Monday 17 February 2020

Beeb bashing.

The BBC has had a near total monopoly on TV politics and what has it coughed up for us? Grace Blakeley, Owen Jones, Aaron Bastani, EU supergirl, Femi, Steve Bray and Ash Sarkar. It debases public debate. It adds no value while acting as a bed blocker to anything that might.

Thanks to the BBC public debate is dominated by cranks because they're cheap, readily available and generate controversy. That's fine for commercial stations but if the BBC has abandoned its obligation to inform and wants to play in the gutter it should not enjoy special status.

It can't complain if the government wants to treat it like a commercial entity when it has decided to compete with commercial stations on their terms. If there's any point to a state broadcaster then it's to take risks private channels cant, preferably by rising above the dross.

But it's not going to do that because BBC politics producers genuinely don't see a problem. The worse they get the better they think they are. It's a basic values problem born of a contempt for ordinary people, believing them incapable of serious engagement with the issues.

Instead of exploring issues in depth the BBC gives over most of its airtime to attention seeking opinionated blowhards who don't have a basic grasp of the issues meaning the viewer is likely to be more informed than the people presuming to inform us. So what is the actual point?

It's not even as though the wastrels and blowhards they give airtime to are representative of the layman's point of view. They tend to be self-radicalised adolescents with no real world experience who live a narrow selfish existence inside a London bubble whose values are alien.

The BBC then seeks to bring "balance" by giving airtime to juveniles from Tory think tanks, spewing wildly inaccurate bilge to reinforce a tightly controlled narrative. That's not balance. It just means the debate is polluted by valueless noise while the substance is neglected.

So in fact the BBC does the public a disservice, leading the debate into triviality and irrelevance for the advancement of narcissists and parasites. And they think that deserves public funding? Worse still, they have no idea why they are so deeply detested. It's unsalvageable.

The BBC is no longer capable of informing the nation because it wouldn't know where to even look for serious sources. It has long since reduced politics to passive entertainment while seeking to be a participant rather than observer. Why should we pay for that?

BBC supporters often say the fact both sides accuse it of bias means they're doing their jobs. That just speaks to the intolerance for opposing views from each lunatic fringe. But if the sum product is a cacophony of valueless noise then the BBC is failing in its primary function.

But let's not kid ourselves. Deleting the BBC doesn't solve the problem because there is still a huge market for coprophagia. If the BBC doesn't supply it, somebody else will. The central problem is you, dear reader, who indulge it by responding to it. Physician, heal thyself.

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