"Four legs good, two legs better!"

You will remember that line from Animal Farm.  But do you remember this line?  “Cuts are never good, state intervention is always good".  No, I thought you wouldn’t.  I don’t either.  But then maybe it was in 1984.  No, not there either.  But it is a good line all the same and it reflects a still present view in some of the media.  Which is all well and good if it’s the Daily Record, Daily Mirror, The Guardian or Sky.  Privately owned media outlets.  We know where they stand and choose, or not, to buy their paper or media streams.  It’s not so good if it’s the licence funded broadcasters or the other publicly owned organisations like Channel4. 

Now I don’t believe this silly stuff about their infiltration by socialist and specifically Labour Groupthink. But it is difficult not to see there has been a problem.  Partisan?  Possibly.  Badly judged?  Almost definitely.  Why?  Because the culture that has existed in the BBC seems to have drifted to a shared ideology with Labour - "cuts are never good, state intervention is always good".  Perhaps they fear, because the public is the key funder of the BBC, it too is in line for “cuts”.    I actually do believe that BBC is an excellent organisation that produces world class stuff.  But it shouldn't be exempt from the effort to put the UK back on a sane fiscal footing than any other taxpayer funded activity.  Just look at Greece this morning and think of what we could have been like.

But I’m not sure your money and mine should be going to fund a Press Office that, within a day, is sending out what effectively is a briefing note against the new Culture Media and Sport Secretary. 

But perhaps it's no surprise.  Take one screen shot from the BBC web site on 27^th April.  

Labour’s lines and policies feature prominently and are completely unquestioned.  The only mention of the Tories links back to an ancient story about a Cameron speech given on 14 April.  Or another screen shot a few days earlier.   

 

See a pattern? 

Now I’m really not so sure it really is a plot by the BBC to go against everything a non-Labour government does as some conspiracy theorists would argue.  I think it’s just a lazy culture that has been allowed to grow over the years.  They employed like-minded people.  It’s the easiest way to recruit.

Peter Sissons in his autobiography, wisely penned after he'd retired, commented that he wouldn't call it a bias so much as a mind-set.  And that, in the BBC newsroom, you'll see any number of copies of the Guardian and the Independent floating around, but rarely a Telegraph.  He recalled the times he arrived to work when there was some major new story developing.  Asking for a briefing he would be handed a Guardian and told, "It's all in there. "

That's the core of the BBC's problem.  And they are going to have to sort it out very quickly before John Whittingdale does it for them.