Sunday, February 18, 2007

LISTEN WITH MOTHER

Fuck, I so hate the BBC and I hate everything it stands for.

Condescending, patronising, maternalistic, narrow-minded, London-centric, moralistic, pro-establishment - yet all the while pretending to be none of those things. And with the added chutzpah to demand inflation-busting increases in the mandatory annual licence fee, so that we, the peasants, have to pay for it all. Little old ladies and single mums that can't afford to, or anyone else who doesn't want it, will have their assets seized by bailiffs and get sent to gaol (how about a documentary on that, you bastards??). Sadder still are those so infantilised by Auntie Beeb that they feel gratefully compelled to defend its values and traditions - almost a form of Stockholm Syndrome.

Last night's BBC2 9/11 programme as part of its series on 'conspiracy theories' is a classic example of its underlying supercilious attitudes. Instead of using the enormous licence revenues it rewards itself in order to have an open-minded and balanced investigation into what happened, it was (after five years of wilfully ignoring this story) an all-too-predictably shallow exercise in picking holes in the arguments of those people who doubt the official explanations (who have a challenging enough job as it is to get official responses to their questions), at the same time asking us to accept the BBC producers' own implausible answers and conspiracy theories as some kind of gospel - all essentially in order to match some evidence to their own narrow Johnny-come-lately beliefs. And the commentary is in that classic preachy schoolmarm tone that is their trademark when we're supposed to be listening like attentive well-behaved children.

6 comments:

John McAndrew said...

So no more future appearances on Radio 1 for you then? What about referrals to articles on the BBC website? Or do you just mean their television service? Anyway...

What I really hate about the BBC is how dated the powers behind them are. A few years ago they were going to work towards putting their entire back catalogue of TV and radio online for viewers to watch and download. It sounded like a fantastic forward thinking idea full of potential, but like so many others they decided to riddle what programmes they put up with DRM, severely restricting what users could do with the footage. Terrible considering it's a supposed public service. There's a blog article here that mentions this here:

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/12/bbc_techies_talk_drm.html

And I really wish their online radio service was more like WFMU, where you could listen to programmes from their past without fear of it being swiped away from your hands in the space of a week. Not that many of their radio shows are that worthy of archiving, but still...

William Bennett said...

Yes, BBC producers could take note here http://www.apfn.net/pogo/A003I060823-am-c3.MP3 of some real journalism as the main Popular Mechanics stooge gets properly roasted. Though the States may be guilty of much of the worst, it shouldn't be forgotten in this backwater we call the UK that it also has the best.

lansig said...

The Power of Nightmares was an excellent series of films on 9-11, the neo-con project and the rise of the Islamists.

It was genuinely hard-hitting, aired on BBC2, prime-time. Note that since then, some American major networks have refused to broadcast the film:

lansig said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+power+of+nightmares&search=Search

William Bennett said...

I agree, Lansig, that was an excellent series and, to me, rather than the cure, it's all part of the BBC disease, of which John Peel was the classic example in the field of music - hence my Stockholm Syndrome analogy. Through small crumbs of comfort that we're thrown every now and again, we're encouraged to feel grateful for, and be apologists for, the BBC's entire reason for being.

William Bennett said...

interesting follow-up to this story: http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2007/270207bbcresponds.htm