Looking Up the BBC's Knickers

Robin Aitken, 25 years a BBC reporter, takes a long look up the BBC's knickers and tells us what he finds in his new book - Can We Trust The BBC? A hint -- Mr. Aitken tells us in advance that the view is decidedly not pretty. I am waiting for his book to hit the bookstores.

From my own personal standpoint, I have great respect for the BBC and all that the organization does as a whole, but by the same token, I believe that the BBC News Division is a cancer on the U.K. - and everywhere else it is shown in the world. I can recall sitting in a flat outside London a few years ago, just before the Iraq War began, and having my jaw drop in disbelief at just how far left the BBC news was in what it chose to report and how it reported it.

What makes the BBC news division truly objectionable is that it operates without having to compete in the marketplace. All citizens of Britain fund it, and it operates distinctly to the left of center, expousing both directly and by omission, a firm belief in multiculturalism and related views. Unlike PBS in America, which has more then once been threatened with funding cuts when it has strayed even a little out of the political mainstream, the BBC is a monolith that operates without adult supervision. It has worked a sea change in driving Britain to the socialist and multicultural left in the past half century, and it has done so on the public tit. It has never been challenged. Perhaps that will change with Mr. Aitken's new book.

Although there is tremendous publicity in the U.K. surrounding this book, the BBC has put a lid on it, refusing to comment or grant an interview with its former reporter. As Mr. Aitken states, in an article on 18 Doughty Street:

Funny that not one of them seems to want to cross swords with an obscure reporter who has had the temerity to point out that the Corporation’s claim to impartiality is a Big Lie. And that if word was to get out about just how unfair, one-sided and biased most BBC programmes are there could be consequences. The Corporation’s cherished reputation might be irreparably damaged.

One can only hope that this leads to a groundswell at the grass roots level. In Britain of the past twenty years, it is not that there has been a silent majority of moderates and conservatives, it is that there has been a silenced majority. The first step towards normality in the U.K. involves, almost out of necessity, taking a very serious look at spinning off the BBC news division and letting it operate in the free market.