBC - and intend to have a significant influence over the appointment of a new director general … what is more, Cummings and his colleagues are actively searching for possible Director General candidates they regard as sympathetic to their aims for the corporation”.
Where Polecat Dom may be coming from is hinted at by the Guardian: “Dominic Cummings’s thinktank called for the ‘end of the BBC in its current form’ and suggested right-wingers should work to undermine the credibility of the broadcaster, branding it the ‘mortal enemy’ of the Conservative party”. And what did they propose in its place?
“Cummings … was the director of the New Frontiers Foundation when it called in 2004 for a campaign to target the BBC and the creation of a Fox News equivalent that would not be constrained by impartiality rules”. Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse) is a mere propaganda outlet, many of its hosts now unemployable elsewhere.
And talking of FNC, it seems that Rupert Murdoch is once again there in the background, with the Guardian also revealing “Boris Johnson saw Rupert Murdoch for a ‘social meeting’ on the day he signalled his intention to seek a general election last year, according to new transparency disclosures … Murdoch was the only newspaper proprietor seen by Johnson in the first three months of his premiership”. Moving right along brings another nugget.
When the decision was made to axe the Victoria Derbyshire show, the news was leaked first to … the Murdoch Times, as Ms D told yesterday. "Absolutely devastated at the plan to end our programme (which I first learned about in yesterday’s Times)”. But playing nice to the Murdoch mafiosi and the Tories will not save the BBC in its current form.
As Byline Media has had to point out, “The BBC first brief the Times, owned by one Rupert Murdoch, to announce the cutting of one of the few remaining investigative shows … Murdoch spent 40 years trying to nix the BBC, and 3 times managed to delay Panorama’s investigation into his favourite journo - the Fake Sheikh”. Mazher Mahmood, once described as “a criminal with an NUJ card”, was eventually undone and jailed.
But for so long, he, along with the Murdoch press, invented stories and ruined lives just to score a few more sales of papers like the late and not at all lamented Screws. Now that same Murdoch empire has an in with the Government, whose chief advisor is more than sympathetic to the idea of taking the axe to the BBC - just as Murdoch wants.
And the Beeb finds itself in this parlous position just as its trust ratings have fallen - especially among those on the left who would in the past have rushed to its defence.
Who will now come to rescue the Corporation? Don’t all shout at once.
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As his tenure at the Labour Party may be coming to an end, maybe Seumas Milne might like to follow in his father's footsteps? That'd upset a few people...
ReplyDeleteThe sad fact of things are that WE,the people, have no say in this dictatorship. This has been long planned, one way or another, bu the Tories for years.
ReplyDeleteNothing new about this element of corrupt spiv toryism. New Labour and the LibDems made it even worse.
ReplyDeleteFor example, undermining of the NHS began decades ago with the creation of "trusts" and middle management stuffed with overpaid (read:bribed) place men and women and the "outsourcing" (read: sell off) of services. All of it done gradually, aka salami-slicing, and kept low key by cringeing media clerks.
The same method was applied to the BBC until it is now a hollowed out shell ripe for idiot advertising and Murdoch/Rothermere-type far right propaganda.
The ultimate aim is to eliminate ANY form of co-operative public service organisation and fair socioeconomic and cultural life. The replacement will be the usual brutal and corrupt capitalism. The hundreds of years preceding 1945 show only too clearly where that leads.
The current gang of liars, scoundrels, hypocrites and thieves in Parliament are merely the latest propagators of this evil.
All the butt kissing of the Tories during the election has done the Beeb no favours at all. Hell slap it up them. Getting what they deserve.
ReplyDeleteDictatorship of basil brush, boom boom!
ReplyDeleteTim, do you really want to destroy the BBC? Yeah it's not perfect, far from from it.
ReplyDeleteBut it also does good work. You ignore the fair and balanced BBC Radio 5live shows and segments.
The right wants to destroy the BBC and you can't see that far too many on the left are just helping them do it.When it's gone, it's gone. The next time you attack Tim just think about what will replace it.
Yeah they get thing wrong wrong but they also get things very right. Britain without the BBC would be a dystopia.
The Left are just as hell-bent on destroying the BBC. I'm sure the DPRK model would suit them: most believe the BBC was the reason Corbyn never got anywhere. Of course, it had nothing to do with Corbyn being a petulant old sod without an original thought in his head.
Delete@ 05:22.
ReplyDeleteYou're too late. Britain IS a far right tory dystopia.
It's in all the papers and broadcast media.