Trust in Beeb Falls Below 50 Per Cent

A few days ago Zelo Street put up an article commenting on a letter Joel Benjamin sent to the Beeb’s Director-General complaining about the corporation’s massive pro-Tory, anti-Labour, anti-working class bias. Benjamin had taken the step of writing to Tony Hall directly because he didn’t trust the Corporation’s complaints service. He stated that it was

a private contract administered by criminally negligent outsourcing company CAPITA. Experts in dull, pro-forma response letters, which fail to address the complainants concerns and a symbol of much that has gone awry at the BBC and in neoliberal, corporatist Britain. 

He also listed the following specific examples of the Beeb’s bias towards the Tories.

• Editing out BBCQT audience boos of Johnson to insert audience applause
• Newsnight edit out Johnson challenged re: status & release dates of withheld Russia report
• Running a news ticker on so-called ‘Labour anti-semitism crisis’ during holocaust package
• Weaponisation of anti-Semitism allegations against Jeremy Corbyn & the Labour Party 
• Laura Kuenssberg broadcasting non-verified Tory Party claims on made up Leeds “punch”
• Laura Kuenssberg illegally revealing postal voting information, likely to affect voter behaviour
• News reporters broadcasting live on air speaking of “the majority [Johnson] so deserves” 
• Failing to cease newspaper reviews during purdah, despite a well known right wing bias

To which Zelo Street added a few more of their own.

‘(a) the use of newspaper columnists, editors and press hangers-on in paper reviews, allowing the press to mark their own homework and therefore perpetuate right-wing bias,(b) the blatant use of the BBC’s Sunday Politics by veteran presenter Andrew Neil to push climate change denial, and (c) Neil and political editor Laura Kuenssberg, along with Robbie Gibb, orchestrating a resignation from the shadow cabinet live on the Daily Politics just before PMQs to the benefit of the Tories…(d) Ms Kuenssberg effectively taking dictation from Vote Leave’s Matthew Elliott over the campaign breaking electoral law, (e) Refusal to discuss the misbehaviour of Cambridge Analytica, to the extent of having Carole Cadwalladr shouted down during a paper review on The Andy Marr Show™, (f) a whole string of instances where the Question Time audience has been infiltrated by Tory plants, and (g) loading panel shows with right-wing pundits and other hangers-on.’

Benjamin particularly resented the Beeb’s dismissive attitude towards criticism. He wrote

Instead of BBC management being responsive to public criticism this election, licence fee payers were subject to Francesca Unsworth, the BBC’s Director of News and Current Affairs – publishing a letter in the Guardian – framing complainants as peddlers of “conspiracy theories” in the wake of a highly visible series of self-ascribed “mistakes,” each, coincidentally, benefitting Boris Johnson and the Conservatives, whilst harming the Labour opposition. Despite the pushback to Unsworth’s article, you then chose to to double down, blame licence fee payers, and cry conspiracy. 

He also remarked that the Corporation’s bias was

clearly unacceptable, yet a natural consequence of a broadcaster answerable not to the public, but directly to an increasingly brutalising, fact free, and tone deaf Government, that ultimately wants the BBC abolished. In this context, your servile, pro-establishment political coverage looks to fee payers like feeding Conservative crocodiles, in the vain hope the BBC get eaten last.

See: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T55oQGHV1bJUzljHSE3akPlguzrmZCYcTDZ53WBGdGs/edit

But what is also remarkable is the extent to which people share this dissatisfaction with the Beeb. Zelo Street reported that a poll by YouGov at the start of this month – December 2019 – had found that trust in the BBC had fallen to 44 per cent. 48 per cent, on the other hand, distrusted the Corporation. This was a marked drop from October, when 51 per cent of respondents to the survey trusted the Corporation, and 41 per cent didn’t.

The Street remarks that not everyone will share Benjamin’s views and his wider analysis, but they may understand his frustration, particularly at the Corporation’s refusal to listen to the people that actually support it by paying the licence fee.

He also warns that the Tories are determined to inflict further damage on the Beeb in order to create an utterly compliant media landscape. And if that happens, Hall and the rest of them may find themselves out of a job. Unless they actually start listening to their critics, and realise that there is a problem.

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/12/bbc-charge-sheet-looks-grim.html

Now I dare say that many of those, who distrust the Beeb come from the Right. People who think that the Beeb really is biased against the Conservatives, because Johnson tells them it is while running away from interviews, his comments echoed and supported by the right-wing press. I’ve come across complaints from those on the extreme Right, who despise the Corporation because it generally supports multiculturalism, feminism and gay rights. Which in their view makes it anti-White and anti-British.

But the Left have every reason not to trust the Beeb. Joel Benjamin and Zelo Street are right: the Corporation has been massively biased. And not just in this election either. One commenter to Zelo Street’s post reminded readers how the Corporation was also biased in the referendum on Scots independence.  They were. I remember how Nick Robinson was so dissatisfied with Alex Salmond’s very full answer to a question on the effect independence would have on the Scottish financial sector, that it was progressively cut down during subsequent news bulletins with Robinson claiming that Salmond had made an unsatisfactory answer. Finally it disappeared altogether, and Robinson claimed the-then leader of the SNP hadn’t answered it. Which is a piece of newspeak worthy of Orwell.

