Blair’s office like Nixon White House: ousted BBC chief

[Nambe]

Khaleej Times

LONDON - Greg Dyke, the former BBC director general ousted over the broadcaster’s coverage of the Iraq conflict, on Sunday unleashed a scorching attack on the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair, blaming it for trying to bully the BBC into submission. ..

“We were all duped,” he said of the argument Blair made to drum up support for the Iraq war. “History will not be on Blair’s side, it will show that the whole saga is a great political scandal.” ..

“Over seven years (in Blair’s cabinet) he turned Downing Street into a place with overtone of (Richard) Nixon’s White House. You were either for them or against them. And if you opposed them, you became the enemy,” Dyke wrote. ..
Use your Head

Put a Lid on It!

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. No wonder Blair and Bush* have become such great pals.

Although I have to say I'm disappointed. I used to kind of like Blair, at least while Clinton was President. I wonder what kind of dirt Bush* has on him?

[LiberalFighter]

4. Or maybe it was Clinton that kept a leash on Blair?

[lovuian]

2. Blair is a Dictator and is taking Freedom of Speech Away

He is destroying Freedom in the World

[goclark]

5. Blair is a Born Again too I think

[AP]

10. How is Blair taking Freedom of Speech away? By telling the BBC they can't

be a publically subsidized hegemony in entertainment production and distribution in the UK?

[truthspeaker]

12. By forcing BBC staff to resign for reporting true stories

[AP]

13. If the story was true, why'd couldn't tell the truth?

The reason Dyke got fired was because the story they did tell wasn't true. It was because an especially shoddy piece of journalism from a third rate journalist made it on the air.

[truthspeaker]

16. "sexed-up dossier" was 100% true

Is Blair paying you to post here?

[AP]

17. Read Gilligan's original story and compare it to the truth.

[truthspeaker]

18. I did. Seemed pretty accurate.

Certainly nothing worth forming a commission to investigate.

[AP]

19. It wasn't. The gov't presented the evidence that the intelligence agencies

presented them.

If the intelligence agencies are dominated by spies for Israel or whatever, then this story ends up killing the messenger, rather than telling the truth (which benefits the people who wrote the message).

Gilligan and the BBC would have played apart in getting rid of the government and replace them with fascists who are totally sympathetic to fascism.

Perhaps the real story wasn't in that Blair was totally manipulating the evidence, but that the intelligence agencies need to be investigated.

[truthspeaker]

20. I can't believe you believe that

It's the same crap Bush and his boys are trying to pull over here.

The intelligence agencies gave Blair inflated and inaccurate intel about Iraq's WMDS - because Blair pressured them to do so.

[AP]

21. You cannot ignore your intelligence without good evidence not to believe

it, or you will get HANGED for doing so. If Kerry, Edwards or Blair ignored the evidence, there would have been an attack that would have been blamed on them and their parties would spend the next 50 years in the political wilderness while the Republicans and Tories would have free reign to conduct Iraq-style invasions all over the globe with impunity.

[truthspeaker]

26. what about ignoring all the OTHER intelligence

the intelligence that said Iraq wasn't a threat and didn't have WMDs?

The problem was that Blair and Bush chose to ignore some of the intelligence.

[AP]

28. Kerry, Edwards, Clinton all said that there was good evidence that hasn't

been made public.

Do you wonder why? It's because that evidence was the chess move the Republicans were going to play had Congress voted against the war resolution, and it was the evidence that was going to be plaid in the UK had Blair not participated.

And how do you know the evidence you do know? It's because the, uhm, media has played it up. They played up the bad evidence all last summer hoping that it would get Howard Dean nominated by the party.

[Capt_Nemo]

30. So what is the "good evidence"

about weapons that DO NOT exist?

[AP]

35. I wish I knew what it is. I'm sure we would have heard it had...

...the Democrats voted against the IWR, or had Howard Dean been the nominee.

[truthspeaker]

37. Welcome to DU, Mr. Rove!

[AP]

44. Hey, when your all out of ideas, call me a right winger.

[Capt_Nemo]

45. The weapons DO NOT exist therefore ALL evidence is false!

am I making it clear now?

[AP]

52. Even Greg Pallast says there was a weapons project.

It wasn't in Iraq on the day we invaded. That's true. Bush wants you to think it went to Syria.

I have no idea where it went. Saudi Arabia? Pakistan? Who knows. But my hunch is that there was something, and there's some reasonable intelligence that supported the fact that there was something, and that where it went is part of this whole big caper.

[truthspeaker]

53. But Hans Blix, Scott Ritter, and David Kay sure as hell don't.

[AP]

55. I think they all say there weren't any on the day the invasion started.

So the question is, "where'd they all go?"

I suspect that members of the BFEE do know, and they'd never tell the public the truth.

And the other question is, could the fact that there might have been a weapons program produce enough apparently solid evidence that you could have hanged Kerry Edwards and Tony Blair had they acted against it?

[muriel_volestrangler]

67. Ritter and Blix said they wanted inspectors back in Iraq

because they weren't sure that all the WMD materials had been disposed of. Ritter did say he didn't think that Iraq was any danger to other countries; Blix wanted the inspections to continue, because he had found no WMD, and was proving that the American claims of knowing where they were were all wrong. Both thought it possible that all materials had degraded beyond use, and that no programs were active.

Bush and Blair, on the other hand, lied, saying they knew the weapons existed. The process of changing the intelligence to say this has been proved. It involved the Number 10 office. Blair had control of the production of public 'evidence' (remember the dodgy dossier, which was in fact a graduate thesis several years old, sexed up and presented as new information?) Kerry and Edwards were not in that situation. They had to take the intelligence reports as written.

