“The toughest job facing the new head of Ofcom: tackling the blatantly partisan GB News”, writes Polly Toynbee in the Guardian.
She writes,
Labour feels more sure-footed. A stronger sense of its own identity flows from standing up to Donald Trump, his war and his insults. MPs are less often looking over their shoulders at the right and its media.
Here comes one test. Selecting a new chair of the media regulator Ofcom is in its final phase: which of two reported frontrunners is appointed will reveal the government’s frame of mind. Ofcom has been moribund, weak to the point of invisibility. One key area is the regulation of online harms, as the government seeks to toughen up on the safety of children and the sanity of the nation, against a libertarian right that defends aggressive notions of free speech, and permits fact-free dangers, such as vaccine and climate denial. Kemi Badenoch is a free-speecher who argued for the weakening of the Online Safety Act in 2022 by removing the ban on “legal but harmful” material for adults, claiming it was “legislating for hurt feelings”. Keir Starmer is strengthening the law by banning addictive algorithms.
and
Try to imagine the revolt on the right if Labour sanctioned an upstart broadcaster with, say, George Galloway as its main nightly presenter (he’d be as good at it as Nigel Farage), a string of leftists paid large sums by a benefactor founder and a news agenda focused on far-left tropes. Beyond that scenario, it’s hard to devise a leftist channel as aggressively poisonous as GB News, which pours out Farage, Matt Goodwin, Lee Anderson, Darren Grimes, Martin Daubney and Richard Tice, and is frequently accused of breaking rules about accuracy and impartiality.
Toynbee is right to say that George Galloway could find an audience, but wrong to present the scenario of him being employed by a mainstream outlet as unthinkable. Alongside his work for Iran’s Press TV and Russia Today, Galloway hosted shows for talkSPORT and talkRADIO for several years. But we don’t have to imagine “a string of leftists paid large sums by a benefactor founder and a news agenda focused on far-left tropes”, we can see it in Ms Toynbee’s own newspaper, which has been financed by the Scott Trust since 1936. That’s fine by me. I don’t object to “a string of leftists and a news agenda focused on far-left tropes” if it is paid for by a benefactor or by other leftists who like their tropes. I start objecting to a string of leftists and a news agenda focused on far left tropes when I am forced to pay for it via my television licence.
It’s almost as if Polly Toynbee cannot fathom how different people have different views, even in a multicultural and diverse population.
Anyone who is against free speech is on the side of the bad guys. These people used to say “I’m in favour of free speech but…” now they have given up all pretence.
You might not “object”, but I hope you’d still grouse about it, at least. Otherwise, they might realize that they could decimate Samizdata.net content simply by ending production! Is there anyone who would want to make that tradeoff?
…
Wow… that’s a lot of hands…
Kemi Badenoch is a free-speecher
My God Britain, how did you get to the point when calling someone a “free speecher” is considered pejorative?
It tells you everything you need to know when her bringing up the idea of Galloway as a presenter as something that would shock his opponents to the point they’d favor restrictions. As if proponents of free speech would object to this. It tells you that she does not even understand what free speech is at the most basic level.
You might not “object”, but I hope you’d still grouse about it, at least.
It is almost as if the correct response to speech you don’t like is expressing your disagreement. Other options, ignoring it, changing the channel, mocking the stupidity of the speaker, getting better friends, agreeing to disagree. All sound just fine to me.
Not to Ms Toynbee. It seems she just does not have the most basic understanding of the idea of free speech.
The newspaper that covered up the murder of millions of people in both the Soviet Union and Mao’s China complaining about partisan news coverage.
And note the personal viciousness of Polly Toynbee – the people who suffered and died (were KILLED) by the Covid injections are dismissed as “fact free vaccine denial” – would this evil person like to say that to the families of the people the injections killed?
The Guardian lies about just about everything, and has done for many years, and it is complaining about “fact free” news outlets.
Infamously Thomas Paine sneered at Edmund Burke over the vast number of, mostly quite ordinary, people murdered by the Revolutionaries in France “he regrets the plumage, but forgets the dying bird” – thus reducing murdered human beings to feathers, to be regarded as unimportant.
It would not surprise me to learn that Polly Toynbee is an admirer of Mr Paine.
By the way – the “dying bird” was supposed to be the people of France which, for some reason, did not include anyone (of whatever station in life) murdered by the Revolutionaries. Mr Paine’s contention was that the people of France would be better off under the new government than the old one – a contention for which Mr Paine produced neither evidence or rational argument.
