This author seems to have completely missed the point. The BBC has despised its most ardent supporters for years. To them, we are white, middle class, racist Brexiteers. It’s ok to uncritically cover the armed wing of the BLM, but the moment a protester with the Football Lads Alliance waves to someone in an upstairs window, it’s a fascist salute.
Then there is the pc culture – ever present in the news, drama, comedy, CBBC and CBeebies.
What was once a cohesive, conservative force for social good has been turned into the broadcasting wing of the Guardian and their anti-white, anti-male, anti-British woke agenda.
Derek M
3 years ago
“I believe it is a force for good in our nation as we saw at start of the pandemic with its calm, public-spirited response” – Really? The BBC’s coverage since the start has been a national disgrace, whipping up paranoia and hysteria
The BBC reporting on Covid is a disgusting, national disgrace. Fear mongering from day one and asking no questions of govt policy. I do more investigative research than the whole of the BBC.
Andrew Best
3 years ago
The BBC thinks it is ok to say Kill all whites Well done, very funny, everyone is cracking up by such wit and humour, on no hold on, that’s just racist rubbish. The BBC is destroying itself day by day, Good. Cancel your TV licence Free your mind Spread the word
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
Well I wouldn’t stop at the suits. The entire organisation needs to be taken down, not least because a recent survey revealed that the British people now trust Al Jazeera’s news more than they trust the BBC’s news. Just think about that…
Whatever, I threw out the TV 20 years ago because I refused to fund this malicious and garbage organisation. I would encourage everyone else to do the same. There are much, much better things to do with your time than watch or listen to the garbage that the BBC churns out 24/7 across endless channels.
Wow man: I used to think I was a weirdo when I started to watch Al Jazeera (English) when I was living in a non-English speaking part of the world. I have grave reservations about their bona fides and I know they’ve been reported as promoting some questionable things in their Arabic broadcasts but that just comes with the audience they are targeting and the “message” their backers are trying to sell perhaps?
But compared to the subsidised, self loathing of the “Australia Channel” (now defunct) they were a shoe-in. I’ve heard that the BBC has gone totally Woke but jeez: things must be bad over there. My last TV set got stolen from storage while I was away hiding from a malignant piece of red filth that was running our gov’t at the time. But it was giving me the shits anyway so I’ve not replaced it and that was nearly 10 years ago.
I stopped watching BBC television or paying the licence fee years ago for the same reasons as you, but we still have a tv on which we watch DVD’s and recently the kid persuaded me to get Netflix, it’s rather good. Who needs to be insulted by this self regarding, arrogant dinosaur and have to pay for the privilege too?
Al Jazeera originally picked up a lot of staff from the old BBC Middle East team, and then managed to maintain a reasonable degree of reporting objectivity which is why it feels a bit like the Beeb used to be back in the day.
It’s about the only news source I can bother watch these days – although if you want a master class in Pravda style propaganda RT is always good for a laugh.
N A
3 years ago
“The licence fee can be seen as cheap when its daily output on radio, television and online costs us one-fifth of the price of a coffee in major cafe chains.”
Umm, what on earth does that have to do with anything? That’s an absurd comparison.
Here’s a better comparison: A TV license costs over twice the amount of a basic Netflix subscription and has no where near the amount of content that I actually want to watch as Netflix, nevermind twice as much.
+1. These “one coffee a day” comparisons grind my teeth. (a) I dont want £2.50 coffee every day (b) its not compulsory and (c) I dont agree with poorer people, esp single mothers, being forced to buy a coffee a day – or pay £152 pa if they want to watch ITV
A Spetzari
3 years ago
Reporters are sent to stand pointlessly outside empty buildings at night for dramatic effect.
Always makes me chuckle this. It’s a format that has become the done thing but no longer makes any sense whatsoever. What value does it add shipping a random journalist to go and stand next to a place where some of the news in the story may or may not have happened?! Do they gain insight through some sort of osmosis?
But it’s symptomatic of many of the other issues you highlight. It’s very set in its ways the BBC on many things, then in the areas it tries to innovate it invariably gets it wrong.
The Day Today skewered 90% of news tropes perfectly, and more recently Charlie Brooker’s “How to report the news” was a slam dunk on almost any news report
X Xer
3 years ago
Netflix isn’t a parasite, it’s a vastly better competitor than the BBC. When I first got a subscription I could scarcely believe the choice, quality and proper diversity of programming. If I now catch the BBC elsewhere (I cancelled my licence) I’m incredulous at how insipid, painfully PC and anachronistic it is.
How right you are – I’ve resorted to the classic movie channels and been delighted at discovering old gems now long overlooked. YouTube is also a fount of unpublicised treasures which don’t cost a bean.
Would that be the Netflix which offers us such gems as ‘Dear White People’ and ‘Cuties’? I would save your money. Amazon donated $10 million to BLM to “organizations that are working to bring about social justice and improve the lives of Black and African Americans”. Aside from being a lot cheaper than paying proper wages to its workers, why would multi-billion dollar companies donate to what is frankly an extremist political party? Because it makes them look good and they’ll go along with any BS as long as they can focus on making vast profits and don’t actually have to change the way they operate.
