British Broadcasting Corporation

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is the state-controlled public mouthpiece of the UK government. In the United Kingdom, there is no constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press analogous to the First Amendment in the United States. The BBC is the leading broadcaster in the UK and is the largest broadcaster in the world by audience figures, promoting the interests of globalism and Western military and economic alliances. It broadcasted a radio segment about Conservapedia on March 7, 2007 in England.

BBC was given a royal charter in 1927 as a public body; it took over the operations and infrastructure of the private, commercially run British Broadcasting Company, which began in 1922. The royal charter and license, constitute the BBC as a public corporation with a mandate to provide broadcasting as a public service. BBC is funded by an annual tax (which it calls a license fee) levied on the majority of UK residents owning a television set regardless of income. The BBC's monopoly on radio lasted from 1922 until 1973 with the introduction of commercial radio. It monopolized television from 1936 to 1954, when the Television Act allowed for the establishment of commercial stations financed by spot advertising.

The BBC is criticized for political bias by members of the Conservative Party for displaying particularly liberal ideology, and for being overly politically correct and overly supportive and selective in its coverage of the Labour Party. Likewise those in the Labour Party accuse it of having an inbuilt Conservative bias and being overtly hostile to the working class. Analysts have accused the numerous extremist links to this BBC indicates a possible propaganda media network connection to Islamic terrorist group Al-Qaeda. In general, the BBC succeeds in broadcasting material that have offended varying elitists, Conservatives, and Liberals alike. Princes William and Harry blame the deceptive and underhanded reporting methods of the BBC for the death of their mother, Princess Diana.

Broadcasting

The BBC operates eight national television channels (nine including the High-Definition service- BBC HD) in the UK and ten national radio stations. Alongside these are its regional television services, which are variations of the national services, and separate regional radio stations.

The BBC produces many well-known television programs, including The Ten O'Clock News, Newsnight, Question Time, Eastenders, Holby City, Casualty, Top Gear, Match of the Day, Have I Got News For You and Doctor Who. Another show it produced, Till Death Us Do Part, was adapted by American TV producer Norman Lear into the CBS sitcom All in the Family.

Its best known TV channels in the UK are BBC One (which began in 1936) and BBC Two (which first went on the air in 1964). The other channels are broadcast as digital-only services and are available to owners of terrestrial digital receiving equipment. BBC One typically shows more mainstream programs while BBC Two has a reputation for more diversity and special interest content.

Outside the UK the best known service is the BBC World Service radio network which transmits in 33 languages to an estimated weekly audience of 192 million, and its websites have an audience of 38 million people per week. The BBC operates a number of commercially funded international television channels including BBC World, the international news channel.

Funding

The BBC is a Crown corporation supported by a licensing fee applied to television owners of £145.50 (about $223 US) per year. All owners of TV receiving equipment are obliged to pay the fee whether they watch BBC content or not. As such the license fee is often correctly criticized as being a tax.

BBC programming is free of commercial advertising. However, it has some obligations to transmit statements by political parties and it advertises its own programs. BBC channels transmitted in the UK are nevertheless free of commercial advertising - with the exception of sporting events, during which it is still permitted to display commercial advertising. Cricket matches were a previous source of contention as adverts projected onto the field of play are only visible to television viewers. This results in much greater non-advertising broadcasting time and uninterrupted broadcast of feature films. However, since the funding is determined by the government, the BBC can be slow to criticize those in power. This arrangement means the government has to do very little to apply pressure on the BBC and often the BBC will self regulate in favor of the government without any formal instruction being given. This in turn leads to the government and the BBC being able to declare independence and neutrality officially, while in reality this is far from the case.

While there is a vocal minority campaign to privatize the BBC and change it back into a commercial company (as it had been prior to 1927), this appears highly unlikely to happen.

Ownership

The BBC is an independent body which is held in trust for the British people. The BBC was most recently given a ten-year royal charter in 2006 that defines its purposes and allows it to act somewhat autonomously, free from commercial and government influence.