In his defense, Mr Paine did oppose the murder of the King (the kindly, but very weak willed, Louis XVI) – but even after the murder of hundreds of thousands of mostly quite ordinary people (mostly in rural areas – such as the west of France), Mr Paine never (as far as I know) had the basic honesty to admit that the French Revolution was a bad thing and it would have been better for it not to have happened.
Do the ‘Left’ want to argue their case, or do they just want to disable or even destroy their opposition? Seems clear to me what Polly’s answer would be.
@FrankS
Do the ‘Left’ want to argue their case, or do they just want to disable or even destroy their opposition? Seems clear to me what Polly’s answer would be.
Is it redundant to point on that Ms. Toynbee is a journalist? A JOURNALIST FFS. A journalist talking as a “free speecher” as a pejorative.
Isn’t that turkeys voting for Christmas[*]? Or an internal combustion engine manufacturer voting for EV subsidies?
[*] Or thanksgiving depending on your geographical location.
I fancy she sees herself more as a kind of unarmed warrior than as a truth-seeking reporter or journalist. She battles the dragons of her worldview, but in mine she is a dragon collaborator.
FrankS and Fraser Orr.
Yes indeed Gentleman – yes indeed.
I stopped taking Polly Toynbee seriously when she was in the throes of orgasmic giddiness over the gloriousness that was Gordon Brown. Gordon Brown, for heaven’s sake.
To me, she is in the same class as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Tucker Carlson. They puzzle me. I cannot tell if they actually believe the guff they come out with or if it all performative nonsense for the sake of clicks. If the former, then they are mouth-breathing purveyors of flatulent tosspottery. If the latter, then they are whores for attention.
I would suggest that they have no case to argue. Their ideas have a proven track record of failure. To have left leaning beliefs in the twenty first century demonstrates an inability to learn from mistakes.
On a purely geographical note, flatterers are located in the second bolgia of the eighth circle of Hell, in which they are submerged in human shit, symbolising the crap that came from their mouths during their lives.
Is is possible to teach The Guardian a lesson and for someone to set Ofcom on them? (I’d do it, except that I’m outside the UK.)
Stonyground – the socialist “case” is indeed based on nonsense.
Clause Four (the take over of the “means of production, distribution and exchange”) has the supposed justification that this will secure workers “the fruits of their labour” – the Labour Theory of Value that was refuted many decades BEFORE Clause Four was drafted, indeed almost a CENTURY before Clause Four was drafted (back in the 1820s – almost a century before 1917-8 when Clause Four was drafted)economists such as Richard Whately and Samuel Bailey had shown the utter absurdity of the Labour Theory of Value.
Yet almost half the electorate in Britain voted for the Clause Four Labour Party in 1945 – and after more than five years of failure so severe it bordered on farce, almost half of voters were STILL voting for them in 1951. And the Atlee government is presented in British history textbooks (and the media) as a great “reforming” government, with its “achievements” celebrated.
It is hard not to despair at the utter insanity that is fashionable “thought”.
I don’t, personally, think there’s anything wrong with “partisan” news outlets; I think there’s absolutely a place for unbiased, neutral reporting on “what has happened” (and I think this has a hugely important place), but very much also a place for “and this is what I think about it.”
The majority of the press in the UK (as in, the daily papers that you see on the stand when you walk into yer local supermarket) leans right or vaguely centre-right, with the exception of probably The Mirror and The Guardian; this is fine by me.
(Famously, the Beeb gets accused of being right-wing by the left, and left-wing by the right)
I disagree with Toynbee on this; GB News *is* obviously partisan, but so what?
There’s a place for it; I certainly wouldn’t want so-called journalism reduced to only reporting on “what has happened”.
I think Fraser Orr has it right. Polly has little or no understanding of the concept of free speech. As a rule I try to avoid simply being rude but I am prepared to make an exception for Polly and say that for some years I have thought her considerable sense of entitlement to be in inverse proportion to her intelligence.
neonsnake – you appear to have forgotten the “I” newspaper.
As for the idea that the BBC might not be leftist – “gets accused of being right-wing by the left, and left-wing by the right”.
The BBC, like Sky News and Channel Four, is a leftist agitprop outlet.
Not just in its news and current affairs output – but in everything else as well, from its documentaries to its “comedy” shows.
GB News – its news broadcasts appear to be straight from the news agencies (just read out by newsreaders employed by GB News), and carry the standard leftist bias of these news agencies – which makes an odd contrast with some (some) of the presenters of its programmes who are indeed on the right. So every half an hour or so there is a “news summery” which is just vile, even in the middle of a good programme.