Andrew, you are right to point this out. Netflix and Amazon are stuffed with films with the usual pc cast and pc plot lines. You have to sort through a lot of rubbish made in the last few years before finding anything any good. But there is nevertheless rather more good stuff on Amazon and Netflix than on the BBC. Everyone, trawl the back catalogue for best results.
I agree that there are some interesting films on both, though there’s rather more choice on Amazon – for example, I’ve watched some excellent Russian films and TV series on it. But we aren’t forced to pay a tax to watch them and can cancel our subscriptions should we so wish.
I can’t recall the last time I watched anything made by the BBC (I don’t own a television as I have no desire to pay the BBC tax) – drama series, even (maybe even especially) period dramas, feature crowbarred diversity quotas that are not just anachronistic but downright insulting to the source material. They just can’t get over the fact that Britain is now, and has historically always been, a country of indigenous white people. Black people represent, in 2020, around 4% of the population. If anything they are over-represented in film and TV.
Watching European and Russian foreign films (yes, sometimes on Amazon) means I can concentrate on the story rather than see it mangled by the diversity police. (For example, the superb Russian TV series Dostoevsky with Evgeny Mironov.)
I would be genuinely interested in seeing films made by African cinema, just as I’m interested in some of the films that are made in (for example) Iran. I want to know the stories and the characters – these are genuinely universal. I don’t want to be force-fed diversity quotas by the types of people who are currently responsible for the absurd rules now governing films that can be considered for the Oscars. It’s destroying the possibility of creativity not just in film but also in the other arts.
This kind of political interference was typical of the Soviet Union and led to the production of an immense amount of dreck. Directors like Tarkovsky were exceptional, but I can’t see anything getting past this art-by-committee approach we see taking over today.
Completely agree. We watch a lot of foreign language films and have watched several 1950s Italian films on Amazon recently. They weren’t exactly great, but the scenery is! You mention Iranian films and I’ve watched quite a few – well 10 probably. But you are right about African films – very few out there. I find the French support a lot of African / Middle East films, so good on them. Three recommendations, though all somewhat depressing, sorry! I won’t put links, but look up Osama (Afghanistan) Leviathan (Russia) and The Day I Became a Woman (Iran).
PS We subscribe to Cinema Paradiso also. PPS I’ve edited to add another film Timbuktu – brilliant
I’ll check those out, thanks. Currently not subscribed to Amazon, but I’m thinking of signing up for another month (we’re in local semi-lockdown here and Jeff Bezos needs the money). I’ll recommend one film I saw on Amazon (of course, you’ll have to search for it by name) – a Russian movie called I Won’t Come Back. There’s nothing like it in Hollywood or the (so-called) British movie “industry”. But what a brilliant film.
Hmmm.. and the BBC will broadcast anything that fits the woke narrative and block any actual discussion of those topics.
Jos Haynes
3 years ago
Have we been watching the same channels?
I have had enough of the the BBC gloating over every increase in Covid19 deaths, over every difficulty which the EU throws up against Brexit, and over every piece of bad news that it can possibly find. It buries any good news.
I have also had enough of its woke campaign to convince the population that it is racist, sexist, and probably fascist too.
I used to admire the BBC but the love affair started to fade 30 years ago. Now I just want a divorce and never to see nor hear of it again.
Warren Alexander
3 years ago
I haven’t had a TV licence in decades. I used to be an assiduous listener to radio, particularly Radio 4’s drama and comedy, now both are pathetic parodies of what they used to be. My entertainment comes from the internet where I can find excellent news coverage and lots of entertainment without paying a pointless tax to the BBC.
Exactly. I would encourage everyone to watch people like Steven Crowder (surely the true genius of new media), Tim Pool and Jimmy Dore (a Socialist, but honest and funny). And there are countless others, all vastly superior to anything in the legacy media.
The only BBC content I now consume is the football commentaries on the radio, which I have on in the background while reading or doing chores. I then watch the highlights on YouTube.
Matthew Powell
3 years ago
Your talking about an organisation that causally allows anti-white racist (gammon) and sexist (Karen’s) abuse but you think it’s problems can be solved by cutting a few managers jobs?
Ian, you’re part of the problem.
polidoris ghost
3 years ago
You don’t arf ramble. The situation is far worse than you think. The BBC, and you, come from a small segment of society, let’s call it the metropolitan elite, that thinks it is entitled to a disproportionate say in running the affairs of this country. In the interest of all, of course. Brexit, covid, and your responses to them, has torn away the last figleaf. I think that you are now more widely seen as self serving, deracinated, dishonest, contemptuous of the interests of so many of your fellow countrymen, and willing to collaborate with a foreign power in order to preserve your privileged position. And, most damning of all, your are mostly, utterly incompetent. This perception is certainly unfair on many individuals. It is, I’m sure, unfair on you. But this is what comes into my mind when one of you puts pen to paper in defence of the BBC and its tax-gathering goons.
