What influence has the BBC had on history?

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/head-head/what-influence-has-bbc-had-history

by pepys • 8 months ago

42 57 8 months ago

pessimizer• 8 months ago

https://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/mi5.bbc.staf...

At the last count, in 1984, the BBC had a staff of almost 30,000. We have discovered that all current affairs appointees, together with many of those involved in the actual making of programmes - including directors and film editors - are vetted.
We have also established who runs the system. It operates, unknown to almost all BBC staff, from Room 105 in an out-of-the way corridor on the first floor of Broadcasting House - a part of that labyrinth on which George Orwell modelled his Ministry of Truth in 'Nineteen Eighty-Four.'
The names of outside applicants are submitted to F Branch 'domestic' subversion desks at MI5, which is headed by the diplomat Sir Antony Duff. They are fed into a computer containing the details of 500,000 'subversives'.

https://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/mi5.bbc.page...

MI5 probably got their toe-hold in the BBC during the war when staff running the external services broadcasting to occupied Europe were vetted. Sir Hugh Greene, later to become director-general of the BBC, remembers: 'I was vetted in 1940. MI5 thought I was a Communist, but it turned out to be a mistake .' During the Cold War, Attlee's Government openly announced that civil servants who were Communists (or Fascists) would not be allowed access to classified material. But the BBC were keeping a secret blacklist. Hugh Greene recalls a case in the external services: 'He wasn't a security risk at all. It turned out he had worked for MI6,the rival secret service, and there had been an internal quarrel.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Christmas_tree%22_files

edit: the BBC coverage of the Scottish independence referendum, Corbyn, and Brexit was embarrassing. The Prescott memo is just the latest observation of how the BBC has been used as a tool to propagate elite opinions and accomplish intelligence objectives. Of course you like it, it's for you.

beejiu• 8 months ago

Keeping out communists from a state broadcaster at the height of the Cold War sounds sensible.

croes2• 8 months ago

Being a communist doesn’t mean being a foreign agent

lmm3• 8 months ago

If you're supposed to be defending democracy in the cold war, excluding people based on their political views amounts to surrendering.

quietbritishjim• 8 months ago

propagate elite opinion

I can't speak of the MI5 accusation but the elite opinion one is comically of the mark. The (economic/political) elite famously hate the Beeb for its "leftie" views (really, it's just being balanced and telling the facts that they object to). The Tories would love an excuse to tear it apart but historically it's been too popular for them to get away with that.

If you had meant intellectual elites then maybe you would have a point but I don't think that's what you were saying.

raffraffraff• 8 months ago

I think that everybody looks back with rose tinted specs. Off the cuff, I'd say that the BBC isn't as honest and transparent as I thought it was back in the 80s, 90s.

Then I remember the Jimmy Saville cover-up. Britain's pound shop/ dollar store Epstein.

senior managers were not told of complaints about Savile because of an "atmosphere of fear" which still exists in the BBC

Written 10 years ago and still true today. It's just that the lies de jour depend on who currently holds political and (to a far grater extent today) cultural power. The elites, in a modern cultural sense, are not necessarily people with traditional money and power (royalty, politicians, famous stars and billionaires). Undoubtedly they have power, but these days that type of power doesn't protect you from the mob. Today, power is wielded by people who claim to have none, yet somehow set the tone on social media (moderation rules), influence rules within universities, influence charities and NGOs, and from there, media outlets. Politicians today are just landing to all. The BBC has is right up there with all the other liars.

doe88• 8 months ago

When you're attacked from all sides, it's either you're doing it all wrong or all good. Obviously I want to think it's the latter.

gmac2• 8 months ago

This is such a dangerously naïve view. Anyone who's any good at all at politics has learnt that this heuristic is widely applied, and is therefore careful to make a huge fuss irrespective of how well or badly things are going for them.

(Well, I say anyone; I guess I mostly mean bad people, who aren't restrained by fairness or honesty).

pjc504• 8 months ago

Someone very smart told me that incompetence is a form of bias all of its own, because it privileges people who are able to ask for corrections in their favor.

