We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
A marvellous article by Antony Jay in today’s Daily Telegraph confirms what has been obvious for some time to anyone reading political blogs and pundits – the BBC is biased. And not only that, it has its own ideology that Antony Jay calls ‘media liberal ideology’. His article analyses impact of technology, history and perspectives on individual and institutions that defined the BBC and with it the chattering classes. A must read as it provides a solid backbone to our rants against the BBC politics. Here are a few morsels that should give you a taste of the piece.
Of people working at the BBC and particularly on Newsnight, which he produced for several years.
…we were not just anti-Macmillan; we were anti-industry, anti-capitalism, anti-advertising, anti-selling, anti-profit, anti-patriotism, anti-monarchy, anti-Empire, anti-police, anti-armed forces, anti-bomb, anti-authority. Almost anything that made the world a freer, safer and more prosperous place, you name it, we were anti it.
I disagree with the final sentence of the following quote. There is never too much freedom or too much variety, nevertheless the distinction is brilliant. Saying that there is too much freedom is like saying that there are too many notes in Mozart’s music… which ones would you like to remove? But I digress:
…there have always been two principal ways of misunderstanding a society: by looking down on it from above, and by looking up at it from below. In other words, by identifying with institutions or by identifying with individuals.
To look down on society from above, from the point of view of the ruling groups, the institutions, is to see the dangers of the organism splitting apart, the individual components shooting off in different directions, until everything dissolves into anarchy. Those who see society in this way are preoccupied with the need for order, discipline, control, authority and organisation.
To look up at society from below, from the point of view of the lowest group, the governed, is to see the dangers of the organism growing ever more rigid and oppressive until it fossilises into a monolithic tyranny. Those who see society in this way are preoccupied with the need for liberty, equality, self-expression, representation, freedom of speech and action and worship, and the rights of the individual. The reason for the popularity of these misunderstandings is that both views are correct, as far as they go, and both sets of dangers are real but there is no “right” point of view. The most you can ever say is that sometimes society is in danger from too much authority and uniformity and sometimes from too much freedom and variety.
A brutal description of the media elite’s views and attitudes and how they got there:
The second factor which shaped our media liberal attitudes was a sense of exclusion. We saw ourselves as part of the intellectual élite, full of ideas about how the country should be run, and yet with no involvement in the process or power to do anything about it. Being naïve in the way institutions actually work, yet having good arts degrees from reputable universities, we were convinced that Britain’s problems were the result of the stupidity of the people in charge. We ignored the tedious practicalities of getting institutions to adopt and implement ideas.
This ignorance of the realities of government and management enabled us to occupy the moral high ground. We saw ourselves as clever people in a stupid world, upright people in a corrupt world, compassionate people in a brutal world, libertarian people in an authoritarian world. We were not Marxists but accepted a lot of Marxist social analysis. Some people called us arrogant; looking back, I am afraid I cannot dispute the epithet.
And here he spells out their anti-market bias:
We also had an almost complete ignorance of market economics. That ignorance is still there. Say ”Tesco” to a media liberal and the patellar reflex says, “Exploiting African farmers and driving out small shopkeepers”. The achievement of providing the range of goods, the competitive prices, the food quality, the speed of service and the ease of parking that attract millions of shoppers every day does not show up on the media liberal radar.
It’s an ideology!
For a time it puzzled me that after 50 years of tumultuous change the media liberal attitudes could remain almost identical to those I shared in the 1950s. Then it gradually dawned on me: my BBC media liberalism was not a political philosophy, even less a political programme. It was an ideology based not on observation and deduction but on faith and doctrine. We were rather weak on facts and figures, on causes and consequences, and shied away from arguments about practicalities. If defeated on one point we just retreated to another; we did not change our beliefs. We were, of course, believers in democracy. The trouble was that our understanding of it was structurally simplistic and politically naïve. It did not go much further than one-adult-one-vote.
We ignored the whole truth, namely that modern Western civilisation stands on four pillars, and elected governments is only one of them. Equally important is the rule of law. The other two are economic: the right to own private property and the right to buy and sell your property, goods, services and labour. (Freedom of speech, worship, and association derive from them; with an elected government and the rule of law a nation can choose how much it wants of each). We never got this far with our analysis. The two economic freedoms led straight to the heresy of free enterprise capitalism – and yet without them any meaningful freedom is impossible.
