BBC Radio 4’s Today programme has been shedding listeners at an astonishing rate – over 800,000 in just a year. A hint as to why might have been on display earlier this week.
Discussing the Tory government’s crisis on Wednesday a commentator – unchallenged by anyone on the programme – told what’s left of its audience that a crisis was taking place, not because of the Tories’ incompetence and dishonesty or because Jeremy Corbyn has played a blinder in refusing to give Theresa May an escape route or easy target, but because ‘both parties are broken‘:
Labour has the largest membership of any political party in Europe. It surged during last year’s general election from twenty-five points behind in polls to within a whisker of government and has grown stronger still. And under Jeremy Corbyn it has brought the government to collapse and disarray.
Yet according to the BBC this week, it’s ‘broken’ – and the government crisis has simply happened as a consequence of Labour’s dysfunction as well as that of the Tories.
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I was very surprised to hear The Today Programme accurately report that Russia’s military budget is about the same as that of Britain and only about 10% or so of that of the United States. This was on Monday, I think.
You haven’t done the BBC real justice. It’s jaw dropping explanation as to why the Today programme lost 800,000 listeners was that there hadn’t been as much news of any great interest as there had been in the previous year.
And there was me thinking that things like Brexit , Russians releasing nerve agent all over the country and the continuing Trump fiasco to mention but a few might have stirred a bit of public interest.
Is that James Naughtie? If so, I believe he’s one of the few Labour supporters to have worked on Today. In one sense, he has a point, the Blairite/right rump of the PLP is not behind Corbyn and despite the brilliant job he’s been doing, if they manage to bounce him on Brexit, the party will be fucked, which is what some of them want. Every other social democratic party in Europe is dead or dying, which is why the Corbyn revolution is so important to keeping the Labour Party alive and why it must not fail.
One reason every other social democratic party in Europe is dead and dying is because they sided with the EU and capitalism, and against socialism. Watch out, Jeremy!
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Back in the 1960s Ralph Miliband in The State in Capitalist Society showed how the BBC was utterly biased in favour of establishmentian views in favour of capitalism. Spool forward to recent times and Tom Mills in The BBC Myth of a Public Service has shown how its business news operates as the Neoliberal Broadcasting Corporation.
Labour needs a policy and strategy for remedying BBC bias if/when we have a Labour government, otherwise we will just continue to moan about it for ever.
It’s really not worth getting so exercised by the BBC’s news output. I stopped listening to ‘Today’ and the rest a long time ago. Forget such, and there’s a lot more actually worth listening to. The establishment bent is long-standing in current affairs – it’s just part of the Westminster gang bang.
The aim should be to have a plan to create a frame of governance that supports real breadth and balance and severs political closeness. Then there is the question of dealing with the printed press and other media and its ownership.
… and don’t forget that there are contradictions within Labour that are unresolved. I have no problem with that being examined, because it is real and does impact on Brexit.. It’s the exclusion of certain points of view and the sloppy adoption of the gang bang narrative – as happened disgracefully with the ‘antisemitism’ scam – that is unacceptable..
RH, I think I will continue to get exercised by the BBC’s bias.
You never know, all that archived evidence of the BBC consistently subverting democracy to keep the Conservatives in government and the food banks and payday lenders thriving might come in handy sometime in the future.
…and this morning we have a Radio4 journalist describing Macron’s austerity as ‘necessary’. Time for us all to do our yellow vests!!!
In a way they are right; Labour has not got rid of the traitors, the Blairites who are going to make sure Labour is “broken” when they sabotage Labour government trying to implement it’s manifesto.
Biased Broadcasting Corporation degrades democracy!