Peter Preston (London Guardian): It's a charade and we all know it

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Guardian of London
Dated Monday July 7

It's a charade and we all know it
The government is only harming itself in its battle with the BBC
By Peter Preston

Nobody (wails a baleful Silvio Berlusconi) understands irony any longer. Nobody pauses to scowl, and then smile. Well - huff-puff! - maybe not at a dodgy Italian prime minister, pumping out propaganda through television channels he happens to own. How slimy; how shameful; how un-BBC. And then we fall flat in a puddle of irony, too.
Occasionally, at some international conference or other, a journalist from benighted areas where independent public broadcasting is nigh on impossible will sidle up and ask you how the BBC does it. What embedded safeguards keep its truth-telling alive, maintain its reporting quality? Questions courting bemusement - and disappointment. Look, you reply, there are no such safeguards. Indeed, with a spin of the fact box, just the reverse. Nothing is safe.
Consider the actual situation. This corporation is superintended by its governors. They are appointed by the government of the day. New Labour. So is the chairman of the governors - currently Gavyn Davies, a rich merchant banker who gave Tony Blair oodles of his own boodle in order that he might become lord of Downing Street (and whose wife is Gordon Brown's right-hand woman).
But remember, you add, that these governors really only exercise strategic control. The practical day-to-day powerhouse is the director-general. He's appointed by the governors (appointed by Tony Blair) and he happens to be Greg Dyke, a rich ex-ITV executive who gave more oodles of boodle to the Blair campaign . . . .
But the good news, thus far, is that everything you'd hope would happen has happened. The BBC has declined to be intimidated. Mr director-general Dyke has stood unflinchingly, even cheerily, by his men.

Read more.

[Capt_Nemo]

1. This is the best analisys of the Blair vs. BBC row

that I have read yet.

[T_i_B]

2. It is a charade

If they were serious they would look for the mole.

Plus I do think that Blair has an agenda here of trying to build up support for selling the BBC off. Murdoch must be in heaven with what Blair is trying to do to his main competitor in the UK. No prizes for guessing who his rags will be supporting come election time! :eyes:

[Classical_Liberal]

3. Sadly the world will be ten times better off if Blair loses

than if he wins. Blair has done this to himself. He clearly stands in the corner of faux news propagandist, who have fucked America up so badly. No liberal should attempt to save him from his self destructive tirade, because the only way he can be saved is to bring down the treasure called the BBC world service and replace it with more faux news. It would be a terrible loss the English speaking parts of the world if this happened.

[DemoTex]

4. Win-win for Blair. Lose-lose for the world.

Blair will probably go to work directly for his current paymasters - the Carlyle Group - instead of indirectly, as the arrangement is now. The Carlyle Group will continue to try to takeover the world.

BTW: Here is a great documentary video on Carlyle. The first 107 seconds are in Dutch; the remaining 46 minutes are in English (from BartCop's site):

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article3995.htm

[Classical_Liberal]

5. what is really sick is that the DLC wants democrats to emulate Blair

Uhg! They are calling themselves Blair Democrats.

[realityboy]

6. Farce

They saw that normal service was being resumed when the Tory press turned on the govt over the absense of WMDs, over which the war they supported was supposedly fought. So Blair and Campbell decided to deflect attention by tossing them a piece of meat: the BBC.

Now the whole question of why Britain went to war, killed thousands of people, violated international law and lied to the British public and the world is being reduced to a media farce between a tabloid hack and a BBC reporter.

I wouldnt be suprised to see the BBC's independence and public ownership being gradually compromised. Lest we forget, the BBC was created by the establishment to serve its purposes. Once it begins to get any independent ideas, it become an irritant. The more the Tory-New Labour consensus grows, the more the notion of balanced reporting becomes useless to them. The war coverage shows that Murdoch and his like are more than willing to fill the role of propaganda, cheerleading and distraction, so what use the BBC?