Canary on BBC anti-left-wing bias

The BBC routinely gets attacked by left and right for bias against them - this lengthy article provides you with a detailed analysis from a left-wing perspective, using a range of very specific examples, not least the rather extraordinary treatment and coverage of Jeremy Corbyn, but also Israel and much more.

There has been considerable research now published into how the wider media have covered Corbyn - finding he is rarely directly quoted in mostly hostile articles and features.

Article.

BBC huge public survey says gov should back off

A government survey has seen its plans to shift BBC regulation to OfCom and to downsize the corporation rejected by overwhelming numbers in an exceptionally large public response.

It's media rivals, unsurprisingly, were all for both! Sky, for example, was full of praise for the wonderful job OfCom does!

Just 4% of public agree Ofcom should regulate BBC.

UPDATE - from August 2016 UKIP leadership debate:

MEP Bill Etheridge, who suggested the national broadcaster should be sold off.Etheridge said: “Ladies and gentleman, I’m so glad we have coverage here for this tonight because I know how much they are going to enjoy this: I want the BBC privatised. We pay taxpayers’ money to have leftwing propaganda rammed down our throats.”He said the BBC should “stop picking our pockets to feed us this stuff that we don’t want to hear”.

IMPRESS signs up obscure titles but could grab power

IN THIS POST: Peter Preston savages Impress' credentials and strategy; despite only signing up 4 micro-local titles they could bring about statutory powers that include draconian fees for newspapers whether they have signed up to Impress or not. You'll find further Impress resources at the bottom of this post. Read more on press regulation on the Media Guardian here.

Impress boast of their actually humble beginnings. Note the new domain: http://impress.press/

Peter Preston's weekly column is mostly on the Saville case, and is useful for highlighting the consequences of the incessant political pressure on the Beeb.

However, its the fiery, furious final two paragraphs that grabbed my attention, coming to a conclusion that hadn't occurred to me. Greenslade had reported that Impress was to announce its initial sign-ups, but when this proved not to be the IPSO refuseniks like The Guardian I switched off.

Preston flags up that despite the absurdity of Impress' starting slate, four micro-local titles, this could see the severe powers to fine newspapers, whether signed up or not, heavy amounts. In his own words:

BBC politicised by funding World Service?

This is a report that I'm sure will be reported very differently in the right-wing press (ie, most of the UK press), much of which actively campaign against the whole concept of a publicly funded PSB and engage in BBC-bashing at every opportunity.

It reports that the public oppose the 2010 change, making the BBC pay for World Service radio (previously funded by the Foreign Office as it has the explicitly political aim of promoting British government policies and undermining non-democratic regimes around the world), as it politicises the BBC.

There is also fear that the poor will be badly served and neglected by proposed changes, including moving more content online only, and clear opposition to any pay-TV (as is planned for children's TV content).

Full article: BBC risks excluding viewers by prioritising online content.

Murdoch power continues, so much for Leveson

Write off ol' Rupe at your peril. His power and influence over UK government policy would seem as strong as ever, and this article hints that he may be behind the savage attack on BBC funding, and therefore its very future, by the Tory government.

He continues to meet with the PM, Chancellor and Culture Secretary despite being disgraced by revelations from the Leveson Inquiry. A renewed bid to fully takeover Sky seems likely given the rather blatant favour he's shown by his ideological allies, a repeat of his 80s tie to Thatcherism.

George Osborne met Rupert Murdoch twice before imposing BBC cuts.

TV HISTORY PM Heath used ITV for political ends

Most of the examples we look at relating to TV regulation show the TV regulators to be resistant to government pressure - something that went into steep decline from the moment Labour declared war on the Beeb over its 'sexed-up dossier' report, leading to the curious death of Dr Kelly (see Guardian; Wiki; BBC).

This google search provides lots of articles on the Blair Labour government's attacks on the BBC, leading to its two leaders quitting the BBC - even though the reports that Blair was so furious over were essentially accurate.

This one shows up overt government manipulation of TV for political ends.

Previously unseen documents that implicate former prime minister Edward Heath in a concerted attempt to influence the jury in one of the most controversial prosecutions of trade unionists in British history will be revealed to parliament this week. 

