The BBC

[Denny Crane]

I posted that Chomsky, Marr clip a few times it's brilliant. 

 

The BBC had their ways and means to ensure they employed sound people. 

 

My wife -- whose father is a TV director who'd worked for the BBC -- learned as a little girl that the British spy agency MI5 secretly vetted people who applied for work at the BBC and denoted possible subversives by putting a doodle of a Christmas tree on their personnel files; people who were thus blacklisted were discriminated against within the Beeb.

This practice -- which continued into the 1990s -- has been an open secret for generations, but the BBC has always officially denied it.

Now, the BBC has allowed Paul Reynolds, one of its reporters, to look at its "vetting files" and publish his findings. He found that long after MI5 lost interest in spying on BBC workers, the BBC was still enthusiastic about the practice, with senior managers fighting against scaling back the practice. The BBC also lied to the press, the public, and Parliament about the process. Potential hires were blackballed for belonging to "radical" organisations, but could also be denied employment just for being associated with members of the Communist Party -- for example, for belonging to organisations whose members included CP members.

 

If MI5 found something against a candidate, it made one of three "assessments" in a kind of league table:

* Category "A" stated: "The Security Service advises that the candidate should not be employed in a post offering direct opportunity to influence broadcast material for a subversive purpose."

* Category "B" was less restrictive. The Security Service "advised" against employment "unless it is decided that other considerations are overriding".

* Category "C" stated that the information against a candidate should not "necessarily debar" them but the BBC "may prefer to make other arrangements" if the post offered "exceptional opportunity" for subversive activity.

The BBC procedure was in principle never to employ someone in Category "A", though a few did get through the net. This contradicted its public position that the BBC controlled all appointments. In theory it did. In practice it gave that choice to MI5 in Category "A" cases

 

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/boingboing.net/2018/04/23/auntie-mccarthy.html/amp

[Dougie Do'ins]

10 minutes ago, Shooter in the Motor said:

Is this thread about the BBC or Brexit? 

 

If it's about the BBC, they have some good channels and some bad ones, some good shows and some bad ones and some good presenters/actors&actresses and some bad ones.

 

If it's about Brexit, I might pop over the the Brexit thread.

No, it's definitely about the BBC. It's political bias and the fee we have to pay for it. 

 

There's been a few occasions when I've praised the beeb for it's programme content and times when I've done the opposite. 

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Dougie Do'ins said:

No, it's definitely about the BBC. It's political bias and the fee we have to pay for it. 

 

There's been a few occasions when I've praised the beeb for it's programme content and times when I've done the opposite. 

The personal sacrifice I have made (and it is a small one in the grand scheme of things to be fair) is to not watch live TV and not watch any BBC content in exchange for the fact that I do not pay a TV licence. I can not say for sure that it's due to political bias but certainly it's got a large part to do with the fact that I do not agree with what the Government does with the money received in paying huge salaries to TV stars etc and then telling the people who work 'normal' jobs to stump up the cash for it or else.

 

For that reason, my opinion on the BBC is that for the most part it's shite but their radio presence is boss (even though some of those are also paid a small fortune but at least I don't have to pay for a licence to listen to it).

[Mook]

11 minutes ago, Shooter in the Motor said:

The personal sacrifice I have made (and it is a small one in the grand scheme of things to be fair) is to not watch live TV and not watch any BBC content in exchange for the fact that I do not pay a TV licence. I can not say for sure that it's due to political bias but certainly it's got a large part to do with the fact that I do not agree with what the Government does with the money received in paying huge salaries to TV stars etc and then telling the people who work 'normal' jobs to stump up the cash for it or else.

 

For that reason, my opinion on the BBC is that for the most part it's shite but their radio presence is boss (even though some of those are also paid a small fortune but at least I don't have to pay for a licence to listen to it).

If you're watching any sort of tv (live or not) then you're due your licence fee.

