As for its content, Simpson’s post summed up the BBC on several levels. Firstly, that its most senior journalists are simply unable to see the world as ordinary people see it. Politically motivated attack? Mate, the BBC literally edited footage. This was no innocent error; as Janet Daley put it, this was “a professionally crafted editing job which has to have been designed to produce a calculated effect for a political purpose”. Your bleating is only making it worse.
Secondly, that the BBC considers a Left-of-centre worldview to be the definition of objectivity. The Guardian is its ideological ally because both assume they are the privileged holders of sanity, grown-up thinking and the truth, which must be defended against the fascist hordes. When the chips are down, the BBC won’t even bother to hide it.
Thirdly, that any criticism of the broadcaster represents a bad-faith attempt to destroy a great socialist project that aims to redistribute the news to each according to his needs. Here lies the kicker: in pushing such a conspiratorial Leftist worldview, the doughty journalists of the BBC have apparently dispensed with the need for evidence.
– Jake Wallis Simons (£)
Plus the BBC also has the patience to weather the storm – and get away with it. Remember Jimmy Saville? Remember the Police raid on Cliff Richard? Even when the BBC has been found guilty they soldier on. In my opinion the BBC has not yet learned to fear the consequences for their actions.
Simons has been a busy chap at the keyboard of late.
Simons almost says what I shall now say. The BBC has been caught blatently with it’s pants down over Trump. These two sackings are sacrifical goats. They have turned the Trump debacle which they just couldn’t spin their way out of into an opportunity to do a mea-culpa (of sorts*) and by dumping the Chairman and the News boss they hope this is enough humble pie…
*Of sorts? Of course. They are not exactly lying when they say they “made a mistake”. They went too far and got caught. They made a mistake in the same way a murderer accidentally leaves a vital clue at the scene.
Everything the BBC itself does is “politically motivated” – motivated by its leftist political and cultural agenda, as is the rest of the modern establishment – including the vile “Ofcom” (the “regulator”).
End funding for the BBC and for “Ofcom” – allow many different television stations arguing for different points of view, different world-views.
Including the BBC – if its wealthy leftist fans wish to voluntarily fund it.
This was the thrust of Robin Aitken’s argument almost twenty years ago. And it was hardly news even then. In 1965, Michael Wharton (the Telegraph’s “Peter Simple”) wrote that to the people who make “thought-provoking” television, “to think means to think Left-wing”. We’re hearing a great deal from BBC types at the moment about how terribly, terribly hard they’re all striving to be impartial. The allegation isn’t that they aren’t trying. It’s that they don’t know what impartiality means.
NickM: Limited hangout. They’re hoping that if they make a big play of resignations over the fake speech, everyone will forget about the Gaza stuff. And the tranny stuff. And Tim Westwood. And Huw Edwards. And Jimmy Savile. And …
Discovered Joys at 11:48am, “…the BBC has not yet learned to fear the consequences for their actions.”
I guess I missed it, but what consequences? The two resignations? I’m betting they have new jobs already…would be interesting to know what those jobs are.
By the way…
Why isn’t this a “conspiracy theory”? Is it because, like Russiagate and the whole J6 thing in the first place, it’s different when the Right People do it?
Adorably, some on my side (USA) of the pond, have tried to dismiss this as a “bad edit.” By that line of reasoning I guess I could classify putting arsenic in the oatmeal as a kitchen mishap. The bias has been evident for a long time, but when it isn’t enough to spin the news the only alternative is to outright lie. I think of Robert Conquest’s rule of institutions. All of them, unless explicitly right wing, become left wing over time. The BBC was never explicitly right wing and probably began as a left of center institution so this latest descent into manipulation was inevitable. Those of you who have endured it every day will have a better fix on it, but I think that the reputation it acquired during WWII had sufficient momentum to make it seem respectable and trustworthy to many people over here. That reputation ought to have gone by the wayside now.