It is understood that a dossier of newly unearthed papers suggests that some of the most senior members of Heath’s 1972 Conservative cabinet and members of the security services commissioned and promoted an ITV documentary entitled Red Under the Bed that was screened on the day the jury went out to consider the case against the “Shrewsbury 24”. One of the previously unseen files shows that Heath, on seeing a transcript of the film ahead of the trade unionists’ conviction, informed the cabinet secretary: “We want as much as possible of this.” 

Twenty-four men were arrested and charged with offences ranging from conspiracy to intimidate to affray following the first national building workers’ strike in 1972. The strike lasted for 12 weeks and won workers a pay rise, but the union’s picketing tactics enraged the construction industry and the government. Six men – including Ricky Tomlinson, who later found fame as an actor and starred in The Royle Family – were sent to prison. Tomlinson served 16 months of a two-year sentence. 

Another striker, Des Warren, was jailed for two years and eight months. His death in 2004 from Parkinson’s disease has been linked to his time in prison, in particular to the use of a “liquid cosh” – a cocktail of tranquillisers – that was administered to inmates at the time.

Revealed: Ted Heath behind TV documentary used to sway jury in trial of Shrewsbury trade unionists.

BBC Dir Gen hints at OfCom switch

Tony Hall is arguably the worst leader the Been has had since Thatcher, enraged at the Peacock Report's refusal to back BBC privatisation, appointed the free market zealot John Birt as director general.

His internal market reforms saw a bloated bureaucracy balloon as internal departments had to treat each other as commercial concerns, and tended for everything.

Hall has caved in to government pressure to agree to taking on a government welfare policy, free license fees for pensioners (the high-voting group it is prioritizing public spending on whilst slashing spending on the young), widely seen as a fundamental undermining of the BBC's supposed independence from government.

Now he's showing some awareness of this, albeit arguably belated and without diluting his own free market reforms, and cuts to youth-centred output (youth channel BBC3 will go off-air shortly, with rumours about Radio1 and Radio6).

He's arguing that the BBC should be externally regulated, that funding reviews should be by the decade not in five yearly cycles that make it easy for governments to exert pressure, that major shifts in BBC direction should require the assent of 2/3 of parliament, with online votes from the public over smaller decisions too.

It's a detailed article; here he is on how things seemed to have changed when he rejoined the BBC in 2013 after years away:

“The foundations of the BBC’s independence became weaker. The traditions and informal arrangements which protected it had been eroded. Politicians had not done this deliberately – it happened under all parties.“First, the licence fee was spent on things that were not directly to do with broadcasting. On digital switchover. On rural broadband and local TV. Then twice it was settled without a full process.”

Only a separate regulator can guarantee BBC independence, says Tony Hall.

FUTURE Could Corbyn reintroduce ownership limits?

It is abundantly clear that a right-wing government able to rely on generally favourable coverage from a UK press which is also largely right-wing, and which has undermined the BBC's finances so radically, will have no desire to regulate on media ownership.

Quite the opposite: should we expect Murdoch to resurrect the buyout of the 60% of BSkyB shares his conglomerate doesn't own - so inconveniently halted by public outrage over his paper's phone hacking of Milly Dowler? Probably, yes; despite the protests of the Culture Select Committee and others, the Tory Culture Secretary was set to wave it through pre-Leveson.

Now we have a left-wing Labour leader, will there be a sharp end to the consensus over free market, laissez faire media regulation? Again, probably.

Corbyn has said little on this yet, but his one utterance directly attacked concentration of ownership and many perceive Murdoch's empire as a target.

Let's not forget that Tom Watson, who doggedly pursued News International and the phone hacking story even when directly threatened by the Murdoch press, and at the cost of his marriage, is now deputy leader.

The Blairite right-wing Labour MPs will doubtless argue that Labour needs to court the likes of the Mail and the S*n - after all, Tony himself flew out to Australia to genuflect before the great man in advance if the 1997 election.

Such arguments will surely now be rejected, and we can expect to see a sustained, vicious barrage of flak to shoot down this counter-hegemonic force.

The largely hostile coverage in the Guardian suggests that there might be friendly fire too, even if Greenslade thinks the paper will be neutral.