Andrew Anderson
3 years ago
Agree with most of this. However, the BBC needs to admit when it’s got something wrong, as good newspapers now do, rather than taking months (no exaggeration) to defend the indefensible.
Re its foreign coverage, I part company with Ian Birrell: it’s patchy, and patronising. For example, its long-serving and (at least by the BBC) highly regarded Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, can speak only enough Arabic to order a a cup of coffee; like not a few of his colleagues, he relies on interpreters and translators. This is inexcusable. I don’t believe there’s a single foreign reporter in the UK or the USA who doesn’t have excellent English. I wonder how much of this is because the BBC cares so little about the rest of the world, unless it’s Brexit-related or the USA. For example, the World at One is a terrible misnomer, hardly ever paying attention two what’s going in 190 other countries.
Let’s hope the new DG can sort this out.
Ian Barton
3 years ago
There are too many problems with the BBC to list here – but changing the News organisation to do a lot less – with far more capable people – seems a good place to start.
… and untangling the “real news” content from the current (inappropriately named) News website would be a great step forward …
Steve Edwards
3 years ago
I was looking forward to watching “Enslaved” fronted by Samual l Jackson. I was hoping for a wide ranging analysis covering all aspects starting from 700 when historical records first show slavery in Africa. I was hoping it would cover the enslavement of White people and the involvement of Arabs. Most importantly, I was hoping it would cover slavery today. But then I reflected on why front such an important topic with 2 celebrities, apparently. Then I checked IMDB: “A look at 400 years of human trafficking from Africa to the New World, from the perspective of three different storylines.” Hmm, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Perhaps not!
Sean Arthur Joyce
3 years ago
The same problem is happening in Canada with the CBC. Once the loved and trusted voice of Canadians that linked us from coast to coast across this vast country, it has descended into PC identity politics and an unquestioning daily repeat of the official COVID narrative. All semblance of investigative journalism, such as once made us proud of the CBC, has gone. It is now just another Western version of an official government propaganda organ like Pravda was under the Soviet Union.
To paraphrase and invert the famous saying, there might at least have been some truth in Izvestiya and some news in Pravda. When it comes to the BBC, CBC, CNN and various others there is neither truth nor news.
Ben
3 years ago
It’s also hugely London-centric like a lot of organisations and to that extent symptomatic of establishment failure across the board.
Tim Hurren
3 years ago
More actual news and far, far less comment and reaction would be welcome. After viewing or listening to BBC news I sometimes wonder why they have to pad things out with predictable waffle rather than including more reports from what is supposed to be a ‘world class’ news team stretching across the globe. I too have come across people who watch Al-Jazeera for news in preference to the BBC, which is somewhat disturbing. But one of the things on the BBC news website that really annoys me is that the scaremongering and biased headlines on the website are often not at all representative of their own content in the accompanying reports. However in that respect Sky News can be just as bad. Wierd.
Diarmid French
3 years ago
I think it would be better to sack the BBC
Gerry Fruin
3 years ago
Sorry but this analysis really rather points to what has been lost by the BBC. Wimpish, careful not to offend by suggesting modest changes. Salaries of celebrities no issue! Really? It would be easy, so very easy to criticise the laughingly so called news put out by ‘flagship’ program’s. ‘Flag’ White. Oops! now I’ll be banned from Unheard. More than 6000 ‘reporters’ and the Today program still has “whim of the week” anti-government agendas that are trivial, but the celebrities keep to their script even when real agendas have come and gone. Catch out a politico is the big brownie point winner. I fear the writer hasn’t the experience of hearing the BBC news in it’s pomp. Many Unheard readers will remember when the TV (10″) news was read by a man in a dinner jacket and spoke clearly in beautifully modulated English. Compare today’s slovenly estuary delivery and weep. Younowarraimeen. Yuno? It’s far too late to change this parasitic overstaffed grubby tenth rate monster. The answer? Oh a good old establishment compromise. Throw more resources at it, pour in more tax payer funding and increase the innumerable committees. Finally up the salaries and add a few hundred ‘Sirhoods’. There, solved the British way. Yuno
mike otter
3 years ago
“calm response” to the virus panic? Anyone listening to PM or the Today program on R4 would have heard the glee with which they reported faked or exaggerated death or infection rates, government failures and the economic damage. I am not in the least puzzled by the nature of their game nor are most people i know. What they pay their pundits is irrelevant… aside from Linekar none seem to advocate fringe or violent political ideas. If they can negotiate these figures i say well done to them.