Control rests with the 12-person BBC Trust, which replaced the Board of Governors in 2007. Trust members are paid and are appointed by the British prime minister and are supposed to represent the interests of a broad cross-section of the British listening and viewing public. Day-to-day management is handled by the board of management, headed by the director general; its members are appointed by the board of governors.

BBC News

BBC News and Current Affairs is the largest news organization in the world. It has at least 2,000 journalists and 44 news-gathering bureaus, three in the UK and 41 overseas. It produces some 120 hours of news broadcasts daily.

News programs are produced for both TV and radio stations. Much of the TV news programming is delivered in a few major news bulletins throughout the day, the most recognized of which is the flagship Ten O'Clock News in the evening on BBC One. On BBC radio, news is delivered in mostly smaller segments on the hour or half hour. However, the Today program on Radio 4 is broadcast from 7am to 9am and is often considered the most influential news broadcast in the UK.

News produced by the BBC is made available and archived on the BBC news website.

Internet

The BBC has a news and archive website, one of the top twenty most popular English language websites. Like its TV and radio broadcasting it is not allowed to show advertising if the site is viewed from within the UK. This has prompted some criticism from within the BBC as it means funds from the licensing fee used for the website are not available for TV and radio programming. However, some costs of the site are now, since late 2007, offset by advertising to non-UK based visitors to the site.

Competitors have also criticized the BBC website due to its ability to fund itself non-commercially without advertising to the detriment of its commercial competitors such as on-line versions of national newspapers and other news broadcasters such as Sky and ITN.

Accusations of bias

The BBC has a long history of being criticized for bias. As well as persistent criticisms of liberal bias, it also receives accusations of cultural bias, regional bias, political correctness, bias towards multiculturalism, Islamophilia and minority interests, as well as both pro- and anti-government bias.

The BBC is often accused of right-wing bias by those on the left and of left-wing bias by those on the right. This is sometimes attributed to UK governments of either persuasion simply objecting to negative reporting of its policies. However, it is also common for opposition to the government to be critical of the BBC. In some cases, the BBC can be subject to criticism from both sides citing bias in favor of their opposition, as in its reporting of the war in Iraq.

While the BBC had been accused of bias many times in its history, a liberal bias became prevalent during the reign of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, likely as a direct result of her government's efforts to streamline the corporation and make it more efficient. Before her reign, the BBC's overall ideology had fluctuated quite often between being pro-Conservative and pro-Liberal, mostly depending on which party was in power.

BBC, atheism and anti-Christian bias

See also: Atheism and the media and British atheism

The Daily Mail reported about Britain's influential broadcaster the BBC:

“

The BBC employs more atheists and non-believers than Christians, an internal ‘diversity’ survey has found. The new research has been seized on by critics who accuse the Corporation of bias against Christianity and marginalizing the faith in its output. The survey found that just 22.5 per cent of all staff professed to be Christians.

”

Bias against the U.S. and Israel

Although its charter requires it to be impartial, critics often accuse it of bias against United States and Israel. Because of these complaints of bias, an internal investigation was conducted on the BBC's coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict. However, after the investigation was completed, BBC officials decided to withhold the 20,000-word report of the investigation, compiled in 2004 by senior editorial adviser Malcolm Balen. Steven Sugar, a Jewish critic of the BBC, attempted to get access to the report under the 2000 Freedom of Information Act, but was denied by the High Court of England and Wales. The information commissioner, Richard Thomas, backed the BBC's decision to block access to the report, but the information tribunal ruled on appeal in August, 2006, in favor of Steven Sugar. Still, the BBC argued at the High Court in London that the tribunal did not have jurisdiction over the case, and the High Court ruled in favor of the BBC on April 28, 2007. The BBC maintains that the internal investigation found no deliberate or systematic bias. Conservative MP David Davies commented: "An organisation which is funded partly to scrutinise governments and other institutions in Britain appears to be using taxpayers' money to prevent its customers from finding out how it is operating. That is absolutely indefensible" and called the BBC's actions a "shameful hypocrisy". It has been estimated that the BBC has spent around £200,000 - £300,000 on the case so far.