Greenslade also states that Corbyn has to become PM to change media policy, but that isn't necessarily so. We saw under the coalition government that the backbench Select Committee undertook the scrutiny that the responsible government minister, Jeremy Hunt, appeared reluctant to, including Watson famously describing James Murdoch as a Mafia boss.

With some cross-bench support (ie, Labour, Tory and others) its recommendations could still be enacted, though whether it will put forward any radical changes, other than eviscerating the BBC, does seem unlikely.

We have also seen plenty of examples of backbench bills getting close enough to passing to force government to act.

Whatever now happens, the cosy consensus and hegemony of deregulation will at least be up for debate, marking a distinct shift in 36 years of both major parties cutting media regulation.

Jeremy Corbyn versus the media - will he take on Murdoch? 

The current Tory Culture Secretary could face charges for leaking anti-BBC briefings to the Sunday Times: John Whittingdale accused of misleading parliament over BBC story in Sunday Times.

BBC cuts by government a Murdoch plan?

An incendiary post by Jukes (via a tweet by Nick Lacey, well worth following), though can anyone informed about the media landscape really be surprised at this apparently ongoing relationship between the Murdochs and a government/party when they both share a core neo-liberal, low tax, 'free market' ideology?

I've often blogged on the right-wing hostility towards the BBC and PSB generally, and how the sustained flak both from right-wing papers and politicians (often quoted in such coverage to beef it up or keep a story running) has looked ever more likely to finally down the BBC as a publicly funded large-scale broadcaster.

Jukes takes this point a step further, writing about an actual deal between Murdochs and senior Tory government ministers to work together to kill off the BBC as an organisation able to compete with the likes of Sky.

This is a short extract - its worth reading more.

As I've detailed in my 2012 book, [T]he Fall of the House of Murdoch, the plan to shrink the BBC by 30% was part of a four year dance between Cameron, Osborne and James Murdoch, as he vied to cement his succession at News Corp by buying the whole of BSkyB, and amalgamating News International and Sky in a digital hub at a new base in Isleworth.  

Called Operation Rubicon, the deal would have sealed the Murdoch family as owners of Britain's most lucrative TV channel and its biggest newspaper group - a virtually unassailable position in the media landscape. Their only real (non commercial) competition was the free news service provided by the BBC both in broadcast and online.

Read more.

Jukes' book.

BBC Independence 'myth' in tatters?

There have been so many, wholly predictable (I did just that before the election!), big news stories about the free market/small state Tory attack on the publicly funded BBC that I've been waiting for something concrete before blogging on this again.

In the space of a week we have the story that the PM threatened to shut down the BBC, angered at what he saw as liberal/leftie bias, and Chancellor George Osbourne very bluntly questioning the future of the BBC in its current guise and scope.

Today comes action which ties together all the speculation over what Tory hostility might mean in practice. With a Culture Secretary outspoken on his attacks on the BBC before the election it comes as little shock that the Beeb has just meekly accepted an extraordinary funding cut just days after confirming the closure of BBC3 and announcing many 1000s more job cuts were planned.

Providing free licences for the over 75s is an instant cut of 20% of the budget. TWENTY percent!

2015 General Election: Media Policy

Rather than post a stack of posts reacting to policy announcements and eventual manifesto pledges, I'll gather links and points in this post.

Key (probable) issues:

• Future of BBC, funding, downsizing?; form of BBC regulation (scrap Trust?)
• Wider future of PSB requirements
• Future/role of OfCom
• Watershed in digital era
• Extending ratings system to music video and other media content
• Press regulation, Leveson response, IPSO
• Privacy laws, protection of journalists' right to privacy
• Film industry state funding
• Pluralism, (concentration of) ownership, cross-media ownership limits

UPDATE, 21ST APRIL: GUARDIAN GUIDE TO MEDIA POLICY PLEDGES
I've been saving a variety of links, but the Media Guardian has come to my rescue on this one!
Here's their helpfully pithy overview (written by Jasper Jackson):

Plans for the media industry may not be seen as a big vote winner this election, but the manifestos published over the past few days suggest that each party has a very different take on the industry.

BBC blasted by Culture Select Committee - new regulator?