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
And don’t get me started on Last Night of the Sue Barker…
Graham Smith
3 years ago
The Hatfield train crash was the start of my parting with the BBC. I remember the presenter on R4 saying along the lines of ‘It’s only just happened so we don’t want to speculate, but……. and so started speculation from the first ‘expert’. Then the Dr David Kelly saga which went on for weeks to the virtual exclusion of all other news on R4. And now Covid. Disgusting, fear mongering reporting with zero investigative reporting. Taking the govt line without question. Can’t bring myself to listen watch or read more than 30seconds of it. Where is the questioning of policy? Where is the challenge on the ‘science’ as presented by govt and their ‘advisors’. All we get (certainly until very recently) is silence or put downs of anyone questioning the establishment line. I still listen to some drama and comedy, maybe Ken Bruce. That’s about it. I tune mainly into a number of non mainstream media sources for news plus Al Jazeera. The BBC is broken, big time. I know nothing about how to run media operations so not going to advise on them fixing themselves. The BBC needs to re-establish its own news identity, regrow it’s set of balls and step out with head held high. Or just forget news altogether and stick to drama.
Drama by the BBC No thanks. Woke rubbish with a never ending agenda of teach the racists they are just evil Great apart from the people the BBC thinks are racist are the whole country but only the white people obviously and they must be taught that they are evil and just unworthy of a place in polite society. No thanks
David Bottomley
3 years ago
Totally agree it needs to up it’s game in reporting on China – and drop some of the over lengthy and tedious reporting on Trump ( far too much detail to the point that we can’t see the wood for the trees).
The daily news programmes should also integrate with, and cross refer to the website for more info, insight and background.
Oh and drop the many and often pointless, time consuming interviews with random people in the street – the ‘how do you feel about’ type of question to which the poor person has to come up with some sort of unconsidered answer.
David Waring
3 years ago
The BBC no longer does unbiased TV or Radio as its presenters e.g Katy Kay and Christian Fraser practically salivate at the prospect of dead US civilians.
David Bottomley
3 years ago
In addition to the point made, there is one thing that puzzles and annoy me concerning UK national and regional reporters. Why, oh why does BBC central have its own ‘Scotland’ reporter in addition to the team that BBC Scotland employs. I cannot think of a single reason for this and it seems a total waste of money in a) employing the Scotland reporter and camera and b) in managing this pointless position. It’s the same with Wales and even with regions of England
Joe Blow
3 years ago
The oversight of the BBC must entail some form of dispassionate annual assessment of its bias, not by its own blinkered luvvies, but by people with established academic know-how that can undertake the analyses. We can probably all see what the results would be, and the BBC should be given zero second chances, given how many they have already had.
They do real damage: it is probable that the lines fed to bumbling Biden as he dribbles about Brexit have found their way to him from the BBC to NPR and then to one of the unthinking millennials who script-write his “Brexit = nasty xenophobia” garbage.
Believe me, the last people you should trust are ‘people with established academic know-how’, at least beyond the hard sciences. And probably not even in the hard sciences these days.
Sadly many of the current academics are too woke to see the issues – or too scared for their jobs to point stuff out ….
dehavilland
3 years ago
The entire notion underpinning the BBC is and always was a terrible idea. State owned broadcasters are by their very nature always going to be political footballs. Bulldoze the institution & salt the earth upon which it stood.
Stuart Bennett
3 years ago
BBC News online is an embarrassment to journalism that gets worse every time I venture on. Partisan churnalism and click bait style headlines. They should also be reminded that the whole country pays the licence fee, not just the Woke.
Steve Craddock
3 years ago
I believe the bbc is merely reflecting the incompetence and politics seen in many areas of UK life that draw their workforces from similar demographics. The career middle managers who progess to their elevated positions almost solely based on the fact there was no one better available at the time and who are a continual reminder of the old truism: “That [middle] managers rise to the level of their own incompetence” whereas a valuable worker grows in to their area of expertise. I would be happier to voluntarily continue to pay the licence fee if the beeb put some proper balance back in its programming and started filling their “factual” and news output with actual facts from which I can then form my own opinions. Walruses falling off a cliff or largely peacefull protests anyone?
Hector Mildew
3 years ago
Mr Birrell writes:
“It (the BBC}… has delivered big scoops on the atrocities inflicted on Uighurs by Beijing.”
And so it should have done. It seems curiously reticent, however, about delivering anything on the widespread persecution of Christians either in China or anywhere else.
srhodes5
3 years ago
Constructive criticism of the BBC is all very fine but there is a more insidious campaign led by the very shouty,shallow ‘journalists’ on the Murdoch & Global radio stations. This is not challenged by the BBC. Some of the desperate desire to please the London illiterati & make BBC inclusive to all sections of society all the time is making it look like a whimpering kitten rater the lion it was. However, the depth of news it still produces & the variety of output, still makes it my broadcaster of choice. I’m extremely concerned that it will be destroyed to be replaced by the commercial, ponderous shallow LBC,Talk Radio & their ilk.
I’d totally disagree with the notion of Talk Radio being shallow. Can’t speak for the others as I don’t listen to them. Mike Graham for instance has putting up guests who challenge all angles of the Covid debacle. Interestly, and probably predictably the most common ‘guests’ like mainstream politicians, scientists who adorn the BBC ‘news’ refuse to appear on Mike’s programme. No prizes for guessing that they don’t like a challenging grilling. Which is what the BBC should be giving them. It’s not like the BBC is funded by big business and has to jump to their tune. Or maybe they do indirectly.
