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BBC propoganda?
*Note, I am not a leftist, I am an Atheist, white, lower-middle class, and I would consider myself neutral between left/right economics and libertarian
I'm watching Russell Howards' good news right now, and I noticed that a considerable amount of time was spent being anti-ukip, and anything political in the show is always anti-tory and very rarely criticizes Labour.
I've noticed the same about almost all comedians commissioned by the BBC, anything political seems to be anti-conservative/right wing, and either openly leftist with people like Stewart Lee, Jeremy Hardy ... or simply liberal in the modern sense, basically the opposite of far-right social values, and not really interested in economics/politics in my eyes, kind of a product of the UK's education system, very standardized minds.
Its fairly obvious that the BBC only really selects, uh, non-right wing comedians is how I'll put it, but it had me thinking about other areas.
I'll list what I think is right wing/left wing they espouse.
Right Wing
Pro-Israel whilst ignorins Palestinian strugle
Anti-Iran/Syria, and non-explicit fear-mongering against Chinese people looking at some documentaries they commision on the very strict and authoritarian side of Chinese education, entertainment culture etc
Immense scare-mongering against pedophiles
Pro-army (more so individual soldiers)
Always arguing for "free trade", European style constitutional "democracy", intervention (economic/military).
Overall free markets
Pro-Police/authority to the point of heroism.
The kind of aurra they try to put around Boris Johnson and protect him from criticism
Londoncentricity
Left Wing
Pro-multiculturalism/Diversity
Seemingly anti-austerity looking at chat shows/debates
The sort of people they invite to chat shows or do documentaries on politics/economics
Anti-UKIP/EDL/BNP whilst ignorning legitimate issues they talk about (albeit in a brutish xenophobic way)
Pro gay-marriage/feminism (seemingly)
Not neccassarily anti-Christian, but a continual expose'as against Catholics/American Christians and Christian institutions.
Ones I can't classify simply
Ignoring issues/wars in parts of the world not of economic interest to the state and the states business partners, pretty much a lot of South America, Central Africa, south east Asia
Non-explicit anti-Americanism
Globalist approach
Almost Ignoring anti-White crime
Fear of criticising Islam in the way they have with Christianity
Very selective of how they report terrorism, always picking Al-Qaeda of groups openly affiliated with Al-Qaeda, whilst ignoring the massacres commited by hundreds of Islamic Extremists accross Africa, East Asia, the Caucuses etc
Judaism is never a topic on the BBC.
Anti-Banker/open criticism of the "big cats" of corporations, exposing dodgy companies/CEO's etc
Sorry If some of these are vague or generalisations, just trying to put them down in short terms.
I have tried to reseach as many political ideologies as I can and have never really conformed to any. I'd like to say I try to think critically about any issue and think about solutions that would benefit humanities progress. The way I see the western wordl is that regular society seems to be standardised, there's a lot of cattle-like thinking, businesses and capitalists think we are stupid consumers, right wing liberals hate poor people and love money, the far-right love authority and what is familiar to them (usually in the past) , leftists have their head in the sand and are a bit hipstery, modern liberals are smug w******* who are almost always 15-25 with no life experience, I'd say this is what most people fit into
I think your observation is up for debate to be honest. I definitely agree with what you have said, and have witnessed the same. But on the same note, i have also seen loads of pro-free market and anti-communist/socialist themed material too. In reality, i think all they are doing is give people the slant on news that they think they want to hear. In the same way as the daily mail does with conservatives, just as a TV channel.
It's simple, we kill the liberal cultural hegemony.
pew pew pew
The Queen. The BBC love the Queen. You can see it every time she is covered on the news, the presenters just seem SO positive whenever she appears.
"Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs."
- Guy Debord (Panegyric)
"Guided by the Marxist leader-dogmas of misbehaviourism and hysterical materialism, inevitably the masses will embrace, not only Groucho Marxism, but also each other."
- Bob Black (Theses on Groucho Marxism)
"I think that the task of philosophy is not to provide answers, but to show how the way we perceive a problem can be itself part of a problem."
- Slavoj Žižek ("Year of Distraction" lecture)
There really aren't too many well known right winged comedians that I know of. Unless you count everyone on fox news cause they're all jokes.
Some of the points you raise are demonstrably false (e.g. the BBC probably broadcasts more about Judaism than any other mainstream news channel, including regular messages from the Chief Rabbi and televised specials around the time of Jewish festivals), others are quite dubious (e.g. many right-wingers would disagree that the BBC takes the right-wing positions you ascribe to it, as left-wingers would deny that it takes these supposed left-wing positions), a few are utterly ridiculous (e.g. claiming that the BBC ignores anti-white crimes is like saying it ignores alien abductions)
The BBC reflects the views of the media establishment, well-to-do Londoners, the political class broadly speaking, and will assume conventional thinking as standard.
