Wednesday, May 18, 2005

There are two types of responses to the story that Newsweek's story about desecration of the Koran was false: Go mental, rant about supposed left-wing control of the media and demand a jihad against those media outlets or step back, be thankful it wasn't true, but reflect over how the US Government's behaviour since declaring a War on Terror made it so easy to believe such a thing was true. And it's not over yet.

It seems that some sections of the community want to hold media editors to a higher standard than elected officials. Heaven knows I don't like Piers Morgan, but to be forced out of his job as an editor for printing false photos of prisoners being tortured rather than actual ones still seems the height of absurdity.

Meanwhile, because he seems rather hurt no-one is paying attention to it, Blithering Bunny has cut'n'pasted an article from the Torygraph about former BBC reporter Robin Aitken's new book on the BBC's left-wing bias. Robin Aitken, who describes himself as a Conservative we should say.

It seems amazing that the BBC survived as some hive of lefties through the Thatcher years as Aitken claims. Politicians used patronage everywhere else yet somehow both Thatcher and Major failed to get anything done about the BBC. And to say john Birt left the BBC to work for the Labour government does not mean he ran the BBC like a left-wing organisation, more that he shows a true politicians ability to follow where the money and power is.But when you identify as any point on a political spectrum it is easy to see those on either side of you as at the extremes, Aitken seems to believe the BBC is being run by the editors of Marxism Today, I see it as a slightly right-of-centre media producer that tries to disguise this by asking awkward questions of ministers about the Iraq War.

I do agree it's cuddled up to New Labour. Before the 1997 Election it would show Prime Minister Questions each week to show John Major getting trounced by Tony Blair. Since then PMQ gets shown only when the Government is really in trouble, and then shredded to soundbite quotes to minimise the damage to Blair. Since 1997 the Lib Dems almost disappear from the news except for Charlie Kennedy asking a question in Parliament or Sir Ming Campbell turning up late of night on Newsnight. And there are shows that don't get made on the BBC, anything pro-Israel (although I'd argue they don't make anti-Israel shows either, despite what Zionists like to contend), the only time we've had a 'capitalism is great!' show was on Channel 4 a year or so back, when some berk took us round a cleaned-up Nike factory and said "therefore, sweatshops don't exist!" But the news keeps showing us how genetically modified crops are helping Indian farmers, not showing anything about how economics ties these farmers to American companies for ever, and the dangers that occur of these crops poisoning wildlife and spreading outside of the farms. When it comes to animal experimentation, the BBC has consistently toed the Government line that all protesters are violent thugs. When the current law change happened they had someone on from an organisation that has no links to violent animal rights extremists and on several occasions in quite a short interview Jeremy Paxman was asking him about whether they would disavow violence and each time he said yes but Paxman persisted as though he'd said no.

The issue is not so much that the BBC is 'too' left-wing or 'too' right-wing but that it is too reliant on the good graces and prejudices of the current (and in 1995-1996, the party that was obviously going to be the future) Government.

Finally, Mr Galloway Goes to Washington. The insane response, showing if you can't say anything intelligent just call a guy names. I don't like Galloway, certainly nowhere near as much as Diamond Geezer, who is one of his constituents but I can't deny he puts on a good show. He didn't do much in the 2001-2005 Parliament and this will probably be the website to keep an eye on to see whether he does more for his new constituency.

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