MEDIA ALERT
New Chairman Confirms The BBC As A Mouthpiece For Establishment Views
October 3, 2001
The BBC never tires of reminding us of its bona fides. A
recent BBC advert assured us:
"Honesty, integrity - it's what the BBC
stands for."
During the recent general election, the same source
declared:
"The BBC is fighting the election on a single issue: The
Truth!"
No surprise, then, that the BBC requires that reporters undergo
some demanding, even gruesome, procedures prior to taking up their
positions. Political editor Andrew Marr reveals all:
"When I joined
the BBC, my Organs of Opinion were formally removed." (Marr, the Independent,
13 January, 2001)
This is welcome news to anyone who read Marr's pre-BBC
Observer articles, with titles like: "Brave, bold, visionary. Whatever became
of Blair the ultra-cautious cynic?" (The Observer, 4.4.99), and, "Hail to the
chief. Sorry, Bill, but this time we're talking about Tony." (The
Observer, 16.5.99) Marr declared himself in awe of Blair's "moral courage"
and wrote: "I am constantly impressed, but also mildly alarmed, by his utter
lack of cynicism."
During the bombing of Serbia, Marr's Organs of
Opinion were very much in place, and inflamed with war fever:
"I want
to put the Macbeth option: which is that we're so steeped in bloodr we should
go further. If we really believe Milosevic is this bad, dangerous and
destabilising figure we must ratchet this up much further. We should now be
saying that we intend to put in ground troops." (Marr, the
Observer, 18.4.99)
Marr referred to the "war-hardened people of
Serbia" as "beasts", explaining how the Serbs, "far more callous, seemingly
readier to die, are like an alien race." (Marr, the Observer,
25.4.99)
The Serbs were a kind of "gook", then, to use the dehumanising
jargon of an earlier war. To be sure, the Serbs died readily enough under our
bombs, dropped from the safety (for our pilots) of 15,000 feet. Marr is
currently reporting Blair and Bush's 'War on Terrorism', but keeping any
thoughts of a "Macbeth option" to himself.
Kamal Ahmed of the Observer
noted the obvious: "Marr... is close to senior officials in Downing Street
and makes no secret of his New Labour credentials. He is well-liked by the
Prime Minister and his official spokesman, Alastair Campbell." (The Observer,
14.5.00)
Journalists are keen to defend the reputation of the BBC as an
unbiased, neutral and objective public broadcaster. When challenged on the
role of advertisers, parent companies, wealthy owners and
business-friendly governments in filtering news "fit to print", hacks
commonly refer to the counter-balancing influence of the BBC. Thus Jon Snow,
the Channel 4 newsreader, said in an interview:
"Your big problem is
that you're dealing with a multi-media activity in Britain, in which there is
a huge non-corporate involvement... I'll give you the BBC as an
example."
But at a time when business domination of global society, and
Seattle-style mass resistance to that domination, are the big issues of the
day, how "non-corporate" is the BBC, in fact?
Consider that the BBC's
new chairman, Gavyn Davies, was touted as the next Governor of the Bank of
England in 1997. Prior to joining the BBC, Davies, who is estimated to have
amassed a personal fortune of £150 million, was chief economist of the
powerful global bank Goldman Sachs. The outgoing and equally "non-corporate"
chairman, Sir Christopher Bland, left the BBC to become chairman of British
Telecom. Sarah Ryle of the Observer, notes of Davies's "non-corporate"
agenda:
"...those at the BBC prepared to comment only off the record say
the Davies appointment is a good one. Broadcasting is as much about business
as it is about content, today more than ever before." (Quoted, Sarah Ryle,
the Observer, 23.9.01)
Steve Barnett of the Observer expresses
mock-surprise at the appointment:
"Who would have believed it? A Labour
government appoints a millionaire banker with little public-sector experience
as chairman of the BBC, while a Conservative Opposition complains bitterly
that the job didn't go to an experienced and dedicated public service
broadcaster. The tide of twentieth-century politics has truly turned." (Steve
Barnett, the Observer, 23.9.01)
As a result, both the
director-general, Greg Dyke, and the chairman of the BBC, are not just Labour
supporters but have both given money to the party. In Davies's case, the
links are even more intimate - Davies's wife runs Gordon Brown's office. His
children served as pageboy and bridesmaid at the Brown wedding and Tony Blair
has stayed at his holiday home. "In other words", Richard Ingrams writes in
the Observer, "it would be hard to find a better example of a Tony crony."
