Power without responsibility...

With around three quarters of it's main news bulletins currently devoted to every detail of the 'evil empire' that is apparently destroying our freedoms and everyday life, the BBC relentlessly attacks an eighty year old Australian businessman as if he is responsible for every sin committed by staff on one of his many papers between 2000 and 2007.

The News of the World may well have been involved in phone hacking along with many other British tabloids - and who knows, maybe a few broadsheets as well - and no doubt the CPS will in time prosecute those responsible. And quite rightly many will end up in prison. But the BBC coverage has gone much further than that. This is plainly an attempt by one broadcaster to destroy a rival. The BBC has clearly shown tribal jealousy and partisan hatred for Murdoch and his businesses without widening its coverage when it has clearly been shown that such appalling behaviour has been widely practiced across the British tabloid press.

The BBC has by some margin, neglected it's responsibilities as the dominant national broadcaster in covering important news stories that effect ordinary people over the last two weeks - Obama and US deficit default, the potentially disastrous consequences of Euro problems spreading to Italy, the deepest and most severe drought affecting millions in East Africa... I could go on. Any one of these stories could have consequences for Britain which illegal phone hacking at a tabloid newspaper in order to gain titillating stories over three years ago, is unlikely to have.

This is not how a national broadcaster - funded entirely from a compulsory licence fee - should operate. At best the BBC could be said to have been misguided in pursuing a narrow and partisan political agenda being set by a left-wing newspaper and the Labour party - the parties who have felt most hurt by the views expressed in the News of the World.

At worst, the BBC has malignly used its enormous and highly monopolistic power, to destroy a rival broadcaster without being held to account for the consequences for freedom of expression, pluralism of provision or indeed basic fairness. Murdoch has rightly been criticised for the way in which its papers have allegedly conducted themselves in persuit of bigger and better scoops - using power without responsibility. The BBC is now doing exactly the same. The difference, is that we can choose not to buy Murdoch's offerings. The BBC uses its power in our name.

Is the BBC a threat to plurality & independence?

State-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision, which are so important for our democracy claimed James Murdoch to widespread derision from the mainstream media in his MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival in August 2009. Today we might begin to understand what he meant.

Right across the BBC - numerous TV channels, more than thirty radio stations & volumes of online content - the agenda continues unabated: who will rebel against the government on tuition fees? And you would be forgiven for thinking that the outcome will alter all our lives irrevocably for the worse. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Ordinary people up and down this country think it's a no-brainer. Students, who benefit enormously from a degree qualification and will be earning over £21,000 before they are asked to pay something back, should shoulder a greater amount of that cost than the low paid. The low paid of course, currently pay for that degree and will never have the opportunity to earn that amount in their lifetime. Its called fairness, and its about time the BBC began to reflect what ordinary people think. Not just the sectional interests of a small but vociferous minority which fits their way of thinking.

A year ago at the Copenhagen climate conference, an army of correspondents dominated news bulletins reporting every last disagreement and suggesting that without an agreed outcome, the world would come to an end. A year later in Cancun, the BBC report nothing. Nothing on climate change that is. Only that Chris Huhn might vote against tuition fees. From Mexico.

Could this have anything to do with the coldest winter for 30 years and records showing no global warming has occured over the last 15 years despite increasing levels of CO2 emmissions?  No? That's just 'weather' not 'climate' right? Or is it just another example of editorial group-think? Similar to the much-criticised group-think amongst bankers that led to the greatest financial disaster for sixty years?

The power of the BBC is enormous. Its involved in every major area of our lives, setting the environment in which events are reported, discussed and decided upon. We need to be constantly questioning whether the BBC is reporting news in an unbiased and honest way. Or does it have an agenda set by group-think? Is it involved in a form of social engineering for its own sectional interests?

Balance & the BBC

What have the following people in common?

BBC Director General Mark Thompson, Labour shadow Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, a left wing lawyer defending Neil McKinnon against US extradition & latterly taken on by WikiLeaks and finally, Annie Lennox, UN campaigner for AIDS in Africa?

They were all guests on The Andrew Marr show this morning.

No political bias there then...

By the left

Charles Moore - chairman of the innovative think-tank Policy Exchange - talks of the BBC's coverage of such organisations in his column for this week's Spectator:

It has three descriptions of think-tanks. One is 'respected'. This is only ever applied to a think-tank which tends to the left and represents the producer interest, such as the King's Fund. The second is 'independent'. The third is 'right-leaning' (the phrase 'left-leaning' is never used). If a report by Policy Exchange finds favour with the BBC, it is called 'independent'. If it is disapproved of, it is 'right-leaning'. One is not allowed to be respected, independent and right-leaning.

Hypocrisy and the BBC

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner argues on the six o'clock that most muslims live in 'authoritarian regimes' around the world and cannot therefore understand why the US government does not intervene (as their own regime undoubtedly would) and stop pastor Terry Jones from burning the Qu'ran in Florida.

No arguments are presented for the rule of law, democracy, freedom or individual conscience as we should expect from an unbiased media organisation. Once again the BBC uses its poverty of aspiration to justify appeasement and hypocrisy in the name of cultural relativism.

All we need do apparently is 'understand' islam and all will be well.

You've had the cowboys, now try the Indians...

I can't believe I've just heard Laura Kuenssberg - BBC Chief Political correspondent - saying on the 6 o'clock that honesty in foreign relations is part of the new politics and - by implication - very little to do with the old.

Cameron is apparently "determined to persue this new 'frank' style abroad - honesty he believes is the best foreign policy".

She obviously doesn't realise the forces of anger, hatred and deceit left office on 6th May...