Babies and bathwater: this government needs to tackle BBC bias head on rather than fiddle about at the edges

Sorry to return to the subject of the BBC so soon – but it’s in the news a lot these days. The thing that’s starting to worry me is that the government - let alone everybody else with skin in this particular game - has already got itself in a muddle about what the object of their review is. Is it about creating a level playing-field for commercial broadcasters and websites? Is it about making sure old folk don’t have to pay? Is it about the alarming spread of BBC services on an unsustainable plethora of fronts? Is it about establishing a funding model in line with the reality of the rest of the modern media landscape? Is it about making sure people only pay for the bits of the BBC they use?

It’s actually about none of these things. Fundamentally, it’s about the corporation’s inherent political bias. The current Tory government wants the BBC to stop pumping out anti-Conservative left-wing propaganda via its news, current affairs, comedy and drama programmes.  That’s it. Everything else is of secondary importance.

Obviously, as someone who is to the right of this government on every single issue, I am thoroughly in favour of curbing the BBC’s ability to pump out its relentess politically correct, dirigiste, high tax, high spend, anti-“Austerity”, pro-EU, pro-Green, pro-immigration, anti-Monarchy, anti-Christian, pro-gay, culturally relativist, pro-public sector, pro-Big Government message. Roughly half of the electorate doesn’t share the BBC’s views on some or all of the above issues. Why should half of all license-fee payers stump up £145.50 a year each just to hear their opinions mocked or ignored altogether? The result of the general election was as much a rejection of the BBC’s policies as it was of the Labour Party’s.  The argument that the BBC doesn’t have policies is, of course, nonsense – by a process which is mysterious to both insiders and outsiders alike, the corporation has come up with a more clearly-defined set of policy positions than any major political party. (Test yourself – name any issue, and tell me you can’t instantly identify the BBC’s line on it.)

Because no government can state this truth baldly, it inevitably ends up seeking to revenge itself in other ways. I’m not saying that these other routes aren’t valid in their own right, or that the suggested changes aren’t perfectly justified – it’s just that they don’t address the central issue, which is that the BBC – by a country mile the single largest and most influential provider of news and opinion in the UK - is utterly, screamingly, 100% left-wing, and that it has spent decades distorting Britain’s political landscape and the attitudes of its people to an alarming extent. The very fact that we have a majority Conservative government and that UKIP polled almost four million votes in May bears heartening testament to the sheer bloody-mindedness of the British people (the utter uselessness of Labour – the BBC’s preferred political party – helped, obviously).

The main problem for the Culture Secretary, John Whittingdale, is that there’s no obvious way of curbing the BBC’s rampant bias without turning the corporation into the worst kind of state broadcaster, reading out government press releases and burying bad news (although quite of a bit of this went on when Blair was in power – not exactly Auntie’s finest decade). But the least – the very least – Whittingdale could do is compile a video file containing the very worst examples of bias, and give the BBC a chance to answer the charges against them on camera, in public. I’d be happy to compile it. It would contain some of Home Affairs Editor Mark Easton‘s reports, a variety of jaw-droppingly awful lowlights from Newsnight, almost any edition of The News Quiz, choice selections from the Today Programme, slices of Victoria Derbyshire on the News Channel, chunks of John Piennar and Norman Smith, Andrew Marr continually interrupting David Cameron during the election, snippets from the laughably one-sided Question Time, examples of John Sopel’s slavishly pro-Obama misreporting from America, Jeremy Bowen (and many others) constantly sticking it to brave little Israel in the Middle East, and almost anything uttered by the ghastly Robert Peston with his ridiculous drawling delivery and his stupid fucking hair-do. There’s tons more to show, of course, but that little lot should be enough to start the ball rolling.

At the same time, Whittingdale could ask the Labour Party to come up with examples of BBC right-wing bias. (Good luck with that, lefties!)

To be honest, I’m not sure such an exercise would make a difference, given how blind the BBC is to its own lack of balance: let's face it, any broadcaster which claims to be politically balanced while pumping out Newsnight has lost touch with reality. But at least it would be fun listening to the BBC’s excuses.  I’m sure it doesn’t need me to tell John Whittingdale that hobbling the BBC by, for instance, severely reducing the licence fee (while not in itself a bad idea) would do absolutely nothing to diminish its ability to broadcast socialist propaganda by the shedload to the majority of Britons. If the Tories genuinely want things to change, they’ll have to tackle the issue of bias head on. I sincerely hope they succeed.