It’s difficult to place Reith on the simple linear political continuum, especially as it’s thought of today. He absolutely wanted a monopoly on broadcasting, deliberately strangled the life out of Baird’s Television, Ltd. during its first couple of decades to maintain it, and strongly supported the joint-stock British Broadcasting Company’s nationalization in 1927. (He basically invented the “public corporation”, later used as a vehicle for most of the post-war nationalization efforts, the NHS being the notable exception.) He also deplored advertising. But he didn’t want the government to simply take over and run it as a department of state like the Post Office. And his ideals were patriotic, religious (his father had been Chaplain to the Free Church College in Glasgow), high-culture, before the traduction of high culture by the Left, and he also had a military background.
I’ve often said that calls for a “return to Reithian values” are a wrongheaded, because Reith’s values haven’t been abandoned: “Auntie knows best, so pipe down and take your medicine”. That said, I do think he’d be apalled at what his Corporation has become. However, a state enterprise with that attitude was always ripe for Leftist infiltration.
NickM,
They are not exactly lying when they say they “made a mistake”.
They did not say that. They said: “Mistakes were made”.
So damned passive. Might have well said “Mistakes happened”. Because they just do . . . on their own volition . . . with no know cause.
Those people are so weasly.
It was a bad edit, people.
On a completely unrelated subject, George Floyd’s death was an unforgivable murder. Completely unrelated, I know; I don’t know why I brought it up.
Never mind the new jobs, what about the severance payments for falling on their swords so quickly?
I suspect if this was a private sector organisation bbc reporters would be all over the story and in particular the sums paid to the scapegoats.
The licence fee is the core problem. All the country must pay for programming which caters to half the country. It’s morally indefensible. Let auntie sink or swim on its own.
I cancelled my direct debit. Not paying for someone else’s bias any more. I encourage you all to do likewise.
If we are to go back to the early days of the BBC, when its impartiality was unquestioned, we discover that …. its impartiality was questioned.
Churchill’s post war comments on the pre war BBC were :
“I am against the monopoly enjoyed by the BBC. For eleven years they kept me off the air. They prevented me from expressing views which have proved to be right. Their behaviour has been tyrannical. They are honeycombed with Socialists — probably with Communists……”
Plus ça change.
Just in case this isn’t well known – here in Blue USA, the BBC is well-regarded by the same crowd that loves PBS (Public Broadcasting System – TV) and NPR (National Public Radio.) BBC World is, in fact, carried as a regular daily feature on NPR.
Same progressive audience, beloved by people who regard all things European as intrinsically superior to the crass stuff we get here.
So, the “election interference” charges have weight.
To someone who opted out of the license fee twenty years ago (and have never regretted it), this just seems like yet another scandal on an endless conveyor belt of them. Resignations, ‘lessons learned’, same old same old.
I know some BBC senior producers, and it’s not going to change. Reform is impossible. The few supposed Tories put in to supposedly change it over the years have always failed – it’s structural.
It’s always been an anachronism- one of the great pillars of Statist control – and all the more pernicious because of its supposed ‘independence’. In the new media age of internet, online video and social media, the BBC is not only an anachronism, but decreasingly relevant.
Split it up, sell it off.
Better yet, sack the staff, raze the buildings, salt the ground.
BBC delenda est
Look how long it took to get rid of *that* football commentator. The chances of serious reform being carried through are nil, in my opinion.
The worst outcome would be for the BBC to swear mighty oaths to change, and then carry on regardless once peoples’ attention was elsewhere.
DJ
That is exactly what they are planning.
The skin of the bubble is so tough that reality has (net) zero chance of intruding.
They don’t think that what they have done was wrong, they really don’t.
They cling to the tenets of their faith – climate change, trans, UN, EU, immigration, the benevolent state – for that is what it is.
The delicate shudder when some lower status person tries to point out the flaws in any of these tenets is ample proof.
This isn’t about logic or reason. It’s a tribal marker.
As Patrick says – end the “License Fee” and end all other compulsory funding.
Not just for the BBC – for the (utterly despicable) “Ofcom” and Channel Four.
Let all television stations be voluntarily funded and argue for competing points of view – and the corrupt “regulator” “Ofcom” must be abolished.
I’ve developed a man-crush on Jake Wallace Simons. He’s been consistently brilliant, incisive, and correct.
His book, Israelphobia, is well worth reading.
Richard Dimbleby is spinning in his grave.