BBC Bias and the Christian Foundation of the British Broadcasting Corporation

The BBC has a trust issue. As King Solomon forewarned, “A good name is better than precious ointment” (Ecclesiastes 7:1). Trust is like generosity, exploit it and it disappears like a mist.

This year the BBC is celebrating a hundred years of broadcasting and a crisis is spoiling the parade. There’s an exodus of staff and accusations of editorial bias persist; the mask of impartiality is slipping under the editorial confines of progressive activism disguised as benign solicitude.

Bias is a blinding white light, the BBC is mesmerised by its beautiful simplicity

The BBC crisis is similar to CNN, which has lost 90% of its viewers as it became enchanted by confidence in its rectitude. Genuine imparity gave way to a blinding faith in altruistic activism, masked as journalism and people become tired of the lecture.

The BBC suffers from a progressive echo chamber mentality, making impartiality illusive. Aunty has become a surreptitious harangue activist

The BBC was not born to be woke. The first Director-General of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) insisted this pioneering titian should be a force for truth, grounded in Judeo-Christian values. When Broadcasting House opened in 1932, a Latin inscription was placed in the central archway in the entrance lobby, declaring its biblical intent. All who entered passed under a proclamation by the founders of its purpose:

This Temple of the Arts and Muses is dedicated to Almighty God by the first Governors of Broadcasting in the year 1931, Sir John Reith being Director-General. It is their prayer that good seed sown may bring forth a good harvest, that all things hostile to peace or purity may be banished from this house, and that the people, inclining their ear to whatsoever things are beautiful and honest and of good report, may tread the path of wisdom and uprightness

BBC Broadcasting House Inscription, 1931

How the mighty have fallen from their commission. Accusations of political partisanship, selective coverage, incognito progressive activism, left-wing favouritism, nepotism, groupthink echo chambers, sexual perversion in drama, and advocacy driven by middle-class guilt have all stuck to the BBC. In 2020, Ofcom found just 54% of viewers rate the BBC as impartial; that’s existential crisis level.

You shall not show partiality

– Deuteronomy 1:17

The BBC is required to achieve “due impartiality in all its output” by its regulator, Ofcom. But what does impartiality mean in an affluent liberal bubble? Studies show nearly all mainstream media lean left and if you can predict the angle a reporter (or a drama) is going to take, you’re not getting informed, you’re hearing a lecture on the creator’s worldview.

“We need to foster peculiarity, idiosyncrasy, stubborn-mindedness, left-of-centre thinking

– Ben Stephenson, BBC Controller of Drama Commissioning, Guardian, July 2009

The promise of the BBC to be free, fair, unbiased and impartial has collapsed under the weight of progressive ideology. There’s a Stockholm syndrome mentality that has blinded its opulent leaders to the world outside of their affluent bubble; privilege is a shelter.

He will surely rebuke you, if you secretly show partiality

– Job 13:10

The social media pages of BBC staff are illumining. Imagine living in an exclusive street, dining in posh restaurants, enjoying restrictively expensive hotels, and going to dinner parties with billionaires, celebrities, Hollywood stars and business leaders. Could you resist the echo chamber and terminate them from fashioning your thinking? Can we expect integrity from journalists who exudate salvia hoping to visit the World Economic Forum in Davos or who are mesmerised before a Hollywood star lecturing on climate change from a private jet?

Have you not shown partiality among yourselves…you have dishonoured the poor man

– James 2:4-6

Divorced from the poor, celebrity BBC writers, producers and presenters have lost their way, living bourgeoisie lifestyles, whilst claiming to represent the proletariat. Their semantics sound like another language to the working class: “Oh it’s marvellous, beastly, terribly tight. I’m blotto darling; dinner party and champers. Golly, our host was a bore. I’ve ravishingly bad luck, rugger in the afternoon and gotta be in New York tomorrow.”

I do remember I walked back in – we were broadcasting then from Broadcasting House in the centre of London, all very upmarket in those days – and the corridors of Broadcasting House were strewn with empty champagne bottles

– Jane Garvey, Radio 4 presenter, memories of 1997, after the first politically left election victory since the 70s

The BBC has become a club where only those with the right views receive a say. After twenty-one years of BBC broadcasting, Andrew Marr proclaimed the BBC has an “innate liberal bias,” hiring “an abnormally large proportion of younger people, of people in ethnic minorities and almost certainly of gay people.”

