THE BBC : HOW INDEPENDENT IS IT ?

To what extent is the BBC a mouthpiece for the Government ? I never thought that this was the case, but recent programming and the partial coverage of the Occupy demonstrations here and almost non-existent coverage of those in the USA and the rest of Europe has given rise to serious doubts about its much vaunted ’ independence.’

It is always a bad sign when something starts indulging in self-mythology. Not long ago a fictional drama was screened set in the BBC. I have never ever seen a programme set in the BBC before. It was placed in the 1950’s, conveniently ’historic’ rather than contemporary, (in fact the number of programmes that are set in an ill defined past are plentiful, much easier than dealing with the messy present), with an invented current affairs programme called ‘The Hour’ as its subject. The so-called Suez Crisis was happening and between the inevitable off screen inter-collegial bonking, this was one of the focal points of the whole series. And what was central in emphasis was that despite the frequent meetings with representatives of the Government off screen the programme makers were feisty and not prepared to toe the line in all cases. I am not old enough to remember what the actual BBC coverage was like, but there was certainly no programme that I know of that provided critical political debate and stood out against Government policy in the 1950’s.
So it was both fiction yet gave the strong impression that the BBC had editorial independence and was staffed by highly motivated and principled people who did not operate as purely neutral observers, which is still the apparent line.

Now look at what this ‘neutral’ channel has broadcast in recent weeks : an hour long documentary almost wholly about two alleged benefit cheats. In the style of the Daily Mail they highlighted one person with a boat and a house in France, neither of which, by the way, necessarily means that you are not eligible for benefits if unable to work, and another who was running a pub and had a big car. Both may well have been fiddling the system. But the fact that they were being filmed by the BBC, who even sent someone to France to view the house and boat, quite unnecessarily as the person freely admitted to owning them and provided a handy video, and were being tracked by both officers from the local authority and a benefits fraud team means they were certainly not going to get away with it for much longer and moreover the whole premise of the programme was to imply that these two clearly exceptional cases were commonplace. The unstated but clear inference was that living on benefits was a route to an easy life and enabled people to prosper at the tax payer’s expense. This is a downright lie and the programme amounted to nothing more than government propaganda to demonise and further denigrate those that rely on benefits by concentrating entirely on two atypical examples. In the course of the hour long programme it was never stated what the actual weekly benefit is for a typical claimant, its £65 a week, nor how many millions legitimately manage to survive on this paltry sum.

For some reason best known to the programme makers they interspersed the headline grabbing ’man with yacht claiming benefits’ with some footage of people who were not disabled parking in disabled parking bays. What this was intended to prove was unclear. There was also an illegal immigrant featured.