(Ingrams, the Observer, 23.9.01)
Media commentators have been quick to
point out that the communal door linking BBC, government and business
executives has been turning for a very long time. Steve Barnett describes a
few of the earlier revolutions:
"... back in 1980, George Howard, the
hunting, shooting and fishing aristocratic pal of Home Secretary Willie
Whitelaw, was appointed [BBC chairman] because Margaret Thatcher couldn't
abide the thought of distinguished Liberal Mark Bonham-Carter being promoted
vice-chairman.
Then there was Stuart Young, accountant and brother of one
of Thatcher's staunchest cabinet allies, who succeeded Howard in 1983. He was
followed in 1986 by Marmaduke Hussey, brother-in-law of another Cabinet
Minister who was plucked from the obscurity of a directorship at Rupert
Murdoch's Times Newspapers. According to the then-Tory chairman, Norman
Tebbit, Hussey was appointed 'to get in there and sort the place out, and in
days not months.' Those were the days of nods and winks, of unbridled
political collusion - not so much Tony's cronies as Maggie's baggage."
(Barnett, ibid)
This is the farce of a British media system utterly
dominated by business interests and business-friendly government; that is, by
the establishment.
The idea that the BBC is independent of such
influences is quickly exposed by even a casual glance through the historical
record.
The BBC was founded by Lord Reith in 1922 and immediately used as
a propaganda weapon for the Baldwin government during the General Strike,
when it became known by workers as the "British Falsehood Corporation".
During the strike, no representative of organized labour was allowed to
broadcast on the BBC; the Leader of the Opposition, Ramsay McDonald, was also
banned. Reith said it was wrong but that he could do nothing about
it.
At the start of the Second World War, an official wrote that the
Ministry of Information "recognized that for the purpose of war activities
the BBC is to be regarded as a Government Department." He added: "I wouldn't
put it quite like this in any public statement." For forty years, from an
office in Bush House in London, home of the BBC World Service, a brigadier
passed on the names of applicants for editorial jobs in the BBC to MI5 for
'vetting'. John Pilger reports that "Journalists with a reputation for
independence were refused BBC posts because they were not considered
'safe'."
In the leaked minutes of one of the BBC's weekly Review Board
meetings during the Falklands war, BBC executives directed that the weight of
their news coverage should be concerned "primarily with government statements
of policy". An impartial style was felt to be "an unnecessary
irritation". Prior to the opening of hostilities, a Peruvian plan for a
negotiated settlement came close to success. On 13th May 1982 Edward Heath
told ITN that the Argentinians had requested three minor amendments to the
peace plan. According to Heath these were so trivial that they could not
possibly be rejected, yet Prime Minister Thatcher rejected them out of hand.
The interview with Heath was the only time on British television that
mention was made of the peace plan; the story was allowed to die.
The
idea that the "non-corporate" BBC somehow counterbalances the corporate media
is made absurd by the fact that, on issue after issue - global warming,
sanctions against Iraq, the bombing of Serbia, Western support of Indonesia,
inaction over East Timor, the history of US and British support of Third
World tyrants - all promote near-identical establishment views.
Beyond
all the propaganda and wishful thinking, the truth of the BBC's relationship
with the establishment was revealed long ago, and with admirable honesty, by
the BBC's own founder, Lord Reith, in his diary:
"They know they can
trust us not to be really impartial."
SUGGESTED ACTION
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views of those who place people before profit. Challenge the media to
include business-unfriendly facts and ideas. We urge readers to turn away
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CONTACT: The
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