But analysis was irrelevant to us. Ultimately, it was not a question of whether a policy worked but whether it was right or wrong when judged by our media liberal moral standards. There was no argument about whether, say, capital punishment worked. If retentionists came up with statistics showing that abolition increased the number of murders we simply rejected them.
And the damning conclusion:
It is not so much that their ideas and arguments are harebrained and impracticable: some of their causes are in fact admirable. The trouble – you might even say the tragedy – is that their implementation by governments eager for media approval has progressively damaged our institutions. Media liberal pressure has prompted a stream of laws, regulations and directives to champion the criminal against the police, the child against the school, the patient against the hospital, the employee against the company, the soldier against the army, the borrower against the bank, the convict against the prison – there is a new case in the papers almost every day, and each victory is a small erosion of the efficiency and effectiveness of the institution.
I can now see that my old BBC media liberalism was not a basis for government. It was an ideology of opposition, valuable for restraining the excesses of institutions and campaigning against the abuses of authority but it was not a way of actually running anything. It serves a vital function when government is dictatorial and oppressive, but when government is ineffective and over-permissive it is hopelessly inappropriate.
I can’t deny that my perceptions have come through the experience of leaving the BBC. Suppose I had stayed. Would I have remained a devotee of the metropolitan media liberal ideology that I once absorbed so readily? I have an awful fear that the answer is yes.
I may not agree with everything Antony Jay says and believes but that does not detract from the value of his, well, confession. Aptly, the article is an abridged extract from ‘Confessions of a Reformed BBC Producer’ to be published tomorrow by CPS.
Yes, I know what the actual charges filed against Black were, but there is an interesting article in the Guardian by former Telegraph editorial director Kim Fletcher called The wages of envy which raises some interesting points.
It is in the nature of court cases that findings of guilt lend an artificial certainty to the world. Black will now find himself spoken of as another Robert Maxwell. But while Black’s detractors were quickly out of the traps to say “we told you so”, it became clear during the trial that nothing going on at Hollinger was in the same league as the Mirror under Maxwell. Before his trial the result had been seen even by Black’s circle as a foregone conclusion. “There’s no way a blue collar jury in Chicago can let a man who looks like Conrad off every charge,” said one of his friends to me, before the trial began
Given that the central charges failed, it does make me wonder if he was not in truth convicted of being unapologetic about being rich and being called Lord Black. Perhaps the verdict had as much to do with the jury selection process and where the prosecution chose to hold the trial than whatever Lord Black actually did or did not do.
“If Michael (Moore) thinks healthcare is expensive now, just wait when it’s free.”
P.J. O’Rourke, in a remark attributed to him in this nice takedown of Moore’s latest “documentary”, Sicko, a film making the case that we would all be better off in having tax-funded healthcare free at the point of use, like the magnificent British National Health Service that is the envy of the world (cue sarcasm alert, sounds of hollow laughter).
Arnold Kling has thoughts on the movie. Here is what I wrote about some of the issues arising when people want healthcare free at the point of use (ie, they want someone else to pay for it).
Do not misunderstand me: private healthcare in some countries, such as the US, is far from perfect. For a start, it does not have a lot to do with unfettered laissez faire capitalism, as anyone who has encountered the powerful American Medical Association will point out. The insurance system in the US encourages inflated prices for treatment, and there are other regulatory and legal costs which have become a lot worse in recent years. But if Moore thinks British cinema audiences will be wowed by his paean of praise for Britain’s Soviet model of healthcare, he needs to have his head examined.
Mind you, I have often wondered whether Moore is for real, or a sort of performance artist secretly working for Dick Cheney.
(Update: further thoughts on whether Moore is a clown damaging the already-weak case for socialised medicine can be seen here.)
…Abolish it. That is what the latest Libertarian Alliance press release demands and I find it hard not to agree.
In this era of channel fragmentation, cable, satellite and the rise of the internet as a method of distribution, what on earth is the point of the BBC? If I want to see what the other side is thinking I can watch Al Jezeera or read the Independent.
