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| Fascinating |
This wouldn't be a credible blog about BBC bias if we didn't note that the BBC has been under relentless fire this past week or so for that very thing: bias.
Sir Cliff's victory over the Beeb may have grabbed the headlines, but the BBC's senior reporters and editors (including News Editor James Stephenson and Editor of BBC Live Political Programmes Rob Burley) have also been fending off attacks from the pro-EU Left.
BBC press releases have gone out, put lots of Twitter rebuttals and Feedback appearances, and it's felt almost like a fight to the death.
I'd been brooding for days on on a far-too-long, ultra-detailed piece about it but simply don't feel up to writing it at the moment, so all I'll say is that the BBC is now under concerted attack from three specific groups: (1) pro-EU fanatics, (2) Carole Cadwalladr groupies and (3) Corbynista goons.
I'd been brooding for days on on a far-too-long, ultra-detailed piece about it but simply don't feel up to writing it at the moment, so all I'll say is that the BBC is now under concerted attack from three specific groups: (1) pro-EU fanatics, (2) Carole Cadwalladr groupies and (3) Corbynista goons.
(Like the BBC and its use of words like 'hardline', I may not have been entirely neutral in my descriptive language there!)
Their charges are utter nonsense (and I'd happily spend hours debunking them, had I enough hours and if enough people wanted me to) but they are absolutely hammering the BBC with complaint after complaint after complaint after complaint. And the BBC is listening.
It's wearying to deal with their nonsense as a blogger. And why should I? 'Our side' has been diligently publishing heavily detailed evidence for well over a decade showing, among other things, hugely overwhelming BBC 'pro-EU membership' bias and has received nothing but brush-offs and snide dismissals and little attention...
...but now, within the last year or so, former staunch defenders of the BBC like Nick Cohen and Andrew Adonis have turned anti-Brexit crusaders and taken to Beeb-bashing with a vengeance and, with nothing more than wild assertions and dubious anecdotes, succeeded in sending the BBC into a tailspin, with rebuttal after rebuttal pouring out of the BBC in response to their (to my eyes) groundless criticisms.
And it's obviously wearing the BBC out too. Even Rob Burley - the BBC's most indefatigable batsman - seems to be drowning in a sea of lunacy.
The loons are winning on Twitter (if, perhaps, nowhere else) by dint of exhausting everybody else with their fiery tomfoolery.
The Andrew Marr Show this morning saw Andrew putting questions that reflected the concerns of the Cadwalladristas, and it sounded (to me) as if Andrew Marr and Co. were going out of their way to prove to such people that they were doing 'the right thing', but (checking Twitter) it still wasn't enough.
I used to think such things were helpful to the BBC in advancing their silly 'complaints from both sides' defence but I really don't think the BBC is enjoying it at all.
Like robotic entities in Star Trek, they just can't compute it and are starting to blow up.
If they blow up fully, the BBC will fall even more into the hands of the pro-EU fanatics, Carole Cadwalladr groupies and Corbynista goons.
We live in interesting times.
Firstly, the left, trade unionists and far left have always criticised the BBC for bias. In fact I think it was the lefty quasi-academic Glasgow Media Group which pioneered detailed analysis of BBC output. However, as I recall they didn't half have to twist the data to match their ideology.
ReplyDeleteThe left have some basis for complaint. The traditional socialist wing of the Labour Party (now unusually in the ascendant within the party) has definitely been treated less well by the BBC than the soggy left end of the party. But of course that sort of differential fades into insignificance compared to the anti-Brexit, anti-right wing, anti-populist, anti-nationalist and anti-Conservative bias within the belly of the BBC.
The far left are kind of indulged and patronised more than criticised. Far leftism is almost encouraged by the BBC in children and in the arts. But in terms of mainstream politics, the BBC's preferred ideology is the globalist, pro-EU, multicultural, PC social democratic model - really Blairism without the pro-US foreign policy.
The Ctrl-Alt-Left are saying the BBC are not biased enough! What is the point of having a propaganda machine if it's not running at full pelt?
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