In 2003, Media Tenor, an independent, Bonn-based research group, conducted a study and found that the BBC's Middle East coverage was 85 percent negative, 15 percent neutral, and 0 percent positive toward Israel.

During a 2006 internal "impartiality summit", BBC executives said they would happily broadcast an image of a Bible being thrown away, but would not do the same with a Koran. At the summit, the BBC's Washington correspondent Justin Webb also accused the executives of being anti-American, saying they treated the nation with scorn, derision and no moral weight.

However, some on the other side of the debate have criticized the BBC for a pro-Israeli bias. For example, the BBC has been criticized for refusing to show a Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for Gaza following the fighting in the region in December 2008 - January 2009. Russia Today, a news organization tied in with Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin, has also raised allegations of pro-Israel bias, in particular with regards to the interview of Israeli defense chief. An investigation went under way following allegations from pro-Palestinian activists.

It got so bad in 2021, with anti-Jewish attacks, ‘BBC’ ranked third, after Iran and Hamas, on Wiesenthal Center ‘top 10’ anti-Semitism list. Given the weight it has, that people trust it.

BBC inaccuracy on Israel expands even beyond just the Arab conflict. Enter, 2022 Ukraine war. Israel has been fast to supply aid to Ukraine. By Apr 13, 2022, it has sent 220 tons of humanitarian aid to Ukraine – the largest amount sent by any country except the U.S. Israel has also built a large field hospital inside Ukraine, run by Israeli medical personnel. Israel has welcomed tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees into Israel, including 25,000 non-Jews.

Yet, despite all this, some in the media continue to paint Israel as an ally of Vladimir Putin, “taking Russia’s side” and refusing to condemn its atrocities. A report on this attempt to sully Israel’s image at BBC:

Even as Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid this week charged Russian forces with war crimes following the apparent massacre in the Ukrainian city of Bucha, media outlets continue to manipulate their audiences into thinking that the Jewish state has turned a blind eye to Moscow’s reported atrocities.

For instance, during the BBC’s April 6 evening news broadcast, Clive Myrie, reporting from Kyiv, depicted Israel as a Russian “ally” in the war against Ukraine, akin to India.

The BBC like others, know better, know all about the delicate path Israel is forced to walk, so not to hinder, from Putin, its operations against genocidal Iran and via its Hezbollah thugs in Syria.

From a 2019 piece titled "How the BBC proliferates antisemitism in the UK"

In 2017, the BBC’s Yolande Knell promoted a story about a baby born in the Gaza Strip who died of congenital heart disease, and claimed that Israel had not given him a permit to exit the territory.

Yet, Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) said no such request had even been received from the Palestinian Authority. A similarly unverified and anonymous story was recently aired on one of the BBC’s domestic TV channels.

Last May, the BBC produced several reports claiming that a baby named Leila al Ghandour had died in the Gaza Strip after inhaling tear gas fired by Israeli forces. Although Hamas subsequently removed her name from its casualty list – and despite BBC Watch corresponding with the BBC since June 2018 on the issue – the claim that Israel was responsible for her death still appears on the BBC News website.

In Jan 2023, BBC tied itself in knots to avoid mentioning Israel in a piece about a woman in… Israel in Yolanda Knell's "report."

Bias against India

In February 2023 income-tax authorities of the government of India raided BBC offices in New Delhi and Mumbai, alleging that the foreign broadcaster was not in compliance with Indian law, and had indulged in tax evasion and diversion of profits.