Again, have you read the report calling for Blair's impeachment?

[truthspeaker]

31. You're joking right? Media "played up" the bad evidence?

There was and is no credible evidence that Saddam had WMDs or was invovled with Al Qaeda. That was obvious, but hidden by the media, a year ago. It is now indisputable fact.

You are misquoting Kerry, Edwards, and Clinton. Kerry and Edwards made the mistake of assuming Bush was telling the truth. They also made the mistake of assuming he would abide by the letter of IWR (exhausting diplomatic efforts first).

[AP]

38. I'm not misquoting Kerry, Edwards and Bill Clinton.

Edwards explicitly sated that as a member of the intelligence committee that they were presented a great deal of convincing evidence along with some obviously bad evidence.

Clinton said that there was enough evidence in January 2001 to justify action and that, in fact, Al Gore was a very strong proponent of taking action.

They all believe, however, that what Bush has done has made things worse and not better because he acted unilaterally.

[Capt_Nemo]

48. all the evidence was unreliable

that is the conclusion at which came France and Germany.
They were right! All the evidence has now been descredited!
And contrary to what David Kay said not everybody was fooled...

[Capt_Nemo]

29. Not only Nr. 10 cherrypicked intelligence

but nr. 10 explicitly asked for the caveats to be removed
from the intelligence they wanted to present.

[AP]

33. Actually, that's what Gilligan did. He cherry-picked the story.

There's a much bigger story to be told, and they're only telling the part they think will help get Tories elected.

Granted, some of this story isn't going to look good. How do you tell people that Blair had to get involved so that the US wouldn't use Iraq all by themselves to create chaos that would ruin Europeann economies and encourage the election of fascists who would spread Iraq-style imperialism all over the middle east? How do you tell people that sometimes you have to do something that looks bad in order to win the match 20 moves later? There's a reason that chess isn't a popular spectator sport.

[truthspeaker]

36. wait a minute, you're supporting Blair's support of the Iraq war?

You're at the wrong site. You want to click here to join your brethren: www.freerepublic.com

[AP]

40. I'm supporting Blairs approach to making sure that fascists don't get...

...elected to head EU governments by not letting Bush go into Iraq and the ME and cause a chaos that would ruin European economies and ruin the lives of millions more lives on the doorrstep to Europe.

I believe that Johnn Kerry will get elected and will work with Blair and the point of what Blair has been trying to do will become perfectly clear.

[truthspeaker]

46. Ah, the Neville Chamberlain approach!

[Capt_Nemo]

41. Gilligan had a story to tell, why in the the hell would he

put it together with your own conspiracy theory that explains that Blair
is a good guy genius?

That context to the story exists only in your head AP...

At this point in time the European economies are less vulnerable
than the american. The only economy that is being ruined by
the Iraq adventure is the american. Anyone that knows the limitations
of modern warfare and a little ME history knew even before the
invasion that Iraq would become a quagmire, making it impossible
for the americans to use Iraq for whatever purpose they had in mind.

[qanda]

3. "And if you opposed them, you became the enemy,"

Now, where have I heard *that* before?

[the Kelly Gang]

6. Blair is the most un-British Pm ever..following Thatcher

[dArKeR]

7. Ex-BBC chief says Blair `duped' public on Iraq

THE GUARDIAN AND AFP , LONDON

Greg Dyke, former BBC director general

Greg Dyke, the former BBC director general ousted over the broadcaster's coverage of the Iraq conflict, yesterday unleashed a scorching attack on British Prime Minister Tony Blair, blaming him for trying to bully the BBC into submission.

Dyke, in excerpts of his upcoming book Inside Story published in the Observer and the Mail, also scalded the BBC governing board for pandering to Blair's office by pushing him out.

"We were all duped," he said of the argument Blair made to drum up support for the Iraq war. "History will not be on Blair's side, it will show that the whole saga is a great political scandal."

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2004/08/30/2003200844

[barb162]

8. it's time for the British to kick his sick ass out too

just like us with you know who.

[AP]

9. Dyke is an asshole who says very frightening things about media hegemony.

He does NOT understand the proper role of the media in society.

He once argued that Fox was a great argument for having one channel dominate all the news media. Uh, what if that one channel happens to have the same editorial agenda as a place like Fox?

AFAIC, Blair and Labour have exactly the right idea about the role of the BBC. They want to break all the entertainment aspects of the BBC off from the news part of BBC. They believe that entertainment is best delivered in the private sector, and that news is best delivered by a news division. They believe there should be a diversity of voices providing the news, and that a state-owned news station should be one of those voices.

Dyke doesn't like that. Dyke's an asshole with an agenda.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. That sound completely wrong, AP

Please give us the speech or interview where he said that. I think you've, wilfully or otherwise, completely misinterpreted what he said. There is, however, one 'asshole' in all of this: Alistair Campbell, whose aim was to 'fuck Gilligan'. Campbell had vendettas against the BBC. He is the British equivalent of Karl Rove. His aim was to control what the BBC said. That's why he sent all the letters constantly complaining their coverage wasn'r pro-government enough.

Splitting the 'entertainment' and news into separate channels would result in less people watching the news. A good way of lessening the influence of BBC News, I would say. However, I haven't seen Labour propose it? Where did you get this from?

[AP]

14. Splittling up entertainment from news will result in less people watching

news?

Really?

So that's a good reason to keep them together.

BBC Newshour is often a 20 minute commercial for the premier league. Perhaps splitting up news from entertainment will mean 20 more minutes of news every hour.