THIS LONG POST CONTAINS:

• Analysis of the Culture Select Committee's largely scathing report on the BBC, which had many suggestions for reform of the BBC
• Details and analysis of media coverage of this, looking at how anti-BBC flak is formulated
• Specifically the issue of the BBC Trust: will it be scrapped in favour of a new regulator?
• Brief overview of some of the many other detailed posts on the Beeb

Wow - not a good day for Auntie Beeb; here's a flavour of what they face today, leading off from events yesterday; the Media Guardian's top 10 stories on the morning of 26th February, 2015:

The spectre of Sir Jimmy Saville raised once more, on of the low points in the BBC's entire history; a link made to tax avoidance, the political hot potato of this month given the furore over the HSBC tax avoidance revelations (and then the Telegraph ad revenue story); a clear growing consensus that the license fee must go (just not yet); and strong-worded condemnation of the BBC Trust, the current main regulator of the BBC. The Daily Mail will be loving this!

ANTI-BBC FLAK: THE MAIL'S GLEEFUL REPORT

Whither Media policy post-election 2015? Privatisations ahoy?

UPDATE: SEE THIS POST ON PARTIES' POLICIES

Much more on this when time permits - and manifesto commitments, or just policy statements, are firmed up by the leading political parties. Will Auntie Beeb be sold off or financially eviscerated to prepare the ground for privatisation, just as the Post Office was gradually stripped of profitable contracts? Will OfCom be radically downsized? Will C4 be privatised, and will ITV lose all that PSB 'red tape'? Will Hutton argues that yes is the answer to all of these if the Tories win the election - but says nothing about the media policies of Labour, Lib Dems, Greens, SNP, UKIP or any party that might form part of a coalition government - possibly being handed responsibility for the DCMS, largely viewed as a backwater. I will see what I can find out...

Our unique television culture needs friends in high places.

BBC DG invites flak by suggesting watershed outmoded

UPDATE, FEB 2015: STEPHEN FRY SWEARS DURING BAFTAS

The BBC stoutly defended Fry, and the principle of free speech, though said it 'noted' the concerns expressed for this post-watershed swearing. For some, the watershed isn't enough!
At one point, he told his audience it was “pissing down with stars”. He also introduced Tom Cruise as “Tom f**king Cruise” as he ambled on stage to present an award.
“We received complaints from viewers unhappy with some of Stephen Fry’s language while presenting the Baftas,” a statement on the BBC’s complaints website read.
Attitudes to strong language vary enormously and we considered very carefully how to reflect this.
“Stephen, whose irreverence and style is extremely well-known to viewers, has presented the Baftas for several years. Any strong language was used after the watershed, and there was a presentation announcement at the start of the programme warning viewers that the broadcast would contain language of this nature.
“We accept that some viewers disagreed with this approach, and this feedback has been noted.”

Before you ask, the Mail was a tad cross at all this, shockingly enough (whilst squeezing in a load of large celebrity pics).

Both the BBC's film ratings and the TV (and radio) watershed face a problem which can be summed up in that one familiar word: digitisation. If young kids can effortlessly access TV or films at any time with any rating, can we really maintain the pretence of control? As more of us timeshift instead of following schedules, the concept gets even weaker.

There are other arguments against a watershed: why should adults, not least those without children, be restricted in their viewing?

The BBC have addressed and acknowledged some of these points, arguing that they provide valuable information so that those parents who choose to can make informed choices - though cinemas don't have any legal wriggle room to let parents/children decide.

Cinemas themselves will surely join any calls for deregulating film controls - they face fierce, intensifying competition from TV and mobile platforms, with TV advantaged by the ease of getting around age restrictions.

Read this article for a debate on the watershed between editors of prominent magazines, Robin Parker (Broadcast) and Boyd Hilton (Heat). Perhaps ironically, given Heat isn't exactly reknowned for classy, child-friendly material (but does attract young readers), it's Hilton who takes the pro-watershed line.

Below the line: an overview of how the Mail, Indie and others reported this story.

PCC Ineffective to the end: Mail flouts ruling

Roy Greenslade notes, in typically dry fashion*, that the Daily Mail continues to show just how much (ie, seemingly not a lot!) it respects the PCC. Both it and the Telegraph were found guilty of the same Clause 1 (Accuracy) breach, falsely accusing the BBC of extravagant hotel spending (they actually got a £59 rate, half the standard rate).