Thus yes, often the BBC is "left wing" on cultural questions like gay marriage, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism, etc. But there is no conspiracy: it is just that the people on your TV are metropolitans, media professionals, humanities graduates, etc., and they genuinely do find opposition to these things incomprehensible.
You mentioned comedians. Again, you don't need to think it is a conspiracy, it is just that it happens to be a fact that there aren't that many right-wing comedians out there. Comedians rarely have an act that promotes completely different views to how they actually feel (and if they do, they swing it so far to the opposite extreme that the audience knows its a pisstake)
Its like alleging that the porn industry has an anti-religious bias because most of its performers aren't religious churchgoers. Its more the fact that the output of the industry reflects the cultural values of most of its performers, and anyway most religious people wouldn't choose porn star as a career.
for freedom and peace
Disagree on most of these. If all you ever watched was the BBC, you'd think City AM editor Allister Heath was some kind of giant of economics and the only person worth speaking to on the subject. And the BBC is neutral at best on the subject gay marriage. Their World News service's coverage of the far right violence in France over Hollande's gay marriage legislation outrageously blamed both sides for the unrest.
As for UK fascists, I can't say for sure what the BBC thinks of them, because they're too busy complaining about Abu Qatada to document the far right's frequent acts of racist violence against the muslim community in the news. However, their editorial stance is overwhelmingly in favour of tougher immigration controls and they gave a lot of publicity to pre-emptive racist knuckledragging over the prospect of giving Romanians and Bulgarians full EU citizenship. I'm sorry, but the idea that these 'issues' are being ignored just doesn't wash. Yes, the BBC wasn't terribly nice to Nick Griffin on Question Time. But it still offered him a fawning interview in the 2009 European elections (that didn't put him on the spot in the slightest) despite anti-fascist protests.
The idea that the BBC is anti-UKIP is laughable. The BBC gave UKIP wall-to-wall coverage (nearly all of it positive) over the course of both the Eastleigh by-election and last month's local elections and Nigel Farage is one of the most frequently invited guests on the BBC's news and current affairs shows.
Of course, outside of the news and current affairs division, Mock the Week did have left-wing panelists like Frankie Boyle and Andy Parsons and made dark jokes about the Iraq war, but there is no way the BBC would dare attempt the same thing today. At best, some of the BBC's non-news & current affairs output has something of a left-wing hue. Recent drama series the Village is a leftist caricature of WW1 era provincial England (although many of the things it depicts were true) and Doctor Who has been a little bit didactic at times. But then, this is counterbalanced by awful soap operas like EastEnders with its offensive stereotypes of muslims.
Last edited by GerrardWinstanley; 12th May 2013 at 19:03.
If the BBC is biased it is towards the state in general. If it seems left-wing in any way then that is because it only appears that way in comparison to the vitriolic right-wing bullshit vomitted out into newspapers like The Sun or the Mail.
Modern democracy is nothing but the freedom to preach whatever is to the advantage of the bourgeoisie - Lenin
Left-leaning comedy takes the piss out of the powerful. Right-leaning comedy takes the piss out of the weak. Given that more people are weak than powerful, I don't think you have to theorise conspiracies to explain why one is more popular than the other.
The BBC has comedy panel shows that criticise the Labour party such as Have I Got News for You. It for the majority of the time doesn't amount to much more than laughing at peoples body image or calling them stupid but, meh. It's probably the closest you'll get to any political comedy these days.
Russell Howard will be loved by the BBC because he is a young(ish) liberal with a massive hard-on for the Queen and Barack Obama. Lot's of young people watch him.
The BBC right now seems to have cut back on political comedy and focused more on the upbeat comedy of the likes of Michael McIntyre. I guess in times like these the type of people giving space of the TV narrows quite a bit. People want to forget about all the shit they have to put up with and others don't want satire on the TV that points fingers at people causing the problems or the system itself.
We have something in the states called "Fox News" that actually supports fascism. Your argument is invalid, sir.
Yeah, no.
Probably more to do with the fact that, culturally, old white bald Tories who don't understand what 'sick' means, and think that hardship is the FTSE 100 losing 0.5% on their pension plans, are much funnier to take the piss out of than, say, people fighting for workers' rights, women's rights and minority rights.
My understanding was that the Irish were people of good humor.
To be honest I wouldn't place the BBC as a complete insitutuion on either the left or right. Some aspects, like the comedians you've mentioned, are on the left. But I personally have always found thier news reporting centre right.