Simon – the BBC looks like a class act compared to LBC and Talk Radio etc I agree. (And it doesn’t do adverts except for its own product). The trouble is the BBC content. You may as well be buying the Guardian or subscribing to Stonewall or BLM.
This author seems to have completely missed the point. The BBC has despised its most ardent supporters for years. To them, we are white, middle class, racist Brexiteers. It’s ok to uncritically cover the armed wing of the BLM, but the moment a protester with the Football Lads Alliance waves to someone in an upstairs window, it’s a fascist salute.
Then there is the pc culture – ever present in the news, drama, comedy, CBBC and CBeebies.
What was once a cohesive, conservative force for social good has been turned into the broadcasting wing of the Guardian and their anti-white, anti-male, anti-British woke agenda.
“I believe it is a force for good in our nation as we saw at start of the pandemic with its calm, public-spirited response” – Really? The BBC’s coverage since the start has been a national disgrace, whipping up paranoia and hysteria
And whipping up anti-government feeling at every turn.
The BBC reporting on Covid is a disgusting, national disgrace. Fear mongering from day one and asking no questions of govt policy. I do more investigative research than the whole of the BBC.
The BBC thinks it is ok to say
Kill all whites
Well done, very funny, everyone is cracking up by such wit and humour, on no hold on, that’s just racist rubbish.
The BBC is destroying itself day by day,
Good.
Cancel your TV licence
Free your mind
Spread the word
Well I wouldn’t stop at the suits. The entire organisation needs to be taken down, not least because a recent survey revealed that the British people now trust Al Jazeera’s news more than they trust the BBC’s news. Just think about that…
Whatever, I threw out the TV 20 years ago because I refused to fund this malicious and garbage organisation. I would encourage everyone else to do the same. There are much, much better things to do with your time than watch or listen to the garbage that the BBC churns out 24/7 across endless channels.
Wow man: I used to think I was a weirdo when I started to watch Al Jazeera (English) when I was living in a non-English speaking part of the world. I have grave reservations about their bona fides and I know they’ve been reported as promoting some questionable things in their Arabic broadcasts but that just comes with the audience they are targeting and the “message” their backers are trying to sell perhaps?
But compared to the subsidised, self loathing of the “Australia Channel” (now defunct) they were a shoe-in. I’ve heard that the BBC has gone totally Woke but jeez: things must be bad over there. My last TV set got stolen from storage while I was away hiding from a malignant piece of red filth that was running our gov’t at the time. But it was giving me the shits anyway so I’ve not replaced it and that was nearly 10 years ago.
I stopped watching BBC television or paying the licence fee years ago for the same reasons as you, but we still have a tv on which we watch DVD’s and recently the kid persuaded me to get Netflix, it’s rather good. Who needs to be insulted by this self regarding, arrogant dinosaur and have to pay for the privilege too?
Al Jazeera originally picked up a lot of staff from the old BBC Middle East team, and then managed to maintain a reasonable degree of reporting objectivity which is why it feels a bit like the Beeb used to be back in the day.
It’s about the only news source I can bother watch these days – although if you want a master class in Pravda style propaganda RT is always good for a laugh.
“The licence fee can be seen as cheap when its daily output on radio, television and online costs us one-fifth of the price of a coffee in major cafe chains.”
Umm, what on earth does that have to do with anything? That’s an absurd comparison.
Here’s a better comparison: A TV license costs over twice the amount of a basic Netflix subscription and has no where near the amount of content that I actually want to watch as Netflix, nevermind twice as much.
+1. These “one coffee a day” comparisons grind my teeth. (a) I dont want £2.50 coffee every day (b) its not compulsory and (c) I dont agree with poorer people, esp single mothers, being forced to buy a coffee a day – or pay £152 pa if they want to watch ITV
Always makes me chuckle this. It’s a format that has become the done thing but no longer makes any sense whatsoever. What value does it add shipping a random journalist to go and stand next to a place where some of the news in the story may or may not have happened?! Do they gain insight through some sort of osmosis?
But it’s symptomatic of many of the other issues you highlight. It’s very set in its ways the BBC on many things, then in the areas it tries to innovate it invariably gets it wrong.
“Broken News” spoofed that trope magnificently.
Not seen that – will check it out thanks!
The Day Today skewered 90% of news tropes perfectly, and more recently Charlie Brooker’s “How to report the news” was a slam dunk on almost any news report
Netflix isn’t a parasite, it’s a vastly better competitor than the BBC. When I first got a subscription I could scarcely believe the choice, quality and proper diversity of programming. If I now catch the BBC elsewhere (I cancelled my licence) I’m incredulous at how insipid, painfully PC and anachronistic it is.
How right you are – I’ve resorted to the classic movie channels and been delighted at discovering old gems now long overlooked. YouTube is also a fount of unpublicised treasures which don’t cost a bean.
