On Summer Solstice 2014 thousands of people joined the People’s Assembly National Demonstration against the austerity measures introduced by the UK’s ConDem coalition government. The organisers’ estimate of the number of people walking from the BBC’s New Broadcasting House to the Houses of Parliament was 50,000. A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police confirmed there were no arrests, but refused to provide an estimate of the numbers joining the protest.
Given the positive and peaceful nature of the protest, I wasn’t surprised the Met tried to play down its impact. And I’d have been astonished if it appeared in the Sunday Mail as anything more than the solution to one across in the quick crossword. Perhaps more surprising was the fact that I sat through several BBC news bulletins that contained no mention of the event, and came across no reference to it on the BBC Website.
Why? It wasn’t an issue of geography: the march set off from the doorstep of the London-centric ‘beeb’. It wasn’t the lack of the now mandatory ‘hook’ of high profile participants: speakers included Russell Brand, comedian Mark Steel, Question Time contributor Owen Jones and Green MP Caroline Lucas.
For me, this was yet another example of the BBC’s bias and increasingly alarming tendency to set a news agenda supportive of the austerity strategy implemented by the ConDem government. So I logged a complaint under the category of ‘bias’ via the website and this was the response:
BBC Complaints – Case Number CAS-2768707-QDZ9DV
Jun 25 (2 days ago)
Dear Mr Hedgecock
Thanks for contacting us about coverage of the People’s Assembly anti-austerity demonstration on 21 June.
We understand you feel there was insufficient coverage of this demonstration by BBC News.
We have received a wide range of feedback about our coverage of this story. In order to use our TV licence fee resources efficiently, this general response aims to answer the key concerns raised, but we apologise in advance if it doesn’t address your specific points in the manner you would prefer.
Your concerns were raised with senior editorial staff at BBC News who responded as follows:
“We covered this demonstration on the BBC News Channel with five reports throughout Saturday evening, on the BBC News website on Sunday, as well as on social media. We choose which stories we cover based on how newsworthy they are and what else is happening and we didn’t provide extensive coverage because of a number of bigger national and international news stories that day, including the escalating crisis in Iraq, British citizens fighting in Syria and the death of Gerry Conlon.
We frequently report on the UK economy and what it means for the British public. We also reflect the concerns of people such as those demonstrating, and others who hold opposing views, across our daily news output on TV, radio as well as online, and we also explore them in more depth including in our political programming and current affairs investigations, debates on ‘Question Time’ and during interviews and analysis on programmes such as ‘PM’ and ‘Newsnight’. Inevitably, there may be disagreements over the level of prominence we give to stories, but we believe our coverage of this subject has been fair and impartial.”
We hope this goes some way to explaining our position, and thanks again for taking the time to contact us.
Kind Regards
BBC Complaints
I was disappointed by the generic nature of the reply and deeply insulted by the Corporation’s assumption I was daft enough to accept it.
In their book Manufacturing Consent, Edward S Herman and Noam Chomsky, produce a detailed analysis of the way governmental and corporate elites manipulate public opinion and control the news agenda. The mass media, they say, are:
“… effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system of supportive propaganda function by reliance on market forces, internalised assumptions, and self-censorship, and without significant coercion.”
Manufacturing Consent, 1994, Vintage, p. 306
But the beeb can’t be a mouthpiece for propaganda can it? Not ‘Auntie’, not the trusted institution that brought us Our Friends in the North, Boys from the Blackstuff, Not Only But Also, I’m Alan Partridge, Arena, The Old Grey Whistle Test, The Singing Detective, The Ascent of Man, Fawlty Towers and Life on Earth?
The corporation’s golden age is over – there were many more serious dramas broadcast 30 years ago and the documentaries were edgier – but the real issue is one of trust rather than quality. And the most significant area of concern is news, current affairs and political journalism. Let’s just look at a key example of balance in that response. A typical Question Time panel consists of someone from the pro-capitalist Labour right, two representatives of the coalition government (a Tory and a LibDem), a rightwing celebrity or business leader and, of course, the BBC’s favourite politician, Nigel Farage of UKIP. Farage has been a panellist no fewer than 25 times – only the programme’s presenter David Dimbleby has appeared more frequently.
The perspective offered in Question Time, Any Questions, Newsnight and the PM programme is based on a very narrow set of ideological assumptions – there’s an underpinning ‘common sense’ belief that we all adore the royal family, admire the self-serving and exploitative antics of business buccaneers such as Richard Branson, see less successful and needy people as ‘scroungers’ and believe any objection to Jeremy Clarkson’s serial racist outbursts to be ‘political correctness gone mad’.
We are occasionally allowed to hear a genuine voice from the left, to enable ‘Auntie’ to pat herself on the back for her tolerance. Owen Jones, Mark Steel, Caroline Lucas, Professor David Harvey and Russell Brand have used their airtime to present cogent and compelling ideas, but whatever they say tends to be framed by a mainstream, pro-coalition message.
Complaining to the BBC is a disheartening business – I do it about four times per year and the outcome is always similar. For example, I complained about an uncritical radio interview with David Cameron during the 2012 Olympics, in which the PM took the opportunity to reinforce the idea the UK was recovering from a dire economic mess caused by Labour policies rather than the behaviour of bankers. And yet the lack of challenge was appropriate, I was told, because the interview was in the context of celebrating a sporting event. There was no need for a balancing interview with the opposition for the same reason.
In 1926 Lord Reith, a dyed-in-the-wool Tory and a horrendous snob, fell out with Stanley Baldwin’s Conservative government by trying to report all points of view, without comment, during the General Strike. He even tried to allow right of reply to the Government by the Labour opposition. Reith lost the argument and BBC coverage of the strike drifted in a pro-government direction. At least Reith stuck his head over the parapet: I can’t imagine Tony Hall locking horns with Cameron in similar circumstances.
We’re funding our own oppression. The BBC uses part of our license fee payments to finance a propaganda machine designed to preserve the institutions, certainties and class divisions of the UK. There’s no simple solution: decamping to the BBC’s main current affairs rival, Sky News, isn’t an attractive option. But there are alternatives out there, not just the insightful Paul Mason on Channel 4, but a host of websites from which we can come up with a triangulated view of reality.
One thing is for certain: we can’t rely on ‘Auntie’ with her blinkered worldview and her inertia inducing certainties.
Andy Hedgecock
June 2014