 

Not that I'm arsed if you pay or not like, the BBC are tory cunts as far as I'm concerned.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Mook said:

If you're watching any sort of tv (live or not) then you're due your licence fee.

 

Not that I'm arsed if you pay or not like, the BBC are tory cunts as far as I'm concerned.

Not true, you can watch any other channel after broadcast (e.g. ITV player), stream from providers such as amazon/netflix etc all legally without a licence. It's only BBC and iPlayer that it's necessary to have a licence.

[Denny Crane]

This paragraph puts it succinctly on the overall coverage of the BBC news output. Rather than look at as a left/right issue.

 

TM: I think the most straightforward way of putting this is that the BBC will aim to fairly and accurately reflect the balance of opinion amongst elites

• openDemocracy
• oD UK
• oDR
• oD 50.50
• democraciaAbierta
• Transformation
• ourBeeb
• About us
  • Can Eu

 

The BBC is neither independent or impartial: interview with Tom Mills

IAN SINCLAIR and TOM MILLS 25 January 2017

Is the BBC really impartial? Interview with scholar of the BBC, Tom Mills, on his new book.

 

.

 

I asked Mills about the popular image of the BBC as independent and impartial, its Iraq War coverage and what changes he would like to see made at the Corporation.

Ian Sinclair: In an interview with the Press Gazette after she was recently named Journalist of the Year at the British Journalism Awards, Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’s Political Editor, said ‘Among the many jewels and gifts that the BBC has is our editorial independence’. She went on to argue ‘I would die in a ditch for the impartiality of the BBC. That’s what we do.’ Is the BBC independent and impartial?

 

Tom Mills: The simple answer is ‘no’. But the question isn’t quite as straightforward as it sounds.  First it is important to state from the outset what is rarely acknowledged in discussions about the BBC: that it isn’t independent from governments, let alone from the broader Establishment. The BBC has always been formally accountable to ministers for its operations. Governments set the terms under which it operates, they appoint its most senior figures, who in future will be directly involved in day-to-day managerial decision making, and they set the level of the licence fee, which is the BBC’s major source of income. So that’s the context within which the BBC operates, and it hardly amounts to independence in any substantive sense.

But though politicians have never ceded overall control, they have generally granted the BBC editorial autonomy, at least for the most part. In the interwar period, the system of broadcasting pioneered by the BBC was referred to as ‘remote state control’. It emerged from a situation where politicians did not want a chaotic system of broadcasting to develop, especially given the presumed political power of the new medium. But equally, officials did not want to assume responsibility for producing broadcasting content, which is what the radio companies wanted – they basically had radios to sell but no broadcasting service for potential customers to listen to! So what emerged from this was the BBC, a broadcaster with an ambiguous kind of independence that in some cases has enjoyed substantive freedom, but which has always been kept under some degree of political control, and often enormous political pressure. 

Does this mean it’s independent? Well really the BBC’s not so different to various state institutions that are afforded operational autonomy but ultimately answerable to ministers or to parliament through various mechanisms, such as the police or the Bank of England.

Getting back to Laura Kuenssberg, she spoke specifically about ‘editorial independence’, so I presume what she has in mind here is government interference in editorial decision making. Well that’s not exactly how this works. What happens is the editorial policy is defined at the top of the BBC – which is the most politicised section of the Corporation given that senior executives have to periodically negotiate with governments over its funding, its Charter and so on, and senior editorial figures have to respond to constant complaints over its reporting – and that policy then cascades down the hierarchy, in rather complex and uneven ways. You occasionally see glimpses of this at work, such as in 2010 when the then Director General Mark Thompson attended Downing Street to discuss the BBC’s reporting of the Coalition Government’s austerity agenda, and you get a much fuller picture of how this works in practice from archival sources and autobiographies, which I draw in the book. 

None of the actual evidence is suggestive of the kind of independence and impartiality that Kuenssberg praises to the skies. But her remarks reflect the fact that, rightly or wrongly, she has personally come to symbolise the BBC’s very conspicuous failures in exactly this regard. So naturally it’s in her interests to make these kinds of statements. But strongly asserting something doesn’t make it true, and it’s not.

