> At the last count, in 1984, the BBC had a staff of almost 30,000. We have discovered that all current affairs appointees, together with many of those involved in the actual making of programmes - including directors and film editors - are vetted.
> We have also established who runs the system. It operates, unknown to almost all BBC staff, from Room 105 in an out-of-the way corridor on the first floor of Broadcasting House - a part of that labyrinth on which George Orwell modelled his Ministry of Truth in 'Nineteen Eighty-Four.'
> The names of outside applicants are submitted to F Branch 'domestic' subversion desks at MI5, which is headed by the diplomat Sir Antony Duff. They are fed into a computer containing the details of 500,000 'subversives'.
> MI5 probably got their toe-hold in the BBC during the war when staff running the external services broadcasting to occupied Europe were vetted. Sir Hugh Greene, later to become director-general of the BBC, remembers: 'I was vetted in 1940. MI5 thought I was a Communist, but it turned out to be a mistake .' During the Cold War, Attlee's Government openly announced that civil servants who were Communists (or Fascists) would not be allowed access to classified material. But the BBC were keeping a secret blacklist. Hugh Greene recalls a case in the external services: 'He wasn't a security risk at all. It turned out he had worked for MI6,the rival secret service, and there had been an internal quarrel.'
edit: the BBC coverage of the Scottish independence referendum, Corbyn, and Brexit was embarrassing. The Prescott memo is just the latest observation of how the BBC has been used as a tool to propagate elite opinions and accomplish intelligence objectives. Of course you like it, it's for you.
> The Prescott memo is just the latest observation of how the BBC has been used as a tool to propagate elite opinions and accomplish intelligence objectives. Of course you like it, it's for you.
I think this kind of criticism is in bad faith. Because there's an implication that you're comparing the BBC to some kind of ideal unbiased news outlet.
In reality, the alternatives to the BBC are much more obviously nefarious and make far less steps to remove bias.
If the BBC is a tool to "propagate elite opinions", then how would you describe Fox News, the Daily Mail, The Times (UK), or even CNN?
You’d be forced to pay way more than the cost of the licence fee in punishing austerity if it was up to the Mail and the Times. The per capita cost of Brexit that they campaigned for far exceeds the licence fee.
Yes, for-profit services often cost more and deliver less than non-profit or at-loss public services which make more sense for commodity services especially those needed to survive like healthcare or infrastructure.
More broadly (like "not just UK" broadly) if you get rid of propaganda paid for with your own taxes, what you're left with isn't "no propaganda" but rather "everyone else's propaganda".
If your government is a democracy and you are not an elite yourself, this is bad for you. If you're not in a democracy or you are part of the elite (in this example meaning you can pay for the creation of propaganda to serve your own interests), that's good for you.
You are free to not use those services and hence opt out of payment. Of course you know that already - it’s just so that others recognise the bits you conveniently leave out!
I always understood that Broadcasting House was inspiration for Room 101 (Ministry of Love) rather than the MoT.
It's well-known that the University of London Senate House building was the inspiration for the Ministry of Truth. Both the interior and exterior have appeared in many films and TV shows. Seems to come out of the visual creative toolbox when there's a need to evoke oppression or technocratic stultification through architecture, which is a shame as it's rather nice to visit!
Someone very smart told me that incompetence is a form of bias all of its own, because it privileges people who are able to ask for corrections in their favor.
(They had a nice worked example involving exam results - some years have much higher variance than others, due to incompetence in question-setting or marking, and in those years the mis-marking is randomly distributed but only the more middle class parents manage to work the system to get re-marked)
This is such a dangerously naïve view. Anyone who's any good at all at politics has learnt that this heuristic is widely applied, and is therefore careful to make a huge fuss irrespective of how well or badly things are going for them.
(Well, I say anyone; I guess I mostly mean bad people, who aren't restrained by fairness or honesty).
>>the BBC coverage of the Scottish independence referendum, Corbyn, and Brexit was embarrassing.
Yes, they were clearly pro-Remain and anti-Corbyn and anti-Scottish independence.
>> The Prescott memo is just the latest observation of how the BBC has been used as a tool to propagate elite opinions and accomplish intelligence objectives.
Yes, it demonstrated examples of bias in favour of those elite opinions.
It is grimly funny how the Conservative party (Cameron) looked at the indyref, with its 48/52 win with all three main parties and almost all the media on their side, and decided that this was a big win and they could do it again. But this time the media would be on the other side, and pro-Leave were the ones making all the big undeliverable promises in all directions.
I would say they were a lot less pro-Remain than the facts were, such that they were effectively heavily biased towards Leave.
Typically they'd interview someone to factually explain how Brexit would be bad, and then 'balance' it up by giving equal airtime to some liar/fantastist telling us how it would be wonderful.
But no, not only that. 90% of economists thought Brexit would be net bad [1]. But at least 50% of economists the BBC put on air thought it would be net good [2].
All that shows is that 90% of economists were wrong.
I mean I don't think it was massively good (government fumbles saw to that) but the UK isn't doing significantly worse than the rest of Europe, or worse than it was pre-Brexit.
Economics isn't a proper science, but even so it's not a democracy - more people saying x rather than y doesn't guarantee they're correct.
Somewhat off on a tangent but George Orwell got mentioned (possibly ”invoked") and he literally sent names of communists that couldn't be trusted to be involved in broadcast to the government:
I can't speak of the MI5 accusation but the elite opinion one is comically of the mark. The (economic/political) elite famously hate the Beeb for its "leftie" views (really, it's just being balanced and telling the facts that they object to). The Tories would love an excuse to tear it apart but historically it's been too popular for them to get away with that.
