I was listening to BBC Radio 4 today as I drove home. Feedback was on and the item that got my attention was one about the BBC and how its news journalists are being treated by El Presidente.
We heard a wee bit of a news conference featuring Trump in which he lambasted a few US news sources for their anti-Trump rhetoric and then lumped the BBC in the same category, calling them 'another beauty.' John Sopel is the BBC's news editor in Washington and he was brought on. Sopel is a career BBC man (34 years and counting). What exactly did anyone think he was going to say about events in Trumpland? He gave a good rendition of a man flabbergasted at such treatment. After all, isn't the BBC the very definition of integrity, honesty and impartiality? Even if Trump didn't think so.
Trump may be weird and hugely inexperienced in government but he's not thick. He has a sensitive (over-developed) ego when it comes to criticism, and it occurred to me: just because Trump is odd doesn't mean he's not right.
There are a few pro-independence people in Scotland who would agree with Trump about the BBC's impartiality: if the BBC and a small number of rabid right wing newspapers hadn't been hellbent on misrepresenting just about everything from Scottish exports to the state of the NHS and education and the security of our pensions, Scotland might now be celebrating its independence.
Maybe some pro-Corbyn people in England might also think if it hadn't been for the BBC and some right wing newspapers' mocking tone when discussing Corbyn and his senior people (mainly McDonnell and Abbott) and their policies we might in fact have a Labour government right now. I try to imagine what the playing field would have looked like if the media had examined the manifestos of the Tories (gimme a blank cheque) and the Labour Party (fully costed). Nope, it does no compute but the BBC and a lot of other news outlets never tried to work it out.
John Sopel's contribution was followed by emails from listeners to Feedback. All English, I noticed. All supportive of the BBC's position. I wondered if any contributions from American or Scottish or English Labour listeners were lying unused on the Feedback editor's desk, opposing views on BBC impartiality left largely unheard.
The myth of BBC impartiality is collapsing around them but the media don't tell us that. The BBC is part of that mythical place: Englandshire, where nothing has changed since about 1930 and where nothing will ever change. Lord Reith is still in charge of the BBC and he sets the standard. Newspapers are owned by rich old men. There are no black people. Women are barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. Gay people don't exist or, if they do, they live in closets behind firmly closed doors. Everyone who matters in the country went to the same schools (and not 'bog-standard comprehensives' either) and to the same universities, worked in the city and got rich as a matter of course.
All our problems are caused by immigrants. We can close our borders and manage fine, although we want ex pats (you're only an immigrant if you're coming into the UK) to be full citizens of the places they have opted to live in the other 26 EU countries. And we're rich. The UK may produce little by way of manufacturing (except what comes out of the North Sea in the way of oil and gas, plus items like whisky, specialist foods like beef and lamb - a lot of them Scottish) and much of the UK may depend to a quite foolish extent on the service sector (needs no factories - can bugger off at the drop of a hat to another EU city or demand to be bribed if we want them to stay). But still we're rich. We can opt out of EU laws, although we need to notice there's a whole raft of other laws (Geneva Convention, etc) that we can't ignore. We can refuse to pay what the EU wants us to in order to leave and still demand a trade deal, but has nobody yet noticed the EU only have to say: no, sorry, not going to happen - no deal - you're on your own?
The BBC, I'm sorry to say, is part of the British problem. Despite being top-heavy with so-called 'big beasts' among their news and current affairs staff on grossly inflated salaries, they have not examined in any detail the major issues affecting the UK right now: the legality or otherwise of the agreement with the DUP, the terms of Brexit, the rights of citizens to seek Scottish independence and the dissolution of the union. But they spend a lot of cash, yours and mine, on reporting from the USA. (Interestingly, the only other news organisation to spend a similar amount is Sky).
What will knock the BBC out of its comfortable, lazy ways of thinking and running the organisation? A review of its charter? The threat of breaking it up? A cut in its funding? A detailed analysis of how it treats its staff, explaining why the leading actor in the Archers gets 16,000 a year while the Evans guy walks off with 2.2 million? I don't know, but I do know when Scotland does become independent, we will have a very different approach to the media. Responsibility will be the in word.
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