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Not cricket, old chap And it hasn’t been ‘cricket’ for some time according to Philip Chaston:
Preference for the BBC, even from such a low base, demonstrates the length of time that it can take for an institution’s authority to wither away. After all, a dispassionate observer in contemporary Britain would not judge the BBC to be objective or impartial, although the lingering effects of its past present a noteworthy survival and form the foundations of its remaining credibility.
Philip goes on to explain why the problems that beset the BBC beset British public administration as a whole and why the solution to those problems may be emerging.
It’s a strikingly good piece and one to which I can add nothing except a hearty endorsement.
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It’s certainly hard not to agree with Mr. Chaston – and his analogy with the Civil Service is particular apposite, given the clear Labour bias displayed by Blair’s spokesman last week, when he attempted to smear the late Dr. Kelly. Both the BBC and the Civil Service are beyond redemption.
As for the former, its dogged refusal to let go of the bone over Iraq deserves some sort of prize. Every day R4 news tosses progressively damper tinder onto the fire in an attempt to keep the pot boiling. Its usual tactic is to dredge-up some lightweight US politician who has ‘grave concerns’, presumably in an attempt to convince us that there is ‘growing unrest’ in the USA. Most often it a failed Clintonista, yesterday it was an obscure Republican. The effect resembles nothing so much as a schoolgirl arm-twisting her friends to lend support in a playground bitchfest.
It is hard to imagine that the BBC’s news editors can have any idea how pathetic this continual yah-boo stuff makes them appear. Even to someone who thinks the corporation was mostly in the right over Dr. Kelly, as I do, any good impression fostered by its refusal to bend the knee to Blair’s thugs has been obliterated by its clear, unalloyed bias over the war as a whole and this increasingly desparate scrabbling to shore-up a lost cause.
I agree with Philip. Also the growth of capitalism and its products contributes to the decline of the BBC: the more people watch cable, the more they realise there’s nothing great about the BBC. News especially is much better on cable. Anybody who is seriously interested in seeing what goes on in the world as well as reading/hearing about it should watch CNN and/or Sky News. The BBC isn’t just wrong, it gives the impression far more people agree with it than actually do.
The self-professed intellectual classes are the ones without cable, of course, while ordinary folk with some cash get to find out what’s really going on… power to the consumer! I think this shift in how knowledge is spread, from top-down to bottom-up, could lead to all sorts of nice surprises in the future.