I look for the Dyke quote now. He said in an interview on an NPR program. And I'm sure he's said it elsewhere.

[AP]

15. Here you go:

Dyke thinks the problem with Fox and Clear Channel is that the market is too fragmented in the US. He thinks the US needs one large channel to dominate the news and give the main message. He thinks it's competition that causes CC and Fox to compete for viewers with sensationalism. He thinks they didn't have the power to counter the government.

I think your average DUers would say the problem with the US media is that it isn't fragrmented enough and that the three or four players dominating the airwaves are motivated by the dollar (as is the US government) and that's why we get a uniformly right wing message.

Dyke is trying to protect the domination of the media by a single voice and uses basically the argument against that as the argument for it. He says, basically, trust the BBC to tell the truth. I bet if the UK media had been more fragmented in 1980, and fragmented in a way that a few big companies didn't dominate everything, I bet the Tories wouldn't have had such a long run. And I bet your average Brit would have a better understanding of African politics.

Here's Dyke's quote:

http://www.worldrevolution.org/article/871

U.S. broadcasters came under attack for "cheerleading" during the Iraq conflict, with what some critics saw as gung-ho reporting and flag-waving patriotism. In one example, a U.S. network described U.S. soldiers as "heroes" and "liberators."

Dyke suggested the problem stemmed from the recent fragmentation of media, with no single network having the clout to stand up to the U.S. government.

"This is particularly so since Sept. 11 when many U.S. networks wrapped themselves in the American flag and swapped impartiality for patriotism," Dyke said.

Dyke defended the BBC in the face of accusations -- some from the British government -- that the broadcaster had been soft on Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s government.

"In times of war, British governments of every persuasion have sought to use the media to manage public opinion ... it's only a problem if the BBC caves in," Dyke said.

Do you really think he doesn't sound like an idiot? And some might say that the BBC did cave by running Gilligan's piece of shoddy journalism, which then set the tone for the coverage.

[airstrip1]

22. You do not have to love either Greg Dyke or the BBC

to know that Blair is a liar who manipulated the available intelligence to take the UK to war. How anybody on this board can spare time to defend a man who likes to take his holidays with a crypto-fascist such as Sivio Berlusconi just beggars belief. Still I suppose this is how some New Labour apparatiks like to spend their Bank Holidays.

[AP]

23. I can't believe that so many people don't see the bigger picture.

[airstrip1]

24. Unfortunately, I think most people on the DU

see the big picture all too clearly.

[merh]

27. What big picture do you want us to see?

Blair has an agenda and Dyke has an agenda and the agendas conflict each other.

What am I missing?

[AP]

32. That Bush is very interested in seeing Blair get the boot and get replaced

by the Tories, even if it means a couple years of Lib Dems in between.

As for the BBC, here's my wild, unsubstantiated speculation about what the BBC thinks about Labour (and this is NOT the big picture to which I referred), but it's fun to talk about. I should note that the logic of my theory is basically, history and following the buck.

The BBC doesn't like the Labour government. And I aslo suspect a lot of people inside the BBC want to benefit from a break-up of its assets, the same way the Tories broke up the national rail network in a way that was a windfall for Tory cronies. They want the government to sell the BBC for pennies on the pound to insiders, but not until they build up the biggest hegemony possible hrough their de fact monopoly (which is subsidized by a flat tax on the citizens). In other words, they want the taxpayer to subsidize the growth of BBC into a media empire even bigger than it is now, and then when it's worth, hypothetically, 20 billion pounds, they want Tories to sell it to insiders (in parts) for a bout 1 billion pounds, creating an instantaneous winfall of 19 billion pounds to anyone who lays the ground work today to help get the politicians into office who will legislate this sale.

That's basically the story of the railroads, however the people who bought the railroads have an exit strategy: when they're finished running them into the ground (because there's no way railroads can be operated at a profit -- it's an industry that is a loss leader and it's too easy to monopoly price anyway) they'll have the government buy them out, so that they ultimately fuck the taxpayer coming and going.

Now, entertainment industries belong in the private sector. So the government will never need to buy back, for example, the film distribution arm of the BBC, or any of the production assets they sell to the public. But that's alright, because they're going to make millioins and millions of pounds anyway.

So what's the problem with Labour? Well, as I said, they rightfully want to break up the entertainment part of BBC (and rightfully were against breaking up the railroad). But Labour wants to get the British taxpayer the full value of the public assets. They're going to sell those assets to the highest bidders. That's a good thing, because not only does that get the British taxpayer all the money they deserve (and a lot of that is payback for the opportunity cost of not having a competitive entertainment sector in the past, and for that effing flat TV tax all those years) but because it encourages the proper economic attitude for the buyer. They'll be forced to make the most of their purchases. The other thing Labour wants to do is to break the BBC into many small pieces so that nobody dominates the sector. That's another thing big business doesn't like.

So, my guess is that Dyke probably had his eye on that prize, and he's a little bitter that he got canned in the process of laying the groundwork for being the mad who delivered a 20 billion pound asset to a few very powerful people for 10% of its market value.

That's just my wild speculation.

[truthspeaker]

34. Those may all well be true

But you have to admit that with the Gilligan affair and Hutton report the government treated the BBC like crap.

[merh]

39. Your theory makes a lot of sense, but won't the impeachment

of Blair negatively affect *&co? Can't he and Mark Thatcher actually harm BFEE?

Just wondering?

[AP]

42. That's the mantra, but I think the RW is probably happy that it's out...

...there.