 

IS: A key issue seems to be the BBC’s working definition of impartiality. How would you define this?

TM: I think the most straightforward way of putting this is that the BBC will aim to fairly and accurately reflect the balance of opinion amongst elites. In that respect it’s not so different to other reputable media organisations. But a number of studies suggest the range of opinion on the BBC is narrower than some of its rivals. Channel 4 News tends, I think, to have a broader range of perspectives, and the recent Media Reform Coalition’s report on the coverage of Corbyn found that the BBC gave much more airtime to Corbyn’s opponents than ITV.

 

IS: As you note in your book, ‘The Gilligan Affair’ – when a critical April 2003 radio report by BBC Today Programme journalist Andrew Gilligan about the government’s claims about Iraqi WMDs kicked off a high-level conflict between the Labour government and the BBC – is often cited as evidence of the BBC’s independence. For example, the BBC’s official historian Professor Jean Seaton views it as an instance of the ‘determination of broadcasters not to be controlled.’ What do you think ‘The Gilligan Affair’ tells us about the relationship between the BBC and government?

 

TM: The Iraq War was another area where scholarly research found that the BBC was more favourable to the government and its supporters, compared with other broadcasters, and that’s one of the very important factors that tends to get lost in the conventional take on this affair, which is actually very misleading. On the one hand, the report itself is evidence of independent reporting vis-à-vis the government, and that’s a good thing. But on the other hand, the reason the Today Programme felt confident broadcasting the report was that it was being briefed by MI6 and other sources, and so knew that sections of the British state were anxious about the case for war and what the possible fallout might be if and when no Weapons of Mass Destruction were found. So the ‘determination’ of the BBC in this case is based on the support of some of the most powerful and authoritative sources in the British state, and of course there was an enormous public mobilisation around this time as well. 

When the Blair government then attacks the BBC, it’s true that the BBC leadership stands firm, and that’s certainly commendable. But what then ultimately happens is that the chair and director general are both forced to resign, and the BBC publicly apologises to the government – a government that let’s not forget had launched an illegal war on a plainly false pretext. The former BBC governor, Kenneth Bloomfield, argues that ironically part of the reason the BBC leadership stood firm after the Gilligan report is precisely because it was personally so close to the Blair government. The then BBC chair, Gavyn Davies, a former Goldman Sachs partner, was not only close friends with Blair and [then Chancellor Gordon] Brown, his wife worked for Brown and his children were reportedly bridesmaid and pageboy at his wedding. So I think the ‘The Gilligan Affair’ is best understood as a rather bitter conflict within the British elite during a period of considerable crisis, and the lessons in terms of how we understand the BBC are much more complex than is generally recognised.

 

IS: The arrival of John Birt as Deputy Director-General in 1987 seems to have heralded a significant change at the BBC?

 

TM: Yes, that was the year when the then Director General Alasdair Milne, father of Guardian journalist and Corbyn advisor Seumas Milne, was forced to resign by the Thatcher appointed chair Marmaduke Hussey. Milne wasn’t a leftist by any means, but he had represented the more independent spirit of BBC programme making at that time. He was replaced by a BBC accountant called Michael Checkland and John Birt was meanwhile brought in from an ITV company to head the BBC’s journalism, later succeeding Checkland as Director General. 

Birt wasn’t really understood by his critics at the time, who seem to have been rather puzzled by his authoritarianism and his belligerent managerialism. They seem to have regarded him as a Stalinist, or something like that. But in fact he was an out-and-out neoliberal who wanted not only to introduce stronger editorial controls over BBC journalism, but also to radically shift its institutional structure and culture away from its ‘statist’ character and in a more neoliberal, business-friendly direction. This was resented by BBC staff and the Corporation went through a quite unhappy period, with a brief respite under Greg Dyke. As I describe in some detail in the book, Birt’s ‘reforms’ were part of a broader process of neoliberal restructuring, and in some ways Dyke was also part of that, especially in terms of the extent to which business reporting was pushed up the agenda during his time as director general.