Would that be the Netflix which offers us such gems as ‘Dear White People’ and ‘Cuties’? I would save your money. Amazon donated $10 million to BLM to “organizations that are working to bring about social justice and improve the lives of Black and African Americans”. Aside from being a lot cheaper than paying proper wages to its workers, why would multi-billion dollar companies donate to what is frankly an extremist political party? Because it makes them look good and they’ll go along with any BS as long as they can focus on making vast profits and don’t actually have to change the way they operate.
Andrew, you are right to point this out. Netflix and Amazon are stuffed with films with the usual pc cast and pc plot lines. You have to sort through a lot of rubbish made in the last few years before finding anything any good. But there is nevertheless rather more good stuff on Amazon and Netflix than on the BBC. Everyone, trawl the back catalogue for best results.
I agree that there are some interesting films on both, though there’s rather more choice on Amazon – for example, I’ve watched some excellent Russian films and TV series on it. But we aren’t forced to pay a tax to watch them and can cancel our subscriptions should we so wish.
I can’t recall the last time I watched anything made by the BBC (I don’t own a television as I have no desire to pay the BBC tax) – drama series, even (maybe even especially) period dramas, feature crowbarred diversity quotas that are not just anachronistic but downright insulting to the source material. They just can’t get over the fact that Britain is now, and has historically always been, a country of indigenous white people. Black people represent, in 2020, around 4% of the population. If anything they are over-represented in film and TV.
Watching European and Russian foreign films (yes, sometimes on Amazon) means I can concentrate on the story rather than see it mangled by the diversity police. (For example, the superb Russian TV series Dostoevsky with Evgeny Mironov.)
I would be genuinely interested in seeing films made by African cinema, just as I’m interested in some of the films that are made in (for example) Iran. I want to know the stories and the characters – these are genuinely universal. I don’t want to be force-fed diversity quotas by the types of people who are currently responsible for the absurd rules now governing films that can be considered for the Oscars. It’s destroying the possibility of creativity not just in film but also in the other arts.
This kind of political interference was typical of the Soviet Union and led to the production of an immense amount of dreck. Directors like Tarkovsky were exceptional, but I can’t see anything getting past this art-by-committee approach we see taking over today.
Completely agree. We watch a lot of foreign language films and have watched several 1950s Italian films on Amazon recently. They weren’t exactly great, but the scenery is! You mention Iranian films and I’ve watched quite a few – well 10 probably. But you are right about African films – very few out there. I find the French support a lot of African / Middle East films, so good on them. Three recommendations, though all somewhat depressing, sorry! I won’t put links, but look up Osama (Afghanistan) Leviathan (Russia) and The Day I Became a Woman (Iran).
PS We subscribe to Cinema Paradiso also.
PPS I’ve edited to add another film Timbuktu – brilliant
I’ll check those out, thanks. Currently not subscribed to Amazon, but I’m thinking of signing up for another month (we’re in local semi-lockdown here and Jeff Bezos needs the money). I’ll recommend one film I saw on Amazon (of course, you’ll have to search for it by name) – a Russian movie called I Won’t Come Back. There’s nothing like it in Hollywood or the (so-called) British movie “industry”. But what a brilliant film.
Looks good – cheers.
We’ve watched “I Won’t Come Back” – excellent, great recommendation.
Hmmm.. and the BBC will broadcast anything that fits the woke narrative and block any actual discussion of those topics.
Have we been watching the same channels?
I have had enough of the the BBC gloating over every increase in Covid19 deaths, over every difficulty which the EU throws up against Brexit, and over every piece of bad news that it can possibly find. It buries any good news.
I have also had enough of its woke campaign to convince the population that it is racist, sexist, and probably fascist too.
I used to admire the BBC but the love affair started to fade 30 years ago. Now I just want a divorce and never to see nor hear of it again.
I haven’t had a TV licence in decades. I used to be an assiduous listener to radio, particularly Radio 4’s drama and comedy, now both are pathetic parodies of what they used to be. My entertainment comes from the internet where I can find excellent news coverage and lots of entertainment without paying a pointless tax to the BBC.
Exactly. I would encourage everyone to watch people like Steven Crowder (surely the true genius of new media), Tim Pool and Jimmy Dore (a Socialist, but honest and funny). And there are countless others, all vastly superior to anything in the legacy media.
The only BBC content I now consume is the football commentaries on the radio, which I have on in the background while reading or doing chores. I then watch the highlights on YouTube.
Your talking about an organisation that causally allows anti-white racist (gammon) and sexist (Karen’s) abuse but you think it’s problems can be solved by cutting a few managers jobs?
Ian, you’re part of the problem.
You don’t arf ramble.
The situation is far worse than you think.
The BBC, and you, come from a small segment of society, let’s call it the metropolitan elite, that thinks it is entitled to a disproportionate say in running the affairs of this country. In the interest of all, of course. Brexit, covid, and your responses to them, has torn away the last figleaf. I think that you are now more widely seen as self serving, deracinated, dishonest, contemptuous of the interests of so many of your fellow countrymen, and willing to collaborate with a foreign power in order to preserve your privileged position. And, most damning of all, your are mostly, utterly incompetent.