It’s a bit like walking into a Sunday meeting of the Flat Earth Society. As they discuss great issues of the day, they discuss them from the point of view that the earth is flat. If someone says, ‘No, no, no, the earth is round!’, they think this person is an extremist. That’s what it’s like for someone with my right-of-centre views working inside the BBC.
– Jeff Randall, formerly the BBC’s business editor. The BBC does quote this against itself, but my experience of the bien pensant left in the media suggests that it will not be much apprehended inside the corporation.
In Lebanon media bias goes to a whole new level:
A Lebanese TV news presenter has been sacked over comments in which she gloated over the assassination of anti-Syrian politician Walid Eido.
The presenter, who has not been named, then went on to name a Lebanese MP who would be assassinated next.
She was unaware that her microphone was on and that the comments were being broadcast live.
That is taking character assassination way over the top.
Have reports of the death of the mainstream media been greatly exaggerated?
The Home Office [Bureau of State Security for overseas readers] would be ludicrous in its crudity, if it did not present such a threat to liberty. Bids for more arbitrary power are always, but always, acompanied by a scare story.
Today’s example:
Reid proposes register for terror offenders
John Reid will today propose setting up a terrorist offenders register as part of a series of long-term counter-terror measures.
The proposal, based on similar lines to the existing sex offenders register, is one of a series of ideas that the Home Secretary will suggest should be part of the country’s antiterror defences.
One idea being studied by Mr Reid would be to allow the register to operate retrospectively, making an estimated 40 people convicted under terror laws since 2001 liable for immediate listing.
The Home Secretary will say that police should be allowed to continue questioning terror suspects after they have been charged.
He will also outline a plan to allow judges to impose a harsher sentence on people with links to terrorism who are convicted under the criminal law.
This would apply in particular to people convicted of credit card fraud who have links to terrorism.
Another measure would give police the power forcibly to enter the home of a terror suspect held under a control order.
But the pamphlet, to be published today, will not include firm proposals to extend beyond 28 days the length of time that police can hold terror suspects.
Is juxtaposed with:
Security checks on petrol tankers in London
Security spot checks are being carried out on petrol and chemical tankers, cement mixers and other vehicles that could be used by suicide bombers.
Police are monitoring lorries on key routes into London amid concerns that terrorists might copy tactics which have been deployed to deadly effect by insurgents in Iraq. […]
But Scotland Yard stressed today that there was no specific intelligence to suggest that any kind of lorry bomb attack was imminent. [….]
“A counter-terrorism element has been added to the routine work of checking vehicles carrying dangerous goods,” said a police spokeswoman.
The first story is filed by the Times’ home affairs editor. The second by an interesting chap called Sean O’Neill, co-author of The Suicide Factory a highly sensational account of Abu Hamza’s career at Finsbury Park mosque. According to his agent’s website:
“Sean O’Neill joined The Times in 2004 after working for the Daily Telegraph for twelve years. He has covered the Matrix Churchill affair and the Scott Inquiry into arms to Iraq, the Soham murders and the trial of Ian Huntley, and has reported extensively from Northern Ireland. Since 2001 he has focused largely on the al-Qaeda terrorist threat in the UK.”
Mr O’Neill has something of a speciality in reporting the suspicions of the authorities. He clearly has very good police and intelligence contacts, and can make a livid story out of a change in a police checklist. But the inclination of such unofficial official contacts will be to feed such tidbits to the press to suit themselves, knowing an energetic journalist will make much of them.
There is an excellent article in the Telegraph by Charles Moore called What if Israelis had abducted BBC man?, addressing the morally demented attitude amongst the tranzi media and government set.
But just suppose that some fanatical Jews had grabbed Mr Johnston and forced him to spout their message, abusing his own country as he did so. What would the world have said?
There would have been none of the caution which has characterised the response of the BBC and of the Government since Mr Johnston was abducted on March 12. The Israeli government would immediately have been condemned for its readiness to harbour terrorists or its failure to track them down. Loud would have been the denunciations of the extremist doctrines of Zionism which had given rise to this vile act. The world isolation of Israel, if it failed to get Mr Johnston freed, would have been complete.
