Can We Trust the BBC?

As an Ulster Protestant I can say that the BBC is clearly biased against the Unionist community in Northern Ireland. Thus Robin Aitken's chapter "The Despised Tribes" struck a deep chord.

I can give a brief recent example: this years Orange Twelfth of July parades were the most peaceful, family friendly and cross-community in years. However on the 11th night small groups of Roman Catholic rioters were involved in minor scuffles with the police. The national BBC coverage reported this as trouble at the Protestant Orange parades and showed footage of vicious rioting from three years ago!

The chapter on Europe is also damning in the blatant favour shown by the BBC to both the Labour party and the "Europhiles".

An important book about a revered British institution that needs to sort it's act out.

The BBC looks like a Marxist propaganda organ (3/5 people found this helpful)

No, we cannot trust the BBC.

This author is correct, I have noticed a dramatic decline in the quality and relevance of BBC programming, and the rise in absurdly Marxist, Political Class, Multi-Cultural, Collectivist biased reporting. The privately owned Channel 4 has shamed the BBC for many years with _much_ higher quality, radical programming and reporting (like Dispatches), even SKY offers better programming and reporting!

The idea of a national broadcaster, like the BBC, seems bearable provided it is impartial and offers value for money, but becomes pointless and evil as it is taken over by collectivists.

I think that that the BBC TV tax must cease (to remove the extortion and enforce financial reality) and that the BBC should either have a wholesale staff replacement (excluding adverts in the Guardian and the Independent), or be closed and any worthwhile assets be moved into a trust, with free UK public access, and chargeable foreign and private access.

British Bias Corporation (4/7 people found this helpful)

With its national TV and radio networks, regional and local stations, the BBC is massively influential in the UK and also worldwide through the BBC World Service, ten international TV networks plus international radio services in more than 40 languages as well as its Internet news site.

Robin Aitken, having spent 25 years at the organization, provides well-documented proof of its leftist bias, chronicles his struggle against this partisanship and puts forth suggestions for reform. Important elements of the BBC's world-view include unquestioning support for the European Union and the United Nations, guilt about Britain's imperial past, and an anti-capitalist, anti-religious (except when it comes to Islam), anti-American and anti-Israel stance.

The first chapter covers the broadcaster's history from its establishment to the radical change that took place in the late 1960s and subsequent developments, whilst in the second Aitken recounts his career history at the BBC. A significant change took place in 1987 when the ideological agenda took an even sharper turn to the left. The concerns he raised about ideological bias were contemptuously dismissed, he was falsely accused and even threatened.

Chapter four provides profiles of the broadcaster's senior management, almost all of whom have long-standing connections with leftwing media like The Guardian and with the Labour Party. The BBC's overwhelming support for the European Union is dissected in chapter five that reveals a record of purges and suppression of anti-EU opinion, including that of Eurosceptics in the Labour Party.

The "despised tribes" of the BBC are discussed next. They are Ulster Protestants, Conservative Christians and the Roman Catholic Church in particular, most Americans and all those that the organization considers to be "right-wing." There was also a strong bias in favour of the IRA while balanced debate on immigration, the Middle East, Islam and other uncomfortable issues are avoided. There is no doubt that the BBC is contributing to the alarming spread of antisemitism worldwide, as also documented in The Resurgence of Anti-Semitism by Bernard Harrison.

Like all leftists, those at the BBC believe that their moral values are superior and not to be questioned. Chapter eight provides detailed evidence of how far they will go to twist, lie and distort in order to mislead the public. More evidence from current and previous employees - in their own words and anonymously - is provided in the following chapter.

Aitken concludes that one cannot trust the BBC, especially not on issues relating to Israel, the Iraq war, the European Union, Ulster, the USA or Islam. See also The Other War by Stephanie Gutmann for an analysis of reporting from the Middle East. He provides proposals for change by suggesting for example the introduction of a wider spectrum of balanced views and the redirection of funds to other broadcast media.