The globalist conglomerate ran a series of docu-hit pieces on prime minister Narendra Modi to stir up internal ethno-religious discontent in India between Muslims and Hindus. Modi had refused Western efforts to blackmail the Indian government with threats of economic sanctions for not supporting NATO's war in Ukraine and publicly condemning Russian president Vladimir Putin. Contrarily, rather than participate sanctions against Russia, India increased its trade with Russia, buying Russian energy products that the European Union refused to buy.

Modi rose to national prominence in India in the wake of sectarian riots in 2004, and the BBC was attempting to incite intern-ethnic tensions and violence with a docu-series alleging Modi, as regional governor, had acted to heavy-handily against Muslim rioters. As a mouthpiece of Western and globalist interests, the BBC hoped to bring about a color revolution and topple the Modi government, in favor of a more compliant vassal state amenable to Western oligarchs.

Regional bias

The BBC is based in London, in the South East of England. It often faces accusations of being London-centric, with events in the North of England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland having a reduced profile. A perceived disproportionately private school education is often claimed to be illustrated in the output, with a disproportionate emphasis on private school events and sports. Recently, this London emphasis is shifting, with many high-profile BBC programs including Doctor Who being produced in Wales, and production of some programs and channels being moved to Salford in 2012.

It is also argued that the BBC also systematically discriminates against Scots speakers. Although over 1.5 million people speak it there is no service in the language of those licence fee payers. Supporters of the BBC and some linguists argue that the large number of regional dialects of Scots makes it no more viable to program for the language than it would be with English. In September 2008, the BBC launched BBC Alba, a Gaelic service consisting of a digital TV channel, a radio station and an online portal.

Liberal bias

Details of the BBC's liberal bias were further tabled in an official report – in preparation since 2005 – which found that the BBC:

• Has an "institutional Left-wing bias"
• Has "a tendency to 'group think' with too many staff inhabiting a shared space and comfort zone."
• Promotes anti-Christian sentiment
• Allows schedules to be "hijacked by special interest groups promoting trendy issues"
• Over-represents homosexuals
• Over-represents ethnic minorities
• Fails to reflect the views of the British public on issues such as capital punishment
• Fails to reflect the broader views of British people
• Fails to reflect concerns about pornography and family-unfriendly broadcasting (1960s Director General Hugh Carleton-Greene notoriously refused ever to meet broadcasting standards campaigner Mary Whitehouse and would commonly refer to her in opprobrious terms)
• Allows itself to be used by "sinister" campaign groups
• Finds it difficult to understand there may be alternative views of the world

Antony Jay, a former producer on Tonight, a nightly BBC current affairs television program, said the BBC News and Current Affairs are part of the "liberal media consensus". Jay also said his ex-colleagues "were anti-industry, anti-capitalism, anti-advertising, anti-selling, anti-profit, anti-patriotism, anti-monarchy, anti-Empire, anti-police, anti-armed forces, anti-bomb, anti-authority. Almost anything that made the world a freer, safer and more prosperous place, you name it, we were anti it." Paul Dacre, the editor of the British newspaper, the Daily Mail, in his January 2007 Hugh Cudlipp Memorial Lecture, said that "the BBC is, in every corpuscle of its corporate body, against the values of conservatism, with a small 'c', which just happen to be the values held by millions of Britons." He also accused the BBC of being hostile to the "traditional Right, Britain's past and British values, America, Ulster Unionism, Euro-scepticism, capitalism and big business, the countryside, Christianity and family values."

A survey of BBC employees with profiles on the Facebook site showed that 11 times more of them class themselves as "liberal" than "conservative". Its program Question Time has been accused of a liberal bias by hand picking its audience. However, David Dimbleby (the host of Question Time) was a member of the Bullingdon Club, alongside many senior members of the Conservative Party, e.g. Boris Johnson, George Osborne (Chancellor of the Exchequer) and David Cameron himself.

In 2017, BBC interviewed a left-wing Berkeley professor who made false claims regarding Breitbart News. Although the professor's claims were extreme, the BBC interviewer did not question any of his statements.

