Mike early today put up a post commenting on another example of the Beeb’s bias against Jeremy Corbyn, this time on last night’s Have I Got News For You. Hislop had made the comment, When you find yourself agreeing with Jeremy Corbyn, you know the country is in a mess.’
Mike states
If the BBC had any real interest in its stated commitment to political impartiality, one of the other panel members, or guest host Gary Lineker, would have jumped in to say that agreeing with Theresa May and the Tories is what put the country in a mess in the first place. But that didn’t happen.
And concludes
This man is the editor of Private Eye. Do you think he bothers to keep his political bias out of the magazine? Neither do I.
I don’t have to speculate if Hislop is keeping his own personal political bias out of Private Eye. I’ve stopped reading it because he blatantly hasn’t. There are plenty of stories attacking Corbyn and the ‘click-bait’ web site that supports him, The Canary, but absolutely none supporting the Labour leader. The satirical magazine has been running a feature, Focus on Fact, which is devoted to attacking him. This seems to come from embittered Blairites, as many of the stories in there seem to be about internal party disputes from the 1980s.
I’ve blogged before about how I’ve stopped reading the Eye because of this consistent bias against Corbyn, despite the excellent work the magazine has also done attacking privatisation, including that of the NHS. But it needs to remembered that Private Eye and its founders were very much part of the establishment. Richard Ingrams, Willie Rushton, Auberon Waugh, Peter Cook and Ian Hislop himself are all very middle class, ex-public schoolboys. Auberon Waugh was notorious for his own extremely Tory and reactionary views, writing columns for the Torygraph sneering at the Greenham women and teachers, for example. His family were also connected to MI5, and he may have been one of the conduits for the intelligence agency’s attempt to smear Harold Wilson as a KGB agent in the 1970s, according to Lobster.
The Eye is not just biased about domestic politics. It has frequently run pieces about the Ukraine in its Letter from… column, which has unwaveringly presented the line that the current vile regime in Kyiv is entirely democratic and is under threat from Putin, the new Grand Duke of Moscow, who is trying to set himself up as the next Tsar of all the Russias and the true heir to Ivan the Terrible. There is no mention that the current Ukrainian regime includes neo-Nazis, determined to persecute genuinely independent journalists, and who have beaten and brutalised members of the Ukrainian left, just as the regime is genuinely responsible for persecuting ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians.
As for the BBC, I recently posted a piece about a book I found in Waterstones, The BBC and the Myth of Public Broadcasting, which makes the case that the BBC is extremely biased towards the corporate establishment and the Conservatives. This should surprise no-one on the left. Mike and several other left-wing blogs have published articles about the finding by academics at Glasgow, Edinburgh and Cardiff Universities that the Beeb is more likely to favour Conservative MPs and managing directors and spokespeople for the stock exchange over Labour MPs and trade unionists. And the Corporation is also very culpably silent about the privatisation of the NHS.
Hislop’s comment last night is another example of this bias. It’s also the reason why I don’t buy Private Eye, and indeed, can no longer stand watching Have I Got News For You.
Tags: 'Focus on Fact', 'The BBC and the Myth of Public Broadcasting', Auberon Waugh, BBC, Bias, Cardiff, Cardiff Univerities, Conservatives, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University, GAry Lineker, Glasgow, Glasgow University, Harold Wilson, Have I Got News for You, Ian HIslop, Intelligence Agencies, Ivan the Terrible, Kiev, Labour Party, Lobster, Managing Directors, MI5, Moscow, NHS Privatisation, Peter Cook, Private Eye, Privatisation, Public Schools, Putin, Richard Ingrams, Stock Exchange, The Canary, Theresa May, tony blair, Vox Political, Waterstone's, Willie Rushton, Wilson Smears
Beastrabban\'s Weblog 
December 17, 2016 at 5:08 pm |
I wholeheartedly agree. I tried to cancel my eye subscription but left it too late and am lumbered with it for another year. I too noticed his comments last night, followed by that schoolboy snigger. The biased broadcasting corporation really must stop this. I won’t hold my breath though
December 17, 2016 at 5:45 pm |
Plus they couldn’t get Vernon Cokers name correct. It’s Coker not Croker, linnekar.
December 17, 2016 at 7:28 pm |
Thanks for the appreciation. I also share your pessimism about the bias stopping at the Beeb. It’ll carry on for as long as they can get away with it. They’re repeating what the rest of media, political and corporate classes believe and want to hear. As for getting Vernon Coker’s name wrong, it doesn’t surprise me. But you have to remember, this came from the man, who is supposed to have had to alter his name slightly when he was playing in Japan. ‘Gary’ supposedly is similar to a Japanese word meaning ‘diarrhoea’. Make your own jokes up here, folks.