The Very British BBC
Apparently, in a new charter to be unveiled this week, the BBC will see its purpose to "inform, educate and entertain" expand much further, for now they will be required to promote British citizenship.
Now, I have to admit, I'm in two minds about this at the moment. On the one hand, it could help to some extent with building a sense of responsibility, respect, and patriotism once again (although its effect would be limited as ITV will not have to do this). On the other hand of course, it is just a bit worrying. It could, arguably, force the BBC to effectively become a total propaganda machine for the government (although many would say that it already is, in which case, even more so).
One of the things which particularly worries me about this is that many will (and have announced their intention to) exploit this new aspect of the BBC's remit in order to pressure for "cleaner" programming. John Beyer, the director of Mediawatch-UK (read: Mary Whitehouse), said: "This means much more than the BBC thinks. It's not just things like impartial news. It is about reflecting good behaviour on the BBC and using good language. The BBC has a moral role. As a lobby group we will now use this phrase as a way to make the BBC act responsibly."
Certainly, the BBC does need to work on its impartiality, but for the rest of Mediawatch's interests, I think they really are quite out of touch with the majority of public opinion. People are more sensible, modern, mature and tolerant that Mediawatch seem to give them credit for, and really not bothered about this kind of thing anymore. Consequently, they need to focus on pressuring for that impartiality in the news, but no more.
I wait with interest on the development of this story.
(Thanks to John for the tip-off.)
posted by Aaron at 11:11 AM
1 Comments:
Oh God, we don't need the ghost of Mary Whitehouse stirring it all up, do we? I remember her from the olden days, with her knitting circle of disgusted old dears. They would be better off complaining about the amount of rubbish on telly in general rather than swearing and sexy stuff, but most of the bad stuff is on ITV anyway.
And as for the Beeb being more impartial, it's damn hard for any media to be impartial. Which is not a good thing but that's how it is. Best to watch a wide variety of news sources, like BBC and Al Jazeera or summink or nuffink.
12/3/06 3:39 PM
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