Bigotry

The terrible coverage of the BBC on the racist Islamic Malik Faisal Akram hostage taking of Jan 2022, proved again its 'serious issue with Jews.'

That's besides BBC admitting they shouldn't have put 'hostages' in quotes in coverage of Texas hostage siege.

The BBC was placed 3rd on Wiesenthal Center's antisemitism 2021 top ten list, (following only by Islamic fasistic Iran which also added a time frame for eliminating Israel and its nuclear program is the highest menace and genocidal Hamas not backing an iota of its genocidal charter and during Guardian of Walls---its barrage attack on civilians while using its own civilians to--make sure people die and its supporters spread hatred globally).

Explained:

The center criticized the BBC for falsely reporting that Jews attacked in London had made anti-Muslim slurs, and for hiring reporters who tweeted antisemitic posts. BBC reporter Tala Halawa was mentioned specifically for tweeting “Hitler was right.”

Note, BBC's fake reporting, is about the racist Islamic attack on religious students on Chanukah, accompanied by the Nazi salute while shouting free Palestine.

Racism

In its propaganda effort to promote war between the NATO and the Russian Federation during the 2022 Russia-Ukraine conflict, the BBC broadcast Ukraine’s deputy chief prosecutor David Sakvarelidze explaining why he was being very emotional as he was seeing “European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed everyday with Putin's missiles."

Climate change fluff

The BBC is heavily biased in favor of the Anthropogenic global warming theory. It has told staff that "you do not need a 'denier' to balance the debate."

Other

The BBC cancelled the commission for a 90-minute drama about Britain's youngest surviving Victoria Cross hero because it feared it would alienate members of the audience opposed to the war in Iraq.

The BBC funded a paintballing trip for men later accused of Islamic terrorism and didn't pass on information about the 21/7 bombers to police.

Pauline Neville Jones, who is a member of Britain's Conservative party, a former spy chief and former BBC governor, accused the BBC of "parroting" Al Qaeda propaganda to children.

While it is true that the BBC does display bias, private news institutions are also guilty of bias. For instance, Fox frequently supports the homosexual agenda and a recent Pew survey found that 71% of MSNBC's coverage of Romney was negative compared to 3% positive stories and the rest neutral.

History

From its inception in 1922, J. C. W. Reith, the first director-general of the BBC, envisioned the organization as an integral advocate of patriotism and the empire at home.

Second World War

From June 1940 to March 1941, the writer J. B. Priestley (1894-1984), broadcast a widely popular series of Sunday-night radio talks, 'Postscripts to the News.' He became the best known, most gifted, and probably most popular BBC commentator, for he had caught the mood of the British people during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. His forced departure was controversial and harmful to the BBC. Priestley blamed Prime Minister Churchill's negative reaction to his left-wing views on postwar reconstruction. Actually, his firing was mainly due to Ministry of Information and BBC reluctance to allow an extended forum to a 'demagogic' personality who might attract a personal following, as Father Coughlin had done in the United States in the 1930s. The upshot was employment of a wider range of speakers and careful avoidance of controversy.

The BBC played a major role in promoting the British Empire worldwide during The Second World War, 1939-45. The BBC became the voice of Britain, reflecting as well as constructing the nation's history, culture, and tradition. At first, the BBC worked aggressively to deflect criticism and insure that the Empire appeared as a source of strength. It presented British imperialism as a benefit to both Britain and the colonized areas. However, as the war progressed and postwar objectives became a concern, the focus of the BBC expanded to include the importance of maintaining Britain as an imperial power.

Special programs were directed to peoples controlled by the Nazis; listening to the short-wave broadcasts was illegal but widespread. The German-language Austrian Service was directed by Patrick Smith, who emphasized the 'separateness' of Austria from Germany and on 'freedom and independence' as the Austrian goal. As victory approached the BBC stressed the need for Austrians themselves to take part in their own liberation. There were interviews with Austrian prisoners of war held in Britain.

