The Idiocy of the BBC

In my most recent blog on the continuing story of the euro crisis one contributor, disputing some of my facts, referred me, as she or he put it, to the “real data” as given by the BBC.  I shot back, straight from the hip;

The BBC? Well, yes, an impeccable source of truth, justice and the Marxist way!

It’s easy to criticise the BBC, our great national church, funded by a compulsory tithe, because they make it easy.  It may have been at one time an impeccable source of unbiased news gathering, respected across the world, but not any longer.  I never watch Auntie’s news broadcasts now because I have come to anticipate some built-in left wing bias, whether it is there or not; I have come to expect audience manipulation, not objectivity.

Quite frankly the Beeb’s reporting over so many areas is a complete disgrace.  I have in mind the organisation’s one-sided treatment of the Arab Spring, specifically over the ongoing violence in Syria.  I have no desire at all to see any virtue in the Assad regime but there is always more than one dimension to any story. Not according to the BBC, which sees all evil on the side of Assad and all good on the side of the rebels.  The reality is quite different; the reality is infinitely more complex. 

I wrote before, drawing attention to the plight of Syria’s ancient Christian community;

Most of you will be aware of Hilary Clinton’s attempt to have a UN resolution passed, condemning the government of Bashar al-Assad for the violent assault of the Syrian army on the rebel-held city of Homs. What you may not be aware of is that Islamists in the city have carried out a ‘religious cleansing’, forcing 50,000 Christians to flee from their homes in terror…It’s not an isolated event. Christians in other Syrian cities have come under attack. Bishop Antonine Audo of Aleppo, where a car bomb was exploded in the Christian quarter last month, says that the people are very afraid – “The Christians don’t know what their future will hold.”

Trying to find any mention of this inconvenient truth on the BBC is like trying to find snow on a summer’s day.  I get so frustrated, all too often speaking in a vacuum, all too often trying to raise issues and facts that are ignored elsewhere.  I get frustrated that our own government, acting on the ignorant prejudices of William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, who is turning out to an ineffably silly little man, may give active support to rebel factions it knows nothing about.  The Americans, guided by the equally silly Hilary Clinton, are already there. 

Is anyone out there; is anyone listening?  Yes, thank goodness: Rod Liddle is listening!  I took comfort from his most recent article in the Spectator, several arrows fired in the direction of Broadcasting House (At the BBC, the Arab Spring has only just ended).  I’m wrong it would seem: the BBC has not completely ignored the plight of Syria’s Christians.  There was a brief report in April on the community, fearing that it ‘might be caught in the middle’ of the fighting.  Aye, there’s the rub.  Rod cuts to the chase;

…in much the same way, I suppose, that Bosnian Muslims were somehow ‘caught in the middle’ between the Serbs and, er, themselves.

He goes on to say that there has been nothing at all, not a cheep, about Christians being ordered out of the town of Qusair recently by the local Islamist rebel commander, not a cheep about those fleeing in terror to Damascus or Lebanon, nothing at all about the people who are being shot while their churches are destroyed. 

These facts simply do not fit the BBC’s agenda, the rebels being all white and the government all black.  There is nothing in the middle, nothing to disturb this complacent and lying picture.  Seemingly Helen Boaden, the corporation’s head of news, did admit recently that its coverage of the Arab Spring might have been a bit “over excited”, before going on to say that it had been “generally impartial.” 

No, it has not.  This stupid woman is deluding herself and, what is worse, she is deluding the people of this country.  I might argue that the BBC is guilty of the cynical manipulation of the news along the lines of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth.  But there is no cynicism here, just an enthusiasm that is wide-eyed to some facts and blind to others.  The shocking thing is that the British people have no choice but to pay for the BBC’s banal student journalism, whether they watch its news broadcasts or not; simply having a telly is enough. 

As Liddle says, the problem with the BBC is much less a case of political bias than a sort of journalistic imbecility.  And that’s what we pay for, that’s what the public are fed night after night, the simplistic meanderings of a lot of polytechnic Marxists.