 

IS: Why are the politics and quality of the BBC’s news output important?

TM: The BBC is the most popular single source of news for the British public, and is much more trusted than the press, for example. How it reports particular issues has a material effect on the political process, which in turn has consequences for everyone. In many cases – such as reporting on foreign policy, health or welfare issues – this is literally a matter of life or death.

 

IS: What changes would you like the BBC to institute moving forward?

 

TM: There’s not really space to do this question justice here, but very briefly I think first of all that all the various mechanisms of political control need to be eliminated altogether and replaced with forms of independent, or better still democratic, processes. That would be a big step in the right direction. 

But really I think we need to be thinking much more ambitiously about institutional design in the same way as Birt and the other neoliberals did in the 1980s and ‘90s. What kind of BBC do we want for the 21st century? That’s the real question we should be asking. It’s very clear that the BBC leadership are unable or unwilling to advance anything like an ambitious vision for public media. If they have a vision it is for the BBC to be retained as a source of public funding, quasi-official news, and a leading British brand that can give UK media companies an edge in the international market.  They simply have no notion of the severity of the social crisis we are currently in and the political importance of public media and the values it should embody. If we want public media to survive, we are going to have to come up with a vision for the future. The BBC, or at least the people at the top of the BBC, will not do that for us.

 

https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourbeeb/ian-sinclair-tom-mills/bbc-is-neither-independent-or-impartial-interview-with-tom-mills

[Mook]

9 minutes ago, Shooter in the Motor said:

Not true, you can watch any other channel after broadcast (e.g. ITV player), stream from providers such as amazon/netflix etc all legally without a licence. It's only BBC and iPlayer that it's necessary to have a licence.

I didn't know that, could be time to stop paying it for me in that case.

[Section_31]

I was persona non grata at the beeb for a while. Me and a few others used to get invited to these open days at Salford quays but nobody ever got jobs, they used to say the onus was on you to freelance there, 'get to know people' and hope one of them would get you in the door.

 

This meant the place was filled top to bottom with wealthy 20 somethings, some of whom commuting from as far as Leeds and Wolverhampton, to try and get a job. They doled out five day contracts, followed by three month contracts - for years.

 

Anyone with a family to support or a bit of pride couldn't get a sniff. 

 

At one of these events some woman clocked my accent and said she had a remit for 'People like me' and how one of their best reporters was 'the son of a docker'. It was such patronising shit and needless to say, nothing ever came of it.

 

I sent some FOIs in to find out how many people had gone through these open days, how many had got jobs, and what the job description was of anyone who's job it was to select people from working class backgrounds.

 

It seemed to cause some mayhem, she went ballistic at a mate of mine and told him to tell me I'd caused her a lot of trouble.

 

Their top brass are just gobshites enjoying a never-ending comfort zone. Now and again they have to justify themselves so they have an event and invite the great unwashed, take plenty of snaps of you to put online, then cast you back from whence you came.

 

I applied to do some freelance shifts there by emailing the boss directly, I did well and we got on dead sound, but I never got invited back and he went pretty strange. I'm fairly certain my name was flagged up on some black list when they processed my wages. 

 

I do some PR in my job these days and deal with a lot of journos, the beeb lad is a household name in those north west circles but is BY FAR the worst journo I've ever encountered, lazy bastard and absolutely thick as shit. 

[Dougie Do'ins]

56 minutes ago, Shooter in the Motor said:

The personal sacrifice I have made (and it is a small one in the grand scheme of things to be fair) is to not watch live TV and not watch any BBC content in exchange for the fact that I do not pay a TV licence. I can not say for sure that it's due to political bias but certainly it's got a large part to do with the fact that I do not agree with what the Government does with the money received in paying huge salaries to TV stars etc and then telling the people who work 'normal' jobs to stump up the cash for it or else.

