LATER THIS YEAR, THE Chairman of the BBC, Lord Pattern, will have to find a replacement for Mark Thompson the current Director General of the BBC.
I have always believed that the BBC has a Left-liberal bias when it comes to their political coverage, as well as its foreign coverage of Europe and Israel. But of course it goes deeper than this and infects the culture of the institution, as a new report produced by the New Culture Forum demonstrates. Its author, Denis Sewell, worked for the BBC for 22 years and has vindicated many of us on the centre Right who were at one time dismissed as belonging to some kind of flat earth society for even suggesting such bias at the holy Mecca of entertainment.
But what many on the Right see as an anti-Conservative bias at the BBC, is, in reality, a pro-liberal bias that extends to the appointment of Lord Pattern himself as the organisation’s chairman. Political parties all have their liberal core, and this applies as much to the Conservative Party as it does the Labour Party and, obviously, the Liberal Democrats.
As part of the British liberal establishment, the BBC has done those of us on the Right who, like everyone else, have had to pay their licence fee, a disservice. The Corporation has demanded, in the case of people like myself, a viewing tax which carries with it the threat of imprisonment if it is not forthcoming. There is no other country in the world that makes its people pay such a tax and imposes such a penalty.
It was introduced at a time when the collectivist ideals of the welfare state proved acceptable. If we contributed to a health service, then why not a broadcasting service? Since then the institution, born out of post war rationing, has become a Leviathan that gorges itself on over £3 billion annually and does not need to compete for its financing, unlike all other broadcasters.
Such an institution born from such state dependency for its financing, was bound, sooner or later, to take on the cultural mantle of Left wing liberalism. To the BBC, the market place is a kind of Mordor, which they snobbishly try to avoid in fear of being drawn into its dark competitive clutches. Which is why the BBC goes cap in hand to the government every year for an increase in the license fee, instead of seeking freely given subscriptions from the public; which, if as the BBC truly believes itself to be, the best broadcaster in the world; then it would have nothing to fear by seeking advertising revenues as well as subscriptions - as does Sky and ITV.
DENIS SEWELL has delivered a killer punch to the BBC in his report for the New Cultural Forum. He has concentrated upon the BBC’s liberal bias, not only in News and current affairs, but in drama and comedy, ‘Polemical, political drama and comedy continue to be monopolised by Left-of-Centre writers and performers’, is his opening assertion and is backed up by sound reasoning and a polemical flourish; as well as facts and data.
He writes in today’s Daily Telegraph; ‘Cultural biases may be less obvious than political biases, but they are no less significant. Broadcasting plays an important role in the shaping and embedding of values. It helps set the tone of the national conversation. It plays a major part in establishing what can respectably be thought and said, what is considered mainstream, and what idiosyncratic, maverick, or beyond the pale’.
Broadcasting does indeed ‘… [play] an important role in the shaping and embedding of values’. This is why the BBC should have been atomised, leaving a much smaller and less costly institution to concentrate upon news coverage and little else. I would prefer, for the sake of democracy, not to have this institution survive at all, but it still retains a nostalgia with the public born from tradition (something the modern BBC sniffs at).
Denis Sewell puts his finger on the button when he states; ‘Cultural biases operate subtly and insidiously in drama, arts, documentaries, comedy, entertainment and religious programmes. They find a variety of expressions that may be more or less political: a vague, almost nostalgic attachment to some of the tattered remnants of socialist economic thinking; an obsession with identity politics, gender issues and ethnicity; a tepid contempt for traditional institutions such as the Armed Forces and the monarchy; a suspicion of business and enterprise; a belief that religious faith is a hangover from a bygone age; and often a reflexive anti-Americanism. These are the kinds of thing that build perceptions of institutional bias’.
What a wonderful paragraph. Mr Sewell lists the prejudices of the BBC admirably. I defy any member of the BBC’s staff to contradict such a list of their attachments to bias. They cannot, and will not. They will not, because by reading the charge sheet, they will see little wrong with their liberal partiality.
THE BBC uses drama in the same way that the Soviet Union once did; as a means of social engineering. In the Soviet Union, it was used to promote Communism and its inevitable victory over capitalism.
Today, instead of Communism, Multiculturalism has become the ism of choice of a state (i.e. publicly funded) broadcaster. The BBC, as Denis Sewell correctly writes, has a an almost missionary ambition; ‘…an obsession with identity politics, gender issues and ethnicity…;’. Every soap plot; every vox-pop, as well as every news item and other sundry broadcasts carry a PC brand that if ever abused (remember Carol Thatcher) will result in the abuser’s exile from the BBC.
Every item broadcast by the BBC (outside of movies) will carry a representative from an ethnic minority. If this is not an example of the subtlety that Denis Sewell refers to, I know not what is. It astonishes me that the BBC still lays claim to impartiality despite such manifest evidence to the contrary. Even many of the BBC’s finest have written to substantiate such a bias. Andrew Marr, writing in 2006 chimed in; ‘ The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It’s a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias’
While Jeremy Paxman in his James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture in 2007 wrote, ‘The idea of a tax on the ownership of a television belongs in the 1950s. Why not tax people for owning a washing machine to fund the manufacture of Persil?’
I BELIEVE THAT THE BBC should be left to its own devices within the market place. The public should not be forced on punishment of imprisonment to pay their liberal levy. If those who agree with the BBC want to continue with their allegiance, then they must pay a subscription instead of relying upon those of us who have no choice in the matter.
Like every other element in a market driven economy, freedom of choice is paramount. But such freedom does not exist when it comes to choosing what we can watch on our television screens on penalty of imprisonment. The annual licence fee is now £143, soon, no doubt, to be increased. I would sooner use such a sum to help choose my own entertainment than have entertainment thrust upon me by the politically correct BBC.
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