I don't see how Bush could be hurt be getting rid of the politician who is really doing everything he can to transfer a lot of economic, cultural, and political power down to the masses (through higher wages, higher employment rates, etc) and replacing him with the Lib Dems for less than a full term and then getting in all the Bush Family of Fascists' old cronies in the Tory party.

And Mark Thatcher is exactly the reason that Bush wants Blair gone. I have a feeling that Thatcher never would have been arrested if the Tories had been in power in the UK (look how Neil Bush gets a get out of jail free card in the US).

[merh]

54. But don't you see the arrest of Markie and the impeachment of

Blair as potentially devastating for *. I mean when these guys get to squealing like stuck pigs, gosh knows how much dirt they have on the weed that would be king and his terrible family.

[muriel_volestrangler]

59. You're assuming that the South African government would listen

to the Tories about Mark Thatcher. A bad assumption, given Mrs. Thatcher's opposition to sanctions against apartheid South Africa, and Mark Thatcher's own sympathy for 'the poor white community'. The Tories have little influence in South African politics these days, given the ANC is in charge (hell, the National party just disappeared a couple of weeks ago). In fact, I wonder how much the Tories would even have tried to do to save him - he really is a despised figure in Britain.

If you can't see that Bush losing his most prominent overseas supporter, who is the only one who allows him to say there's a 'coalition of the willing' at all, would hurt Bush's foreign policy, and the image he wants to project of fighting a just battle, then you don't understand politics at all.

[AP]

61. Wild speculation: maybe the British would have been spying on SA and

would have given Thatcher a heads up so he could have gotten himself and his family on that flight to Dallas a little sooner.

I just have a feeling that Thatcher or William Hague or whomever would have been using the full aparatus of the British gov't to make sure that Mark wasn't even arrested, just like I suspect they do in the US for Neil Bush (however, I do wonder how this Riggs things will turn out for Bush's uncle -- maybe a pardon is on its way, or maybe there's absolutely no threat that he'll be prosecuted for anything).

If Blair is such a big supporter of Bush, why is he refusing to go to the US to accept the CMH that Bush wants to give him?

You know, Blair has done a lot of shit to make Bush look bad and the media has ignored it. Given exactly the same set of facts, if I ran the news, I could selectively and honestly report on news events in a way that made Blair look like he despised Bush.

[muriel_volestrangler]

64. Blair isn't going for the Congressional Gold Medal

because Iraq has gone tits-up, and he doesn't want a photo session that will remind everyone of that, or to look like a poodle having a new collar given to him by his grateful master. Above all, Blair doesn't want to admit he was wrong. So he doesn't want to be seen with his co-conspirator, who everyone in the UK thinks is a moron.

What has Blair done to make Bush look bad? Yes, Blair supports the Kyoto protocol, but he did before Bush got into power. On Iraq, Blair chose to support Bush, come what may. He is certain he's right, and so won't back down.

I think the speculation on Mark Thatcher is irrelevant - we have no real idea what would have happened with a Tory government. So far, there has been no British government involvement in any way. It doesn't have anything to do with the Labour attack on the BBC.

[AP]

72. When Israel wouldn't give the Palestinians visas to attend peace...

...conference, Straw had some very strong words to say about the situation. They didn't explicitly blame Bush, but it was known that Bush had promissed movement on this issue, and they didn't raise a hand to get Israel to move. That was the first sign that the UK was pissed at the US.

When Blair went to Iraq before Bush, I think that was a powerful statement meant to contrast Bush and Blair and what they thought was going on in Iraq.

Blair's speach to the US Congress was a powerful indictment of Bush.

Those three things alone could have been delivered to the public in a way that was very different than the way they were.

There are two sides to the story about Blair and Iraq, and if I ran the media you'd get the version that highlighted the differences, and not the similarities.

[muriel_volestrangler]

74. 'A powerful indictment'?

"The ending of Saddam's regime in Iraq must be the starting point of a new dispensation for the Middle East: Iraq, free and stable; Iran and Syria, who give succor to the rejectionist men of violence, made to realize that the world will no longer countenance it, that the hand of friendship can only be offered them if they resile completely from this malice, but that if they do, that hand will be there for them and their people; the whole of region helped toward democracy. And to symbolize it all, the creation of an independent, viable and democratic Palestinian state side by side with the state of Israel.

What the president is doing in the Middle East is tough but right. "

Oh yeah, I bet Bush thought that hurt.

Going to Iraq before Bush? Big deal. There was no 'contrast' there. It may show that he has a bit more physical courage than Bush, but not much else. He did it for a photo-op.

And getting pissed off with Israel? Without explicitly saying that the US controls Israel's policy, or the other way round, you can't count that as criticism of Bush.

Yes, if you ran the media, we'd see adulation of Blair that would make Campbell embarrassed. That doesn't mean what we see now is biased.

[muriel_volestrangler]

49. I'm glad you're now admitting that your accusation was

'wild, unsubstantiated speculation'. In other words, you made it up. There's no reason to accuse Dyke of waiting to profit from the breakup of the BBC. He vigorously defends it:

So my point is this. If we want to sustain the British nature of our television system there is no obvious alternative to a publicly funded BBC.
...
I think it matters enormously to this country that we have a public service broadcasting system on both the BBC and commercial television which reflects our society.
...
The danger is that in Britain today, we don't recognise this and begin to believe the arguments put forward by free marketers.

Personally I believe we have a broadcasting system which has served us well and we tamper with it at our peril. Believe me, it's a system which is worth defending.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/speeches/stories/dyke_georgedarnell_lecture.shtml

Why did you feel you had to insult Dyke so much?

