The Brilliant Melanie Phillips
The BBC’s contamination
Tuesday, 15th July 2008
Melanie Phillips
A reader has sent me the following cri de coeur about the hallucinatory
level of prejudice at the BBC:
It really is becoming quite a frightening topic. I never used to worry too
much about it. As an example, Norman Tebbit had a go while Maggie was in
government; but at the time, anyone with a sense of decency could understand
and say ‘hang on, the government of the day was doing some very radical
things and needed to be challenged’ – to be put on the spot if you like.
When Norman had his moan, a balanced observer would be able to see why the
Beeb ‘roughed him up’ and could reasonably think ‘he would say that,
wouldn’t he’.
These days I see a much more sinister agenda, a more subtle use of bias —
not just ear-bashing a right of centre politician with some tough questions,
but even in the entertainment we are provided with.
There is a new drama series (pretty dire) called Bonekickers. The bad guys
this week were posh-speaking Christian fundamentalists; other characters are
an upper-class curmudgeon who makes remarks about women’s breasts (tsk tsk
such shame!) and a wonderfully tolerant Muslim who tries to talk sense to
one of the Christian zealots and gets his head cut off for his pains. This
week’s episode is going to be about American politicians and the slave
trade. I haven’t seen it but I am pretty sure what picture will be drawn.
I had a moan via the complaints procedure suggesting it really was not
cricket for the writers to visit the public with their own prejudices on a
light (ish) drama show. The reply I received was a joke: ‘We are sorry you
felt our programme was biased against Muslims. Ehhhhh ?????? They had the
reply ready before they had even read the complaint — and as the programme
presented Muslims in the kindest of lights, it beggars belief .
I stopped watching the rather good ‘Spooks’ series when the plot lines
became so implausible and political that it was a joke: Israelis dressing up
as Palestinians and setting bombs off in London. Yeah right !
It seems ‘they’ are engaged in a self-appointed crusade to politically
educate the plebeian hordes to follow a twisted political truth. I find it
sinister. Who are ‘they’? The writers? Ok, writers might have opinions; but
isn’t there someone with a decent rounded intellect who can say, hey, there
is a time and place for this sort of preaching or comment and it isn’t a
drama show ? I think not. I think the BBC is contaminated at the highest
level. It has too much unelected power for this to be allowed to continue.
The establishment is there to be challenged but I find this new
establishment frightening in its scope, power, tactics and lack of ethics.
It is really quite obscene that the BBC repeatedly portrays the victims of
mass murder – Americans, Israelis – as its perpetrators and its actual
perpetrators as victims. The BBC is doing the work of the enemies of
civilisation for them. In a less degraded political environment this would
be raised in Parliament and the BBC called sharply to account for such
infernal propaganda. The fact that this complainant received a pro-forma
get-lost letter written for complaining Muslims – the letter went on to say
that
The BBC is satisfied that, whilst asking some difficult questions about
religious fundamentalism, it is not blasphemous
— shows all too clearly that BBC group-think has now fully absorbed the
inversion of truth and lies, victim and victimiser, right and wrong that
forms the Muslim culture of grievance, and has made it its own. Truly
terrifying.
Accessed 16 June 2008,
http://www.spectato r.co.uk/melaniep hillips/836716/ the-bbcs- contamination. tht
ml
