Auntie is biased I tell you! Well, not me, exactly, but Red Ed the useless, adenoidally challenged muppet who leads the Labour Party.
The Labour party has made a “serious complaint” to the BBC about a lack of political balance in its news coverage as it attempts to reinvigorate Ed Miliband‘s leadership and counter what it sees as widespread media bias in favour of the David Cameron-led coalition.
I’m not sure that there is anything to reinvigorate here. Miliband is clearly in over his head; he has neither the competence nor the charisma needed to run a political party, let alone the Number 10 machine. That applied to his predecessor, of course, but Brown had an advantage, his predecessor had won an election for him, so he didn’t have to go through all that convincing the electorate stuff to get hold of the keys. One could argue much the same about Cameron, of course – it’s just that Miliband is worse.
Anyway to hear Labour complaining about bias in the BBC is amusing. After all, the BBC spouted Labour party propaganda pretty much continuously when they were in power. That it appears that the venerable organ has switched sides merely confirms that the coalition have picked up the reins left by the previous incumbents. Those who feel that the BBC is not biased will say that this is evidence of neutrality as both the left and the right perceive bias. The reality is that the BBC is institutionally biased in favour of the Guardianesque left; the chattering classes of Islington – so it will report favourably on things such as AGW and will parrot the fake charities’ and lobby groups’ latest propaganda on drinking, eating and smoking uncritically. It is the unthinking mouthpiece of the new puritans and the various bullying hangers on who would pry and interfere in our lifestyles and private lives – repeating the dogma, iffy statistics, downright lies and junk science unchallenged and as-is (remember this story from last month, for example).
It is also remarkably frustrating in its level of stupidity. During a piece on the Samoan decision to switch sides of the international dateline the other day, the presenter asked “what do Samoans think about losing a whole day of their lives?” Yes, the stupid bint really did say that. This is what we have come to expect from a so-called serious broadcaster.
If Ed Miliband thinks that the BBC is biased against him, it could just mean that he isn’t ideologically pure enough. I wonder if he’s considered that thought? Still, when the Labour party accuse the BBC of bias, we see life mimicking satire. We have truly passed the parody event horizon…
he has neither the competence nor the charisma needed to run a political party, let alone the Number 10 machine
That’s the general idea – you can’t control a man with his own thoughts.
Milliband is quite correct, just wholly hypocritical. The BBC is always supportive of the elite. Now that the Tories are in charge, naturally it dances to a Tory tune. When New Labour was in charge, it snuggled up with Labour. One thing you can be certain is that the BBC will never be on the side of those who pay for it through the licence fee.
Of course he’s a hypocrite. He’s a politician.
Stephen, true and another good reason to get rid of the licence fee.
Ed Miliband: the words silk, purse and sow’s ear spring most readily to mind.
You lot need to read the “Telegraph” comments pages, where they all seem to be convinced that the BBC is some sort of crypto-Marxist ramp …..
I wonder if it’s all being paid for by the Murdochs?
George Orwell said some things are true even if the Telegraph says they are, not that one has to believe in cultural Marxism to find the BBC world view irritating, it’s the received wisdom of the political and cultural elite which happens to be soft left these days, just as in the Thirties say, it was small ‘c’ conservative. I can give you a non political example of this which particularly angers me, the dumbing down of Radio 3, this is being done in order to make it more ‘inclusive’ and remove any suggestion that there might be anything difficult or requiring a bit of thought about classical music. As has been said, it’s been turned into R2.5. As someone who has learned practically everything he knows about music from R3 over the years I find this insulting, an assumption that as people like me didn’t have the benefits of an Oxbridge arts education and are therefore lacking in sophistication we couldn’t possibly cope with anything more taxing than a single movement from a string quartet and will just love inane competitions nattering presenters and phone ins. As is usual the people who imagine themselves great democrats and progressives are more bloody reactionary than the whole editorial staffs of the Telegraph and Mail combined.
As for wondering “if it’s all being paid for by the Murdochs”, all what ? If anything it’s the Guardian and the BBC who are trying to bring down Murdoch not the other way around.