Tuesday - July 21, 2009

BBC executive says corporation should foster ‘left-of-centre thinking.’ And Brits will pay as usual

A bit of a bru-ha this week.

First, folks (most I think) pay a license fee to the BBC which is govt. So this suggestion hasn’t gone down well with the right, what there is of it.

There are two articles of interest, one is two days old.  I didn’t think they had a great deal of interest for our American audience, or in fact anyone outside the UK.  At least not all on their own.  But there really is something to look at with the two.

A couple of days ago I read the following article.

Sarah Kennedy ‘spoken to’ by BBC for praising Enoch Powell during Radio 2 show

By Niall Firth
Last updated at 8:28 AM on 19th July 2009

Radio 2 presenter Sarah Kennedy has been chastised by the BBC for praising right-wing politician Enoch Powell during her show.

During her early-morning show on Wednesday, Kennedy, 59, described Powell as ‘the best prime minister this country never had’.

Enoch Powell was famously sacked from the shadow cabinet by Ted Heath in 1968 after his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech about the dangers of mass immigration.

A spokesman for the BBC said that the corporation had received 25 complaints by Friday and that the presenter had been ‘spoken to’ about the remark.

She said: ‘It was inappropriate for Sarah to offer an off-the-cuff political opinion and we have spoken to her and made that clear.’

DAILY MAIL

Ok, understood. Mustn’t be political and careful of off the cuff remarks. Even if they’re true. And most especially you bet, when the remark favors the right.
Mr. Powell has been gone for many years btw, and I really don’t think her remark should have brought 25 protests. Most likely from wimpy-weepy libtards and commies.

However, todays headline in the Telegraph has another story, not related directly to the one I’ve posted in the mail above.  But I find it telling anyway.
And think about this.  The TV license costs around $200 (in American terms) a year.
Oh wow. I can imagine the posts we’d get from people here at BMEWS were they made to pay for a TV license that leaned left.
Here, this is what I’m referring to.

BBC executive says corporation should foster ‘left-of-centre thinking’

A senior BBC executive has claimed that the corporation should foster “left-of-centre thinking”, leading to accusations of political bias from the Conservatives.

By Jon Swaine
Published: 7:00AM BST 21 Jul 2009

Ben Stephenson, the controller of BBC drama commissioning, said that the corporation should encourage “peculiarity, idiosyncrasy, stubborn-mindedness, left-of-centre thinking.”

According to its own royal charter, the BBC must “be independent in all matters concerning the content of its output”.

Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture secretary, said: “What Ben Stephenson said was a clear breach of the BBC’s impartiality obligations.

“No journalist or editor should be following a political agenda, let alone someone as senior as a controller.”

Mr Hunt said that he had written to Mark Thompson, the BBC Director General, “asking for an immediate retraction and apology”.

Peter Whittle, the director of The New Culture Forum, a right-leaning think tank, said: “The political slant in the non-news output of the BBC is for many harder to detect but is actually far more insidious and damaging in the effect it has on our cultural drift.”

Mr Stephenson made the comments in a newspaper article in which he responded to criticism from Tony Garnett, a television producer, who accused the BBC’s drama department of changing “in ways which have coarsened both it and wider culture.”

He wrote: “If we didn’t all think differently, have different ideas of what works and what doesn’t, wouldn’t our lives, and more importantly, our TV screens be less interesting? We need to foster peculiarity, idiosyncrasy, stubborn-mindedness, left-of-centre thinking.”

He later denied that he had meant the comment to have a political meaning.

“Like ‘left-field’, it is a phrase that I use with frequency when talking to the creative community to encourage them to develop and approach their ideas from a completely new perspective,” he said.

A BBC source said that executives believed that their casting of Boris Johnson, the Conservative Mayor of London, in an episode of EastEnders, proved that they did not have a left-wing bias.

Meanwhile, a report yesterday said that the licence fee should be shared with other broadcasters, because the BBC was failing to fulfill its public service remit.

The paper, by Frank Field MP and David Rees, argued that the licence fee should be put in the hands of a new independent commissioning body.

Broadcasters, including the BBC, would then pitch ideas for public service programmes to the body and be awarded funding accordingly.

BBC One, BBC Three, Radio 1 and Radio 2 should all be put up for sale, it added.

TELEGRAPH

Yeah. Left field.  But he didn’t say ‘left field.’ Did He?
BBC has no commercials and is supported by the license ppl pay.  If I ever watched TV, and honest, haven’t done that in five years and don’t miss it, I guess paying to avoid commercials isn’t a bad idea as ideas go.  But for us, there’s nothin on we want to see and so don’t watch. 

Posted by peiper     on 07/21/2009 at 08:22 AM   
Filed Under: • Television • UK •  
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