Thatcher death + media reg

Typical anti-BBC flak from the Mail elides public and the Mail (read more)

Its become a cliche - in most media, just not the right-wing press - that Thatcher's death and funeral has proven as divisive as her political career. We're also seeing both the press and broadcast TV engage in some informal self-regulation, with flak flying from a particularly gung-ho right-wing press (ie, every national daily bar the Indie/i, Guardian and Mirror) over any attempt to do other than celebrate and glorify the former PM and her contribution to national life.
I'll probably add more to this over time, but, writing before her controversial £10m funeral on Wednesday coming, here's a few pertinent points on this...

CLEAR BLUE LINES: HOW THE PRESS REPORTED HER DEATH
More below on the anti-BBC flak that featured in this, but you can see a very clear example of how the right-left binary functions in our national press through their coverage of her death.
You can view every front page here; analysis here.
The Mail and Mirror fronts sum it up rather neatly: grim-faced, divisive figure v bright, effervescent saviour (apt, as Maggie is held up as a divinity by the likes of the Mail)
Dissenting voices were rounded on by the Mail et al - indeed, the Telegraph took the highly unusual step of banning all reader comments on Thatcher's death/funeral, after they discovered many of these were highly critical of her. Of course, Leveson didn't mention online press content, so had nothing to say on this topic.

RIGHT-WING PRESS v (INdependent???) BBC

IN BRIEF: The BBC was roundly attacked for featuring any anti-Thatcher views, its presenters not wearing black ties from the moment Thatcher's death was announced, and not banning the Ding Dong the Witch is Dead track

DMail, ParentsTVCncl + Moral Panic

Simple example of how our press seek on a daily basis to whip up fresh moral panics to keep its (mostly older) readers in a righteous froth over declining moral standards, young people today and all that good stuff. The source here is the satirical Lost in Showbiz blog from The Guardian - a good example of how broadsheets juggle the demands of retaining their reputation for hard news whilst covering celebrity and other soft news that draws in huge numbers online (and often features on the print front page trails too). Just look at how often the X Factor is featured! 

NB: The article below contains some explicit sexual references.

This example shows how the Mail rather preposterously cited "how even the Parents Television Council" took offence at a portion of the Graham Norton Show New Year special, using this as a means of justifying attacking a favourite target of the right-wing press: the BBC, bastion of public service broadcasting and thus a challenge to the dominance of free market ideology through its very existence.

Parents 'fuming' at Kathy Griffin's on-air sexual antics on New Year's Eve

When the US comedian simulated fellatio on her co-host live on CNN, not everyone was amused.

Alexis Petridis, 3.1.13, http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2013/jan/03/parents-fuming-kathy-griffins-sexual

Kathy Griffin, whose simulated oral sex didn’t go down well on US TV. Photograph: Jeffrey Ufberg/WireImage

And so to America, where something of a storm appears to have blown up over CNN's live coverage of events in New York's Times Square on New Year's Eve. The programme was considerably enlivened by comedian Kathy Griffin referring to the fiscal cliff as "the fisting cliff", then repeatedly dropping to her knees and pretending to simulate fellatio on her visibly unamused co-host Anderson Cooper: "I'm going down, you know you want to," she told him. "I'm kissing your sardine."
Lost in Showbiz confesses that, at first, it thought this all sounded pretty funny. Indeed, it ruefully reflected that it sounded substantially more entertaining than anything on British TV on the night of 31 December. How much more interesting would Graham Norton's interview with Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood of The Great British Bake Off have been if the Grande Dame of the pithivier and petits fours had taken a leaf out of Griffin's book, suddenly grasped Hollywood's testicles and announced: "I'm tickling your sac"?
That was, of course, until it read the Daily Mail's take on events and was swiftly forced to reconsider. Keen as ever not to create an unnecessary furore, the Mail reported that "Many failed to see the funny side of her antics and branded her behaviour 'vile' and 'putrid'." To underline the seriousness of the offence, it added: "Even the Parents Television Council got involved and is said to be 'fuming'."
Lost In Showbiz must admit that it had never heard of the Parents Television Council, but it was intrigued – mostly by the use of the word "even" in the Mail's report. This suggested that it must be an organisation renowned for its restraint, which would start "fuming" only when faced with the most unbearable provocation. It definitely is not to be confused with, say, The Arnica Network, which recently orchestrated a campaign against the BBC,

Tories'/Right-Wing hostility to BBC

The BBC complicates the picture of TV regulation: OfCom now oversee its compliance with 'standards and decency' regulations (cases such as Sachsgate and Chris Moyles' swearing + homophobic remarks, for example) while the BBC otherwise governs itself (in other words, self regulation) on organisational issues over budgets, technology, station policies etc.