 

For that reason, my opinion on the BBC is that for the most part it's shite but their radio presence is boss (even though some of those are also paid a small fortune but at least I don't have to pay for a licence to listen to it).

Just in case anyone is unsure, your not just talking about any BBC live TV. The term live covers anything that's being broadcast in real time no matter what channel it's on. So in effect, we're being charged to watch broadcasting that is totally independent from the BBC. Broadcasters like ITV and Ch4 that make their revenue from advertising paid for by the end consumer. Feels like I'm being charged twice to watch the telly.

 

 

 

[Guest]

25 minutes ago, Dougie Do'ins said:

Just in case anyone is unsure, your not just talking about any BBC live TV. The term live covers anything that's being broadcast in real time no matter what channel it's on. So in effect, we're being charged to watch broadcasting that is totally independent from the BBC. Broadcasters like ITV and Ch4 that make their revenue from advertising paid for by the end consumer. Feels like I'm being charged twice to watch the telly.

 

 

 

That's correct, although I'm not sure how much money the TV companies receive of the licence fee. Regardless of where it goes, the licence fee is being paid to watch all live channels. No wonder so many people want to be 'famous' as they know that the glass screen in the living space is a money pit to be excavated.

[Dougie Do'ins]

4 minutes ago, Shooter in the Motor said:

That's correct, although I'm not sure how much money the TV companies receive of the licence fee. Regardless of where it goes, the licence fee is being paid to watch all live channels. No wonder so many people want to be 'famous' as they know that the glass screen in the living space is a money pit to be excavated.

From reading this, I'm not sure any of them do as I don't think funding local TV channels means any of the most popular independent channels.

 

The UK is buying more TV Licences than ever1. This income means all licence payers can enjoy an ever-wider choice of BBC shows and services, free at the point of use, on a range of platforms.

By buying a licence you support the creation of BBC programmes and services, and new ways of bringing them to you. Our purpose is to ensure as much of the fee as possible goes towards funding them.

Even though the ways we watch and listen are changing, the licence fee also allows the BBC's UK services to remain ad-free and independent.

 

Each week, 96% of UK adults use BBC services2, from TV channels and BBC iPlayer to national and local radio stations, and entertainment, services and information online.

 

Over 90% of the licence fee is spent on BBC TV channels, radio stations, BBC iPlayer and online services.

 

Monthly spend in 2015/16 - £12.13 per household

 

 

 Television: £7.02    BBC World Service: £0.83    Online: £0.76    Radio: £2.06  

 

  Other services and production costs: £0.79    Licence fee collection and other costs: £0.67

 

The costs of administering the TV Licence are less than you might think. For every £1 taken in licence fee payments, just 3p is spent on collection3.

Part of the fee also contributes to the UK broadband rollout, funding local TV channels and S4C, the Welsh language TV channel, as was agreed with the government as part of the 2010 licence fee settlement.

In 2016 the Government announced that the licence fee would rise in line with inflation for five years from 1 April 2017. A standard TV Licence now costs £150.50.

 

https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/what-does-your-licence-fee-pay-for-top13

[Stickman]

Hardly surprising to see Marr behave the way he does when you consider the way shredded wheat head Andrew Neil's tweeted  to a female journalist who is basically trying to undercover right wing corruption and electoral fraud.

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1064074315828744192

[Strontium]

Marr and Neil are worlds apart.

[Rico1304]

So it’s spies, over-paid presenters and Tories?  

 

Or 

 

Luvvies, shit presenters and content and liberal elite.

 

or 

 

old boy network, award winning content and lefty gob shites. 

 

Or

 

its all of the above and you let your own bias accept the bit that’s ok with you and reject the rest? 

[Bjornebye]

The documentaries are ace to be fair. Dynasties is on tonight at 8. Last week it was about Chimpanzees and it was fucking brilliant. Penguins tonight so I fully expect it to be amazing. 