If Mr Johnston had been forced to broadcast saying, for example, that Israel was entitled to all the territories held since the Six-Day War, and calling on the release of all Israeli soldiers held by Arab powers in return for his own release, his words would have been scorned. The cause of Israel in the world would have been irreparably damaged by thus torturing him on television. No one would have been shy of saying so.
But of course in real life it is Arabs holding Mr Johnston, and so everyone treads on tip-toe. Bridget Kendall of the BBC opined that Mr Johnston had been “asked” to say what he said in his video. Asked! If it were merely an “ask”, why did he not say no?
Whatever one thinks of Israel’s policies on various issues, the nauseating double standards so consistently in play by so many ‘news’ organisations are something that need to be pointed out often and unapologetically. Charles Moore is to be commended for his article. Read the whole thing.
I am sometimes told that I should not “bang on” about the Economist journal (much in the way that Mr. Cameron tells everyone that they should not “bang on” about the endless regulations that come from that absurd extra layer of government called the European Union), as it is just another leftist publication like the Guardian, the Independent, the Financial Times (the newspaper for corrupt, politically connected, “business people”) and so on.
However, people continue to defend the Economist so it is worth “banging on” about it.
The Economist stands, at least most of the time and in the case of most nations in the world, for more money for the various ‘pubic services’ and for more regulations (gun control, anti trust – competition policy and so on) as part of its Welfare State ideology and ‘perfect competition’ (i.e. neo-classical excuse for endless government intervention) conception of economics. So its defenders’ claim that it is ‘free market’ is very obviously false.
However, the defenders of the Economist make another claim – that the journal provides coverage of world news that an ordinary newspaper does not.
In a break in a series of Kettering council events I popped out to the town library and had a look at the Economist – I wanted to read its reports on the local elections in Spain and Italy.
There was one line “centre left governments do badly” – no reports on the elections, nothing on what cities and regions were won by who. Even concerning nations in the European Union – the entity that the Economist supports and claims to know so much about.
The Economist fails the final test – it did not even bother have a proper report on either set of elections. It does not provide coverage that ordinary newspapers do not.
I have just got back from sitting in a discussion about how far should journalists go in chasing a story. It is a good question to ask and not as easy to answer as one might think. Is a journalist justified, for example, in breaking and entering a person’s property without consent to obtain facts even if the story is one of supposedly major importance? Can a journalist eavesdrop on confidential phone calls between X and Y in order to get a story and does that story have to pass some sort of “public interest” test? In my own hazy thoughts on the matter, I tend to take the view that the public interest test has to be very rigorous indeed, ie, life has to be at stake. It is not enough to say that “X is a famous man who is interesting to lots of people” sort of yardstick. It has to involve the exposure of murderous, criminal behaviour by the person(s) being investigated to justify breaking into a private home or breaching a confidential document.
Of course, as the discussion unfolded, it became pretty clear that the world of the internet and blogs, that a lot of media laws, as well as the whole idea of journalism being a licenced profession, is under threat. On the whole, I think this is a good thing. If journalists want to form their own trade associations to promote best practice and carry emblems on their news channels or newspapers saying that Mr J. Pearce is a member of the Journalist Society, well and good. It will be rather like plumbers, electricians or bricklayers forming such bodies, bodies that stand for reputation and high standards. Miscreants can and will be thrown out. Being a member of such a club will be a big deal, except that it will not be a state-approved body, but a genuinely private one.
Anyway, the weather is too glorious for me to write further. Time to light the barbecue and open some wine.
If this story about Britain’s so-called ‘public service’ state owned broadcasting channel is true, the end of the BBC cannot come to soon.
Amid the deaths and the grim daily struggle bravely borne by Britain’s forces in southern Iraq, one tale of heroism stands out. Private Johnson Beharry’s courage in rescuing an ambushed foot patrol then, in a second act, saving his vehicle’s crew despite his own terrible injuries earned him a Victoria Cross.
For the BBC, however, his story is “too positive” about the conflict. The corporation has cancelled the commission for a 90-minute drama about Britain’s youngest surviving Victoria Cross hero because it feared it would alienate members of the audience opposed to the war in Iraq.
To be honest I find it hard to believe the people who run the BBC could be so overt in imposing their tax funded biases on the channel. If this is true, even I am shocked by the crassness of it.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
