See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil

Whatever else we may say on this site, it is unlikely we will ever suggest that the BBC is short of journalistic talent.  The problems that the BBC embodies and causes are mostly not due to a lack of capability, and the people who appear on the BBC’s television and radio programmes are generally among the best anywhere in the world at what they do.  The BBC’s sins are due to it being a state broadcaster and having an institutional culture that is Leftist and metropolitan and that is blind to, or ignores, provincial concerns.  This is especially so when the concerns come from the ethnic group that the BBC despises most of all, the white British, and especially from the socio-economic group the BBC hates: the white working class.

Now and then, the BBC’s journalists will put their abilities to good use.  Some time ago, Newsnight ran a series of short features on problems in northern England, and this turned out to be among the best work that programme has ever produced.  It left some of us feeling poignantly sad because we wondered how this country might be different today – and better – if the BBC, which styles itself as our ‘public service broadcaster’, had actually sought to be just that, fulfil its public mission and report critically on this country’s problems. 

Here’s another good feature recently broadcast on Newsnight, this time about problems in Sweden:

It’s painful to watch the people interviewed in that clip carefully avoid the central issue.  The reporter does some of that as well, but at least he makes an attempt at some proper journalism for a change.  Should we praise the BBC for this sort of work and undertake to abandon our campaign if they promise to ‘reform’ and ‘change’ and turn over a new leaf, so to speak?  Is it a case of ‘better late than never’?

We think not, and it’s to the above video clip that we return to explain why.  To credit the BBC for this report would be akin to praising an arsonist for setting fire to a building simply because he had the good manners to alert the fire brigade.  Imagine furthermore that our hypothetical arsonist only does the right thing after waiting for the building to be burnt out and reduced to a pathetic shell.  That analogously describes what the BBC have helped inflict on Britain.  The journalist’s work is good – we must give credit where it is due - but he has done nothing that has not already been done by scores of independent media, while people like him at the BBC were probably calling them racist and bigoted.  He is not even playing catch-up.  The BBC are just covering their backs, and perhaps also strategising a retreat and ‘row-back’ from the obvious failure of the Left’s grand social engineering project.

We are also struck by the fact that we have not seen the BBC do anything remotely similar in their coverage of Britain.  We can’t help but think that the reporter’s decision to cover problems in Sweden is an analogue, a decision taken – perhaps unconsciously – because he knows he could not portray an English town in the same way.  Britain has the same problems as Sweden and the BBC knows this very well, and if the BBC had actually fulfilled its public mission and sought to report on these issues when they were coming to light and ordinary people were complaining, the relevant problems might never have arisen in the first place.  The role of journalists, after all, is to use their critical and observational skills to alert society to problems.  Whatever else may be said about them, the BBC’s journalists are not lacking in skills or intellectual abilities: their problem is that they are beholden to hothouse social dogmas and this colours and influences their reporting.  The distortion is evident even in the above clip.

The poor policeman who appears early on obviously knew the truth but dared not state it plainly, while the reporter was slyly goading him and tried to make him look stupid.  This same reporter would call him racist and have him booted out of his job if he actually told the truth.  We wonder whether this See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil tendency found among ordinary people and petty officials like the police might have something to do with organisations like the BBC and the bullies who work for it?  The reporter then snidely concludes the feature by implying that people with concerns about Sweden – it could be equally be Britain, and that seems to be the import – are being lulled into a fake narrative.  We will certainly credit the reporter for a degree of professionalism and for attempting to fulfil his duties properly, but even he cannot entirely let go of Leftist social dogmas.

This is why we focus on the BBC.  Broadcasting is not an esoteric issue, it is a powerful tool and in the right hands can be used to do good.  The misdeeds and indiscretions of the BBC go to the root of the problems in this country.  Imagine if the BBC had done its duty over the last few decades and had reported on the problems of mass immigration and the lack of public consent for it.  Imagine if, back in the 1980s, the BBC had started reporting on Pakistani Moslem grooming gangs.  Imagine if back in 1992 the BBC had given balanced coverage to the Maastricht negotiations and the issue of European integration.  Where were the BBC reports about white displacement or the concerns of the white working class in areas of east London, the West Midlands or parts of West Yorkshire? 

Yes, we eventually heard from the BBC about these issues, but only inadequately, only through the BBC’s own warped frame of values, and only when the problems had developed into crises of such magnitude that even the BBC couldn’t any longer hide them by omission.  Likewise in Sweden.  Suddenly a sole BBC journalist turns up and interviews a few people, comes to a lot of sweeping conclusions, listens sympathetically to a white working class Swedish man he would probably sneer at and call racist in private, and we’re supposed to be impressed?   We are in little doubt that had the BBC done its job over the years, such reports would be unnecessary.  As it is, the BBC is a veritable Curate’s egg: it has got to the stage that any ‘good’ it does cannot compensate for the bad and even, as here, only serves to highlight the long-unaddressed inadequacies and smouldering grievances and resentments of normal people who look on in bewilderment and disgust at this organisation’s mendacity and hypocrisy.

That is not to exclusively blame the BBC for this country’s problems of course - there are many villains in this tale - but it is to highlight the power and privileged position of a large media organisation such as the BBC.  The BBC has let this country down and must now pay the price: it must be closed down for good.  Any shallow attempt now from the BBC to appease genuine concerns from the public should be met with the scorn and derision it deserves.  Yet we know that a large part of the public fall for this stuff.  As an indication, look at the comments on YouTube under the above video.  The praise demonstrates the power of the BBC brand and the enduring legacy of the Reithian principles: it’s not that the public really think that the BBC stands for impartiality and high journalistic principle, it’s that they think the BBC should and can stand for these things and they seize enthusiastically on any exceptional instance when, as here, the BBC does a halfway honest job.  This is dangerous because the cold reality is that the BBC no longer stands for these things, if it ever truly did, and it can’t.  It is a propaganda machine that hides behind a favourable public perception to push its insidious narratives.