However, the rest of the programme may also be ruined – because GB News (terrified of the evil folk who make up “Ofcom”) insist in putting creatures such as “Nigel Nelson” on their programmes.
Sadly the best presenters, such as Mark Steyn, were got rid of long ago.
Fair – yes, I did forget it. I was trying to recall from memory what I see on those plastic stands in the local Co-Op. I’ll have to remember to check next time I’m in there. I’ve an idea that they’re slightly left-of-centre, but am not sure (a swift google appears to confirm that)
As I say, the left believe it be right-wing, and the right believe it to be left-wing. One can cherry-pick to suit whichever narrative you’d like, I suppose.
(BBC News, at least, is pretty much standard-issue neo-liberal in it’s coverage of financial matters. As to the entertainment side, I’m not in a position to comment, it’s been many, many years since I watched much, if anything, from them. I keep meaning to watch that SAS thingie, but never getting round to it)
neonsnake – if you shop at the co-op you also see the Morning Star – this Communist newspaper is certainly on sale at the Kettering coop.
No – it is not a matter of “believe” it is an objective fact that the BBC, Sky News and Channel Four are leftist – both in their programming, and in the political preferences of most of their presenters. The BBC is not really different from the Guardian – they all push the agenda of the new left (not that new these days – as the Frankfurt School goes back to the 1920s and started to become fashionable in the 1960s) of seeking after new victim groups (women, various racial and ethnic groups, people who engage in certain sexual practices – and-so-on) and teaching them that they are exploited and oppressed, and how traditional society (or what little is left of society) must be destroyed in order to liberate them – but these days such a line is not called Frankfurt School Marxism, it is called “Critical Theory” or “DEI” (EDI in Britain). My former Member of Parliament helped with the work on a formal presentation on BBC bias, and blatant lying, but “Ofcom” ignored the evidence – because “Ofcom” is just another leftist organization – the Conservatives had years to abolish “Ofcom”, but, instead, gave it wider powers. Gave more power to an organization that hates (hates) them.
By the way on GB News – its coverage of President Trump is mostly sneering and hostile, only a small minority of people on GB News do NOT sneer and attack – this is odd as most people who watch GB News do not like the sneering and hostility towards President Trump. Nigel Farage and other people who say they support President Trump do NOT resign from GB News – as it gives them a platform (and, I believe, they are not true friends – but that may be too harsh a view from me).
I suppose the idea is that people who watch GB News have no alternative television station to watch (which is true – the other television stations being leftist agitprop) and so GB News can afford to please Ofcom (and the rest of the government far-left establishment) by attacking “Trump” – knowing that viewers have no where else to go.
I find I can not watch GB News for more than a few minutes before I have to turn it off – when the sneering starts, I switch it off. And this started long before the present campaign in Iran.
Although I do not share the religious beliefs of the people at (New York based) NTD television I find it does not spit in my face – as GB News seems to do (with its endless sneering – and its endless “leftists on the panel – we have to, we have to please Ofcom”).
So when working on the computer I often have NTD on in the background – it is on right now.
When I first got Sky Television Fox News was available – but that went, I think it was when the Disney Corporation bought Sky. Disney is one of the worst Corporations (even by the standards of the international corporate state) – if Walt Disney (or anyone from the great days) was alive today he would not be allowed to work there (other than as a security guard or a cleaner).
But, to be fair, “Forged in Fire” (which is half owned by Disney) is a very good television programme.
Certainly there were leftist messages in entertainment programmes (shows) of the past – Star Trek had references to the Federation providing “schools and hospitals” and the only businessmen showed were corrupt nonentities. Doctor Who, even back in the Jon Pertwee days, had environmentalist propaganda and so so on – BUT, and it is an important “but”, the propaganda was secondary to the story – one could overlook it.
Today there basically is no story on programmes such as “Star Trek Discovery” or “Star Trek Academy”, or in the resent (Disney Corporation) Star Wars films, or modern Doctor Who (and on and on) – there is leftist propaganda and nothing-else (perhaps because “modern writers” writing for the, mythical, “modern audience” – can-not-write, can not create interesting stories) – which is why fewer and fewer people watch most modern television “entertainment” shows (with a few exceptions – for example “Forged in Fire” which was produced by the Disney Corporations – ironically one of the worst corporations) and Hollywood films.
The older programmes and films were actually more effective in pushing leftist messages – because people watched them, many modern programmes and films are so “in your face” with their propaganda (the leftism is so extreme) and lack any interesting stories, that they are unwatchable.
One reason for this may be the change in the “writing rooms”.