[AP]

50. Just putting the pieces together, using logic of money and history...

Hypothesizing that Dyke a rational actor in the great tradition of British public figures isn't insulting him. Anyway, I reserve my criticisms for Dyke's analysis of the media marketplace.

Criticizing his lame notion that the government is pushing around the biggest coporations in the world is totally fair game. It is a knuckle-headed argument that I find a hard time believing that he thinks is true.

I really don't know how connected Dyke is with my theory of the dynamics of the BBC-Labour relationship. But I think it's woth noting the possible points of intersection.

[AP]

51. I'm not making up the pieces, by the way.

The part that is speculation is that people at the top of soon to be privatized parts of the public sector might be thinking out a few more steps. So, who knows what Dyke was thinking (and his public statements about "fragmentation" are interesting in that context), but keep an eye on what future heads of the BBC say about privatizing it.

I don't doubt that the person at thea head of the BBC -- if he or she had private profit in mind -- would want to keep it public while Labour is running the show (because Labour is not likely to sell it for pennies on the pound). But I bet you that when the Tories ("Capital") are running the show, suddenly it will be a great idea, and not only that, I bet the pieces of the BBC will suddenly be worth a lot less in the minds of the people setting the price, and I bet they will be divided up in a way that still allows some form of monopolization.

That's just how things work historically with right wingers.

[muriel_volestrangler]

56. You are aware that Dyke was a Labour supporter, aren't you?

He contributed at least £50,000 to the Labour party over the years. When he was appointed Director General, the Tories said he was going to be far too pro-Blair. But his first concern was for good programming. His predecessor, John Birt, was thoroughly hated by many BBC staff, because he was at heart an accountant, whose only concern was money (as an example, he worked out a deal so that, although everyone assumed he was an employee at the BBC, being the director general, he was actually self-employed, and 'hired' by the BBC, allowing him to put the cost of his Armani suits down as 'business expenses', allowable against tax). Dyke, on the other hand, was praised by the staff - they left the newsrooms all over the country to support him when it was announced he'd been forced to resign. Meanwhile, Birt has been employed by Blair to come up with useless ideas on subjects he knows nothing about, such as transport.

You are, again, making up motivations for Dyke without a single piece of evidence for it. You say that whoever is the head of the BBC would act as you imagine it. That is the most pathetic argument I've ever heard. Can't you come back to the real world? Look at what Dyke has said and done. He wants the BBC to stay as a strong public service broadcaster - and says that it forces the commercial channels to keep a good standard as a result.

[AP]

57. I'm talking about the logic of the instution of the BBC.

I think anyone who heads it is going to be sucked into the force of billions of dollars.

I'm really not criticizing Dyke for much more than the illogical things he said about the American media marketplace. My criticims for the institutional logic of the BBC is something else. I don't know what Dyke's role was within that, but I think the institutional logic is very obvious. There's a potential to transfer billions of dollars into private hands, and I don't think I'm the only one who realizes it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

43. No, he sounds right

When last year Voice of America pulled an interview they had conducted with Taliban leader Mullah Omar because of pressure from the Department of State we were also surprised.
...
American television is now so fragmented there are no 800 pound gorillas around as there was when CBS, ABC and NBC dominated the American television news media.

As a result many of the large television news organisations in the States are no longer profitable or confident of their future.

The effect of this fragmentation is to make government, the White House and the Pentagon, all-powerful with no news operation strong enough or brave enough to stand up against it.

complete speech at http://www23.thdo.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/speeches/stories/dyke_journalism.shtml

He's saying that the TV news organisations all get pushed around by the American government. You must surely see that. DU produces evidence of it day after day. It's the ability of the BBC to report from around the world for itself, rather than taking government handouts, that allows it to be authoritative and impartial.

Gilligan's journalism was not at all shoddy. Did you never read the evidence given to the Hutton inquiry? Have you read the side-by-side comparisons of the intelligence from before Iraq became a preferred target of Bush, and what Blair's dossier claimed in September 2002? It shows that the government did indeed sex up the evidence that Saddam had WMD. The intelligence had all kinds of caveats - 'may have small amounts' became 'has large amounts'. This was Blair and Campbell's doing. Have you read the articles by Brian Jones? These show that there was widespread dismay in the defence intelligence staff that Number 10 was exaggerating the evidence. We know that the 45 minute claim was unreliable. We know that the defence intelligence staff did not believe it. We know that Robin Cook asked Scarlett was it referred to, before the Iraq war started, and he was told it was a possibility for battlefeild weapons. Yet Blair claims he never knew this - that he thought it applied to any WMD that Saddam had. Gilligan said he probably knew it was wrong. I believe that is still true - that Blair wasn't so incompetent that, given a claim that some weapons could be launched in 45 minutes, he didn't ask which weapons it meant. He and his team purposely used language in the dossier that implied it did apply to any weapon - and the papers said it meant missiles aimed at Cyprus. The government never tried to correct this - though they knew it was wrong.

I hope you have read the report setting out the case for impeachment for Blair. It summarizes his misleading, lies, half-truths and evasions well.
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Politics/documents/2004/08/26/impeach.pdf

How you can defend Blair's role in producing the WMD fiasco, and say the actions of the BBC support fascists is beyond me. Your worship for Blair really is blinding to you the facts.

[AP]

47. Absurd. Fox, WB, Disney GE and Viacom are NOT getting pushed around by

the government.

They ARE the government.

They pushed around Bill Clinton for eight years, got Bush elected and immediately Bush went to bat for GE in the EU when they wanted to buy Marconi, and Bush put the son of one of AOL-TW's biggest shareholders in charge of the FCC where he has tried to deregulated the airwaves even more, allowing big companies to own even more tv stations.

