bashamwonderland
Well-known member
- Joined
- 19 Dec 2017
- Messages
- 3,605
Well the chairman of the BBC is worth in the region of half a billion. His Director General earns some £400,000 per year.As has been said, when nearly everybody thinks you’re not impartial it’s generally a pretty good sign that you largely are. However, I’m not sure that being impartial is a good thing if it gets to the point that giving facts and evidence, and presenting the truth based on these things, is classed as having an opinion or agenda.
I remember James O’Brien (shield your eyes, Brexiteers!) saying that he stopped doing presenting gigs on the BBC after the lead up to the referendum. He headed up a ‘conversation’ between Andrea Leadsom and Pascal Lamy, the former director general of the WTO. Due to the BBC having to remain impartial he had to sporadically back up Leadsom when she told Lamy that the WTO didn’t work the way he said it did, so as not to be seen as being ‘on his side’. Despite the fact Lamy used to run the organisation they were arguing about. I guess that made him an expert, and we had enough of those long ago. Well, until what the experts say is what we want them to say, and then they’re allowed again.
That’s where perceived impartiality is dangerous - someone with absolutely no clue what they were on about had to be given equal billing with somebody who knows the subject matter inside out. The BBC is hamstrung and has been flipped on its head by a tribal world, one which deems facts to be opinions and evidence to be some sort of stitch up, which is partially its own doing because of situations like the above. Then throw in the fact that the government appoints the people who run it because it’s state funded and you’re left with an incredible mess, especially once the idea of government no longer respecting the boundaries of ‘fair play’ becomes commonplace. As soon as the attitude from No10 changes from, “We don’t touch that even if it’s telling people we’ve been naughty” and moves on to being one of, “We control it so let’s put it in its place”, it falls down pretty fast.
All that aside, I still find it more than a little ridiculous seeing certain sections of society angrily demanding its defunding. “We want 100% of media and all sources of information privately owned by billionaires! This is evil!” Mind you, given the amount of times Britain has been talked into slashing its own wrists in the last half a decade, it’s probably only a matter of time. I guess this is what happens when something essentially set up and run using the honour system meets the age of dishonesty. It becomes incompatible, and when something is incompatible it’s eventually demonised on its way to the gallows.
Not that I care. My only source of news is Korean Central Broadcasting. All truth, all the time.
Death to the west.
So it's not really a case of billionaires vs "the people". The difference is the billionaires spend their own money on their papers and TV channels. With the BBC, multi millionaires spend our money to peddle their sub standard and bloated programming.