A tarnished national treasure AN OUTSIDERS VIEW Ken Fuller 06/08/2010

A tarnished national treasure

AN OUTSIDERS VIEW Ken Fuller 06/08/2010 A decade ago, the team from a British garden-makeover show sprang a surprise on Nelson Mandela, remodeling his garden while he was abroad. Learning that this was a British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) enterprise, he became effusive, impressing on the team that the BBC was a national treasure to be jealously guarded. What he was referring to was the BBC’s reputation for independence and impartiality, and it’s easy to see that, when compared to the controlled media during the apartheid years in Mandela’s own country, the corporation must have seemed the acme of media freedom. True enough, although state-owned (unlike BBC World, the domestic version carries no advertising, the funding coming from an annual license fee paid by each householder with a television set) the BBC is never shy about attacking the government of the day. John “Rottweiler” Humphrys regularly savages politicians on Radio 4’s early-morning Today program, while his TV equivalent is Jeremy Paxman on BBC2’s Newsnight (five nights a week, but sadly only seen in a 30-minute weekly version on BBC World). Recently, Paxman aggressively exposed the hypocrisy of Conservative leader David Cameron (who, since then, has become prime minister). Mandela was right to be concerned about the BBC’s future, because there were then, and are now, forces at work which would like to scale down its operations, and maybe even defang it. It would be a mistake, however, to exaggerate the damage those fangs can do, because while aggressive interviewers may launch into individual politicians with alacrity, the corporation pulls its punches when it comes to “the Establishment” as a whole, and peddles obscurantism as willingly as dumbed-down Murdoch channels. In fact, in its early days the BBC, rather than enjoying a reputation for journalistic freedom and liberal values, was known as a staunch and stuffy defender of the status quo. There was even a time when announcers — even on the radio, where they could not be seen — were required to wear dinner jackets. What brings this on? Well, a few weeks ago I was watching the news on BBC World when up sprang an item on the Turin Shroud, which the Pope was about to visit. To my ears, the report was lopsided in that while it made sure we knew that believers were convinced that the cloth, which bears the image of a man who has apparently been crucified, is nothing less than the burial shroud of Jesus Christ, the opposite viewpoint was given scant attention. And, of course, the very fact that this event was considered news betrayed an assumption of legitimacy.... MORE     Source:  The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100608com5.html

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