14 May 2020

Good Days at the Beeb

Drastically Needed

by Don Urquhart

The BBC management either fears the government or actually believes the nonsense they are compelled to broadcast.

There is clearly a massive pro-Tory bias most visible during the 2017 and 2019 General Elections and the Tory Party still controls the BBC output. There was and is an alliance of Billionaires, Brexiteers, Tories, Blairites and opponents of a two-state solution who resist any notion of a socialist government in the United Kingdom.  They combine to stifle socialist voices throughout the media and most notably in the BBC.

The crass tactics of the BBC’s political and news programmes to promote this alliance are well-documented.Here’s a Daily Mirror article from 2018:

The BBC has been accused of using an actress to pretend to be a Brexit-backing pastor on Newsnight.

Dog collar-wearing ‘Reverend Lynn’ appeared on the flagship show to fiercely defend Theresa May, urging viewers to “have faith in the government”.

She is the pastor for a tiny organisation called the Seeds for Wealth Ministries, which claims to “help you realise, release and walk into your financial freedom in Christ”.

However eagle-eyed viewers spotted that a woman who appears to be the same person regularly works as an extra under the name Marina Hayter – and was even in Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens.

Apart from the notorious Question Time where Fiona Bruce set out to humiliate Diane Abbott and failed, the whole culture of that programme became comedy as you looked for the Tory who would be randomly picked by Fiona for a statement alleging Labour anti-Semitism or worse.

While Corbyn was party leader any BBC political programme might as well kick off with:Corbyn, Hamas, Hezbollah, anti-Semitism, IRA, Venezuela, and get it over with.

But the pièce de résistance of BBC bias was John Ware’s Panorama on Anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. The BBC hierarchy defended it with desperate heroism despite its dependence on assertion masquerading as fact supplied by a cast of actors, lobbyists and disaffected ex-employees. The recently leaked Labour Party internal report destroys any claim that the programme was anything other than a hatchet job on Corbyn.

So I claim that the BBC is biased against socialism and this assertion is extremely well-documented.  The Tory response is to claim that the broadcaster is biased in the opposite direction although I have not seen a shred of evidence unless you count the investigative documentaries between election campaigns covering for example:

Mental health services being destroyed;

A&E grotesquely underfunded

 County Lines thriving in poor areas;

Newspaper racism in support of Brexit;

Boris Johnson’s Russian connections.

These are factual programmes which go some way to justifying the Licence Fee by speaking truth to power.

In recent weeks Newsnight has taken on a tone more critical of government policy.  With no real socialists on the opposition front bench and no election foreseeable the BBC can start patting itself on the back.

But they give themselves away.  The Breaking News at the bottom of the Downing Street Press Briefing alternates:

Covid-19 deaths  over 700 ;

Stanley Johnson thrilled with new grandson:

Stanley Johnson likes the baby’s name.

This is public service broadcasting at its flimsiest.

Nevertheless I want to retain the BBC as a public service broadcaster to keep it out of the billionaires’ hands.

Needless to say I would sack many of those responsible for political reporting.