Dyke isn't an idiot. He's saying things he knows don't make any economic sense.

One of a range of possible explanations for this nonesense is that he wanted to give the BBC more room to grow (on the taxpayer dollar) before it could be sold off for pennies on the pound to his cronies during a Tory administration (who have a track record for raping the public like that). We'll never know, since Dyke is gone.

[tlcandie]

58. AP .. I generally hold you in high esteem .. but your ramblings

in this thread, truly have me scratching my head.. no wait my .. at any rate.

What I see is the exact opposite of what you are touting it states. I've had to read and re-read what is posted here all the while blinking in disbelief that you see it the way you do.

What I see is him talking about one channel big enough NOT INCLUSIVE OF ALL OTHER channels such as maybe PBS or something that can stand up to the government like BBC has tried to do in Britain.

The fragmented part means that it isn't a bad thing necessarily, but there still needs to be some organization or group in the media somewhere that can stand up to tyranny and report the truth when all others cower or tremble in fear at the government.

I'm sorry, but I just don't buy anything you are selling in this thread. Nothing personal.

[AP]

60. Visit the BBC web site. It's way more than a news channel.

Labour wants to separate everything that isn't news and feels that it should not be subsidized the government and feels that those things should compete in the free market.

I agree with that. I believe that there are things that belong in the private sector: things that get better with economic competition. Entertainment, and most consumer goods. Restaurants. Sports. Private banking. Law firms. Coffee shops. Butchers. Bakeries... And there are things that belong in the public sector: things that can't get better with competition, and things that are easy to monopolize -- train lines, health care, education, police services, gas, electricity and water, and a state news service.

I don't believe that there should be any dominant force in the media, whether news or entertainment. If the government pushes around a news station, it's not relative sizes that is the problem. It's the consitution and the courts. And EVERY media source, regardless of size, should have the voice and the opportunity to tell the truth (or to lie and suffer the marektplace and/or legal consequences if they do). Don't you agree?

There should be lots of choices, and their biases should all be perfectly clear. There SHOULD be fragmentation. This is why one of the reforms Blair has asked for is decentralization of the news. Left wingers should LOVE this. This is a core Democratic value. Remember when Clinton passed FCC regulations to create those local short-radius radio stations? Liberals LOVED that. Then Bush came along and re-wrote the rules so they'd allo go to churches. Remember that? That meant Clear Channel wouldn't have to compete with local news and music (which was the chink in their armor -- they would have had a hard time competing with those little stations).

Decentralization and localization of very powerful cultural forces is a good thing to Liberals, I thought. With Blair, however, it's being spun as an attack on free speech? Right. The "free speech" which can barely be honest about African politics and wants to tell every Brit what to buy at the record store next Saturday, and remind people to go see Man Utd, & buy a new jersey, and drink some Newcastle Amber, or whatever.

I'm amazed that some people don't at least appreciate the argument, if not agree with me about this.

And I really can't see how anyone could believe Dyke's analysis that the government pushed the media arround in the US. That's just absurd. Do you really believe that?

I think Dyke implies that the same problem (the media merely echoing the government) is still a risk with a single big BBC. He says that it will happen when the BBC caves to the government. If pressed, I bet he'd admit that it has in the past (and that it could cave to oppose a good government took, if that government wasn't down with the Premiere League-Breweries-Media axis of control of British consumption).

So where does that leave his argument?

Maybe decentralization of the BBC news part of the business is smart, and maybe separating it out from the entertainment part (ie, the media-breweries etc. influences) is a good idea.

Don't you think?

[muriel_volestrangler]

63. The problem is you are saying that Dyke and the BBC oppose Labour

because they want to get rich from privatisation. You have no evidence whatsoever for this. Instead, all the available evidence shows that what the BBC doesn't like about the current Labour party is (a) that it tries to control the entire political news output; (b) that it suspects that Labour wants to privatize it in some form. The BBC thinks it has an excellent reputation, both in the UK and abroad, for news reporting, and (to a lesser extent) for general programme making, and wants to preserve this. Looking at countries like the USA, it seems the best way to preserve the quality of both the BBC and the commercial channels is to keep a strong publicly-owned BBC, which is not subject to relentless pressure to get ratings based on the disposable income of the viewers; and which cannot be manipulated by the owner (eg the shameless cross promotion of Sky and The Sun by Rupert Murdoch).

You think that the US government doesn't threaten the US media. Why was it such a surprise that Bush couldn't answer the questions of an Irish interviewer (from a state owned broadcaster)? Because the US media are a bunch of lapdogs, and Bush wasn't used to getting tough questions. Rumsfeld reacted in the same way to a BBC interview before the Iraq war. They fear that if they step out of line, they'll get left out of briefings, while all their competitors will be well treated by the government. And the size of the organisation does make a difference - a small team cannot build up the expertise needed to research fully stories - they have to take the sources' (eg the government) word for much more.

What the BBC has, above all, is credibility. Much more than the current government. It has the credibility because of its history of reporting objectively. Break up its news operation, and you destroy that - and with new Labour being the most manipulative government the UK has ever had, that is dangerous for us all.

That you think that the BBC is kowtowing to commercial pressures like football teams is ridiculous. What it does is nothing compared with the commercial UK channels - or American ones. Look at the coverage of American Football. It's hyped way more. How else is the Superbowl the TV event of the year?

What do you think is dishonest about the BBC coverage of African politics? If you're going to bring up Mugabe, I'd point out that there are no news organisations anywhere outside Zimbabwe that regard him as anything other than dishonest.

