Friday, July 20, 2007
Why Nothing Makes Sense Any More
Mark Lawson in the Guardian convincingly analyses the BBC's fraudulent phone-in problems. They were driven, he says, not by a desire to increase ratings but by the desperation of producers to show they were doing their masters' bidding by 'connecting with the public'. This connection creed, as Lawson says, is a peculiarly inane ideology that has seized and corrupted all media. But, in the case of the BBC, it is not the whole story. The truth of these little cheats is that they were all, in fact, pretty trivial. But, as Michael Portillo pointed out on television, the press fury at their exposure was driven by a deep loathing of the BBC that springs from its left-wing bias. This loathing is intensified by the fact, as I can testify, that very few people within the BBC actually believe they are biased. This drives papers like the Daily Mail to apoplectic anathemas against the corporation. Such condemnations would not work too well if the story was just about bias - most people don't care - but it turns stories like the phone-in tricks - about which many people do care - into opportunities for spittle-flecked scorn. The further oddity about all this is that the BBC left-wingers no longer support Labour and the right-wing press no longer supports the Tories. In fact, no single paper currently seems to support David Cameron. The Mail itself seems to be pretty much Brownist. Nothing, in short makes sense any more, and I shall now, once again, leave this politics business to Guidale.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Yes it's all true about the BBC - also that a lot of this trouble was down to laying off seasoned production pros and giving their jobs to flybynights, flibbertyjibbets and all the rest of it - but, having worked in the belly of the BBC beast, I can testify that the thing that most struck me about the Corporation was the massive, impregnable corporate smugness, based on the unspoken assumption that the BBC was more important, and better, than any other institution in the land, and everything it did was by definition right. God knows where they got the idea from, but it was abolutely unshakable...
ReplyDeleteI think you've made your point all too well with this one, Bryan - there seems to be nothing left to say. Perhaps you should have headed it Suddenly Everything Makes Sense - then everyone wld be chipping in to say No It Bloody Doesn't...
ReplyDeleteThe more precise the post, the fewer the comments. it is the way of things.
ReplyDeleteI was stymied by the paradox of the title. The post made sense but how could it? I was confused...
ReplyDeleteSince your fishing for comments, allow me to say that I don't agree the fury of the press is driven by the BBC's bias. It is driven by the right-wing bias of the printed media. It was revealed this week, through the freedom of information act, that Rupert Murdoch was a regular visitor to Downing street during the Blair years. Given the uncritical support of George Bush apparent in the Sun ( and Times editorials ) his influence is obvious. The influence of the BBC is not.
ReplyDeleteThis also explains the abscence of support for Cameron. He has reasoned that the tories have to regain the centre ground which, for them, means moving leftward. For many right-wing commentators this is treason to the sacred memory of Margaret, the once and future leader of the British right. As a consequence dribbling headbanger like John Gaunt, Simon Heffer etc demand that they return to the proper business of demonising asylum seekers and single mothers. The Mail's support of Brown is technically known as "arsehole creeping".
I don't agree they're biased. They usually make the effort to have a range of guests on their news programmes. I just hear Peter Hitchens on radio 4 complaining about the BBCs liberal bias.
ReplyDeleteThe public are just more tolerant about many things like gay marriage and foreigners. These people are just pissed that their opinions aren't that popular anymore.
bryan i thkn the poitn you make about Cameron is the most interesting; in that it is inciteful.
ReplyDeleteWe all know how smug the BBC are, they have 14,000+ members in facebook alone.
But for the Torie sto have lost all the newspapers, even the Mail, is bizarre.
And yet you still have commenters here saying how right wing the print media are? You can't have it both ways, unless you are to suggest that these same papers are now rabidly pro-UKIP or some such.
Bryan, I don't get this left wing BBC idea... I speak as a left winger of sorts who spent many years incarcerated inside the Beeb's hallowed halls.
ReplyDeleteThe decision makers at the BBC are **liberal right Oxbridge grads** who wouldn't rock the establishment boat if someone paid them to...
Speak of that which you know!!!
I'm afraid I do, I speak of that which is on the screen. Try some careful analysis of news language that segues effortlessly into comment.
ReplyDelete