1. Mention, just once, our campaign hashtag, #AbolishTheBBC, live on one of your shows, so that the BBC's own viewers and listeners can seek us out and decide for themselves about the BBC.
2. In addition, or in the alternative, we are happy to put forward one of our number for an interview on a live broadcast of yours - radio or television. On the simple condition that we can speak freely and mention our campaign, you can ask us whatever you like. All you need to do is e-mail us to make the necessary arrangements.
To the best of our knowledge, nobody at the BBC has taken us up on 1 above, and certainly the BBC has not taken us up on 2 above. This is puzzling - what could the BBC possibly have to fear by informing its own loyal viewers and listeners of our campaign? Ipso facto, viewers and listeners should be dutiful supporters of the BBC rather than us.
The Reithian Principles and the BBC’s own notional commitment to 'impartiality' require that all viewpoints are heard. Replying to us on social media (which several BBC personalities have done) is not enough, the BBC is a broadcaster. So we await contact from somebody at the BBC - either they mention our campaign hashtag or they invite us on air. They can contact us at any time.
We expect to be issuing this challenge to everybody we encounter from the BBC.
The BBC bias
argument is the proverbial fish in a barrel shoot.A five-year old could make the case and give
Jeremy Paxman a run for his money.We
could go on forever and ever and ever and ever with the examples.Every day, almost, brings a new outrage in
which some presenter or other flagrantly reveals that his own private political
and social biases would not be out of place at an editorial meeting of Pravda,
or paradoxically, at a board meeting of Dragons' Den.The bias is an eclectic mix of Leftism, cringy plastic commercialism and metropolitanism.
But the basic
problem with the ‘bias’ complaint is that it reflects a naïve trust in
institutions that is no longer warranted. It's a bit like a grown-up lodging an earnest complaint concerning boyhood lies about Santa Claus. It’s too late. We're not in the 1940s anymore. The cat is out of the
bag. It's clear that the BBC fails to be unbiased not because it wants to be biased, but because - in common with all other media organisations - it can't be any other. The BBC is just as partial and dishonest as everybody else. Thus, it’s not enough to complain about
so-called ‘BBC bias’. That's tilting at windmills. The BBC itself exists on the basis of a false prospectus, and reforming it will only make matters worse, even if the reforms are thought-through and well-intentioned. And anyway, reform has been tried before and whenever it has been tried, there have always been assurances that bias would be tackled and minimised and standards would improve. It never happens because it can't. The BBC must go.
Nevertheless, let's look more closely at the bias issue. It is an issue, and bias is at the
centre of our concerns, but our approach to the problem is distinct.We offer a more
subtle (and, we would like to think, more sophisticated) argument, which goes
like this:
1. First, the Platonic objective of impartiality is impossible. It is specified in the BBC's public mission, but it is idealistic and the BBC manifestly fails to achieve it. The BBC is not an elite media. It is biased and pervasively dishonest, like all media organisations are. Better to acknowledge this and deal with reality than carry on pretending that Britain can somehow have a noble broadcasting aristocracy that is above partiality and partisanship. We imagine even the Queen sometimes struggles to remain impartial, even though that is her duty. That she manages to give even just an appearance of impartiality at all is probably down to the fact that little is expected of her in terms of controversial decision-making. The BBC's very existence is predicated on its claim to impartiality, or at least a claim that it aspires to the ideal: it's a broadcasting ethic that runs through the entire organisation, yet it's a giant, bare-faced Big Lie. Enough! Arguments and complaints about bias are loved by the BBC because they divert attention to more useless reform and engagement with their complaints process, and away from the real solution: The inexorable logic is for abolition of the BBC.
2. A lot of what
people think is BBC bias actually strictly isn’t.First, there’s the simple Devil’s advocate
duty that every journalist arguably has. Related to this, it's perfectly legitimate for BBC journalists and broadcasters to want to hold the attention of viewers and listeners with a big amount of aggression and controversy. Jeremy Paxman's interviews were both illuminating and entertaining and he frequently played Devils' advocate in order to challenge his guests.
3. There’s also the need for functional biases in maintaining balance.For example, if a defender of the tobacco
industry goes on Newsnight to dispute the causes of lung cancer, you’d
expect the Newsnight interviewer to give him quite a hard time - not because the
Newsnight interviewer disagrees with him necessarily, but because of a need for balance in the debate and
to reflect wider concerns in society.
4. The problem however with functional biases is how you decide to be balanced,
which in turn is a subjective decision - and not always a conscious decision, sometimes more a result of an institutional culture. This is where we come to the root of what we think is the real problem with the BBC's so-called 'bias', which is mostly not a 'bias problem' at all, but more a problem of how the BBC institutionally decides to be 'balanced'. The BBC is still imbued in a Reithian paternalistic mindset. Its serious journalists believe that part of their duty is to "educate, inform..." the viewing and listening public. That's all well and good, but the problem is that a kindly, detached, cultured sort of paternalism can easily become a stifling, suffocating maternalism. Aunty knows best! Educating and informing the public can easily become "improving and indoctrinating" the public in whatever the BBC as an institutional culture thinks is the 'right' set of views, which in the case of the BBC and the wider Establishment will normally be whatever is politically-correct. This is a classic Actonite slippage: you start with the best of intentions, and before you know it, you end up with a Monster on your hands.
To amplify the point, let's see if we can find a recent example of 'BBC maternalism' in action:
"They were sieg heiling, they were unfurling pictures of Hitler. They were very professional in their imagery and what they produced."