I despise the corporation’s political bias and its knee-jerk contempt for its critics. Any and all criticism of the Corporation is met with the same response: that the Beeb is criticised for bias by both Left and Right, with the implication that the Beeb isn’t biased and it’s all somehow in the critics’ imagination. But studies cited by Benjamin in his letter show that isn’t the case. And in some of the recent instances of glaring bias, the Beeb tries to excuse them by claiming that it was all a mistake.

This won’t wash. Not any more.

The Beeb does make some excellent programmes. But I’m sick and tired of its massive political bias to the point where I’d happily see nearly all their newsroom sacked. Johnson has said that he’s considering decriminalising nonpayment of the licence fee. And the Tories and their donors, particularly Rupert Murdoch, have been clamouring for the Beeb’s privatisation for nearly four decades.

The Beeb may soon find it needs all the help it can get. But it’s rapidly losing them on the Left, and may well end up regretting this.

 

 

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.

 

 

Tory Lead Down to Less than 5 per cent in Targeted Labour Constituencies

More evidence that the Tories are actually going down in the polls, not up. A day or so ago the papers were all running stories claiming that Labour were revising their election strategy following polls predicting that they faced being beaten by the Tories at the coming election. Yesterday’s Metro followed the rest of them in this with the article ‘Labour ‘hits reset button’ after grim poll warning’ by Dominic Yeatman. But a closer reading of the article showed that things were quite so rosy for the party of lies, racism, bigotry, poverty, starvation and death. It stated that the poll by YouGov showed that the Tories were leading in 43 of the 76 Labour constituencies they were targeting. But in most of these the lead was by less than 5 per cent.

It also predicted that the Lib Dem’s share of the vote would fall from 20 to 13, and that Anna Soubry, David Gauke, Dominic Grieve, Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger and Angela Smith would lose their seats.

First the Tory lead was 20 points, then it was ten, then seven, and now in most of the Labour seats they hope to take it’s below 5. Despite the prediction that they would win a majority of 68 seats, the trend for them is quite definitely down, not up.

Which is why, as Dr. Moderate demonstrated in his tweets about their election strategy, they’ve changed their tactics from attack to defence, trying to hold on to their seats instead of attacking Labour’s. And why they’re practically braking electoral law by sending begging letters full of lies urging people to vote for them along with the postal votes in marginals.

Tacky Tories send ‘begging letter’ alongside postal votes in marginal constituencies

Despite puff headlines and articles the Tories and the press are worried. And it’s showing.

Vox Political on Labour and Green Candidates Left Off Postal Vote Forms in Hull

Mike over at Vox Political has posted this piece, Labour and Green candidates left off postal ballot papers. It seems that the name of Labour’s candidate, Karl Turner, and his Green Party rival, Sarah Walpole, were -ahem- ‘inadvertently’ left off 480 postal ballots for the Hull East constituency.

Mike’s article begins

High-profile Labour MP Karl Turner’s name has been omitted from 480 postal ballot papers in his Hull East constituency due to what the local council is calling an “inadvertent mistake”.

Yeah, right.

If that is the case, why were Mr Turner and Green candidate Sarah Walpole only missed off the papers for people who registered to vote after April 1? Doesn’t that imply that somebody removed their names deliberately?

Hull City Council had better check every single ballot paper it is preparing for election day, to prevent any further “inadvertent mistake”. Mr Turner was elected with a majority of more than 8,000, so the potential loss of 480 votes was unlikely to affect him. The loss of who-knows-how-many votes on the day might be a different matter!

Mr Turner told the BBC the mistake was “concerning” because people were “being denied the right to vote and take part in the democratic process”.

He added: “I have had calls from people in East Hull who are going on holiday this week and are angry that they are unable to vote. I have asked Hull City Council to urgently look into the matter and review their processes surrounding sending out ballot papers.”

The campaign is moving from desperation into criminality now, it seems. This Writer does not believe for one moment that those ballot papers were altered by “mistake”.

Mike also expects other instances of electoral fraud, or their exclusion of opposition voters. Such as the closure of the polling stations in some areas on the stroke of 10 O’clock. Mike points out that this was done to prevent the election of Labour or other opposition party candidates, as the Tories always ensure that their supporters vote early.

Mike also reports that a council van, containing 70,000 ballot papers, was stolen in Hastings and East Rye. This is also supposed to be incidental to the theft of the van, but the local council is putting measures in place to guard against fraud.

These aren’t the only incidents of possible electoral fraud by the Tories, or parties unknown. One of Mike’s readers, Reecemjones, has posted this comment about the incident:

Thanks for reporting this. I can confirm this has happened for the constituency of Hereford and South Herefordshire. My postal vote paper only mentions that the Conservative Party, It’s our County and the Lib Dems as standing for it.

Yet when I check out the actual candidates running…
https://yournextmp.com/constituency/65582/hereford-and-south-herefordshire/

Mike’s article can be read at http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2015/04/30/labour-and-green-candidates-left-off-postal-ballot-papers/