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Tory prat tells BBC News to hire more Tory prats

I shit you not. According to the (possibly not the most impartial source in this case, but who cares?) Beeb themselves: "The shadow culture secretary has called for the BBC to 'actively' recruit more Conservatives to its news team. Jeremy Hunt said the BBC had 'made huge strides' on diversity issues but should 'not forget the core audience'. The BBC said it would never recruit people for their politics and Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw described it as 'unacceptable political interference'."

I'm not sure what to think of this one. On the one hand, I have to laugh at the idea of Labour telling off Tories for allegedly interfering with the BBC. The Brown Broadcasting Corporation has been happy to give a sympathetic hearing to most of the shite that New Labour has come out with over the years - Hutton Report, anyone? Then again, I didn't realise that the "core audience" of the BBC now consisted of the Tories. Cue me making a crude, childish joke about Jeremy Hunt's name - not that I'd be implying he was a vagina, of course.

Then again, this might just be a wind-up. This is possibly a reference to the news the Beeb are now actively looking for a news presenter who is over the age of 50. Is Jeremy Hunt just pulling our collective plonker on this one, or is he just a twat?

And is there any other group the BBC should be recruiting more of, whilst we're on the topic?
Beep boop. I'm a bot.

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I'm not sure this is much of a story. Would you expect a Tory to champion more Labour party people to the Beeb - or vice versa? This is normal political posturing. The Beeb is somewhat left wing anyway so recruiting more Tory staff wouldn't make an enormous difference anyway. I like Andrew Marr, who is left wing, but I also like Nick Robinson - who comes from a Tory background. Both these guys are professional enough to keep most of their personal views under wraps.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    well the government is always at odds with the bbc so they must be doing something right. its not healthy for everyone to get along all the time.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Whilst it was badly worded he does have a point - the Beeb spends a lot of time on ensuring ethnic and gender diversity, for the news and current affairs it does need to think about political diversity.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Whilst it was badly worded he does have a point - the Beeb spends a lot of time on ensuring ethnic and gender diversity, for the news and current affairs it does need to think about political diversity.

    Why? Everything has to be impartial, so the only reason your political views should come into question is in your ability to keep them to yourself. Also, it's quite simple to decide what is a woman and what isn't, but how would anyone plan to decide what their employees political opinions are?

    So is this Tory policy then? Actively attempting to bring bias to the BBC in their favour? The idea that most people that work in the creative industries are of more liberal political views (whether it's true or not) has absolutely no bearing on the question of whether the final product is. The only question that's relevant to the BBC is your ability to be impartial and factual.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Because no matter how hard people try to be impartial, its impossible. Your views will colour how you see the world, and in news and current affairs that will mean what you report and the questions you ask, sub-conscously as much as deliberately. This is being made worse by the fact many of the top journos are now blogging on the BBC news site and this by its nature is opinionated.

    If the BBC has a large chunk of the population thinking it's not giving a fair shake to right wing views it has a major problem and it needs to fix that desperately if its to retain trust.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru

    If the BBC has a large chunk of the population thinking it's not giving a fair shake to right wing views it has a major problem and it needs to fix that desperately if its to retain trust.

    Well, if that chunk of the population happens to be pretty much all right wing, then I'm afraid it's not as simple as that.

    I mean, let's face it: anyone who claims, as a great many rightwingers do, that the BBC shows anti-Israeli bias (LOL x 94,000,000), can safely be discounted as someone whose opinion of the BBC is so warped and off-the-mark it cannot be considered at all.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Aladdin wrote: »
    I mean, let's face it: anyone who claims, as a great many rightwingers do, that the BBC shows anti-Israeli bias (LOL x 94,000,000), can safely be discounted as someone whose opinion of the BBC is so warped and off-the-mark it cannot be considered at all.

    If I don't misunderstand you here, it's unfortunate that your blind hatred for the right wing really does undermine and weaken the credibility of your arguments because they come over as just as unbalanced as the BNP.

    Not all right wingers are Nazis just as not all left-wingers have a social conscience.

    Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) is a Westminister based pro-Israel lobby group working within the British Labour party and they have put the BBC under fire on it's 'pro-Palestinian stance' on many occasions.

    It is considered one of the most prestigious groupings in the party and is seen as a stepping stone to ministerial ranks by Labour MPs. LFI boasts some of the wealthiest supporters of the party, and some of its most generous donors, such as Lord Sainsbury of Turville, Michael Levy, Sir Trevor Chinn and Sir Emmanuel Kaye.

    The committee wields considerable influence in Westminster and is also consulted routinely by the Foreign Office and Downing Street on matters relating to the Middle East. Gordon Brown is known to consult its members over Middle East policy.

    Gwyneth Dunwoody, chairman of the Commons transport select committee, was the life president of LFI until her death.

    So, remind me, is it just right-wingers who we can 'safely discount' as being 'warped'? ;)
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Teagan wrote: »
    If I don't misunderstand you here, it's unfortunate that your blind hatred for the right wing really does undermine and weaken the credibility of your arguments because they come over as just as unbalanced as the BNP.

    Not all right wingers are Nazis just as not all left-wingers have a social conscience.

    Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) is a Westminister based pro-Israel lobby group working within the British Labour party and they have put the BBC under fire on it's 'pro-Palestinian stance' on many occasions.

    It is considered one of the most prestigious groupings in the party and is seen as a stepping stone to ministerial ranks by Labour MPs. LFI boasts some of the wealthiest supporters of the party, and some of its most generous donors, such as Lord Sainsbury of Turville, Michael Levy, Sir Trevor Chinn and Sir Emmanuel Kaye.

    The committee wields considerable influence in Westminster and is also consulted routinely by the Foreign Office and Downing Street on matters relating to the Middle East. Gordon Brown is known to consult its members over Middle East policy.

    Gwyneth Dunwoody, chairman of the Commons transport select committee, was the life president of LFI until her death.

    So, remind me, is it just right-wingers who we can 'safely discount' as being 'warped'? ;)
    A quick look on Wikipedia reveals this:

    "The Labour Friends of Israel is a distinct organisation to the Jewish Labour Movement, the affiliated socialist society and successor to the UK's Poale Zion."

    So yes, that's a really unbiased lobby group you got there.

    Meanwhile, you will find that instances of complaints of anti-Israeli bias in the BBC by anyone else who isn't a rightwinger or Jewish are about as common as three-headed dogs.

    And that's for a a very good reason: namely that the BBC is not fucking biased against Israel- unless one's definition of bias happens to be "the reporting any actions commited by the Israeli State that shows it in a bad light to the world".

    Which sadly appears to be exactly the definition used by far too many rightwing parties, governments and media alike.

    Until last year I would have said the BBC was as impartial as a news organisation can get towards the Middle East conflict (see the equally vociferous complaints it gets from the other side). But after the abominable and fucking disgraceful refusal to broadcast a *humanitarian* appeal for the people of Gaza, the BBC can probably be described today as showing bias in favour of Israel.

    Biased against Israel, my hairy arse.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Aladdin wrote: »
    A quick look on Wikipedia reveals this:

    "The Labour Friends of Israel is a distinct organisation to the Jewish Labour Movement, the affiliated socialist society and successor to the UK's Poale Zion."

    So yes, that's a really unbiased lobby group you got there.

    Your understanding of that paragraph seems to be different to mine. No, it says it "is a distinct organisation to the Jewish Labour Movement" i.e. it is independant. It's not very well written English. It doesn't mean that it's the same as the Jewish Labour Movement.

    ((I may have misunderstood what you have written Aladdin so I apologise if I am barking up the wrong tree)) :)

    But furthermore, have a look at the MP list on that same link. Most of these people listed are not Jewish.

    My point stands. There are many in the Labour Party who are pro-Israel. It's not just a Tory 'Nazi' peculiarity.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I seem to have misread that sentence in the article and drawn up the wrong conclusions in a hurry. My apologies.

    However being "pro-Israel" and believing the BBC is biased against it are two separate things- certainly in the dictionary definition of being 'pro' something. Not everybody in that group will by any means believe the BBC is biased against Israel, regardless of what the group might have said. And the fact remains that the claims of anti-Israeli bias still come in an overwhelming majority from right wingers.

