Johnson Turns on BBC Complaining of Bias

Despite the Beeb’s massive pro-Tory bias – all those stories it ran pushing the anti-Semitism smears, the packed, right-wing panels and audiences of Question Time and Fiona Bruce favouring the Tories, gaslighting Diane Abbott, and Laura Kuenssberg’s breach of electoral law about the postal vote, BoJo still isn’t satisfied with the Corporation. He announced yesterday that he was boycotting Radio 4’s Today programme, claiming it was biased. An article about this in yesterday’s Metro, ‘Johnson boycott of BBC Today ‘Bubble”, ran

Boris Johnson has turned up his attack on the BBC and ‘withdrawn engagement’ from its Radio 4 Today programme.

A No. 10 source accused the corporation of speaking to a ‘pro-Remain  metropolitan bubble in Islington yesterday’.

No minister were put up for interview on the programme in the 48 hours after the election, following a campaign in which the PM was criticised for refusing interviews to the Today programme and Andrew Neil.

Dominic Cummings – the PM’s chief adviser – told colleagues he ‘never listens’ to the programme, which has lost 1 million listeners since 2017. 

It also emerged the PM has asked aides to explore whether non-payment of the TV licence fee should be decriminalised.

He threw doubt over the future of the £154.50 annual charge during the campaign.

A BBC spokesman defended its election coverage and said it was ‘fair and proportional’. 

Zelo Street comments on the twitter debate about this, beginning with former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger’s tweet

A clever moment for Dominic Cummings {if it’s him} to pick off the BBC [and thereby delight Murdoch and many others]. If my timeline is representative, many of the Beeb’s natural defenders are shrugging and/or too cross to protest.

Even if they think the BBC had a poor election, that’s like abandoning the NHS because it struggled over one winter. By all means call for improvement/reform. Privatisation will lead to a form of UK Fox News. And then how we’ll miss it.

The Tories have been steadily running down the BBC for years. They resent it because it’s a state industry. Hence the legislation passed under Major’s government demanding that more programmes should be made outside the Beeb by private production companies. Boris’ attack will also please Murdoch and the Americans. Murdoch has been attacking the Beeb for years in order to promote his wretched Sky channel, and the Americans are buying up British broadcasters. Nothing would please Murdoch and the Americans more than to have the Beeb abolished or privatised.

As for Fox News, it’s dire. Its slogan, ‘Fair and balanced news’ is an outright lie. It has a colossal right-wing bias to the point that one media investigation found that people would be far better informed if they didn’t watch it because of the massive falsehoods and lies peddled by the channel. It also has a very restricted audience. Its demographics show that most of its viewers are over 70, so much so that it has been described as a television retirement home. Yet I can remember an article by one of the hacks in the Radio Times pondering if the BBC shouldn’t emulate it.

Zelo Street also shows a number of other tweets by people, who do feel betrayed by the corporation. While they don’t support its privatisation, they feel that their criticisms aren’t taken seriously. This feeling is summed up in a tweet from Matt Prescott:

I used to love the BBC and would have died on the barricades to defend it. Now I feel utterly betrayed by the daily failures to ask hard questions and call out lies.

Tim concludes

‘The Tories have played the BBC like an obedient fool. And in pandering to them, the Corporation has left itself fatally vulnerable.’

See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/12/tories-turn-on-bbc.html

Yes, they have. If the Corporation thought that a pro-Tory bias would stave off further attacks, they have been gravely mistaken. The Tories won’t be satisfied until they are privatised, just as they want the media in general to capitulate to them and their wishes utterly. As history has shown, those broadcasters that anger them in power have their stories spiked or their broadcasting licences withdrawn.

The Beeb does make good programmes, which is partly why the Tories hate it. As an institution, it’s genuinely popular and so prevents private broadcasters completely taking over British television and radio. But through its pro-Tory bias it has alienated many on the left, who would otherwise be its most staunch defenders.

But Johnson’s attack on the Beeb is only going to be the beginning. He wants the other broadcasters to submit. The attack on the Beeb is also a veiled threat to them.

The Tories are directly attacking freedom of speech and opinion on the airwaves. This looks very much like the beginning of massive state control of public broadcasting, in which the only voices permitted will be pro-Tory.

 

 

Tags: 'Today', Alan Rusbridger, Andrew Neil, BBC, Bias, Boris Johnson, Conservatives, Diane Abbott, Dominic Cummings, Electoral Law, Fiona Bruce, Fox News, Freedom of Speech, John Major, Laura Kuenssberg, Matt Prescott, Media, Postal Votes, Privatisation, Question Time, Radio 4, Radio Times, Rupert Murdoch, Sky, The Guardian, The Metro, Zelo Street