Aunty Beeb, imbued with Leftists and an Aunty Knows Best attitude, assumes that the majority of the rest of the country are Leftists too, and thinks that 'balance' means presenting the 'right' sort of opinions: in this case, Hitler and [neo-]Nazism are 'evil'. That is not to deny that Newsnight features such as the above are the result of BBC bias in and of itself - they are - nor is it to deny that the bias is deliberate propaganda - it's that too - but we think the following comment from Twitter is closer to the mark in explaining the Left's motivations:
Hard to escape the conclusion that many in the Western left have declared a self-flattering war on neo-Nazism precisely as a distraction from the real problems facing Western society today, to which they have no answers, and are uncomfortable even with the questions - B O'Neil
Mr McOwan hits the nail on the head, so to speak: Newsnight, for instance, are well-aware of the problems in British society, especially in England, and have (we must say, to their credit) run a series of features on the social issues of northern England. These features are worth watching - they demonstrate poignantly the potential of the BBC when it gives the Leftist/PC agenda a rest - but it is too little too late. If Reithian paternalism has been corrupted into maternalism, this is only due to wider changes in society and a broader Establishment agenda. The BBC clearly has an overriding agenda against the white British. It is an enemy bureaucracy and must be stopped. 5. We think balance is a more realistic goal than impartiality, but the BBC can't even achieve this. This is partly because the goals of impartiality and balance are often in practical conflict and are sometimes paradoxical to each other. To achieve balance requires the state to get out of broadcasting, while assuring a minimalist regulatory framework within which a plural media can function. 6. An additional point is that the corruption of BBC paternalism into maternalism has affected and influenced the British media generally. As an example, consider the following clips from the commercial radio station, LBC, in which the caller raises understandable concerns about an alien minority in British society. The presenter, Tom Swarbrick, also works for the BBC. Swarbrick accuses the caller of Islamophobia and proceeds to lecture to him in the manner of a schoolmistress:
As a graduate of religious studies and philosophy, we'd expect you to own a dictionary. OED defines 'impartial' as "treating all rivals or disputants equally". That said, we didn't write the petition, we're just promoting it.
— Campaign To Abolish The BBC (@AbolishTheBBC) August 16, 2018
We are running a campaign to abolish the BBC. It seems the BBC is running a campaign of its own: to
abolish Boris Johnson’s political career:
If anyone thinks that the BBC is still impartial, I invite you to look at the @BBCNews Politics page. Six articles/videos on Boris and the burka, not one on Corbyn's Munich Massacre row.
One of the most surprising camps among critics of the BBC are the activist Left, many of whom think that the BBC is biased towards the Conservative Party and slanted against Jeremy Corbyn. On reflection, they do have a point. It makes sense that the BBC would give more favourable coverage to the neo-Blairite and pro-Zionist Theresa May and her government than is warranted, while at the same time looking unfavourably on Jeremy Corbyn's putatively anti-Zionist Labour Party. But then some of the bias has gone the other way at times. For one thing, there has in the past been favourable coverage of Jeremy Corbyn by the BBC. For another, there is the fact that Zionists have in the past excoriated the BBC over their coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict. We could go on listing the incongruities, but won't.
The BBC Switch-off campaign of the last few days, mainly concentrated in Scotland, was started by the Left. It has included a Twitter trend and also an outdoor demonstration. RT covered it and it does seem to have caused the BBC some public embarrassment. Predictably, our state broadcaster has declined to cover the demonstration or the campaign itself, which called on people to stop watching the BBC at 6 p.m. on Thursday 9th. August 2018 - 6 p.m. being the usual time of broadcast for BBC One's daily flagship news programme. It seems the aim of the campaign has been to protest (among things) the BBC's bias against all the usual Leftist shibboleths, including Jeremy Corbyn and the NHS, also to challenge what the Left see as bias pro-Zionist coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and furthermore to highlight a neo-liberal agenda on foreign affairs that many Leftists attribute to the BBC. These complaints are not without justification, but one thing we have noted is that very many supporters of the BBC Switch-off campaign are Scottish Nationalists (in fact normally members of the SNP). Among such people, our impression is that the concern with the BBC is less about specific biases, and more that the British Broadcasting Corporation does not cater to the interests and concerns of Scotland.
No doubt many of these campaigners are simply playing the political game and putting pressure on the BBC in the hope the broadcaster will dance to their tune. Their objection to bias is purely partial and self-serving: they are not concerned with upholding the principle of impartiality, they simply want the BBC to be biased towards them rather than the other side of whatever is the dispute or controversy. Of course, some anti-bias campaigners are genuinely naive and muddle-headed and actually think that the BBC can somehow be studiously impartial.
Whatever, the BBC's famed 'impartiality' has to be seen for what it is: a fig leaf for vested interests to hide behind. Professional impartiality is a myth, not just at the BBC but throughout media. Therefore, if we allow the BBC to go on, we are allowing the perpetuation of a deceit on the public, many of whom still implicitly trust that the BBC is fair and impartial.
Broadcasters and the media cannot be impartial. They can, however, be balanced. They can present both and multiple sides of an argument. The BBC often does not even achieve balance, and when it does at least offer notional balance in features and discussions, it tries to make out that this is evidence of practical impartiality. It isn't. Balance and impartiality are not at all the same thing. Impartiality is an ideal that can never be fully achieved, and in the case of the BBC (like most other media organisations) is only paid lip service to. Balance is more of a realistic goal, but even that depends to a large extent on having competitive media, some of whom will actively strive for institutional balance in what they do, others of whom will be openly slanted on the basis that balance is embodied in the availability to viewers and listeners of a multiplicity of outlets. The state can help by ensuring there is genuine media plurality and choice, so that viewers and listeners are able to receive information from different sources and weigh things up. How might the state achieve this? Easy - by doing one simple thing. The state needs to get out of media and broadcasting and start treating us like adults.
Our solution is simple: abolish the BBC, end state involvement in information, and allow the disciplines of the free market to bring fuller transparency and balance into media and broadcasting.