(They had a nice worked example involving exam results - some years have much higher variance than others, due to incompetence in question-setting or marking, and in those years the mis-marking is randomly distributed but only the more middle class parents manage to work the system to get re-marked)

benrutter• 8 months ago

The Prescott memo is just the latest observation of how the BBC has been used as a tool to propagate elite opinions and accomplish intelligence objectives. Of course you like it, it's for you.

I think this kind of criticism is in bad faith. Because there's an implication that you're comparing the BBC to some kind of ideal unbiased news outlet.

In reality, the alternatives to the BBC are much more obviously nefarious and make far less steps to remove bias.

If the BBC is a tool to "propagate elite opinions", then how would you describe Fox News, the Daily Mail, The Times (UK), or even CNN?

gadders3• 8 months ago

>how would you describe Fox News, the Daily Mail, The Times (UK), or even CNN?

"I'm not forced to pay for those via a tax" would be the key difference.

gadders3• 8 months ago

>the BBC coverage of the Scottish independence referendum, Corbyn, and Brexit was embarrassing.

Yes, they were clearly pro-Remain and anti-Corbyn and anti-Scottish independence.

> The Prescott memo is just the latest observation of how the BBC has been used as a tool to propagate elite opinions and accomplish intelligence objectives.

Yes, it demonstrated examples of bias in favour of those elite opinions.

gmac2• 8 months ago

they were clearly pro-Remain

I would say they were a lot less pro-Remain than the facts were, such that they were effectively heavily biased towards Leave.

Typically they'd interview someone to factually explain how Brexit would be bad, and then 'balance' it up by giving equal airtime to some liar/fantastist telling us how it would be wonderful.

pjc504• 8 months ago

It is grimly funny how the Conservative party (Cameron) looked at the indyref, with its 48/52 win with all three main parties and almost all the media on their side, and decided that this was a big win and they could do it again. But this time the media would be on the other side, and pro-Leave were the ones making all the big undeliverable promises in all directions.

ZeroGravitas• 8 months ago

Somewhat off on a tangent but George Orwell got mentioned (possibly ”invoked") and he literally sent names of communists that couldn't be trusted to be involved in broadcast to the government:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s_list

martinclayton2• 8 months ago

An aside:

I always understood that Broadcasting House was inspiration for Room 101 (Ministry of Love) rather than the MoT.

It's well-known that the University of London Senate House building was the inspiration for the Ministry of Truth. Both the interior and exterior have appeared in many films and TV shows. Seems to come out of the visual creative toolbox when there's a need to evoke oppression or technocratic stultification through architecture, which is a shame as it's rather nice to visit!

moltar• 8 months ago

When the Soviet Union fell apart BBC opened a number of journalism schools in Russia. The schools were sponsored by George Soros. My dad attended one of those and then was called into FSB office (former KGB) to be questioned.

My suspicion to this day is that these schools were both a spy front and long-game propaganda, where they were teaching how to make news more western-aligned.

Why would BBC want to teach their methods in Russia? How do they benefit from that? How does Soros benefit from that?

lmm3• 8 months ago

Why would BBC want to teach their methods in Russia? How do they benefit from that?

The BBC's mission is to inform, educate, and entertain, not to benefit themselves.

How does Soros benefit from that?

I'm more anti-Soros than most, but he is fairly open that he wants to prevent a recurrence of the Holocaust and a free press and western-style civil liberties are things he sees as supporting that. Even if you want to see it in selfish terms, the guy is rich and Jewish and wants the kind of society that doesn't victimise people like him; that doesn't mean he's part of some kind of cloak-and-dagger conspiracy.

notepad0x903• 8 months ago

The goal there is similar to why the US state department sponsored the Tor project. They want a democratic society in Russia, and they want the Russian people to have friendly views of the west. The objective wasn't so much to teach them their ways, but to establish rapport with the journalism community in Russia. Journalists decide if for example Putin's power grabbing and dictatorship is covered as a negative or a positive thing. That rapport goes a long way with influencing their unavoidable bias. I think "influence" is correct, not "propaganda" unless there was specific messaging being disseminated.

