Mark Thompson: defending the BBC under fire
The BBC’s funding is being raided and its output attacked more ferociously than ever, reports John Lloyd in this month’s Prospect. Earlier this month Stephen Carter’s Digital Britain report called for the BBC to share a slice of its licence fee with its struggling competitors. Could this mark the beginning of the end of public service broadcasting? And if so, should this matter?
It certainly should, argues Lloyd. The BBC’s list of sins may be long, but this powerful, plural institution is crucial to the health of our democracy, and we must defend it. Read his impassioned defence of the BBC here.
Plus, Prospect has talked exclusively to BBC director-general Mark Thompson. In the wide-ranging interview, which is free to read online, Thompson forsees the internet becoming the leading BBC distribution outlet, talks about how a Conservative government would affect the BBC, and defends it against accusations of liberal bias.
So, should the BBC be forced to open its coffers to others, or must it be protected? Weigh in on this any many of the other issues Lloyd and Thompson discuss here.
Share
Comments
Print
Add Comment
Last I heard, the BBC’s Charter, and hence it’s right to exist, requires fairness and balance. Night after night the BBC shows he fun side of sex. We have 600 abortions per day in the UK, this is the largest cause of death in the country, it’s not the lead story in the news every night, but it would be if the Taliban killed 600 babies a day. The BBC refuse to show abortion – the not so fun side to sex.
If there is a train accident and people die, it is on the BBC news, but if someone dies on the road it only gets a mention as a delay in traffic on the radio.
Every year the Bilderberg group meet – it makes the G8 summit look like kid’s party – but the BBC don’t cover this.
There are a lot of people in the UK who are inadequate; they watch a lot of TV and the BBC know this. Programmes that they watch will be things like East-Enders. In these programmes, the BBC uses the flicker trick – change the camera angle every 3 seconds or less to semi-hypnotise and keep the attention of the audience. What does it then do ? – it gives them half an hour of misery pornography – Where it could give them examples to follow of pleasant friendly behaviour with humour it instead teaches them how to have a hair trigger violent tempers and to end every chat with a fight and a door slam – this behaviour is then mimicked in the real world.
If a young woman gets whipped by the repressive backward Taliban the BBC covers it, if a young woman is tasered in the enlightened USA then it’s not covered. If a death row prisoner in the USA is to be executed the BBC will sometimes cover it and say how bad it is that this happens, but if a partial birth abortion happens – where the baby is simply ripped apart as it is being born – then this isn’t even mentioned. The above is not exhaustive by any means but the excuse “you can’t please all the people all the time” is not an adequate answer to the BBC paradigm that America is all good apart from executions, the UK is all good and the only place to find bad and evil things are in foreign countries far away. I‘d say they were heavily in breach of their charter.