The BBC - A Biased
Broadcasting Corporation
Vernon Coleman
It has long been clear to me that the BBC is a very biased
broadcasting organisation which takes a strong pro-establishment line on almost
every issue.
I used to work for the BBC regularly - presenting
programmes on both radio and television. But I don't get invited to appear much
on the BBC these days. Review copies of my books are sent to programme editors
and presenters but, on the whole, we would get as much response if we sent
copies to the Man in the Moon. When representatives of the BBC do ring up it is
usually to invite me to appear on something in which I have absolutely no
interest and which is unlikely to give me any opportunity to embarrass any part
of the official establishment. A little while ago, for example, I received a
message offering me a fee of £2,000 to appear on a `celebrity' issue of a BBC
quiz programme. I rather doubt, however, whether I will ever be invited to
discuss this book on any BBC programme. (Note: Dozens of copies of this book
were sent to BBC producers, editors and presenters and no one wanted to talk
about it.)
The BBC seems to me to support the medical establishment, the
meat industry and the drug industry and to say that it is not keen to give air
time to my views on doctors or the health service or to my views on the
pointlessness of animal experimentation is something of an under-statement. I
have never heard a BBC programme (on radio or television) which was fair to
pro-animal campaigners, that dealt with the EU fairly, that dared to criticise
American Imperialism with gusto or that criticised doctors and drug companies.
The BBC usually only gives air time to politicians and other establishment
figures and gives little (or preferably no) time to anyone threatening the
establishment with contrary or original thoughts. Not for nothing is the BBC
known not as the British Broadcasting Corporation but as the Blair Broadcasting
Corporation, the Bush and Blair Chorus and the Bent Broadcasting Corporation.
The whole darned organisation spins more than a top. After watching a BBC news
programme I feel dizzy from all the spinning.
It has, for some time now,
also been pretty clear to me that the BBC does not like to broadcast
uncomfortably trenchant criticism of the European Union. My book England Our
England is probably the biggest selling book on politics to have been
published in England in recent years. And yet I have discussed it just once on
the BBC, on a late night local radio programme. (The presenter later reported an
unprecedented interest in the broadcast.)
I am not the only person to
have noticed that the BBC takes an unusually partisan line on the EU. This
pro-European bias has been evident to many listeners for many years and few
people were surprised when, in June 2004, a study conducted by the Centre for
Policy Studies revealed that the BBC gave twice as much coverage to pro-EU
speakers as to eurosceptics. (I'd like to see, but am unlikely ever to obtain, a
list of all the direct and indirect grants and financial inducements the BBC has
received from the European Union.)
Naturally, representatives of the BBC
are invariably quick to defend their organisation. I suspect that some of them
really believe that they are impartial and it is certainly a fact that they
often fail to realise just how much their bias is showing.
People who
work for the BBC don't think of themselves as being part of the establishment
(in fact many of them like to think of themselves as being rather radical) but
with the possible exception of the British Medical Association I don't think
I've ever known a more pro-establishment body than the BBC. The BBC has a
hierarchy based on the civil service and certainly doesn't reflect the diversity
of opinion in England. Very few BBC employees have ever experienced life in the
free market (the ones who have, have usually failed).
The problem is
that the BBC's internal environment, their in-house culture, is terribly biased
towards Labour and all its best-established enthusiasms. Any honest broadcaster
would have left the BBC in disgust years ago. The European Union is important to
Labour and so it is important to the BBC too. (The BBC's uncomfortable, and for
it rather embarrassing, position over the illegal invasion of Iraq was merely a
reflection of the Labour Party's own internal schism.)
Most BBC staff
members are recruited through advertisements which appear exclusively in
left-wing pro-Labour newspapers such as The Guardian and the organisation
grows and grooms its own managers instead of recruiting from outside.
Inevitably, most of the people who work for the BBC are Guardian readers.
There are uncomfortable and unacceptable links between BBC staff and the Labour
Party. One BBC presenter and her company has received £600,000 in public money
since Labour took over the Government. The payments included hosting a one day
conference on tourism, and making a film of the disastrous Scottish parliament
project.
Is it really surprising, therefore, that the BBC ends up
supporting the EU and refusing to allow the critics of the EU fair access to its
airtime? Is it surprising that BBC staff invariably seem frightened of producing
anything likely to upset the establishment? Was it really surprising when one
well-known presenter referred to the Labour Party as `we'? Most BBC staff may
not be stupid enough to endorse one party but they don't even realise that their
prejudices are prejudices. They simply regard their views as `right'.
The
BBC produces no real investigative journalism and no consumer protection. The
organisation is plump, complacent and infinitely pro-establishment; full of
people looking over their shoulders, terribly pleased with themselves and scared
witless that their comfy sinecure may end. Is it any result that young BBC
broadcasters do nothing original or daring or likely to upset any part of the
establishment, unless it is acceptably original or daring (in which case of
course it is neither) and unthreatening to the establishment within and without
the BBC.
The ultimate insult, of course, is that it is impossible to
listen to the radio or watch television in England without paying a hefty annual
fee to the BBC. Where else in the world do the citizens have to pay to be
indoctrinated? Does no one outside the BBC realise that any broadcaster which is
totally dependent upon the establishment and the Government of the day for its
very existence must end up as no more than a tool for both.
Although the
BBC gets its income from a tax on the public (whether they watch its programmes
or not) the BBC is effectively a state owned broadcaster. It certainly acts like
one. No one with a brain would expect to turn on the BBC to listen to the news.
The BBC is a good old-fashioned state broadcaster. It would have been
comfortable operating in the USSR in the 1960s.
Taken from
The Truth They Won't Tell You (And Don't Want You To Know) About The EU
by Vernon Coleman
All Vernon Coleman's books (including this one) are
available from the bookshop on this website and from all good bookshops and
libraries everywhere.
Copyright Vernon Coleman 2007
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