19 July 2010

Lefties attack BBC bias

An article in the New Statesman takes Michael Gove to task for criticizing the Bitchy Boys' Club for leftist bias. Not so, says the NS, rattling its life-support tubes, in fact the BBC has a conservative bias.

Funnily enough, I agree with the lefties on this one; except that what the corporation above all wants to conserve is the top-down, statist configuration of British politics and society, so that the Bitchy Boys can continue to enjoy all and more of the rewards of private sector without being subject to any of its risks.

The NS finds it particularly sinister that Gove said:
I believe in value for money. It maybe a concept that was alien to the last government and it may not be a concept that the BBC would like to see applied to public expenditure, but I believe that it is important that the taxpayer gets protection for the money that is spent on his or her behalf.
To which the NS replies:
Gove's line fits neatly with the Conservative narrative that the BBC is biased towards the left (which my colleague Mehdi Hasan has argued against). The conflation of "the Today programme" and "the Labour party" is an example of this victim mentality. It is quite a clever technique to portray anything that questions your view as evidence of bias (even if it is just that: a question), although his churlish manner will not have done him any favours. That final - rather spiteful - remark is just the latest hint that the BBC is next in line for some painful cuts.
So, mentioning value for money is 'spiteful'? The linked 2009 Mehdi Hasan article argued that the BBC speaks for 'the establishment' and is therefore biased towards the right. Actually, it is the propaganda arm of the civil service, and as such biased only in favour of whatever suits the bureaucratic oligarchy.

To call that a bias towards either "left" or "right" is idiotic.

2 comments:

  1. Imagine accusing the current government of cultivating a 'victim mentality' when the Labour regime has attempted to turn their present and hoped for constituents into an assemblage of self-pitying and useless clots dependent for their bare glimmer of selfhood on the Nanny state. Well, that is, apart from the independent criminal entrepreneurs whom they have invited to make this society their happy home.

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  2. Biters do not like being bit. Fuck 'em.

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