The BBC is a national institution in the UK so complete abolition is not even considered. It is still hard to understand why opposition parties and civil society did not more vigorously oppose the use of taxpayers' money to subsidize a self-perpetuating class of ideologues promoting such one-sided views. More information on this matter is available in What's Left?: How Liberals Lost Their Way by Nick Cohen.

What a pity that broadcast deregulation wasn't thoroughly effected in the 1980s. It's the one important area where Margaret Thatcher did not succeed. If she had, the UK and a significant part of the global public would have been better informed and less brainwashed than they are today. I also recommend Scrap the BBC! by Richard D North, whilst Propaganda by Jacques Ellul remains a classic on how people's attitudes are shaped by the media.

I now watch the BBC News 24 with much more `salt' than I ever did before. (11/15 people found this helpful)

At first I thought that this was a book written by a disgruntled ex-employee who wanted a platform to have a `pop' at their old employer. Reading further it became obvious to me that this was defiantly not the case at all. I found the style and pace of the book to be really quite pleasant, the use of and relevance of referenced examples was excellent.

As a result I am paying more attention to how the BBC's news articles / programmes are introduced, who they are presented by, and ultimately if I notice bias. (which I do far too often). Don't get me wrong, I love the BBC, I love the fact that it is free from direct advertising, that it is recognised around the world as a quality assurance mark. What I did not know was quite how much responsibility the BBC has for some of our nations staunches politically correct attitudes, which can, and often do fly in the face of good old common sense.

This book alludes to the wider national problem of `leftist' attitudes and behaviour being subtly served at breakfast, lunch, and dinnertime for national consumption. There are a few other books that explore this potential blindsiding of the public by the "lib-leftist", namely `What's Left?" Nick Cohen, "Londonistan" M. Phillips, and "While Europe Slept" Bruce Bawer.

On the off chance the above portrays a right wing or general anti-left stand point, at the last General Election I voted for `Iraq Not In My Name' party (Shipley West). I like to think my political allegiance is to common sense!!.

Excellent (14/17 people found this helpful)

This is a short book, but very succinct in describing how the BBC has tended towards a single worldview, and how that view can lead the public rather than follow it.

There is much evidence of bias, for example the comparison of the BBC's headlining of Tory ministers' and MPs' affairs with the equivalent of inside pages for Robin Cook leaving his wife, followed by an account of the Governors' rejection of the author's complaints of bias, apparently accepting but not publishing BBC executives' arguments that there was no bias.

The subtle psychology of the suppression of dissent within the corporation is interestingly put, not that it can be particularly obscure that in a large organisation, those with dissenting opinions have to be careful (I suppose the important distinction is that this organisation's business is news, fact, opinion, etc., so such suppression would be worse than for others.)

A chapter with anonymous remarks from BBC journalists backs up these discussions. Of course you have to decide whether the anonymity means the remarks are merely disgruntled, or really because their owners don't dare articulate them.

There is an excellent chapter, remarked on by another reviewer, about the Panorama about the Phillipines and the Catholic church -"Sex and the Holy City", which seems to be an extreme example of bias, running to outright invention, and the author's conservative argument against this is fantastic. You can still see a large "Your Comments" page about this on the BBC's website, showing how appalled many viewers were with the church. What's interesting about that page is that the viewers would probably not have felt so strongly had they read an equivalent report in the press, because the Guardian (or the Daily Mail for that matter) do not promise balance and impartiality. In other words viewers trust the BBC and listen and watch uncritically.

Which was to me the main point to come out - I would love to watch different, openly biased programmes and channels, the way I can read the Guardian and Daily Telegraph.

Another book on the subject very well worth reading, is "Scrap the BBC!" by Richard D North.

Robin Aitken

Reader Reviews:

Interesting and Important. (2/2 people found this helpful)

The BBC looks like a Marxist propaganda organ (3/5 people found this helpful)

British Bias Corporation (4/7 people found this helpful)

I now watch the BBC News 24 with much more `salt' than I ever did before. (11/15 people found this helpful)

Excellent (14/17 people found this helpful)

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