Monday, June 05, 2006
BBC coming to America
"In happier times, Americans' exposure to the BBC was limited to gems such as Fawlty Towers and Are You being Served? In future it will be no laughing matter."
The reasons Gerard Baker, currently of The Times of London and an employee of the BBC for 7 years, sees the recent launch of a 24-hour BBC news channel in the United States in serious terms extend beyond the publically funded levy-athan's privileged poll tax base, which Baker describes thusly:
" ... (W)hile the BBC funds some of its international coverage from commercial sources, its prestige and brand prominence owe entirely to its vast $5bn worth of public funding back home. ... paid for by a compulsory ... levy on every household in the UK (on pain of imprisonment for non payment)."
Despite the probable range of opinions amongst its financiers, BBC management, "accountable to (virtually) noone", seems convinced American news is one-sided and aims to introduce the saturated US news market to "both sides of the story", says Baker.
His former-insider account of what such BBC-style even-handedness entails merely confirms what is already obvious:
"BBC News is produced by a very large team of ideological confreres, who, with a very few exceptions ...:
" ... think ... roughly, that capitalism is some sort of conspiracy by evil men against the ordinary working stiff and that big government and higher taxes are the only route to a fair society, ... (and) that Europe is the acme of human civilization ... (I)f only Britain and America would emulate it (or in Britain's case, completely subsume itself within it) the world would be a much better place.
" ... declines to call Islamist terrorists terrorists because the word is a value-loaded one, but it never fails to pore in infinite detail over every "atrocity" committed by America or British forces in Iraq.
" ... thinks in any case that the war on terror was all got up by oil industry tycoons and clever neocons and that there is no real threat from violent political Islamism at all.
" ... believes passionately in equal rights for homosexuals, though of course it urges cultural sensitivity when dealing with countries where such "deviancy" is rewarded by execution."
