Rightwing thinktanks run this government. But first, they had to capture the BBC
George Monbiot (The Guardian)
Why are representatives of these shadily funded groups treated as impartial observers on flagship news programmes?
Some of it is easy to understand. Liz Truss, a hollow vessel filled with secondhand ideas by the dark-money thinktanks, believed their assurances that the magic of an unregulated market and tax cuts for the very rich would trigger an economic boom. The thinktanks must scarcely have believed their luck: that someone so malleable could become prime minister.
On the day of the mini-budget, they crowed about taking over the government. (...)
I see these thinktanks, which refuse to reveal the sources of their funding, as lobbyists for hidden interests. We know from leaks and US reports that these include, in some cases, tobacco firms, oil firms and foreign oligarchs. But there is one question to which no one has provided a complete and satisfactory answer.
Day after day, year after year, the BBC has provided these extremists with a massive platform on its news and current affairs programmes. (...)
The BBC routinely torches its editorial guidelines, which state that “we should make checks to establish the credentials of our contributors and to avoid being hoaxed”. (...)
At first, I thought the problem was naivety. But then I saw the BBC’s responses to complaints about its failure to establish the credentials of its contributors. They were defensive, irrational and contradictory. At one point, the BBC said it wasn’t necessary to tell the audience that an MP arguing against climate action was the director of an oil company, on the grounds that he had declared this interest elsewhere. Soon afterwards it claimed that when giving the head of the IEA [Institute of Economic Affairs] a platform to argue against new tobacco regulation, it wasn’t necessary to state that his organisation has been funded by tobacco companies, on the grounds that the IEA had not declared this interest. (...)
These groups are being called upon by the BBC to comment on the performance of this government as if they are impartial observers, rather than the authors of its policies.
I no longer believe the BBC’s failure to uphold its own rules is an accident. I believe it’s a policy. But why? Appeasement is always part of the answer: the BBC constantly seeks to placate the billionaire press and Conservative governments. More importantly, it has always been a defender and projector of established power. (...)
I’m sure there’s more to this story than we yet know. It’s hard to believe how freely the BBC breaks its own rules to promote and normalise an extreme neoliberal cult. Neoliberalism is the intellectual justification for the class war waged by the rich against the poor. The BBC is part of the team.
Broadcasting House in London. Photograph: Ian West/PA.
Tags: #media #news #news_bias #journalism #journalist #thinktanks #impartiality #dark_money #tobacco_firms #oil_firms #foreign_oligarchs #Institute_of_Economic_Affairs #Adam_Smith_Institute #Taxpayers_Alliance #Centre_for_Policy_Studies #Policy_Exchange