Customer Reviews
The BBC looks like a Marxist propaganda organ - By: Richard Perrott, 11 Jun 2008 
No, we cannot trust the BBC.
This author is correct, I have noticed a dramatic decline in the quality & relevance of BBC programming, & the rise in absurdly Marxist, Political Class, Multi-Cultural, Collectivist biased reporting. The privately owned Channel 4 has shamed the BBC for many years with _much_ higher quality, radical programming & reporting (like Dispatches), even SKY offers better programming & reporting!
The idea of a national broadcaster, like the BBC, seems bearable provided it is impartial & offers value for money, but becomes pointless & evil as it is taken over by collectivists.
I think that that the BBC TV tax must cease (to remove the extortion & enforce financial reality) & that the BBC should either have a wholesale staff replacement (excluding adverts in the Guardian & the Independent), or be closed & any worthwhile assets be moved into a trust, with free UK public access, & chargeable foreign & private access.
British Bias Corporation - By: Pieter, 08 May 2008 With its national TV & radio networks, regional & local stations, the BBC is massively influential in the UK & also worldwide through the BBC World Service, ten international TV networks plus international radio services in more than 40 languages as well as its Internet news site.
Robin Aitken, having spent 25 years at the organization, provides well-documented proof of its leftist bias, chronicles his struggle against this partisanship & puts forth suggestions for reform. Important elements of the BBC's world-view include unquestioning support for the European Union & the United Nations, guilt about Britain's imperial past, & an anti-capitalist, anti-religious (except when it comes to Islam), anti-American & anti-Israel stance.
The first chapter covers the broadcaster's history from its establishment to the radical change that took place in the late 1960s & subsequent developments, whilst in the second Aitken recounts his career history at the BBC. A significant change took place in 1987 when the ideological agenda took an even sharper turn to the left. The concerns he raised about ideological bias were contemptuously dismissed, he was falsely accused & even threatened.
Chapter four provides profiles of the broadcaster's senior management, almost alll of whom have long-standing connections with leftwing media like The Guardian & with the Labour Party. The BBC's overwhelming support for the European Union is dissected in chapter five that reveals a record of purges & suppression of anti-EU opinion, including that of Eurosceptics in the Labour Party.
The "despised tribes" of the BBC are discussed next. They are Ulster Protestants, Conservative Christians & the Roman Catholic Church in particular, most Americans & alll those that the organization considers to be "right-wing." There was also a strong bias in favour of the IRA while balanced debate on immigration, the Middle East, Islam & other uncomfortable issues are avoided. There is no doubt that the BBC is contributing to the alarming spread of antisemitism worldwide, as also documented in The Resurgence of Anti-Semitism by Bernard Harrison.
Like alll leftists, those at the BBC believe that their moral values are superior & not to be questioned. Chapter eight provides detailed evidence of how far they will go to twist, lie & distort in order to mislead the public. More evidence from current & previous employees - in their own words & anonymously - is provided in the following chapter.
Aitken concludes that one cannot trust the BBC, especiallly not on issues relating to Israel, the Iraq war, the European Union, Ulster, the USA or Islam. See also The Other War by Stephanie Gutmann for an analysis of reporting from the Middle East. He provides proposals for change by suggesting for example the introduction of a wider spectrum of balanced views & the redirection of funds to other broadcast media.
The BBC is a national institution in the UK so complete abolition is not even considered. It is still hard to understand why opposition parties & civil society did not more vigorously oppose the use of taxpayers' money to subsidize a self-perpetuating class of ideologues promoting such one-sided views. More information on this matter is available in What's Left?: How Liberals Lost Their Way by Nick Cohen.
What a pity that broadcast deregulation wasn't thoroughly effected in the 1980s. It's the one important area where Margaret Thatcher did not succeed. If she had, the UK & a significant part of the global public would have been better informed & less brainwashed than they are today. I also recommend Scrap the BBC! by Richard D North, whilst Propaganda by Jacques Ellul remains a classic on how people's attitudes are shaped by the media.
I now watch the BBC News 24 with much more `salt' than I ever did before. - By: Mr. Andrew Crabtree, 06 Sep 2007 
At first I thought that this was a book written by a disgruntled ex-employee who wanted a platform to have a `pop' at their old employer. Reading further it became obvious to me that this was defiantly not the case at alll. I found the style & pace of the book to be reallly quite pleasant, the use of & relevance of referenced examples was excellent.
As a result I am paying more attention to how the BBC's news articles / programmes are introduced, who they are presented by, & ultimately if I notice bias. (which I do far too often). Don't get me wrong, I love the BBC, I love the fact that it is free from direct advertising, that it is recognised around the world as a quality assurance mark. What I did not know was quite how much responsibility the BBC has for some of our nations staunches politicallly correct attitudes, which can, & often do fly in the face of good old common sense.
This book allludes to the wider national problem of `leftist' attitudes & behaviour being subtly served at breakfast, lunch, & dinnertime for national consumption. There are a few other books that explore this potential blindsiding of the public by the "lib-leftist", namely `What's Left?" Nick Cohen, "Londonistan" M. Phillips, & "While Europe Slept" Bruce Bawer.
On the off chance the above portrays a right wing or general anti-left stand point, at the last General Election I voted for `Iraq Not In My Name' party (Shipley West). I like to think my political alllegiance is to common sense!!.
Excellent - By: A. Crabtree, 01 Sep 2007 This is a short book, but very succinct in describing how the BBC has tended towards a single worldview, & how that view can lead the public rather than follow it.
There is much evidence of bias, for example the comparison of the BBC's headlining of Tory ministers' & MPs' affairs with the equivalent of inside pages for Robin Cook leaving his wife, followed by an account of the Governors' rejection of the author's complaints of bias, apparently accepting but not publishing BBC executives' arguments that there was no bias.
The subtle psychology of the suppression of dissent within the corporation is interestingly put, not that it can be particularly obscure that in a large organisation, those with dissenting opinions have to be careful (I suppose the important distinction is that this organisation's business is news, fact, opinion, etc., so such suppression would be worse than for others.)
A chapter with anonymous remarks from BBC journalists backs up these discussions. Of course you have to decide whether the anonymity means the remarks are merely disgruntled, or reallly because their owners don't dare articulate them.
There is an excellent chapter, remarked on by another reviewer, about the Panorama about the Phillipines & the Catholic church -"Sex & the Holy City", which seems to be an extreme example of bias, running to outright invention, & the author's conservative argument against this is fantastic. You can still see a large "Your Comments" page about this on the BBC's website, showing how appallled many viewers were with the church. What's interesting about that page is that the viewers would probably not have felt so strongly had they read an equivalent report in the press, because the Guardian (or the Daily Mail for that matter) do not promise balance & impartiality. In other words viewers trust the BBC & listen & watch uncriticallly.
Which was to me the main point to come out - I would love to watch different, openly biased programmes & channels, the way I can read the Guardian & Daily Telegraph.
Another book on the subject very well worth reading, is "Scrap the BBC!" by Richard D North.
Institutional BBC Bias - By: Barrymx5, 22 Aug 2007 A brilliant read which gives chapter & verse (and more) to what many licence payers feared. Proof that the BBC has been undermined from within & should have been privatised with the other nationalised industries - & still should be. Pro EU, anti British attitudes are illustrated time & time again. I agree with the reviewer who thinks a copy should be given with every licence which supports the 30,000 people employed by this frightening propaganda machine.