 

Attenborough is god. 

[Champ]

I think you’d be hard pressed to find much criticism of the natural history output but it’s a very different story when it comes to the news department.

 

Maybe I wasn’t previously paying so much attention but when it comes to Brexit, the Labour Party, climate change, austerity, to name just the first few to come off the top of my head time and again there appears to be clear examples of bias, misinformation and misrepresentation on an almost programme by programme basis, prime examples being John Humphreys’ hectoring and bullying of Remain supporters, the lack of reporting of the People’s Vote march last month, the way in which various right wing lobby groups are given prominent airtime with no explanation about how they’re funded, the list seems endless.

 

I was always a staunch defender of the BBC but in what appears to be its fear of offending its paymasters it risks losing all integrity in its news and current affairs departments and potentially undermining its credibility altogether 

[VladimirIlyich]

5 minutes ago, Champ said:

I think you’d be hard pressed to find much criticism of the natural history output but it’s a very different story when it comes to the news department.

 

Maybe I wasn’t previously paying so much attention but when it comes to Brexit, the Labour Party, climate change, austerity, to name just the first few to come off the top of my head time and again there appears to be clear examples of bias, misinformation and misrepresentation on an almost programme by programme basis, prime examples being John Humphreys’ hectoring and bullying of Remain supporters, the lack of reporting of the People’s Vote march last month, the way in which various right wing lobby groups are given prominent airtime with no explanation about how they’re funded, the list seems endless.

 

I was always a staunch defender of the BBC but in what appears to be its fear of offending its paymasters it risks losing all integrity in its news and current affairs departments and potentially undermining its credibility altogether 

Very well said Cath. You have now become a radical left wing troublemaker with such sensible views.

[Numero Veinticinco]

56 minutes ago, rico1304 said:

So it’s spies, over-paid presenters and Tories?  

 

Or 

 

Luvvies, shit presenters and content and liberal elite.

 

or 

 

old boy network, award winning content and lefty gob shites. 

 

Or

 

its all of the above and you let your own bias accept the bit that’s ok with you and reject the rest? 

AKA: ‘they make nice documentaries, shut up criticising anything else’. 

[aRdja]

I like the BBC to be fair. I do believe that we have the right to question them when we feel we need to for whatever reasons, as ooposed to just be eternally thankful for their amazing docos and rick steins travel programs.

[ZonkoVille77]

Rick Steins is a massive fucking cunt. 

[House of Dirk]

4 hours ago, rico1304 said:

It’s weird how the left thinks it’s right wing and the right think it’s left wing.  Then it produces world class documentaries, huge amounts of radio, comedy, kids programmes and drama and people still fucking moan about it.  Proof positive that people are cunts.  

No problem with it's creative output, it is the news and current affairs coverage that is absolute bollocks.  How anyone could think it is remotely left wing completely suspends my belief.

[Rico1304]

5 minutes ago, aRdja said:

I like the BBC to be fair. I do believe that we have the right to question them when we feel we need to for whatever reasons, as ooposed to just be eternally thankful for their amazing docos and rick steins travel programs.

I don’t watch the documentaries, I’m all penguined out and how many fucking lions do you need?

 

Theres a broad range of opinions and bias because it’s staffed by people.  Some of the pandering to ‘balance’ is bollocks, Brexit and Climate Change being good examples.  

[Bjornebye]

4 minutes ago, rico1304 said:

I don’t watch the documentaries, I’m all penguined out and how many fucking lions do you need?

 

Theres a broad range of opinions and bias because it’s staffed by people.  Some of the pandering to ‘balance’ is bollocks, Brexit and Climate Change being good examples.  

Mate you have missed some serious Penguin heartbreak on BBC1 right now. 

[Guest]

23 minutes ago, Bjornebye said:

Mate you have missed some serious Penguin heartbreak on BBC1 right now. 

I love penguins, my favourite ones are the blue ones. Tasty.

[Jairzinho]

Stop watching. Stop paying.