If you had meant intellectual elites then maybe you would have a point but I don't think that's what you were saying.
I think that everybody looks back with rose tinted specs. Off the cuff, I'd say that the BBC isn't as honest and transparent as I thought it was back in the 80s, 90s.
Then I remember the Jimmy Saville cover-up. Britain's pound shop/ dollar store Epstein.
> senior managers were not told of complaints about Savile because of an "atmosphere of fear" which still exists in the BBC
Written 10 years ago and still true today. It's just that the lies de jour depend on who currently holds political and (to a far grater extent today) cultural power. The elites, in a modern cultural sense, are not necessarily people with traditional money and power (royalty, politicians, famous stars and billionaires). Undoubtedly they have power, but these days that type of power doesn't protect you from the mob. Today, power is wielded by people who claim to have none, yet somehow set the tone on social media (moderation rules), influence rules within universities, influence charities and NGOs, and from there, media outlets. Politicians today are just landing to all. The BBC has is right up there with all the other liars.
The UK. Being educated at Eton is a pretty good proxy for "the elite". We've had seven Eton-educated Prime Ministers in the 20th and 21st Century, and 100% of them were Conservatives.
There has never been an Eton-educated Labour PM and the majority of Labour MPs come from state schools. The political skew among the elites is pretty obvious.
That's a far worse proxy. If you want to study PPE at university then you have to pay, there is no alternative. Studying at Eton is entirely unnecessary, given that state schools exist, and also far more expensive - Oxford costs £9,500 per year, Eton is about £17,500 per term.
That's why it's the sole preserve of the elite, unlike Oxford.
You seem to think "Elite" means "Rich" whereas "Elite" in this context means "opinion-former". Some can be rich, some can be MPs, civil servants, journalists, editors etc.
Prior to the current government the Tories were in power for 14 years, mostly with a majority. So I guess your opinion that the elites are left wing must be quite recently formed?
For the newspaper editors, take a look at the circulation figures for 2020 (the last year that we have a full set)[1]
The Guardian, i, and Mirror had a combined circulation of 800,989.
The Mail, Express, Sun, Times, and Telegraph had a combined circulation of 4,246,217. That’s 81% (you'll also notice there are more of them). The newspaper landscape in the UK is overwhelmingly right wing.
I don’t know why you’ve included Civil Servants, since according to your own data only 32% of respondents think they’re part of the elite.
I think this has probably run its course. I did ask for evidence, but from your answers for CEOs and bankers it’s pretty obvious that your opinion is just based on vibes.
You picked the sample, not me. Those categories are taken directly from the YouGov poll that you linked. I took the four categories where "Are members of the ruling class" scored higher than "Are not..."
Your own data doesn't support your argument. I'd also point out that the comment you originally replied to specified "economic/political elite", which is why I started off with politicians. The BBC doesn't fall into either category, it's media.
That's a very purist viewpoint. The other side hired people to work against Britain and managed to get them into sensitive organisations, particularly the security services of course. Should Britain have surrendered to that in the name of purity?
Outside actual national security, like the military, isn't the moral high ground precisely "we use reason, you use force"? I'm really not interested in picking sides when, as I heard a friend say, "the dog bites the dog and everyone has fur in their mouth."
Democracy is a noble ideal, and I believe in it, but anyone can call themselves democratic. You need to put your money where your mouth is.
Communism, for better or worse, was the system of the opponent. It's the reason that various people did turn over to their side or give them secret intelligence. Did Pravda knowingly employ right wing Russians? They wouldn't even have bothered with this kind of ridiculous question.
There's an old story about sombeody like Manny Shinwell (a CP member in the house of lords) and somebody in the labour party convinced they were being bugged and speaking Yiddish to each other on the phone (as if MI5 couldn't find somebody to understand Yiddish, polari, you-name-it)
> At the last count, in 1984, the BBC had a staff of almost 30,000. We have discovered that all current affairs appointees, together with many of those involved in the actual making of programmes - including directors and film editors - are vetted.
> We have also established who runs the system. It operates, unknown to almost all BBC staff, from Room 105 in an out-of-the way corridor on the first floor of Broadcasting House - a part of that labyrinth on which George Orwell modelled his Ministry of Truth in 'Nineteen Eighty-Four.'
> The names of outside applicants are submitted to F Branch 'domestic' subversion desks at MI5, which is headed by the diplomat Sir Antony Duff. They are fed into a computer containing the details of 500,000 'subversives'.
https://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/mi5.bbc.page...
> MI5 probably got their toe-hold in the BBC during the war when staff running the external services broadcasting to occupied Europe were vetted. Sir Hugh Greene, later to become director-general of the BBC, remembers: 'I was vetted in 1940. MI5 thought I was a Communist, but it turned out to be a mistake .' During the Cold War, Attlee's Government openly announced that civil servants who were Communists (or Fascists) would not be allowed access to classified material. But the BBC were keeping a secret blacklist. Hugh Greene recalls a case in the external services: 'He wasn't a security risk at all. It turned out he had worked for MI6,the rival secret service, and there had been an internal quarrel.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Christmas_tree%22_files
edit: the BBC coverage of the Scottish independence referendum, Corbyn, and Brexit was embarrassing. The Prescott memo is just the latest observation of how the BBC has been used as a tool to propagate elite opinions and accomplish intelligence objectives. Of course you like it, it's for you.