    But perhaps the best way to show someone's bias is to show it. Up to date I have never seen a convincing argument to any degree that shows the BBC is biased against Israel. The only reason for this seems to be that the BBC reports Israeli atrocities instead of not reporting them at all (the likes of The Sun newspaper) or devoting just about half a paragraph to them and describing them as 'defence operations necessary to protect Israel' (the likes of the Telegraph).

    The latest round of all this nonsense happened during the siege of Gaza, when Israel committed what everybody from doctors, nurses, impartial observers, humanitarian organisations and later even official investigators from United Nations rightly described as war crimes. Yet the BBC gets accused of bias simply for reporting such actions, and bearing in mind that it never would dare to use such words as "war crimes" on its own reporting.

    Frankly I find it both deeply disturbing and worrying that there is a well greased and established protection racket in sections of the press and the political class ready to shoot down any reporting of Israel that reports unsavoury actions as biased against Israel, if not plain "anti-semite". The BBC is certainly a victim of this.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Aladdin wrote: »
    Well, if that chunk of the population happens to be pretty much all right wing, then I'm afraid it's not as simple as that.

    I mean, let's face it: anyone who claims, as a great many rightwingers do, that the BBC shows anti-Israeli bias (LOL x 94,000,000), can safely be discounted as someone whose opinion of the BBC is so warped and off-the-mark it cannot be considered at all.

    Thanks Aladdin, you demonstrate my point fantastically. The fact that the vast majority of people suggesting the BBC is bias are rightwing suggests they are - I suspect you'd be one of those screaming from the rooftops about BBC bias if all the complainers all pretty much left wing.

    The BBC wouldn't indeed have a problem if half of those claiming bias were right and half were left...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Thanks Aladdin, you demonstrate my point fantastically. The fact that the vast majority of people suggesting the BBC is bias are rightwing suggests they are
    Or it could also suggest that rightwingers are by nature far more closeminded and intransigent than leftwingers.

    Which would also explain nicely while a very sizeable majority of those writing angry letters to teletext or calling radion phone-ins to voice their fury about something or other always have markedly rightwing viewpoints.

    Bias is a subjective matter of course, but still a certain degree can be shown and agreed on when presented with it- for instance the Telegraph being right wing or the Guardian right wing.

    So where exactly is the evidence of the anti Israeli bias we keep hearing about? Unless you count the reporting of any news that might show Israel in a bad light as negative bias of course.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Aladdin wrote: »
    Or it could also suggest that rightwingers are by nature far more closeminded and intransigent than leftwingers..

    Possibly - though the evidence suggests not
    Which would also explain nicely while a very sizeable majority of those writing angry letters to teletext or calling radion phone-ins to voice their fury about something or other always have markedly rightwing viewpoints.

    Er? Have you read something like U75 or even the various posts on here (for example, read the closed minded posts when someone dared to criticise the NHS).
    Bias is a subjective matter of course, but still a certain degree can be shown and agreed on when presented with it- for instance the Telegraph being right wing or the Guardian right wing.

    I hope that's a typo on the Guardian's politics ;)
    So where exactly is the evidence of the anti Israeli bias we keep hearing about? Unless you count the reporting of any news that might show Israel in a bad light as negative bias of course

    I'd have to look through loads of old reports and can't be arsed - though Orla Guerin crying at the death of Yasser Arafat would have to be top.

    However watching BBC Breakfast time's report yesterday on BAe I was struck by the fact the reporting assumed BAe was guilty before any trial and allowed Claire Short uninterrupted airtime to claim corruption, without any countervailing view being put forward. And that's just a quick recent example (and I hardly watch BBC TV news - not due to it's bias and more because compared to the radio, web and newspaper's its coverage is incredibly shallow).

    That said we need to get the BBC's bias into perspective - it's not Pravda nor does it broadcast six hour monologues by the great leader (such as Castro and Chavez). Its more group think, where people think they are being unbiased, but in reality giving a slight taint to a certain number of views.
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