Whilst every other channel is funded by advertising and/or subscription fees, the BBC is unique in being funded by the license fee, a form of tax. This makes it 'public owned' (effectively owned by the state); instead of being part of the 'private sector' it is part of the 'public sector'.

Right-wing dogma sees the public sector as inefficient and inferior to private enterprise, ie 'the free market'. Sky was able to develop satellite/digital subscription-TV because as a private company it is innovative. The BBC, according to this ideology, is an inefficient organisation which fails to innovate; it would be improved if it was privatised - sold off to business investors, traded on the stock market. That ignores the reality that the BBC, with Freeview, the iPlayer and its world-famous web content, not to mention its extensive programme sales to America and elsewhere across the world, channels such as BBC America, and much more besides, actually puts the BBC right at the top of any fair-minded list of broadcast innovators. The BBC also effectively acts as the main source of training for the engineers, editors, cameraman, presenters and suchlike that are then used by all the private media outfits in the UK.

So, the Conservatives, a right-wing party who believe in free market ideology, have long desired to see it sold off to become a private enterprise instead of a state-owned one. This is actually whats happened across most of Europe and America: if the state broadcaster hasn't actually been privatised, in most cases their funding has been slashed to make them a minor outfit instead of a serious rival to commercial, ad-funded broadcasters.

They have also routinely accused the BBC of having a left-wing bias: in the 1980s Tory Chairman Lord Tebbit famously called the BBC the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation (the Russian Communists were Bolsheviks), while in May 2012 Tory Lord Mayor of London Boris Johnson once more accused the Beeb of being left-wing.

In 1985 Thatcher appointed Lord Peacock to report on the UK TV industry, assuming as a right-wing free-marketeer he'd suggest privatising the BBC, or at least scrapping the license fee and making it rely on advertisers for revenue. Right-wingers see state-owned companies as distorting the free market, and providing unfair competition. Private media operators naturally agree, and would love to see the BBC scrapped, privatised or shrunk in size - one of the reasons the Daily Mail constantly attacks the BBC is thought to be down to its own company's ambitions to break into TV ownership. The 1986 Peacock Report shocked Thatcher by stating very clearly that an unregulated free market would be a disaster for UK TV: it would lead to an utter dumbing down of TV content. He said he disliked the license fee, but it was better than advertiser-funding which would also ensure standards would drop as higher audiences were chased rather than higher programme standards.

In the lead-up to the 2010 general election, the Tories, especially David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt, frequently stated their intention to tackle the BBC: to reduce it in size (including shutting several of its radio/TV stations), cut the license fee, ban it from bidding for many sports rights (if they did, the likes of Sky would save a fortune as there'd be less competition; fewer bidders), stop it paying for expensive American imports, reduce or even scrap its web content, force it to sell of profit-making subsidaries and some stations, and so on and so forth. Notoriously, in an act that looks all the worse given the accusations of collusion between Hunt and News Corp, Hunt and Cameron both stated their support for James Murdoch's speech (and said they would scrap OfCom, which Murdoch said should go) at the 2010 MacTaggart lecture. In office, both have continued to attack the BBC as 'bloated', oversized and inefficient, and Hunt broke with political convention by dictating, not negotiating, the BBC's budget for the next several years, including a large reduction.

Hunt has frequently indicated support for 'top-slicing': using some of the BBC's budget (from the license fee) to support other private broadcasters.

