All that enthusiast pro-BBC feedback which Feedback is so keen to report really shouldn't come as a surprise. (Does it to you?)
It's only the fact that I tend to spend a lot of time writing about BBC bias and reading blogs where the sheer awfulness of the BBC pretty much seems to go without saying - and where the BBC's redeeming features only rarely get a mention and, even when they do, only grudgingly and heavily accompanied by caveats - that....if you're still following this long, Henry James-like sentence...it still does come as a bit of a shock to hear viewers and listeners enthusing about the BBC.
This failure on my part to keep remembering that most people don't share my intense negativity towards the BBC and that a large number of people - especially Radio 4 listeners - actually love it is something I'm going to have to try much harder to counter.
Both Sue and myself have been long aware of the 'constant negativity' trap and have tried to give praise where praise is due. (It was even in our 'mission statement' when setting up "Is").
But even we don't give praise where praise is due that often.
Speaking purely for myself here, that could be because (and I know I risk sounding a bit daft here) it feels almost sinful to betray the anti-BBC-bias cause by saying nice things about the BBC.
But it's surely perfectly reasonable to say, openly and without embarrassment, that parts of the BBC's output are truly wonderful (so wonderful that, if the license fee were abolished, plenty of people - including me -would willingly pay for it), but that there's an awful lot of dross too - and far, far, far too much bias.
Perhaps if BBC-bias-related blogs (like ours) made their case less negatively some bridges could be built between the 17% of us who (according to that YouGov poll I keep citing) think the BBC is biased against the Right and the 83% of the population who just don't seem to agree with us (even though we know we are right and believe that either (a) almost everyone else thinks so too and that that YouGov poll is nonsense or (b) that everyone else bleedin' well ought to agree with us, and that they are merely brainwashed 'sheeple' if they are stupid enough not to do so).
Those Radio 4 listeners, for example, who love The Archers, Round Britain Quiz, Something Understood, Just a Minute, Start the Week, In Our Time, Ramblings (etc) may still share our unease about the BBC's biases over social and political matters - or may be persuaded to share our unease about such biases by compelling arguments (preferably backed by evidence) - but it seems (to me) very much less likely that they'll warm to our arguments (and evidence) if they think we are nothing but haters who dislike almost everything on the BBC, including all the programmes they feel so emotionally attached to, and that all we want to do is to take their precious radio programmes away from them and leave them with nothing but dross (which is exactly what many such people seem to fear if their beloved BBC Radio 4 is lost).
As many of you are doubtless already sympathetic to my BBC-bias-bashing instincts, do you think the points I'm making here hold water, or not? I'd appreciate your input (though don't feel pressured to give it!)
The counter-thoughts that rush into my head are that, with the BBC's recent self-inflicted traumas, the growing antagonism between the BBC and much of the press - and the consequent growth of BBC bias awareness at widely-read online sites like those belonging to the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph - plus the evident anger of some in the government at the BBC's partiality, the force may be with us, despite all of this pro-BBC sentiment. So just keep on bashing.
But that's, probably, to fall into several traps.
The first is the danger of believing that the BBC's recent self-inflicted wounds won't quickly be forgotten.
The second is the danger of believing that those parts of the internet which you read so avidly are really representative of what most people think (especially if you can't bring yourself to believe that they actually aren't.)
The third is the danger of relying on an aggrieved political party (the Conservatives), only part of whose parliamentary membership [the only ones who really count] actually seems to feel aggrieved, and which has a long record of being timid when it comes to seriously confronting the BBC, and which - whisper it if you dare - doesn't even seem that likely to win an overall majority at the next election (and, thus, be in any position to actually do anything about it).
So, if these traps are as real as I think they are, the BBC-bias-concerned blogger surely needs to think about how they project their message so that they aren't merely preaching to the converted and might instead strike a chord with those people who love the BBC, but don't love it blindly - people who may help us get what we want (whatever that is).
Hope you enjoyed the navel-gazing there!
