Fair Beeb’s just a Broken dream
THE BBC is as balanced as a one-legged tightrope walker in a force nine gale. Even Paxman says so.
It isn’t just its one-sided news coverage. It’s its comedy output, its debate shows and every aspect of its drama too.
You’d expect a series like Broken, penned by the great socialist screenwriter Jimmy McGovern, to beat up the status quo.
But you get the same message hammered home on EastEnders – life sucks, capitalism is evil, the cuts are killing us.
In Albert Square, businessman Ian Beale is a hopeless skinflint while good folk eat food out of bins (although, in fairness, they do usually get a private room in Walford General).
The latest Doctor Who series bashed capitalists Email me at: garry.bushell@ dailystar.co.uk or write c/o Daily Star Sunday, 10 Lower Thames Street, London EC3R 6EN too. First, a loathsome toff fed small children to a chained-up monster to produce super-coal in order to drive the Industrial Revolution. Boo, hiss. Two weeks later a space mining company used oxygen as a commodity and bumped off its staff once they’d outlived their usefulness. This, said the Doctor, led to the fall of capitalism and “then the human race makes a whole new mistake”. You don’t have to love weak and feeble Theresa to point out that in reality, f ree enterprise has raised living standards, increased earnings and has been a fantastic force for progress.
Even Marx praised the liberating power of capitalism.
As well as unprecedented economic growth, freedom and innovation, it has delivered lower child mortality, mass literacy, cheap travel, well-stocked shops, longer lives and indoor plumbing... All a mistake?
No state-run economy ever achieved a fraction of that.
Yet the BBC seems incapable of hiring writers who don’t subscribe to the “commerce stinks” view of the world.
You won’t see a soap storyline about a poor teenager building a successful business through hard work – although thousands have – or a bright kid being held back by woolly-minded teachers.
You won’t see a pro-Brexit comedian on the Beeb, either. Bias is in its blood. Does it matter? Yes. The Corporation is supposed to be impartial.
It’s a cornerstone of its charter, and one of the key reasons we all have to pay for it or face jail.
Across the board, the BBC is failing in its duty of fairness. JOE Root, right... Katie Boulter... Konte v Velic... Carrie Coon, Fargo...Yvonne Strahovski, The Handmaid’s Tale. OINK! Man Loves Pig was about actual porkers and not Phil and Sharon on EastEnders.
It was “narrated” by Dorothy, an English saddleback who finished up as bacon.
Many viewers were hoping for a different ending – The Pork Shank Redemption. THE Windsors, left – crown fools...Eamonn & Ruth Do Dubai – all buttocks, Botox and brownnosing...The Box That Changed The World – more waffle than a US diner.