I'll add a fairly extensive set of links (over time!) below; here's a snippet from James Murdoch's 2010 speech:

James Murdoch tonight launched a scathing attack on the BBC, describing the corporation's size and ambitions as "chilling" and accusing it of mounting a "land grab" in a beleaguered media market.
News Corporation's chairman and chief executive in Europe and Asia also heavily criticised media industry regulator Ofcom, the European Union and the government, accusing the latter of "dithering" and failing to protect British companies from the threat of online piracy.
Delivering the MacTaggart lecture at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival 20 years after his father Rupert, Murdoch described UK broadcasting as "the Addams Family of world media", comparing it unfavourably with the industries in India and France and complaining about the "astonishing" burden of regulation placed on BSkyB, the pay-TV giant he chairs. "Every year, roughly half a million words are devoted to telling broadcasters what they can and cannot say," he said.
However, his most withering comments were reserved for the BBC. "The corporation is incapable of distinguishing between what is good for it, and what is good for the country," he clamed. "Funded by a hypothecated tax, the BBC feels empowered to offer something for everyone, even in areas well served by the market. The scope of its activities and ambitions is chilling."

MAY 2012: CAMERON'S PRESS SPOKESPERSON ACCUSES BBC OF ANTI-TORY BIAS: Just updating this post with an article which rather handily captures this point about traditional Tory suspicion of the BBC; their belief that it is not balanced but rather a leftie, biased news reporter. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/may/28/cameron-media-chief-rebukes-bbc-reporter?intcmp=239. The following vid may be taken down; it was up when I wrote this:


TIMELINE OF HUNT/CAMERON'S LINKS WITH MURDOCH/NEWS CORP
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/apr/24/leveson-inquiry-jeremy-hunt;
Hunt delays new media green paper (May 2012);

2008: CAMERON WRITES IN SUN TO ATTACK BBC: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/1884401/Bloated-BBC-out-of-tough-with-the-viewers-says-Tory-chief-David-Cameron.html;

NICK DAVIES, THE KEY GUARDIAN JOURNALIST WHO BROKE THE HACKGATE STORY ON THE HUNT/MURDOCH LINKS: http://www.nickdavies.net/2012/05/01/hacking-scandal-reaches-for-the-heart-of-government/;

MAY 2012: BORIS JOHNSON ATTACKS BBC
A fresh item from May 28th, in which Boris Johnson's press spokesperson directly threatens the BBC with flak from the right-wing press, to be partly organised by PM Cameron:

Boris Johnson's former communications chief threatened to use his contacts in the press to confront the BBC over its coverage of the Conservative mayor of London, suggesting that "good friends in No 10" could also be deployed against them, emails leaked to the Guardian reveal.
The threat of a "huge public fight" was levelled at senior BBC figures by Guto Harri, a former BBC correspondent himself, who announced last week that he was moving to become director of communications at News International.
Harri's suggestion that Downing Street was also ready to put pressure on the public service broadcaster raises questions about the Tories' tactics against the BBC and the extent of the pressure City Hall has exerted in its attempts to influence coverage.

 Johnson says in this article:

Quipping that he had just fought an election campaign "in which I sometimes felt that my chief opponent was the local [London] BBC news", Johnson wrote: "The prevailing view of Beeb newsrooms is, with honourable exceptions, statist, corporatist, defeatist, anti-business, Europhile and above all, overwhelmingly biased to the left."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/davehillblog/2012/may/14/boris-johnson-attacks-bbc;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/may/14/boris-johnson-bbc-boss-tory;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/15/leftwing-bias-bbc-myth;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/video/2012/apr/30/boris-johnson-swears-bbc-news-international-video;

2010 JAMES MURDOCH MACTAGGART LECTURE AT EDINBURGH
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/aug/28/james-murdoch-bbc-mactaggart-edinburgh-tv-festival;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2010/aug/30/steve-hewlett-edinburgh-murdoch;

BBC Panorama doc on phone-hacking: how to apply for exam [DRAFT]

PANORAMA DOC "TABLOID HACKS EXPOSED" on iPlayer

Theories: Philip Schlesinger's "source strategy" + Chomsky's "propaganda model", particularly the "five filters" ... not least flak (this p.m. is a key theory we will return to repeatedly)

MORE READING:
MEDIA DIGEST: Times attacks Panorama over phone-hacking allegations
ROY GREENSLADE BLOG [MEDIA GUARDIAN]: The Times throws mud at the BBC to play down phone-hacking revelations
PANORAMA DOC "TABLOID HACKS EXPOSED" on iPlayer
BBC WEB DISCUSSION ON DOC - note the banned comments!
The MURDOCH Empire and its Nest of VIPERS [blog, covers the story]