This perception is certainly unfair on many individuals. It is, I’m sure, unfair on you. But this is what comes into my mind when one of you puts pen to paper in defence of the BBC and its tax-gathering goons.
Agree with most of this. However, the BBC needs to admit when it’s got something wrong, as good newspapers now do, rather than taking months (no exaggeration) to defend the indefensible.
Re its foreign coverage, I part company with Ian Birrell: it’s patchy, and patronising. For example, its long-serving and (at least by the BBC) highly regarded Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, can speak only enough Arabic to order a a cup of coffee; like not a few of his colleagues, he relies on interpreters and translators. This is inexcusable. I don’t believe there’s a single foreign reporter in the UK or the USA who doesn’t have excellent English. I wonder how much of this is because the BBC cares so little about the rest of the world, unless it’s Brexit-related or the USA. For example, the World at One is a terrible misnomer, hardly ever paying attention two what’s going in 190 other countries.
Let’s hope the new DG can sort this out.
There are too many problems with the BBC to list here – but changing the News organisation to do a lot less – with far more capable people – seems a good place to start.
… and untangling the “real news” content from the current (inappropriately named) News website would be a great step forward …
I was looking forward to watching “Enslaved” fronted by Samual l Jackson. I was hoping for a wide ranging analysis covering all aspects starting from 700 when historical records first show slavery in Africa. I was hoping it would cover the enslavement of White people and the involvement of Arabs. Most importantly, I was hoping it would cover slavery today. But then I reflected on why front such an important topic with 2 celebrities, apparently. Then I checked IMDB:
“A look at 400 years of human trafficking from Africa to the New World, from the perspective of three different storylines.”
Hmm, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Perhaps not!
The same problem is happening in Canada with the CBC. Once the loved and trusted voice of Canadians that linked us from coast to coast across this vast country, it has descended into PC identity politics and an unquestioning daily repeat of the official COVID narrative. All semblance of investigative journalism, such as once made us proud of the CBC, has gone. It is now just another Western version of an official government propaganda organ like Pravda was under the Soviet Union.
To paraphrase and invert the famous saying, there might at least have been some truth in Izvestiya and some news in Pravda. When it comes to the BBC, CBC, CNN and various others there is neither truth nor news.
It’s also hugely London-centric like a lot of organisations and to that extent symptomatic of establishment failure across the board.
More actual news and far, far less comment and reaction would be welcome. After viewing or listening to BBC news I sometimes wonder why they have to pad things out with predictable waffle rather than including more reports from what is supposed to be a ‘world class’ news team stretching across the globe. I too have come across people who watch Al-Jazeera for news in preference to the BBC, which is somewhat disturbing. But one of the things on the BBC news website that really annoys me is that the scaremongering and biased headlines on the website are often not at all representative of their own content in the accompanying reports. However in that respect Sky News can be just as bad. Wierd.
I think it would be better to sack the BBC
Sorry but this analysis really rather points to what has been lost by the BBC. Wimpish, careful not to offend by suggesting modest changes. Salaries of celebrities no issue! Really? It would be easy, so very easy to criticise the laughingly so called news put out by ‘flagship’ program’s. ‘Flag’ White. Oops! now I’ll be banned from Unheard.
More than 6000 ‘reporters’ and the Today program still has “whim of the week” anti-government agendas that are trivial, but the celebrities keep to their script even when real agendas have come and gone. Catch out a politico is the big brownie point winner.
I fear the writer hasn’t the experience of hearing the BBC news in it’s pomp. Many Unheard readers will remember when the TV (10″) news was read by a man in a dinner jacket and spoke clearly in beautifully modulated English. Compare today’s slovenly estuary delivery and weep. Younowarraimeen. Yuno?
It’s far too late to change this parasitic overstaffed grubby tenth rate monster. The answer? Oh a good old establishment compromise. Throw more resources at it, pour in more tax payer funding and increase the innumerable committees. Finally up the salaries and add a few hundred ‘Sirhoods’. There, solved the British way. Yuno
“calm response” to the virus panic? Anyone listening to PM or the Today program on R4 would have heard the glee with which they reported faked or exaggerated death or infection rates, government failures and the economic damage. I am not in the least puzzled by the nature of their game nor are most people i know. What they pay their pundits is irrelevant… aside from Linekar none seem to advocate fringe or violent political ideas. If they can negotiate these figures i say well done to them.
And don’t get me started on Last Night of the Sue Barker…
The Hatfield train crash was the start of my parting with the BBC. I remember the presenter on R4 saying along the lines of ‘It’s only just happened so we don’t want to speculate, but……. and so started speculation from the first ‘expert’. Then the Dr David Kelly saga which went on for weeks to the virtual exclusion of all other news on R4.