Why are you so keen on the privatization of the non-news part of the BBC? By not depending on commercials, or subscription fees, it can produce programmes that don't just aim for the demographic with the most desposible income. I'd have thought you'd appreciate that.

[AP]

65. I'm saying two things, which interesect only very slightly:

(1) I'm saying that Dyke is dead wrong about the problem with the American media. Why he gets it wrong is a matter of speculation and it's slightly irrelevant since he's not longer in control of the BBC. If I read his book, it might be interesting to try to see what his agenda is, but I'm probably not going to read it.

(2) I'm saying that somethign is going on with the BBC that is very interesting, and never really discussed here. I laid it out. If you want to debate it, let's debate it. I'm not going to get all the links together, but there out there. There is a debate about the BBC. Labour does want to separate and stop publically subsidizing the entertainment aspects and they want to decentralize what remains, giving more control to local organizations.

To answer your last question, with a wealthy middle class, there's a market for all kinds of media. I don't think you maximize the social and economic value of TV by providing a public subsidy (out of a regressive tax) to produce things that aren't drawing the biggest audience. And in a free market ENTERTAINMENT marketplace, when there's a bigger econoimc reward for the things to rise to the top, you create a lot more interesting less commercial activity at the periphery that takes chances to get that bigger brass ring. As a consequence you get more interesting, challenging stuff. Clear Channel's dominance of radio has really destroyed independant music more than anything else. The BBC being the big oppressive force that doesn't have to respond to market forces has done the same thing in the UK.

Had entertainment been released to the free market in the UK, the UK entertainment industry would have produced more wealth for people who work in it over the years and would have produced more diverse and interesting stuff at the periphery.

Entertainment is just NOT something that benefits from monopolization. So you can be proud of what has been on the BBC, but I think there was a huge opportunity cost in doing so. There has probably been way more talent that didn't get to realize its full value than talent that has.

As for the Irish journalist attacking Bush, the press in the UK is also trying to tie Bush to Blair, so attacking Bush probably does more to hurt Blair than hurt Bush. Or that might be the point of it. I notice it was only a tiny blip in American, that was only if you read DU. Nobody knew the first thing about it. But we did get 20 minutes on the premiere league during Newshour on our NPR affiliates.

[AP]

66. What does that Irish reporter have to do with whether the US pushes around

the media here, by the way?

Do you REALLY think the government pushes the media around in the US?

Once again Bush went to bat for GE with that Marconi merger. That's pushing the media around? And don't you think that there's a reason why the GE and TW aren't pushing Bush? (psst, in addition to merger laws, FCC limitations on the number of stations you can own).

I'll say it again to you and Dyke: The problem in the US is not fragmentation. It's that a very few very large corporations dominate the media and they DON'T compete or have different opinions when it comes to the essential questions about what the American government is doing.

It would be hard to review the 2000 election and honestly say that the media didn't want Bush to win. And the reason they helped Bush out when he wasn't even the president has nothing to do with the relative size of the gov't and the media. They pushed the hell out of Gore.

And, please ask Mr Dyke why fragmentatioin didnt' stop the media from pushing around Bill Clinton for eight years.

[muriel_volestrangler]

70. The Irish reporter shows how weak the TV news interviewers are in the USA

Yes, I REALLY think that Bush's regime pushes around the media in the US. DU is full of examples. The pressure not to show the Reagan biography on a broadcast channel. The sidelining of Helen Thomas. Above all, the acceptance of whatever the government said leading up to the Iraq war. They wanted access to government spokesmen, and to embed reporters so they could get their action reports.

I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about with GE and Marconi. I'm also surprised by the claim that the FCC head that Bush appointed was the son of a major Time Warner shareholder. I thought Michael Powell was the son of Colin Powell.

It is true that large corporations own the electronic media in the US - except NPR and PBS. But their influence is small - because they don't have the depth of resources, and thus reputation for good reporting, that the BBC does.

Clinton and Gore didn't abuse their power like Bush does, so they didn't strongarm the media. You seem to have made the same mistake as before - you think that if someone could exercise unfair power for their own benefit, they will. Clinton, Gore and Dyke are better than that. As a Democrat, I'd have thought you'd have seen that at once.

[AP]

71. I think that American reporters are exactly what their editors want them

to be.

Dyke doesn't think that Bush pushed around Helen Thomas into propagandizing for the war. He thinks Fox, CNN, NBC, CBS, and ABC MGT, EDITORS and ANCHORS are being pushed around into propagandizing.

What did Dan Rather say? "During a war, I'll line up where Bush tells me to line up"? He was PROUD to say that.

- Colin Powell is a major AOL shareholder. Guess what? Collin Powell was the richest man Bush appointed to his cabinet in 2001. Something like 90% of his wealth was from AOL-TW stock.

- The GE-Marconi merger? You don't remember that? GE owns NBC. Do you need some more clues?

- The private American media is richer collectively than the BBC and could do serious journalism if it wanted to. If the media weren't dominated by these companies, smaller journalists could get their ideas and stories out there. BBC is big because it was a publically-funded monopoly for years (and is now just publically funded), but this isn't why it's good, and being good isn't just a product of size.

Decentralized media in an environment where nobody dominates, with a state-run station being ONE of the players is the best strategy, if you ask me.

And if I ran PBS or NPR, I could turn it into a GREAT, INTERESTING source of news without spending one more dollar than they do now and without having to hire any more employees. I think that it's obvious that the problems in the US media don't have to do with resources. They have to do with bad choices.

