The Bastardisation of the BBC
by Grouse Beater (Dec 2, 2014)
Did Sarah Smith, well-meaning presenter of BBC Scotland’s genteel political chatabout, ‘Scotland 2015,’ really trail her interview with retiring Gordon Brown as, ‘tonight, my interview with titanic Gordon Brown,’ when she meant titan?
If so, what Freudian slip of epic proportion. As it was, she gave him all the adulation he expected for selling out his country with the help of her employer, BBC.
‘Bastardisation’ is my creation but it conveys exactly a process over a number of years. In no special order: the complete discarding of integrity, the diminution of funds, the contraction of output, the withdrawal of decision-making to London, the sacking of talented staff in place of competitive submissions from freelancers and independent production companies UK-wide, the elevation of the second-rate, and the betrayal of a nation it purported to serve.
The BBC’s own respected Newsnight journalist, Paul Mason, felt so moved he went public on the reason for his resignation, his disgust at the way the BBC has turned itself into a purveyor of half-truths and deceptions. It deserves a paragraph all to itself. He tweeted:
“Not since Iraq have I seen the BBC working at propaganda strength like this. So glad to be out of there.”
Sarah Smith’s ‘Titanic’ was an unintentionally amusing moment, the only one, in a pathetic litany of despicable propaganda organised by the BBC to derail the result of the Referendum. As a former executive employee I am ashamed to have thought that place the apogee of a writer’s career. In fact, it is difficult to write about the BBC with any degree of impartiality and still hold back rage and disgust. The BBC proved itself a stalwart of Westminster ideology, a mouthpiece for the anti-democracy lobby.
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