Wednesday, September 10, 2003
The Daily Telegraph has decided to stamp it's little feet about the long-haired hippies that infest the BBC and use it to beam out leftist propaganda into our homes 24/7.
The BBC's mental assumptions are those of the fairly soft Left. They are that American power is a bad thing, whereas the UN is good, that the Palestinians are in the right and Israel isn't, that the war in Iraq was wrong, that the European Union is a good thing and that people who criticise it are "xenophobic", that racism is the worst of all sins, that abortion is good and capital punishment is bad, that too many people are in prison, that a preference for heterosexual marriage over other arrangements is "judgmental", that environmentalists are public-spirited and "big business" is not, that Gerry Adams is better than Ian Paisley, that government should spend more on social programmes, that the Pope is out of touch except when he criticises the West, that gun control is the answer to gun crime, that... well, you can add hundreds more articles to the creed without my help.
See, it's bad to think it's bad to be a bigot. The Telegraph newsroom will soon be kitted out with 'Straight Pride' t-shirts.
Now, none of the above beliefs is indefensible. The problem is that all of them are open to challenge and that that challenge never comes from the BBC. Fine, for example, to make a documentary about the sufferings of people on death row in the United States, but why is there never a documentary made by someone who believes that the death penalty cuts crime?
I'm not sure how things work in Lord Birt's privatised BBC, so is the thirteen part documentary, 'Walking With Government Murderers' something that the BBC decide to make, then put out calls for people to offer to do it, or something that a production company decides to make, then the BBC decides whether or not it wants to buy, or is it somewhere inbetween the two?
I've, admittedly halfheartedly, been looking for right-wing criticism of the BBCs coverage of the bombing of Iraq, to find out what it was that so incensed the soldiers on the Ark Royal that made them turn over to Sky News. The only two things I can think of are the BBC admitting that there were allied casualties too, and John Simpson being a bit annoyed when the British troops he was with came under friendly fire. I've not had much luck finding anything so far.
But meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph, accountable to no-one except it's owner, has started Beebwatch, to expose those dope-smoking Beatles-record-listening sandle-wearers for what they are:
Beebwatch
(Filed: 10/09/2003)
The BBC's agnostic head of religion, Alan Bookbinder, denies that the corporation treats Roman Catholics unfairly. One wonders how he squares this with Today's hounding of Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, or the BBC1 documentary that raised the possibility that the Virgin Mary was raped by a Roman soldier.
The BBC's lack of respect for the Catholic Church expresses itself in many ways: for example, in frequent references to the Pope's frailty and in the disproportionate airtime given to Catholic dissidents.
The item on last Wednesday's Woman's Hour about priestly celibacy was a classic. The peg was the suicide of a priest who had fallen in love with an RE teacher, Jan Curry. The report was built round an interview with Curry, who denounced the Church's "hypocrisy".
Her views were echoed in the studio by Jan Walker, wife of an ex-priest, who didn't see why married ex-Anglicans should be allowed into the priesthood. A Catholic spokesman, Fr Francis Marsden, described celibacy as "a sign of great spiritual fruitfulness"; but then the supposedly impartial Jenni Murray pitched in.
"Isn't there a terrible hypocrisy there?" she said - and, later, in response to the point about married Anglicans, "How do you deal with that particular hypocrisy, Fr Francis?" In contrast, Jan Walker was asked whether celibacy contributed to the "marginalisation of women".
If Murray had been even-handed, she could have reminded Walker that her husband had broken vows of celibacy - unlike the maligned former Anglicans. The impression given was that Jan, Jan and Jenni were speaking for "women", with poor old Fr Francis defending male hegemony.
In fact, there are hundreds of thousands of British Catholic women who strongly support a celibate priesthood; why was one of them not invited to present an alternative viewpoint?
The BBC's mental assumptions are those of the fairly soft Left. They are that American power is a bad thing, whereas the UN is good, that the Palestinians are in the right and Israel isn't, that the war in Iraq was wrong, that the European Union is a good thing and that people who criticise it are "xenophobic", that racism is the worst of all sins, that abortion is good and capital punishment is bad, that too many people are in prison, that a preference for heterosexual marriage over other arrangements is "judgmental", that environmentalists are public-spirited and "big business" is not, that Gerry Adams is better than Ian Paisley, that government should spend more on social programmes, that the Pope is out of touch except when he criticises the West, that gun control is the answer to gun crime, that... well, you can add hundreds more articles to the creed without my help.
See, it's bad to think it's bad to be a bigot. The Telegraph newsroom will soon be kitted out with 'Straight Pride' t-shirts.
Now, none of the above beliefs is indefensible. The problem is that all of them are open to challenge and that that challenge never comes from the BBC. Fine, for example, to make a documentary about the sufferings of people on death row in the United States, but why is there never a documentary made by someone who believes that the death penalty cuts crime?
I'm not sure how things work in Lord Birt's privatised BBC, so is the thirteen part documentary, 'Walking With Government Murderers' something that the BBC decide to make, then put out calls for people to offer to do it, or something that a production company decides to make, then the BBC decides whether or not it wants to buy, or is it somewhere inbetween the two?
I've, admittedly halfheartedly, been looking for right-wing criticism of the BBCs coverage of the bombing of Iraq, to find out what it was that so incensed the soldiers on the Ark Royal that made them turn over to Sky News. The only two things I can think of are the BBC admitting that there were allied casualties too, and John Simpson being a bit annoyed when the British troops he was with came under friendly fire. I've not had much luck finding anything so far.
But meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph, accountable to no-one except it's owner, has started Beebwatch, to expose those dope-smoking Beatles-record-listening sandle-wearers for what they are:
Beebwatch
(Filed: 10/09/2003)
The BBC's agnostic head of religion, Alan Bookbinder, denies that the corporation treats Roman Catholics unfairly. One wonders how he squares this with Today's hounding of Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, or the BBC1 documentary that raised the possibility that the Virgin Mary was raped by a Roman soldier.
The BBC's lack of respect for the Catholic Church expresses itself in many ways: for example, in frequent references to the Pope's frailty and in the disproportionate airtime given to Catholic dissidents.
The item on last Wednesday's Woman's Hour about priestly celibacy was a classic. The peg was the suicide of a priest who had fallen in love with an RE teacher, Jan Curry. The report was built round an interview with Curry, who denounced the Church's "hypocrisy".
Her views were echoed in the studio by Jan Walker, wife of an ex-priest, who didn't see why married ex-Anglicans should be allowed into the priesthood. A Catholic spokesman, Fr Francis Marsden, described celibacy as "a sign of great spiritual fruitfulness"; but then the supposedly impartial Jenni Murray pitched in.
"Isn't there a terrible hypocrisy there?" she said - and, later, in response to the point about married Anglicans, "How do you deal with that particular hypocrisy, Fr Francis?" In contrast, Jan Walker was asked whether celibacy contributed to the "marginalisation of women".
If Murray had been even-handed, she could have reminded Walker that her husband had broken vows of celibacy - unlike the maligned former Anglicans. The impression given was that Jan, Jan and Jenni were speaking for "women", with poor old Fr Francis defending male hegemony.
In fact, there are hundreds of thousands of British Catholic women who strongly support a celibate priesthood; why was one of them not invited to present an alternative viewpoint?