And now Covid. Disgusting, fear mongering reporting with zero investigative reporting. Taking the govt line without question. Can’t bring myself to listen watch or read more than 30seconds of it. Where is the questioning of policy? Where is the challenge on the ‘science’ as presented by govt and their ‘advisors’. All we get (certainly until very recently) is silence or put downs of anyone questioning the establishment line.
I still listen to some drama and comedy, maybe Ken Bruce. That’s about it. I tune mainly into a number of non mainstream media sources for news plus Al Jazeera.
The BBC is broken, big time. I know nothing about how to run media operations so not going to advise on them fixing themselves. The BBC needs to re-establish its own news identity, regrow it’s set of balls and step out with head held high. Or just forget news altogether and stick to drama.
Drama by the BBC
No thanks.
Woke rubbish with a never ending agenda of teach the racists they are just evil
Great apart from the people the BBC thinks are racist are the whole country but only the white people obviously and they must be taught that they are evil and just unworthy of a place in polite society.
No thanks
Totally agree it needs to up it’s game in reporting on China – and drop some of the over lengthy and tedious reporting on Trump ( far too much detail to the point that we can’t see the wood for the trees).
The daily news programmes should also integrate with, and cross refer to the website for more info, insight and background.
Oh and drop the many and often pointless, time consuming interviews with random people in the street – the ‘how do you feel about’ type of question to which the poor person has to come up with some sort of unconsidered answer.
The BBC no longer does unbiased TV or Radio as its presenters e.g Katy Kay and Christian Fraser practically salivate at the prospect of dead US civilians.
In addition to the point made, there is one thing that puzzles and annoy me concerning UK national and regional reporters. Why, oh why does BBC central have its own ‘Scotland’ reporter in addition to the team that BBC Scotland employs. I cannot think of a single reason for this and it seems a total waste of money in a) employing the Scotland reporter and camera and b) in managing this pointless position. It’s the same with Wales and even with regions of England
The oversight of the BBC must entail some form of dispassionate annual assessment of its bias, not by its own blinkered luvvies, but by people with established academic know-how that can undertake the analyses. We can probably all see what the results would be, and the BBC should be given zero second chances, given how many they have already had.
They do real damage: it is probable that the lines fed to bumbling Biden as he dribbles about Brexit have found their way to him from the BBC to NPR and then to one of the unthinking millennials who script-write his “Brexit = nasty xenophobia” garbage.
Believe me, the last people you should trust are ‘people with established academic know-how’, at least beyond the hard sciences. And probably not even in the hard sciences these days.
Sadly many of the current academics are too woke to see the issues – or too scared for their jobs to point stuff out ….
The entire notion underpinning the BBC is and always was a terrible idea. State owned broadcasters are by their very nature always going to be political footballs. Bulldoze the institution & salt the earth upon which it stood.
BBC News online is an embarrassment to journalism that gets worse every time I venture on. Partisan churnalism and click bait style headlines. They should also be reminded that the whole country pays the licence fee, not just the Woke.
I believe the bbc is merely reflecting the incompetence and politics seen in many areas of UK life that draw their workforces from similar demographics. The career middle managers who progess to their elevated positions almost solely based on the fact there was no one better available at the time and who are a continual reminder of the old truism: “That [middle] managers rise to the level of their own incompetence” whereas a valuable worker grows in to their area of expertise. I would be happier to voluntarily continue to pay the licence fee if the beeb put some proper balance back in its programming and started filling their “factual” and news output with actual facts from which I can then form my own opinions. Walruses falling off a cliff or largely peacefull protests anyone?
Mr Birrell writes:
“It (the BBC}… has delivered big scoops on the atrocities inflicted on Uighurs by Beijing.”
And so it should have done. It seems curiously reticent, however, about delivering anything on the widespread persecution of Christians either in China or anywhere else.
Constructive criticism of the BBC is all very fine but there is a more insidious campaign led by the very shouty,shallow ‘journalists’ on the Murdoch & Global radio stations. This is not challenged by the BBC. Some of the desperate desire to please the London illiterati & make BBC inclusive to all sections of society all the time is making it look like a whimpering kitten rater the lion it was. However, the depth of news it still produces & the variety of output, still makes it my broadcaster of choice. I’m extremely concerned that it will be destroyed to be replaced by the commercial, ponderous shallow LBC,Talk Radio & their ilk.
I’d totally disagree with the notion of Talk Radio being shallow. Can’t speak for the others as I don’t listen to them. Mike Graham for instance has putting up guests who challenge all angles of the Covid debacle. Interestly, and probably predictably the most common ‘guests’ like mainstream politicians, scientists who adorn the BBC ‘news’ refuse to appear on Mike’s programme. No prizes for guessing that they don’t like a challenging grilling.
Which is what the BBC should be giving them. It’s not like the BBC is funded by big business and has to jump to their tune. Or maybe they do indirectly.
Talk Radio is a mixed bag, but still a lot better than the BBC.
Simon – the BBC looks like a class act compared to LBC and Talk Radio etc I agree. (And it doesn’t do adverts except for its own product). The trouble is the BBC content. You may as well be buying the Guardian or subscribing to Stonewall or BLM.