[muriel_volestrangler]

75. What has GE or NBC got to do with Marconi?

Marconi is, as far as I can tell, still an independent, struggling, company. I can't find any story of an attempted takeover by GE since Marconi sold off its defence interests, and became known as Marconi, in 1999. What are you talking about?

I didn't know Powell had a lot of AOL stock. But putting his son in charge of the FCC doesn't show he's doing what the whole AOL/Time Warner stockholders tell him - it shows that he's benefitting the people in his administration.

Thomas was an example of what happens to reporters who question the regime too much. That's why the other sit down and shut up. They are also afraid of being smeared as unpatriotic by the Republicans. They tried it with the BBC too ("the Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation"), but the BBC has the reputation to whitstand it. Break it up and you lose that reputation.

Yes, the private American media has more money - because it chases lucrative advertising. The BBC's independence of corporations allows it to be objective. When it doesn't get threatened by the government, it can be objective in reporting that too. Labour did threaten the BBC.

[AP]

77. GE wanted to buy Marconi and EU prevented it. Bush tried to use

his weight to force the EU to allow the purchase. He was pissed when the didn't.

Bottom line, you expect NBC to report fairly on Bush when Bush has so much influence on whether they can monopolize marketplaces?

Why was Bush so eager to help GE? Why did GE go so easily on Bush during election?

Dyke thinks it's because the government is pusing GE/NBC arround. I think it's because GE/NBC is the government in many respects.

[muriel_volestrangler]

79. Are you talking about the GE Honeywell merger?

OK, Bush is friendly to big business. There are many more companies than just the ones that own the media that Bush has done things for. The fact that he could, if he wanted to, exclude any media company that pissed him off gives him another lever.

[AP]

80. How does Dyke expect the media to "push" the government when

it depends on the government to help it buy defense contractors and monopolize marketplaces?

Don't you think that would be a more productive road for Dyke to go down if he wants to explain why the media whores it up for Bush?

[muriel_volestrangler]

81. Maybe I'd sum it up thus

American television is now so fragmented there are no 800 pound gorillas around as there was when CBS, ABC and NBC dominated the American television news media.

As a result many of the large television news organisations in the States are no longer profitable or confident of their future.

The effect of this fragmentation is to make government, the White House and the Pentagon, all-powerful with no news operation strong enough or brave enough to stand up against it.

No so far from saying some media companies depend on the Pentagon, or others on government tax breaks for their theme parks, for their profits.

But would that make me an asshole with an agenda?

[AP]

82. There may be fragmentation of ownership (but, seriously, 5 companies

controlling 90% of all American media is NOT fragmentation), but the real problem is that there is no fragmentation of opinion. There is no diversity of opinion. All the media has the same opinion about the relationship between capital, labor, the consumer and the government, and I assure you, there is no pushing and shoving between the government and the media UNLESS it's a government that looks after labor and the consumers more than it does capital (such as Clinton's).

If the government can push arround American media because of its fragmentation, why didn't it when Clinton was President?

[AP]

68. About football: it IS the business of the private media to hype private

enterprise.

But I think it's ridiculous that British citizens pay a regressive tax to pay for the BBC NEWS (and not just the entertainment) division hype football for 20 minutes out of every hour.

Is there really no better news?

Why can't you just leave the private sector to the private sector, and the news to the news? I'm not saying that it has to be boring.

I'm saying that a state news service, financed out of progressive taxation, which provides something more than product placement should be a key part of a diverse, decentralized un-monopolized news media landscape.

[muriel_volestrangler]

78. Football is popular - the BBC can't ignore it

The real hype kicks in when it's an international game - when there are no companies involved.

I won't defend every BBC news programme - 1/3rd spent on football does sound excessive. I don't think it's typicalm though.

I do agree that progressive taxation would be a better source than the licence fee - as long as the government can't change the amount from year to year. The BBC needs to be beyond the control of whatever party currently has a majority in parliament.

[AP]

69. Re your last paragraph: HBO.

The government doesn't need to run HBO off a flat tax on all citizens. It belongs in the private sector. Let people decide if they want HBO. Make HBO price compete with other subscription services. That's the way you're going to get the best commercial-free media. You're not going to get it by threatening everyone with jail if they don't pay the tv tax and then dominating 40-50% of the channels available to people.

I do think that the local Film Councils in the UK are a great idea, so long as they're not run at a loss, or to make cronies wealthy, and so long as they try finance less commercial media -- the stuff where the big corporations don't step in.

But they're at the lowest level of the chain: production. When the government dominates the whole chain right up to distribution, that's a problem. That starts to influence the marketplace in perverse ways.

[muriel_volestrangler]

73. HBO does produce good material

but in far less quantities than the BBC. It's mainly a film channel, showing films produced by other companies that have already been in theaters. A subscription model for the BBC might work, but it might force it to aim at the more affluent. The BBC does far more in documentaries and educational programming than anything on American TV.

You've shown no evidence that the BBC is suppressing a British film industry. What are these perverse effects?

[AP]

76. The American film industry is a good example of how...

...the free market works to create more wealth in an industry that makes sense to operate in the free market.

But my proof is opportunity cost, and how do you prove the opportunity cost?

Rank Films could have been as big as WB. Working Title could have been Miramax.

But there isn't enough money in British entertainment thanks to BBC holding value down by not having to compete in a market it dominates.

[AP]

62. By the way, I think it only sounds like ramblings because I'm challenging

you to rethink what you think you know.

I think if you try to anser the questions I asked you in my last post, you might rethink your characterization of what I'm saying.

[rinsd]

25. But AP....

He seems to be saying the right things, music to our ears if you will.

How dare you dig deeper than a quick article! ;-)