We need a People’s BBC
JVL Introduction
Like most readers of this blog, there have no doubt been many times when you’ve come away fuming with rage after watching or listening to some biased and prejudiced BBC programme.
As Debs Grayson says here, the BBC is deeply flawed. But it also plays a crucial role in UK public life, providing a range of cultural programming, children’s content, educational resources and support for minority languages that would never be provided by the market.
Because of that we need an alternative vision and the Media Reform Coalition has articulated just that in its recent Manifesto for a People’s Media.
This openDemocracy article outlines briefly what this would mean in practice – devolved, supportive, collaborative, independent, progressively funded, and more.
Media Reform Coalition/openDemocracy are organising a free live event tomorrow, Thursday 27th Jan at 5pm GMT – please join in by clicking here: What will be left of the BBC in 2028?
See also John Booth’s Defend the BBC despite its faults posted here a few days ago.
This article was originally published by openDemocracy on Wed 26 Jan 2022. Read the original here.
The UK government is right, the BBC is broken. Here’s how we fix it
We need a People’s BBC – free from government whims – with increased devolution, audience-elected senior roles, and a sliding-scale licence fee
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The BBC is without doubt the jewel in the crown of British broadcasting, giving us programs without incessantly trying to sell us gold, cremations or alarm systems etc. Where it falls down is on news and political discussion shows where more often than not there is a right wing bias, using either Tory or right wing Labour spokespeople and presenters. The BBC must be protected from the both the Tory Party, who believe it is not right wing enough, and an incompetent and overpaid management who forget that celebrities need the BBC and not the other way around.
We need to defend the real existing BBC, the one that the Tories are attacking, not some “fantasy island” one.
Anything else is a diversion from the task in hand.
Time to abolish the BBC. Its sole purpose is to prop up the establishment. Lord Reith like Churchill was a great admirer of Mussolini. Reith denied the TUC an opportunity to state its case in the General Strike of 1926.
New staff were vetted by MI5. Miners were abused in the strike of1980s. The way it portrayed the events of Orgreave is quite criminal. The smearing of Corbyn. No more chances. Flush this dreadful organisation into the sewer of history.
Terry R
At the age of nearly eighty I can say that I grew up politically and socially with a strong loyalty to the BBC. But there clearly is a problem with the issue of bias. This bias seems to be discernibly single- issue based rather than consistently ideological. Both Left and Right claim bias against themselves at one time or another. This bias occurs largely through the apparent inability of tv editors, and journalists to separate reporting from comment. I was quite shocked at the apparent bias against Jeremy Corbyn during that awful period of media and political (even within the Labour Party ) ‘shark attacks’ on both the person of Corbyn and what he stood for. I cannot claim that it was intentional by the BBC, but probably due to the modern tendency for everyone in the media desiring to be a ‘Personality’ . Journalistic and presentation discipline thus evaporates. If my memory serves me correctly an internal BBC enquiry eventually found a senior political journalist guilty of misrepresenting Corbyn. Finally, I switched channels and found ITV to be refreshingly different and far more professionally disciplined.
So, yes we do need a public broadcasting corporation, just not this one. This article points in the right direction for me.
Another direct tax (aka License Fee) & if you refuse to pay the ‘Liberal Left’ will put you in jail. The BBC is a political organisation & its chairman, Richard Sharp, donated £470K to the Tory Party just prior to his appointment, giving proof to another of the ‘Big Lies’ that the BBC is impartial; objective & independent. It’s charter suggests that its purpose is to inform, educate & entertain (Lord Reith) but its funding depends on gov’t patronage & by definition becomes its representative.
I would describe myself politically as a Socialist with a fear of powerful gov’t & big business. Local gov’t appears to be as corrupt as Central gov’t & powerful business interest groups are taking control of ‘independent media (see Rupert Murdoch). I take issue with many of the issues raised by Debs Grayson as powerful interest groups compete for a subsidised national PSB monopoly; be careful what you wish for.
At the moment the Beeb is between a rock and a hard place – under attack from the right and the left. It has always been conservative with a small “c” though until recently it has made room for some sparky left-wingers. The problem is that the anti-Beeb, lobby is using claims of bias as a stalking horse for commercialising the service, so that these claims will not go away however far the Beeb leans to the right. I agree the Beeb let the nation down over Corbyn, as did the Guardian.
As already said by Terry R. That blatant bias against Mr.Corbyn was SCREAMING from the screen, the Kuenssberg & others was SO upsetting, so wrong, so hurtful I stopped believing anything the BBC news had to say. Even now I cannot believe its news items.
The Tories want to remove the BBC, how strange, considering how far up the TORY governments backside the BBC reporters crawled up…..
It was a very very shameful time, a silence, a ban on videos when Mr.Corbyn was at a rally or meeting, thousands apon thousands travelled to see him, but it was only recorded by private phones & videos.
Unlike the Tory visits which were doctored to to make us believe big crowds where attending to see an abominable PM.
Continue with the DRAMAS & DOCUMENTARIES but leave the NEWS to REAL JOURNALISTS.
Think only of what the BBC should be
Everything worth having has been corrupted, first challenge is to clean out the stables then how you prevent it all happening again
JC has the integrity and the power to inspire millions, in the current climate a new party could be viable, offering a stark choice between the past and the future