The BBC perceives progressive ideology as Britain’s destiny and therefore refutes claims of bias, as it celebrates progressive ideas through its output seeking the ‘greater good’

Jeff Randal, the former BBC Business Editor, described working at the BBC as something like an ideological cult. If you offer an alternative viewpoint, he said, “They think this person is an extremist.” He was describing the blindness that groupthink echo chambers create.

If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself

– George Orwell, 1984

Sir John Reith dreamed of a BBC defending core British values grounded in biblical foundations. His dream has vanished with progressive lectures in family programmes, historical dramas with pornographic scenes and an unacknowledged left-wing ideological bias. Woke ideology drove the BBC to turn a family show, Dr Who, into a weekly lecture on progressive thinking and the show suffered a loss of a quarter of its viewership, delivering its worst ratings in five decades. After the criticism and failure of Dr Who, the head of BBC drama responded by saying, “I can honestly say I don’t think it’s been in better health.”

The cosy biased BBC club has blinded its staff to its alienated viewers

Watch the BBC news and you’ll hear progressive staff revealing, with Freudian concealment, their personal problem with Israel, the Republican Party of the United States, affordable energy, conservative family values and biblical views, to name a few. Men are considered women and the BBC agrees pronouns change with feelings.

It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words

– George Orwell, 1984

Most Britons have never been exposed to a debate about abortion because they’re force-fed a one-sided BBC argument. When a flawed Trump was elected President of the US, BBC viewers were confused because it was selective in its reporting. The impoverished American blue-collar workers and the middle classes were ignored for years. BBC journalists became so bedazzled with left-leaning ideology that their reporting was filled with enchanted positivity towards the worldview of Obama, Clinton and Biden. How can you challenge the costs and debt of Biden’s green policies when you’re grinning with delight at its passing?

Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right

– George Orwell, 1984

The BBC denies it naturally aligns itself with progressive left-wing thinking. Echo chambers are self-congratulatory. The Democrats in the United States, the EU, extreme environmental theories, LGBT+ pressure groups, Islam and anyone who thinks of themselves as a victim are beloved by affluent BBC staff. Impoverished working class British voters are too bigoted to understand the privilege of being poor. To the BBC, the laws of cause and effect, personal responsibility and quality of life, supply and demand, do not exist. It’s discrimination; it’s all someone else’s fault.

There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad

– George Orwell, 1984

The BBC is dropping the ball on important middle-ground issues and anything that challenges progressive ideology is ignored. Did the BBC question how the poor will survive in a world without cheap and efficient fossil fuels? It was silent until the crisis came and millions are impoverished. Has it probed the Bank of England on how money printing (Quantitative easing) leads to massive inflation? It was silent until the crisis came and the poor were sacrificed.

I absorbed and expressed all the accepted BBC attitudes: hostility to, or at least suspicion of, America, monarchy, government, capitalism, empire, banking and the defence establishment, and in favour of the Health Service, state welfare, the social sciences, the environment and state education

– Sir Antony Jay, Telegraph, co-writer Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister

Has it made documentaries with black leaders in America who testify BLM is causing racism and division? It remains silent and the divide grows. Has it studied the link between abuse, trauma and the self-identification movement? Silence. Has it challenged the green campaigners on the accuracy of their data? Nothing to see here. The BBC was so busy saving the planet that it forget the poor will freeze to death, until it happened.

Does the BBC talk about the link between abortion, infertility and population decline? That’s not a left-wing issue. Has the BBC made a documentary about the cognitive decline of the President of the United States or does it collude with American media? Everyone knows something is amiss with Biden, but silence because we’re on his side. Nod, nod, wink, wink, we’re impartial.

In its bid to root out any form of racist perception, has the BBC ever questioned the paradoxes of their cause, such as why it’s considered fine to belittle Americans and why Hollywood loves to cast atrocious characters (antagonists) with a sinister British accent? Are some prejudices fine or has the West become oversensitive and we’re blind to the anomalies? The BBC ignores this.

Liberal sceptical humanists tend to dominate television…The ‘default position in broadcasting’ – when covering issues such as gay marriage and the Roman Catholic position on IVF – revolved around human rights, and that opponents should not be treated as ‘lunatics’

– Roger Bolton, former editor of Panorama and Nationwide

It’s onerous to aim at objectivity when those you’re ‘keeping accountable’ went to your university, live in your area and party with you, climbing the greasy poll of success by compromise. The BBC founders never envisioned a future with celebrity newsreaders making millions. If the BBC was impartial, there would be no need for celebrity presenters because the truth would engage viewers.