Until 1944, broadcasts by the BBC's Hungarian service avoided describing the plight of the Jews in Hungary for fear that it would create an anti-Semitic backlash against one of the few Jewish populations in Europe which, though persecuted, was still allowed to live. Shortly after the Nazi occupation of Hungary in March 1944 the rounding up and deporting of Jews to death camps began. For the next four months, until Hungarian regent Miklós Horthy suspended the deportations, the Hungarian service repeatedly broadcast news of the deportation of Jews and urged Hungarians to obstruct, delay, and hinder the deportations in the name of humanity and Hungarian patriotism. Altering BBC Hungarian service policies regarding the Final Solution would perhaps have done little to slow the Holocaust in Hungary. The BBC Home Service rarely mentioned the massacre of Jews for many reasons, including the restraints formally imposed by a government at war, the notions that such reports simply would not be believed (or, being incomprehensible, written off as propaganda) or might spur a latent anti-Semitism, and the fact that people were not interested in gloomy stories but wanted to hear about the war effort.

Cultural Impact

Monopoly years

As the only TV broadcaster until the mid 1950s and only radio broadcaster until the mid 1970s, the BBC had a monopoly hold on British electronic media. As such its content was highly influential.

'Children's Hour', begun in the late 1920s, was intended as a medium for democracy and the production of exemplary citizens through the dissemination of idealized middle-class values. In time, this approach proved to be out of touch with the listening habits and working class context of many 'Children's Hour' listeners.

Music broadcasts for schools were begun in 1924, and did much to disseminate new ideas, especially through 'music and movement' programs and the enormously popular 'Singing Together' during the Second World War. However, the more formal programs, designed to teach the rudiments of music and notation, were less successful, and Sir Walford Davies's idea of tune building by children was abandoned in 1934. Radio's ability to teach music formally appeared severely limited, and serious doubts as to its precise function in relationship to music teachers were constantly voiced and never answered.

Scottish broadcasters forged a unique and specifically Scottish tradition of radio programming in the 1920s, led by the Aberdeen studies of the BBC. However its role was weakened by a policy of centralization in London after 1932. Radio drama based on collaboration with local theatre companies was especially strong, included much original work, and made a major contribution to the development of professional theatre in Scotland. The centralization of radio broadcasting in London reflected the shift in the organization of the British state toward greater involvement in the everyday lives of its citizens during the interwar years.

Competitive years

Since the late 1970s the BBC, while exposed to high volumes and variable quality of competition, has remained popular with the British public and its cultural influence is still a major force. The BBC is considered the default choice by many when viewing major events such as breaking news or state occasions, even though competitors may be broadcasting the same content.

The BBC has had enormous influence over British attitudes to not just politics but also comedy, multiculturalism, travel, natural history, international culture, popular trends, fashion and even the way the British speak. Through its foreign broadcasts on the BBC World Service, it has also had significant cultural influence outside the UK.

See also

• Alan Partridge
• Abdel Bari Atwan

External links

• BBC official site
• BBCresistance - Campaigns against the television licence
• Bias at the Beeb - official, June 17, 2007, UK Times Online.
• Biased BBC

Bibliography

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  • Briggs Asa. History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom: Volume III: The War of Words (1995) excerpt and text search
  • Briggs Asa. The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Volume IV: Sound & Vision (1979)
  • Briggs Asa. History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom: Volume V: Competition (1995)
• Crisell, Andrew An Introductory History of British Broadcasting. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. (2002)
• Nicholas, Siân. The Echo of War: Home Front Propaganda and the Wartime BBC, 1939-45. (1996) 307p.
• Hickman, Tom. What Did You Do in the War, Auntie? The BBC at War, 1939-45. (1995) 224p.
• Scannell, Paddy, and Cardiff, David. A Social History of British Broadcasting, Volume One, 1922-1939 (Basil Blackwell, 1991).
• Smith, Anthony, and Richard Paterson. Television: An International History (1998) excerpt and text search