There has been a big push to get female writers (but only women of certain political opinions), writers who are “people of color” (but only if they have certain political opinions), and writers who engage in certain sexual practices (but, again, only if they have certain political opinions) – TALENT is now considered irrelevant, in everything from film, television, even comics.
So one gets a group of writers who do not know how to create interesting stories – unsurprisingly what they produce does not attract many people.
Ironically even if a straight-white-male writer has “Progressive” political and cultural opinions they are often now forced out – or have to sit there nodding to every stupid idea that the Diversity recruits produce – any objection can lead to a trip to Human Resources for “creating a hostile working environment” (or “making me feel unsafe”) and losing their job.
The old film and television writers have been hoisted on their own petard – in that they, the old writers, made a big thing of their “anti racism”, “anti sexism”, “anti homophobia” and-so-on – and so have been replaced by talentless hacks who tick the “correct” demographic boxes – or are in same writing room, forced (out of fear of losing their job) to nod in agreement to “stories” that make no sense – and are incredibly boring.
I’ll check, out of curiousity, next time I’m in there. I’ve ever only glanced at the stand in passing; the Mail is probably the paper I see being purchased most often when I’m queueing at the tills, I think.
I have little or zero interest in most of the output of the BBC.
My opinion on Disney and Star Wars is that most of the TV series have been “entertaining enough” to put on in the evening after a hard day’s work. Mandalorian was good, albeit I was massive fan of Lone Wolf & Cub, so it has some nostalgia. Skeleton Crew was “fine”, but again, it’s just nostalgia; I’m of an age where the Goonies was a big thing.
Andor, of course, was staggeringly good, one of the best pieces of media that I’ve personally seen in years, and is an exception to the “they’re fine” rule, in as much as it was truly excellent.
The recent films were shite. The Last Jedi is, obviously enough, the best of the three, but that’s a very low bar. Some excellent ideas (mainly that it blew away the “chosen one” trope – the kid at the end using the Force to pick up the broom, for instance), and some individually great scenes – the Yoda scene where he burns the “sacred texts” was genuinely fantastic – but was marred by some horrible execution within the entirety of the film itself. The concept that Rey’s parents were nobodies was also sound, thematically, and should have been kept.
And then of course – as I’m sure you’re aware – all of the “good stuff” in it was then ruined by the final film. Possibly the only good scene in the final film was the one where the “whole” galaxy turned up to defeat Palpatine, but that was not enough – at all– to redeem the film overall, with it’s “Acksually, Rey is powerful because of her bloodline” message.
A huge shame, and a huge missed opportunity. Star Trek was always the wishy-washy “prime directive” liberal version of “maybe we can debate them?” version of anti-fascism. Star Wars was always the “Yeah, no. lmao we see a fascist, we shoot them through the head” version. The sequel trilogy blew that, with the whole “bloodline chosen one” bollocks, and ignored the “people on the ground” doing the work (which is why Andor/Rogue One were so great, because they focussed on the people doing “the work”)
Maybe The Last Jedi would have been better if it had been a musical?
https://youtu.be/MUB-h2NeQYA?si=qlr-ovyBamaI8Fmr
FWIW, mine doesn’t (or at least didn’t today). I think I’d have noticed if they had done previously, it would be surprising enough to have caught my eye. I’m not positive though.
However, you were quite right – they did have “The I Newspaper”, right at the bottom next to a paper about horse racing.
I don’t know how “granular” their distribution system is, but I’d speculate that the Morning Star would have very limited sales where I live (a centre-right, majority Lib-Dem town of the “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” variety). It’s not implausible that they stock by demographic – slightly OT, but the smaller Co-Op in my town stocks some products that the larger one does not, so it’s likely.
They have the Morning Star at Adsa Bilton. Bilton is a village on the South East side of Hull.
neonsnake – Hollywood was taken over by “Critical Theory” (the anti “ists and phobes” stuff – which considers XYZ groups as the victims of exploitation and oppression by white-straight-men) doctrines quite some years ago, possibly due to the universities (or most of them) being taken over by these doctrines some years before that, although these modern-Marxist doctrines have a lot of influence in the schools – so even those people who do not go to university are often influenced by them (often without knowing they are from Marxism – or rather from the mutated modern form of it).
The Lib-Dems are certainly not “fiscally conservative” – but then no political party in Britain is, government spending goes up (nationally and locally) regardless of who is elected.
Stonyground – that is interesting, I did not know that Asda stocked the Morning Star.
Basically it is just a more “in your face” version of the Guardian (or the New York Times, and so on, in the United States) – they push the same doctrines, but the Morning Star is open about where these doctrines come from.