Do not be deceived: Evil company corrupts good habits

– 1 Corinthians 15:33

Where is the debate about apartheid in law with the growing power of UK Sharia courts? The BBC is too busy shouting, “Islamophobia,” to see the wood from the trees. Where are the special BBC documentaries about how UK migrant policies empower criminal smuggling networks? This is the modern-day slave trade. Is it Christian and compassionate to encourage people to borrow from criminals and risk their lives to enter the United Kingdom? An impartial broadcaster would question if we are creating and fuelling the crisis. The shouts of “Xenophobia” at the BBC have blinded them to burning questions about targeting aid to authentic refugees.

Where’s the coverage on family responsibility and its impact? Fatherlessness, the rise of migrant gangs and tensions are all interlinked. “Racism,” is the lazy, blasé, liberal, progressive response. Is the BBC too busy celebrating diversity to realise integration is not unfolding in many towns? An impartial BBC would ask these thorny questions and declare the answers from the rooftops, not at 1am, on channel 200. Why does the BBC embrace celebrities who were bullied, but never ask if the individual has laughed at others, and is, therefore, both bully and bullied? Most people fill both roles. You can’t play the victim when you realise you are part of the problem.

Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them

– Ephesians 5:11

Where is the BBC’s inquisitive spirit when men dress in bondage gear and dance in the streets in front of children? Would that be acceptable for heterosexual men? The BBC is too busy cheering to ask whether it’s appropriate to sexualise the street and children. Where’s the questioning, probing, thinking and research? Where’s the impartiality? You don’t need any of that when you’ve decided what political party is on ‘the right side of history.’ When the BBC echoes pressure groups, they’re not performing journalism, but propaganda. The BBC’s silence on middle-ground issues is deafening.

When pride comes, then comes shame

– Proverbs 11:2

Has the BBC made a documentary exhibiting the differences between the attempted Turkish coup in 2016 to the January 6 US Capitol Riot? Does the BBC gainfully believe that painted face, horned shaman and his buddies taking selfies had any power to overthrow the state? Leaving voluntarily and posting their pictures online is hardly a James Bond conspiracy. It wasn’t a coup d’état, it was a failure of policing.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them

– George Orwell, 1984

It’s time for responsible journalism, not progressive political tribalism masquerading as news. The real questions journalists should have asked about the 2021 US Capitol Riot are, “Where was the security?” and, “Who benefited from letting the mob in?” But if you’re ideologically bound to the democrats, you can’t propose those questions. The BBC is too enchanted with Biden to see how divisive he is regarded in America.

The BBC…fails to ask serious questions about why the USA is ‘as successful as it is, why the system it invented works. And, in the tone of what we say about America, we have a tendency to scorn and deride’

– Justin Webb, BBC Washington Correspondent, From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel, BBC, 2007

When the BBC airs the views of just one group, the forgotten go elsewhere. People are switching off the BBC and finding other sources from new TV channels to social media platforms. New media is breaching the gap to cover the side of the story the BBC refuses to cover.

Classifying questions about the BBC narrative as disinformation is Orwellian. The BBC is no longer fighting for the middle ground, but preaching progressive ideas to the left-leaning converted

The BBC has become like an aunty who helped you as a child, but now wants to give lectures on why you’re always wrong. If the BBC is defunded, it won’t be anything to celebrate. Significant creativity and influence will be lost and people overseas, such as in the Middle East, will feel impoverished. The BBC Persian service, amongst others, is a lifeline in the Middle East. But the trust level at home is falling.

The BBC is in an existential crisis. The young rarely watch it and the old don’t trust it

The BBC’s strength is found when it forces itself to be impartial. Global news reports on settled issues such as war, covering state events and dramas that focus on great storytelling without a lecture. The BBC has produced many classic TV series and has reported with honour from the battlefield. The BBC was rightly praised for its coverage of Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, proving when they leave woke ideology behind, they can deliver. Also, in light of the political chaos in October 2022, legitimate questions about government policies are important when the goal is to keep power accountable, instead of implementing an agenda. The BBC can be free and fair when it chooses to be.

The author is not urging for the end of the BBC but for its reformation. I believe in the BBC returning to its foundational values. I believe in the founders’ dream of an impartial BBC listening, instead of lecturing. A BBC that asks questions the powerful don’t want to hear, instead of joining in with the progressive choir. I believe in journalism and creativity, not BBC activism. The BBC should heed St Paul’s admonition:

Test all things; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil

– 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22

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By Paul Backholer. Find out about Paul’s books here.