MIDWEEK AIMLESS THREAD

As my blogging will be rather slack this month (before bursting out with renewed vigour in October), I think another introspective post is required. (Oh, we do like our introspective posts, me and Sue!)

I'm feeling a little like Dante tonight:

Midway upon the journey of our life

  I found myself within a forest dark,

  For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Or like Christian in the Pilgrim's Progress:

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream. I dreamed, and behold, I saw a blogger, sitting in a certain place, a laptop in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him switch on that laptop, and read therein; and, as he read, he wept, and trembled; and, not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying, What shall I do?

Alas, Beatrice and Paradise, and the Celestial City, seem far away tonight - at least as far as blogging about BBC bias is concerned! (And what sensible human being wouldn't connect those things to blogging about BBC bias?)

The forest dark/wilderness contains many strange things.

Look on Twitter and search under the hashtag #bbcbias and you will find a lot of activity.

Much of it comes from Scottish nationalists. They absolutely loathe the BBC and claim it's an integral part of the pro-union 'no' campaign. 

Plus, besides the inevitable sports-related uses of the #bbcbias hashtag ("Radio 5Live love/hate Man U, #bbcbias"), there has also been a humongous heck of a lot of anti-Israeli #bbcbias tweeting -  at times even outnumbering the Scottish 'yes' supporters (during Operation Protective Edge).

And I've got to say it: The anti-Israel brigade have clearly stolen a march on supporters of Israel (and fair-minded neutrals) by marching in such numbers against "BBC pro-Israel bias" and tweeting/facebooking en masse against "BBC pro-Israel bias". Their absurd claims have hit the headlines (and the world's attention), well beyond the BBC...

And I rather fear that all [tempting as it is to stick our heads firmly into the sand] all of this rather leaves the patient, deeply analytical blogging and proof-building of bloggers like me, Sue and Hadar at BBC Watch [my kind of blogger] somewhat lagging behind....

...and though I would hope that our blogging will eventually win out - like Aesop's tortoise to that mange-ridden anti-Israel hare - I still suspect that it probably won't (at least in the short term.)

The quicker forms of social media certainly seem to be winning out [for the time being], whether we like to believe it or not (and "our" Islamic State boys certainly seem to believe it)...

...which brings me back to a familiar theme. Twitter can be a force for good, for combatting such nonsense...

For everything BBC Watch, Biased BBC and Is the BBC biased? have achieved (and, yes, do I really need to brag about that again?), I remain staggered by the sheer effectiveness of Biased BBC's DB in wreaking havoc at the BBC through the medium of Twitter.

More than one BBC newsroom head (namely Mesdames Helen B and Mary H) has been forced into public action as a result of it (warning their staff about biased tweeting that might bring the BBC's reputation into disrepute).

For myself, I won't be engaging with Twitter any more than is strictly necessary. In spite of everything, I like to expand on a thought...at as much length as I like. (I hope you do too). We may be doomed, DOOMED, but...like Tony Blair, I have no time for soundbites. I feel the hand of history on my shoulder, but I've noticed something else too...

The energy seems to be going out of the 'the BBC is biased (in the ways we think it is)' portion of the internet these days.

Even a year or so back I could have linked to plenty of articles on large-readership, mainstream, right-leaning newspaper/magazine websites alleging BBC bias (of the kind we recognise).

Even within the past twelve months there was a brief spike of energetic anti-BBC reporting from the Telegraph, Times, Spectator and Daily Mail...

But those articles have almost entirely vanished in recent months (and the few exceptions have been overwhelmingly feeble and halfhearted).

Lost tonight in the dark forest and wilderness of this world, the thought struck me that many of those articles (in places like the Telegraph, Times, Spectator and Daily Mail) might just have come about because of Leveson (i.e. out of pure self interest/spite on those newspapers' part).

Because the BBC, rather blatantly, pursued the right-leaning, non-BBC part of the British media, that section of the media understandably hit back forcibly at the biased BBC.

Now, however, as the threat of Leveson recedes, that section of the media which felt threatened by the BBC's evident backing of Leveson has backed off again in its BBC bashing...and backed off pretty much to a full stop.

Is that too cynical?

The most high focus of BBC bias-related blogs - the long-established Biased BBC - keeps on keeping on though, thankfully, and the effort Alan, now pretty much running the blog single-handedly, is something to behold .(I don't envy him. Single-handed blogging ain't easy).

But still I'm sensing the same lack of impetus there that I'm feeling here. Most of the comments at Biased BBC these days [at best] are only tangentially related to specific claims of BBC bias - and most of those specific claims [however ardently expressed] simply fall to dust when you actually examine them [as I can't stop myself from doing].

Why is this happening? Why is the fire seemingly going out even as the BBC - post crisis-after-crisis - seems particularly vulnerable? Why is this happening despite years of proven bias from the likes of Mark Mardell, Jeremy Bowen and Jon Donnison? Why aren't politicians galore, journalists galore, campaigners galore stamping relentlessly on BBC bias? Why, why, oh why?

It's particularly funny (in the 'strange' sense of 'funny') that the BBC's privileged position, and its license fee, really did seem at risk recently. The BBC has shot itself in the foot so often in the past two of three years that it almost risked committing accidental suicide.

Has that moment passed? Is the BBC safe again? Is it business as usual?

I put these thoughts out tonight before retiring for a couple of day or so.

What do you think? Is it time for us to give up? Is it time for us to stop trying to prove BBC bias and stick with just asserting it instead - just doing so much, much, much, much better? Or it really time for us to get serious again and really get to work at trying to prove BBC bias, for the large majority who don't share our concerns?