We’ve seen from our previous post on the BBC and its woke agenda the extent to which it will go to ensure that its output is consistently left wing, with opposing viewpoints either misrepresented or not represented at all.
Woke in, woke out
But there are other ways in which the BBC’s inbuilt left wing bias manifests itself. Before programmes can be broadcast they have to be planned and organised, producers and presenters found, and interviewees or panelists and, where appropriate, audience members, invited.
And it is here, as much as in the content of its programmes, that the BBC ensures that it has a built in bias in favour of all things woke. A glimpse of this was given us early this year, when an internal BBC recruitment policy document came to light. This instructed all managers and recruiters not to hire candidates who are “unsuited to the organisation”, or are “dismissive or derisory of diversity and inclusion and surrounding topics”.
Robin Aitken, the former BBC journalist and author has referred to these guidelines as showing “just how embedded Diversity, Equality and Inclusion ideology is in the BBC”.
The BBC says that this document had been replaced in January 2023 by a new framework – one that assesses each candidate against “BBC values and behaviours“. Which means, in effect, that nothing has changed when it comes to selecting each new wave of BBC apparatchiks.
BBC staff help convicted Somali sex offenders fight deportation
A specific example of the nature of a typical BBC employee was revealed in February 2024, when The Mail on Sunday reported on Mary Harper, Africa Editor for the BBC World Service. She was paid to give expert evidence on behalf of a convicted Somali gang rapist in his five-year legal battle fo remain in the UK.
Not only that, but she gave (or sold) similar evidence to help a number of other Somali sex offenders, drug dealers, and career criminals in their deportation appeals. In one case she testified that a Somali man who had committed a horrific sexual assault on a profoundly deaf 17-year old girl would be at “severely heightened risk” if he was sent back to Somalia because he had committed a sex crime.
There is more to this one example of highly placed and paid BBC staff being extreme left wing activists, but we shall move on.
Tim Davie facing both ways at once
Being “progressive” (i.e. left wing) is institutionalised at the BBC. From Tim Davie, the Director-General, downwards through the ranks, the stench of left wing ideology assaults the nostrils at every juncture.
In February 2024 Tim Davie told his staff that they should be “proud” to be progressive. But wait a minute. Isn’t this the same Tim Davie who identifies himself as one who is opposed to “the tyranny of a wholly polarised society”? The man who oversaw the hiring of outside “experts” to monitor the BBC’s output for bias?
Is it not true that there are people who identify as “progressive” and other people (almost certainly far more numerous) who identify as being decidedly not progressive?
So how can this man justify his position here? He is saying two different, conflicting, things. He can’t have it both ways. He either has to ensure he has political balance in the BBC’s output, so that left wing views and bias are eliminated, or he should stop trying to fool the rest of us through his ridiculous claims of impartiality.
Again, Robin Aitken sums it up perfectly. “For Tim Davie to say the BBC is proud to be progressive,” he says, “is to take a firm, and controversial, political position. It suggests he has a very poor understanding of what true impartiality looks like.” Mr Aitken also points out, correctly, that such a statement “directly contradicts the BBC’s core mission, which is to accurately reflect all shades of opinion, not merely those of progressives”.
BBC’s lofty ideals versus the reality
By “core mission”, Mr Aitken is referring to the BBC’s object, as set out in clause 4 of the “Incorporation and Objects” section of its Royal Charter (downloadable from https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a80c6d740f0b6230269570c/57964_CM_9365_Charter_Accessible.pdf). Here you will find just what the BBC’s object is supposed to be. It’s “the fulfilment of its Mission and the promotion of the Public Purposes.”
The BBC’s Mission is set out in clause 5 as “to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain.”
Clause 6 defines the Public Purposes of the BBC, the first of which is to “provide duly accurate and impartial news, current affairs and factual programming to build people’s understanding of all parts of the United Kingdom and of the wider world. Its content should be provided to the highest editorial standards. It should offer a range and depth of analysis and content not widely available from other United Kingdom news providers, using the highest calibre presenters and journalists, and championing freedom of expression, so that all audiences can engage fully with major local, regional, national, United Kingdom and global issues and participate in the democratic process, at all levels, as active and informed citizens.”
As everyone who has followed Anglo-Celtic’s battle to get justice from the BBC and, later, from Ofcom will know, the BBC ignores its obligations under the Royal Charter whenever it likes, just as it ignores complaints from viewers and listeners. It is high time for the whole putrid, “progressive” organisation to be given the fate that it is long overdue to receive – the order of abolition.
