The case of the BBC vs. the Blair government reminds us why the world has moved beyond state monopolies. They are inefficient, can be blinded by arrogance and often have an exaggerated sense of their own power. Nowhere is this truer than in the world of media, a profession that is crowded with big egos in any event.
What else would one expect, but that those attracted to the entertainment media would be people with an elevated view of their own importance? What else would one expect, but that those attracted to the
socialist government would be people with an elevated view of their own importance?
All of which should call into question the BBC's reporting during the Iraq War. It was unrelentingly hostile toward the allied forces and became known here as the Baghdad Broadcasting Corp. Of course, this was not an unknown phenomenon here in the United States. But in Britain, the BBC has a unique lock on the power to shape public opinion. A shake-up should be focused on getting the corporation back to basics — through competition and privatization. After all it is the job of the media to report the news — "get it right and get it first" as this newspaper's editor in chief, Wesley Pruden, likes to say — not to promote its own agendas.
The claim is made that journalism is not as uniformly socialist in Europe as it is in America. That certainly seems ironic in the context of the necessity socialists have faced here to continually rebrand their product, trying to outrun the reputation their actual policies merits--"social"ism was deceptive enough in Europe, suggesting social processes rather than government coercion--but here it had to be rebranded "liberalism" (originally meaning the
opposite of tyranny), and that brand has degenerated into "the L-word" so they now try to call socialism "progressive" or "moderate" politics. It seems odd to me that our journalists can uniformly be socialist--that is, "mainstream" journalists consistently wage propaganda war on the idea that a conservative such as Rush Limbaugh might be considered a journalist--yet that socialism is accepted under its own name in Europe.
Bumbling Broadcast Corp.
Washington Times ^ | 2/04/04 | Helle Dale