The Haze watches with incredulity the daft campaign being run by internet petition mongers 38 Degrees in aid of the ‘independent’ BBC’ – a supposed bastion of truth.
https://home.38degrees.org.uk/2015/07/16/urgent-protect-our-bbc/
Here are a few key snippets from their current BBC campaign page:
If we lose the BBC, we’ll be left with the likes of Rupert Murdoch controlling our news.
Our BBC is under attack. Today, the government announced plans to cut popular programmes, undermine its funding, and – worst of all – challenge its independence.
…Together we can show David Cameron’s government that the BBC is important and the public won’t stand for it being stripped down. Please sign the petition to protect our BBC now.
with other parts of the media controlled by the Murdochs and corporate interests, an independent BBC is vital.
We all benefit from having a public broadcaster that’s free from commercial interests and run independently from government.
While Sodium Haze and many of our readers couldn’t agree more that the wholesale ownership of the media by oligarchs and corporate power is a terrible thing…
…the idea that the BBC stands alone, like St Pauls during the blitz, a shining beacon of independence and journalistic integrity is a joke.
First of all the BBC is not independent from the government. Are you listening 38 degrees? Lets say it slowly…
THE — BBC — IS –NOT — INDEPENDENT
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All 12 members of its governing body (the BBC Trust) are selected from a shortlist of ‘suitable’ candidates drawn up by… the government.
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All 12 members of the BBC Trust are appointed by… the government.
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The BBC is funded by a licence fee – the level of which is set by… the government.
So the BBC is governed by people selected by David Cameron and operates under the permanent threat of funding cuts to be decided by the government. Does that sound independent ?
Lets have a look at the guardians of independence that the government appointed to protect the BBC’s journalistic integrity from erm government meddling.
* Rona Fairhead (Chairman of BBC trust) …was Chairman and CEO of the Financial Times Group from 2006 – 2013
* Sir Roger Carr (Vice Chairman of BBC Trust) …has extensive boardroom experience in industry and banking and has been described as one of the most sought-after non-executive directors and chairmen in the City.
* Richard Ayre (Trustee) … a founder board member of the Foods Standards Agency
* Sonita Alleyne (Trustee) … a former non-executive board member at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport
* Mark Florman (Trustee) … co-founded the merchant banking firm Maizels Westerberg,Chief Operating Officer of the investment banking group Aros Maizels, Managing Director of European private equity firm Doughty Hanson & Co
* Bill Matthews (Trustee for Scotland) … building on his non-executive experience with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service
* Aideen McGinley (Trustee for Northern Ireland) …Aideen has spent her career in local and central Government in Northern Ireland.
* Elan Coss Stephens … Alongside her academic career, Elan has enormous experience in policy and regulation through her roles on the Welsh Broadcasting Council and as Chair of the Welsh language broadcaster S4C
* Nicholas Prettejohn … Nick has held senior positions at some of the UK’s leading financial organisations, including Lloyd’s of London, Prudential, Legal and General, and Brit Insurance. He is currently Chairman of Scottish Widows and a non-executive Director of Lloyd’s Banking Group.
* Suzanna Taverne … Suzanna worked at S.G. Warburg & Co Ltd from 1982 to 1990 as a senior manager in corporate finance. She joined The Independent newspaper as Head of Strategic Planning and subsequently Finance Director at a time when it was becoming the first digitally-produced newspaper. She then worked as a consultant at Saatchi & Saatchi, Director of Strategy and Development at Pearson Plc and Managing Director of FT Finance
* Lord Williams of Baglan … Between 2000 and 2005 he was Special Adviser to two Foreign Secretaries: Robin Cook, and then Jack Straw. During that time he also continued his contribution to the BBC as a board member of the BBC World Service Trust
Notice a pattern here? Every single member of the BBC Trust (with the mild exception of Elan Coss Stephens) is from two very particular spheres of British life – corporate finance or various government departments and quangos. How wonderfully representative! No wonder they made it to the top of the short list approved by the government. BBC independence – woo!
