Er (or 'I don't beLeith it!')

  

Courtesy of Guido Fawkes, 26/11/2020

The Spectator's literary editor Sam Leith has a piece at Unherd headlined Stop bad-mouthing the BBC. It's gaining traction on Twitter with pro-BBC people.

Against the evidence of today's Times/YouGov findings, he claims that "like it or not, the majority of Brits trust — and value — Auntie". 

(Has the BBC fact-checked that? Come in, Mr Morris!)

It's a fascinating, wrong-headed read. 

Hostility to the BBC, as we know, is in large part people objecting to group-thinking elitists who think they know better than a large swathe of the population, so it's hard to see how critics of the BBC will now be won for the BBC by him - a London-born, Eton-and-Oxford educated scion of the metropolitan elite with 'woke' views - mocking them, and insulting them, and telling them they're wrong.

Here's the main bit on bias:

Barwise and York argue, on the question of bias, that large-scale surveys tend to show that — whatever we at home may think we know — the BBC is not systematically biased: at least, inasmuch as these things can be quantified. Its charter commitments mean that it falls over itself not to be. And though the public is divided over the BBC’s perceived impartiality (60% think it’s neutral), the accuracy of its reporting is widely credited. For 51% of the population it’s the most trusted news source, its nearest competitor at 9% being ITV. The newspapers that consistently attack it for bias and inaccuracy sit at, er, 1% in that survey.

The authors discover some murky stuff, too, in the opaquely funded think-tanks and pressure groups who monitor the corporation’s output for impartiality. It’s true, they say, that Left and Right alike moan about BBC bias — but it’s only on the Right that complaining about the BBC qualifies as a properly paid day job.

Like the metropolitan elitist authors he quotes, he too selectively cites polls and other research which shows support for/trust in the BBC and ignores the many polls/pieces of research which show the precise opposite (e.g. Today's Times/YouGov poll). 

And these things can be quantified, and the ones I've conducted, and especially those by the like of David and Andrew at News-watch, show that the BBC is systematically biased on certain issues, towards certain points of view. I'm guessing Sam's more a Cardiff Uni fan.

Sam may think he's cleverer than those he's criticising in a largely ad hominem fashion (e.g. "incel science-fiction fans...still recovering from Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor") and doubtless appreciates the fact that the BBC thinks like him, but if he's genuinely seeking to break out of his comfort zone and to win converts to the BBC I really can't see this as a winning strategy. 

That "nearly half" of the population (or "the Plain People of Britain", as he puts it sarcastically) who believe that the BBC is hostile to their values won't be won over by pro-BBC sneering I suspect - especially if the sneering dismissal of their concerns is made by exactly the kind of person they would doubtless see as absolutely indistinguishable in background and outlook to the very BBC types they object to. 

He's one of those evidently who likes to play 'the fair-minded man' in between 'the fools on both extremes'. He writes pieces calling on 'the fools' to stop insulting others, respect others' points of view and see reason (usually, by coincidence of course, his point of view). And he tends to do that while throwing insults at them and completely failing to understand or respect their points of view. He's almost the embodiment of the BBC itself in that respect, blinded by a misguided sense of being in the virtuous mainstream.

Of course, he could just be playing to the gallery and picking up his pay cheque. He might not actually want to convince anyone. If so, good luck to him and we'll think of him no more.