Also, look up "confucius institutes" all over the US and the world setup the Chinese government to do something similar.

suddenlybananas2• 8 months ago

They want a democratic society in Russia

They don't give a damn about democracy. There's a reason they stole plenty of elections across Europe and Latin America. Hell, they even helped steal the 1996 Russian election.

littlecorner• 8 months ago

Its the messy application of FDR's claim that the USA should be the arsenal of democracy and should protect people everywhere. Which sounds all well and good, until you get different ideas about what is the best and that 'I' know better than you. Basically all the mess of the Cold War and propaganda and advertising

lauri_jo• 8 months ago

It seems somewhat obvious that more democratic Russia would be in the interests of the rest of the Europe. Similarly self evidently, the former KGB is against it. Freedom of press is rather important part of democracy, and the state controlled media is an important part of an authoritarian play book.

The lack of democracy in Russia has now ended up costing millions of lives and trillions in damages, so maybe we should have actually invested more?

Angostura2• 8 months ago

The BBC has a wide commitment to help run training courses in many developing countries.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc/media-action/

teamonkey• 8 months ago

The UK government used to greatly believe in “soft power” in that their global influence would be improved through familiarity with British media, values and teaching, using the BBC World Service and organisations like the British Council.

So yes, essentially propaganda, but in the same way Hollywood is.

netsharc• 8 months ago

There's a "state of the world" forum post from a famous author years ago talking about how the UK used to be the adults in the room, how countries went to them and asked them for advice; and how they were seemingly actively shedding their reputation to be the US's aircraft carrier, opening their legs for any oligarch. I think this was written during Cameron's rule, and of course the facepalming got even harder with BoJo and Liz Lettuce Truss.

gambiting3• 8 months ago

>Why would BBC want to teach their methods in Russia?

Why does US benefit from every kid on the planet being able to name the avengers and instantly recognize Coca-Cola cans?

I'm not saying this is some grand conspiracy orchestrated by the elites - but projecting your power by making sure everyone is aligned with you ideologically and culturally helps long term, both in making allies and in avoiding wars.

pjc504• 8 months ago

Two things are both true: the Soros Open Society foundation and BBC activities were pro-Western propaganda, and that does not make them bad or wrong or false. If they had succeeded in turning Russia into a pluralist liberal democracy, that would have been better for millions of Russians and everyone else. Instead Russia turned into a petro-state oligarchy, sponsored a number of wars, and finally threw hundreds of thousands of young Russians into a meatgrinder war in Ukraine.

Peteragain4• 8 months ago

The BBC gets to say what history is because it documents the now. Farage does not have the popular support tha Corbyn had (has?) but you'd never believe it counting the number of interviews Farage gets with the BeeB. The game, as with Wikipedia, is to convince everyone you're unbiased and truthful and then sell us something. The question really is the relationship between the people's will (assuming you think democracy is a good idea) and the BBC's agenda setting.

Angostura2• 8 months ago

The polling suggests Farage absolutely does have that support. BBC coverage reflects that. And I hate the man

t435623• 8 months ago

does he have it because he gets into the news all the time? Do other people with support get proportionate air time to their support? I don't think so.

Like all news organisations the BBC gets views based on outrage and I don't think the Greens or the Libdems get 1/2 Farage's news coverage based on having 1/2 his support and that's clearly because they don't do outrageous things.

Peteragain4• 8 months ago

And you are talking of current polling. I believe you will find that in Corbyn's hayday the polling was suggesting he would sweep labour to power.. but with the wrong politics. Hence being pro Palestinian was turned (in the bbc reporting) into "anti Semitic".

martinclayton2• 8 months ago

https://archive.is/fbKl4

Enk1du• 8 months ago

Not mentioned is that there are _many_ BBC's which became clear when watching the difference in coverage between the local and national broadcasts during Covid. The national editorial team spared the government's blushes at every turn, whereas the local teams reported what was actually happening in their communities, to the point where you were getting more real news from a smaller, underfunded news service.

They each have their own agendas.

What influence has the BBC had on history?

Related Stories