The consensus is that the intellectual climate that's suffering

Fox News' London bureau chief takes the BBC to task for their inability to contextualize and understand any view of the world other than the never-seriously-questioned leftism of their unconscious suppositions. Recently deprogrammed BBC escapee Robin Aitken has it sussed and plans to write about it. Foxs Norvell reports.

« The phrase is a play on one--"institutional racism"--currently in vogue among the professionally aggrieved. It's frequently lobbed when the forces of multicultural goodness can't point to specific proof of racism in an organization but just know deep down that something is amiss.

Mr. Aitken told London's Daily Telegraph (and subsequently confirmed in a telephone conversation) that Britain's taxpayer-funded behemoth, arguably the most powerful media brand in the world, sports a worldview remarkably at odds with a good percentage of the population to whom it purportedly answers.

The BBC's world is one in which America is always wrong, George W. Bush is a knuckle-dragging simpleton, people of faith are frightening ignoramuses, and capitalism is a rot on the fabric of social justice. Through this prism, the United Nations is the world's supreme moral authority, multiculturalism is always a force for good, war is never warranted, and U.S. Republicans sprinkle Third World children over their Cheerios for breakfast.

One could be inclined to dismiss one voice on this topic, but Mr. Aitken is hardly alone in his frustration. British conservatives complain constantly (largely in vain) about the political bent of the BBC, and bloggers, like the gang at Biased BBC, maintain exhaustive online records of its ideological imbalances.»

On the construction of the BBCs truth regarding 300 million people:

«The task isn't a difficult one. Let's just listen to the BBC's U.S. correspondent Justin Webb, writing on the network's Web site: "America is often portrayed as an ignorant, unsophisticated sort of place, full of bible [sic] bashers and ruled to a dangerous extent by trashy television, superstition and religious bigotry, a place lacking in respect for evidence based on knowledge."

"I know that is how it is portrayed because I have done my bit to paint that picture," he confesses, "and that picture is in many respects a true one."»

As for the distinction between position and bias, the defenders of the BBC's status quo ways don't seem sophisticated enough to understand that balanced presentation of news reports can be free of, and co-exist with an editorial position. Even Fox can manage it:

«Fox News is, after all, a private channel and our presenters are quite open about where they stand on particular stories. That's our appeal. People watch us because they know what they are getting. The Beeb's institutionalized leftism would be easier to tolerate if the corporation was a little more honest about it.

Few with a grip on reality believe that there is a cabal at BBC House wringing their hands and plotting the renationalization of the coal industry or state-mandated racial sensitivity training for all 6-year-olds. But there is little doubt that, as Mr. Aitken puts it, a center-left groupthink dominates at the BBC and colors its entire output. It's not deliberate. It's worse. The producers just can't imagine that someone could possibly oppose European integration or any of the other left-wing causes because to them, and their friends, these are self-evident truths. It simply doesn't even occur to them that reasonable people could disagree with them.

The influence of this groupthink goes far beyond the BBC and now permeates the cliquish world of British broadcasting in general. Almost everyone in the television business has worked for the BBC at some point, sipped the Kool-Aid, and now carries the torch of institutional leftism. With few exceptions, every newscast in the country looks and sounds like a knockoff of the Ten O'Clock News, and the nation is not better for it.»

Writing in the OpinionJournal, Scott Norvell also mentions the fine folks at Biased-BBC who take on the murky task of revealing the dark art of subtextual propaganda.

Thanks a bazillion to the Kate McMillan for posting on Fox's peashot at the BBC's lack of balance and persistant blunderbussing at civilized debate. As a state broadcaster with a mandate to be balanced, they are hardly giving lip-service to the task.

After all, as I write another example hops up like a rubber glove from a whack-a-mole machine. BBC's Talking Point once again is repetitiously and pedantically bullhorning what Greenies hold as objective truth about global warming (as opposed to climate change), permitting some challenge, but characterizing it as heresy, as usual.
They advertised a discussion on Smart Growth for cities which isnt just a discredited concept available as an indulgence exclusive to the rich, but a meaningless one. Hey, is anyone out there FOR Dumb Growth?

One fool proposing sustainable taxation and a parade of people resorting to the lowest common denominator of conversation, whinging about the weather this year. Newsflash, sparky there have always been droughts, cooler summers, and variants of one sort or another. Exaggerating the effectual capacity of CO2 by a factor of roughly 33, and attributing Netherlands flooding in the 50s with global warming while mentioning that the trend had not started yet and so on. Having drummed on and on about these facts, they feel no need to support assertions in any way.
The first guest is surprisingly logical and shows concern for the developing world, but not convincing he too accepts that mankind is changing monsoon patterns and such which have always been dynamic in nature.

The shock isn't what the state controlled media says - it is their failings, lack or discipline, and feining of intelligence which is embarassing.