Steyn on the Monolith that is the Beeb

A new book is out by Robin Aitken who is described as a British version of Bernie Goldberg—a man who has seen a system he worked in for a quarter century evolve into an ideological behemoth. Aitken, like Goldberg and ABC, was a long-time employee of the BBC and his book "Can we Trust the BBC?" was eagerly snapped up by the able hands of Mark Steyn, journalist to the world to help me confirm what I have long held. Not to tell you other than what the spice Girls are up to this week or how the pound is fairing against the dollar.

The graphs below are from the Saturday WSJ (sub. req.) are lovingly crafted by Mark Steyn with his signature sarcastic wit. He had me from the first comment: "Despite the 24/7 quagmire wallow of CNN International (which makes CNN domestic look like the Michael Savage show), the rolling news network founded by Ted Turner is still seen around the world as, believe it or not, "American." The truly globalized broadcaster remains the BBC."

I used to listen to BBC on the radio at nights in the late nineties hoping to get at least a good snapshot of world events. Sure , I knew the score back then, they were at least as far left as The Nation, but I had a lot of home improvement to do at the time and there really wasn't much talk radio worth a hoot on that late. Oh, they delivered in the diversity department—never dull as they jumped to the 4 corners of the earth. So between my painting, and drilling, I got the interesting headlines and news snippets I was hoping for, but they usually ranged from biased to downright loaded against the evils of Israel and America. I'd grumble, shake my head, have a beer and keep painting.

And people still ask seriously, why America is not liked abroad. "As Mr. Aitken points out, 82% of people listen to it every week -- and that's just in Afghanistan." Now that's market saturation!

I can't listen to it anymore, even then it was painful to get through the bias ladeled out as if it were coming straight from UN floor speeches. I don't have the full of the article here, just the meat. For the funny bits that lead you into the story, you'll have to get the WSJ subscription:

When a chap writes a book called "Can We Trust the BBC?" I think it's a safe assumption that the answer is unlikely to be "yes." So I trust you won't regard it as a plot spoiler if I reveal that, at the end of his brisk tome, Robin Aitken (a Beeb journalist for 25 years) reveals that, no, you cannot trust the BBC, at least not if you're of a broadly conservative disposition. On the European Union, on the Iraq war, on Northern Ireland, on Islam, on America, the BBC trends not merely well to the left of the Conservative Party but well to the left of Tony Blair's New Labour. Away from the news, its "creative" side is expressed mainly through the usual dreary provocations, such as "Weddings and Beheadings," its laugh-a-minute drama about an Islamist snuff-video cameraman, scripted by Hanif Kureishi, Britain's Oldest Most Promising Young Writer and a man who'll never run out of Beeb commissions. The BBC's privileged position in British life makes its bias of a slightly different order from any U.S. network's.

The British Broadcasting Corp. had a television monopoly until the 1950s, a local radio monopoly until the '70s and a national radio monopoly until the '90s. But it didn't get where it is today without the ability to adapt. As broadcasting was opened up to characteristically British over-regulated competition, the BBC massively expanded. It currently operates eight national TV networks, nine national radio networks, the "national region" stations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, 39 local stations, and an Asian network, plus the BBC World Service (which can be heard in 129 capital cities around the world), 10 international TV networks, and international radio services in 43 different languages, including Kyrgyz and Kinyarwanda.

Unlike the shrunken unmanned Royal Navy, the sun never sets on the BBC empire. As Mr. Aitken points out, 82% of people listen to it every week -- and that's just in Afghanistan. The BBC is the world's most popular Internet news site and the third most popular site in the U.S. Last year, I was having a drink with Australia's great foreign minister, Alexander Downer, and, as one does, we got into an argument about Burkina Faso. I demanded to know whether the minister could, in fact, name the country's present head of government. He confessed that, alas, he hadn't been paying as close attention to the affairs of Burkina Faso as he might, pulled out his BlackBerry, went straight to the BBC and read out their comprehensive and authoritative page on the nation. ("Burkina Faso is a poor country by West African standards" -- which is a mind-boggling concept.)

No other broadcaster has such a reach. When those butch voices announce the evening news from the ABC-CBS-NBC "world news headquarters," you can't help noticing it's heavy on the headquarters, very light on the world news. As for PBS and NPR, I take a malicious pleasure in the humiliations inflicted on public broadcasting in this country whenever I see the floundering host in front of the silent phone bank urging us to call now because otherwise we'll be denied quality programming like the thrice-weekly Peter, Paul & Mary reunion concert and don't forget, for a pledge of only $200, you'll receive this bonus gift of a Bill Moyers snood. No insulated BBC panjandrum has to sully his lips with so desperate a pitch.

So Robin Aitken's argument rests on the Spider-Man proposition that with great power comes great responsibility. In 1938, the American scholar Lincoln Gordon explained that the BBC's privileged position brought with it certain "beliefs appropriate to a British national institution. . . . In domestic affairs they are the monarchy, the constitution, the British Empire and Christianity; abroad, peace sought through the machinery of the League of Nations."

Seventy years on, that list prompts a mirthless laugh from Mr. Aitken. "Only in the BBC's respect for the League of Nations' successor, the United Nations, is there any obvious continuity," he writes. Otherwise the BBC today is antimonarchist and anti-imperialist, and the only constitution it believes in is the one Giscard d'Estaing devised for the European Union. It is avowedly secular and contemptuous of organized religion, with the exception of Islam, which is more organized than most.

When one TV host made some observations about the Arab world's penchant for suicide bombing, amputations, repression of women and a generally celebratory attitude to 9/11 -- none of which is factually in dispute -- he was yanked off the air immediately and permanently. When, however, the BBC's principal current-affairs morning man called the Catholic Church's attitude to AIDS "outrageous" and "wicked," his words apparently complied with BBC standards of "impartiality." When their arts pundit offered the pensée that "Brooklyn born" Jewish settlers on the West Bank "should be shot dead" because "they are Nazis" and "I feel nothing but hatred for them," he too remained at his post, though the BBC did remark on its Web site that "his polemical, knockabout style has ruffled feathers in the U.S., where the Jewish question is notoriously sensitive." ("The Jewish question"?) 

What's a bloke to do about such a levithan? Steyn knows, and it isn't as simple as bringing on a few Craig Westovers. Read on below in Read More...

Tip to Fraters: Get Mr. Aitken on for a future interview. I expect he'll be busy on the circuit in the next month.

Much of what Mr. Aitken recounts will be familiar to readers of disaffected American-broadcasting insiders such as Bernard Goldberg. But if in the U.S. the soi-disant MSM act in support of the Democratic Party, in Britain the BBC has in essence declared itself Britain's official opposition party. And the market cannot correct an entity constitutionally protected from it. After a brisk trot through the Beeb's one-sided coverage of Europe, Ireland and the war on terror, Mr. Aitken concludes wanly that they need to "hire more journalists from right-wing newspapers."

That won't happen, and it would make little difference if it did. The correct answer is to split up the Beeb. A broadcasting behemoth funded by compulsory levy is unjustifiable in an age of ever multiplying narrowcast niche markets. The BBC is the most zealous proponent of a multicultural society -- except when it comes to a monolithic national broadcaster. And even Mr. Aitken can't quite bear to kiss it goodbye.