The biography of Lord Williams of Baglan (proudly trumpeted on the BBC Trust’s own website) is particularly illuminating. While a de facto member of the government that took us into an illegal war in Iraq, the BBC and his Lordship saw no conflict of interest with him serving as a board member of the BBC World Service Trust.
But the real problem with the BBC is not the laughable bunch of establishment figures running it (how many bankers does it take to run the BBC?) but its output.
No blogger, website or media organisation would have the space, time or resources to truly document the horrors that constitute BBC coverage of news and current affairs but lets examine some research.
A study (paid for by the BBC) conducted by University of Cardiff, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies examined how the BBC’s ‘Today’ programme reacted in the critical period following the 2007/8 financial crash.
You can read the study here: – http://jou.sagepub.com/content/14/2/253.short?patientinform-links=yes&legid=spjou;14/2/253
their conclusions were illuminating – the only kind of people the BBC wanted to talk to during the financial crash had a marked similarity to the kind of people one might find in the BBC Trust! The overwhelming majority being people working in corporate finance, politicians, corporate media hacks, business ‘leaders’, neoclassical economists and government officials.
and here is who the BBC wanted to talk to during the last round of bank bail outs in 2008.
note that the range of people the BBC was prepared to interview on air during this critical opinion forming period had narrowed almost unbelievably to basically nobody outside of The City of London and Westminster. That is not journalism – it is propaganda.
In studying the BBC news at Six, the Cardiff researchers found that:
business representatives outnumbered trade union representatives by 19 to one. “The BBC tends to reproduce a Conservative, Eurosceptic, pro-business version of the world,” the study said. This, remember, is where people turn when they don’t trust the corporate press.
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The BBC is a tool of propaganda – it is not fit for purpose as a news organisation.
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Disagree? – see what you think after reading a few of these links:
How the BBC betrayed the NHS: an exclusive report on two years of censorship and distortion
Hard Evidence: How biased is the BBC?
BBC bias and the Scots referendum
The BBC and the propaganda model
Is there bias on BBC Question Time?
BBC’s Panorama war coverage and the ‘Westminster consensus’
Is the BBC afraid of the City of London?
The BBC’S Robotic assertion of ‘impartiality’
Russian aggression and the BBC’s drums of nuclear war
A Critique of BBC’s Middle East News Production Strategy
BBC in the service of Israeli propaganda
http://www.newsunspun.org/category/bbc-news
By giving a platform to climate change sceptics, the BBC is misleading the public
It’s the BBC’s rightwing bias that is the threat to democracy and journalism
Robert Peston Claims BBC Is ‘Obsessed’ With Covering Same Stories As Daily Mail
and there is much much more – an ocean full of wave after wave of smug casual smart suited corporate friendly news mush that washes over its audience 24/7.
Watch this extraordinarily simpering, patronising and insular response of BBC hack Clive Myrie in ‘conversation’ with other corporate media hacks about the strong possibility of Jeremy Corben being democratically elected as leader of the Labour Party.
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Its a wonderful example of how aloof the BBC is from its audience – baffled by anything that happens outside the mechanistic scripts of the Westminster bubble.
If people want to defend the BBC because they fear losing Dr. Who and the free coverage of Wimbledon that’s fine.
But to campaign to protect the BBC’s independence is laughable! It has no independence and is institutionally right wing and pro-establishment in all of its ‘news’ output.
The only people who are suitably brain washed and deluded enough to believe in the oft touted fantasy of its journalistic integrity must surely spend too much time…
…watching BBC News.
I agree with much that you have written. I am firmly of the opinion that the BBC have lost the plot entirely when it comes to Inform Educate and Entertain which where the First principles at the start. A lot got lost during WW2 but inform and educate dont seem to play much part in recent decades.
An illuminating set of articles, which I will bookmark and use in any arguments about the BBC’s stance. I have written to the BBC Trust a number of times re Israeli/ Palestinian coverage as have many others, but the result is always the sort of bland disowning of responsibility which can be found in your links. Anyone with half an eye can see the BBC’s inbuilt bias – the problem is that the bulk of the public don’t look even with half an eye, but accept all the propaganda as truth (as in the online petition you feature).