According to yesterday's Independent: Greg Dyke, the director general of the BBC, was wrong to apologise for last week's edition of Question Time, in which members of the studio audience said that the US ought to try to understand why it was so hated by some Muslims. ===== Good grief. I had missed this. Did he really do this? How far we have come since the heady days of 1982 when, railing against the "Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation" Thatcher, Tebbit et al. set to work attacking the BBC from outside while plants like Rees-Mogg did the dirty inside. Brian Hanrahan was the BBC news reporter covering the Falklands campaign. Thatcher's people tried to engineer that he would report their 1983 election campaign (on to victory, none too subtly). BBC news managers put him on Michael Foot's trail instead, not that it did him much good, given the rest of the abuse heaped upon him by the establishment. Dyke "saved" TV-am at this time, effectively bailing out its original backer, Peter Jay, who is still, I believe, economics editor at the BBC. Jay was sidelined and the not at all lovely Bruce Gyngell was parachuted in to impose financial discipline, which included smashing the technicians' union, whose picket lines were breached regularly by the equally unlovely new presenters (Nick Owen and Ann Diamond, together with older toadies like David Frost -- whose "ground-breaking" and rehabilitatory interview with Richard Nixon in 1978 was produced by John Birt), while Dyke dismantled Jay's mission to explain structure (way too boring for comatose commuters) and gave the world Roland Rat instead. Dyke it was, as ITV controller some years later, who ended weekly coverage of professional wrestling (nothing like WWF, etc.) because it was "too low-brow". There was little complaint when Rupert Murdoch started pumping out Hulk Hogan etc. via his Sky TV around this time. I've already pointed out the remarkably inter-twined nature of Dyke's career with that of John Birt, Blair's strategic policy supremo (see http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2001III/msg00752.html). It was Birt, of course, who cleared the way for the supine abeyance now, apparently, a matter of routine at Broadcasting House. Maybe Newsnight (actually an SDP mouthpiece for much of the 1980s) retains some semblance of independence and criticism, but for the rest of the world BBC World is a faithful mouthpiece disseminating state-sponsored propaganda and manipulation via a bunch of mostly unrecognisable teenagers who've all been thoroughly trained in the dreaded mission to explain ethos of making everything as simple, condescending and thoroughly patronising as possible. Meanwhile those few remaining stalwarts who've survived (and even thrived) during the Birt years, including Hanrahan, David Dimbleby, Philip Hayton and the syrupy John Simpson, have been joined by former ITN journalist and Ditchley Foundations governor Nik Gowing (see http://www.ditchley.co.uk/listings/index.htm) give necessary gravitas to what would otherwise be a distinctly underpowered affair. Among the most sickening aspects of the last week's coverage (and there has been a lot of competition) has been the spectacle of Diana Grief II, as hundreds "spontaneously" gathered in London to grieve the loss of life in New York. This was presented as a wonderful patriotic display, showing how loyal "we Brits" are when it comes to standing "shoulder to shoulder" with our wonderfully supportive and understanding ally. But when other "Brits" spontaneously question the rationale behind an indiscriminate and indeterminate "war on terrorism", the man responsible for Roland Rat apologises. So much for the mission to explain. Michael K.
