News Trivia

[poliphilo]

Jeremy Hunt- the Culture Minister- was complaining the other day about left-wing bias at the BBC. I've been thinking recently- mainly in relation to the reporting of the student protests- that the BBC has been bending overmuch towards the right. This is good, isn't it? If both extremes think the BBC is prejudiced against them then the BBC must be doing exactly what it's supposed to do and steering a course straight down the middle.

Hunt is the one whose name James Naughtie committed a spoonerism on. I guess he's smarting from that.

I've learned that Charlie Gilmour, the silly young toff who swung on the flag, is an old boy of my school- Lancing College. I'll bet they don't mention that in any of the glossy magazines they send me. 

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Perhaps Hunt will have been reassured by Ben Brown's interview with Jody McIntyre? Not much sign of left-wing bias in his line of questioning, I'd say.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

McIntyre is impressive.

Ailz, who is a wheelchair user, tells me that merely to move a wheelchair without its user's consent is classified in law as assault.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

Ah poliphilo - you usually keep quiet about your own life of privilege! I used to live just up the road from Lancing College - the chapel looked fabulous floodlit from the Worthing to Brighton road, like Hogwarts, in fact, and a far cry from my own tatty comprehensive.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Lancing Chapel is fabulous- altogether my favourite Victorian gothic building.

Lancing has a history of producing louche, rackety and subversive figures- for instance Evelyn Waugh and the very scandalous Tom Driberg MP. More recently the lefty playwright David Hare.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you see yourself in that way!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I would rather take my stand with Waugh and Driberg than with the worthy Anglican clergypersons who are Lancing's other speciality.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

Maybe you are both, that is your USP.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You're right, it is.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

This is good, isn't it? If both extremes think the BBC is prejudiced against them then the BBC must be doing exactly what it's supposed to do and steering a course straight down the middle.

That's a common fallacy. News organizations should pursue the truth. It may be that the truth lies straight down the middle between the extremes, but it may also be that one side or the other actually is closer to the actual facts. So, "straight down the middle, pissing off both sides", isn't necessarily the right place to be.

But it might be.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ah, but as jesting Pilate remarked, "What is truth?"

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Epistimological concerns should be secondary to a news outlet. A news outlet can safely use a fairly naive definition of truth -- that there exists an objective universe in which actions take place, and that "truth" is simply the factual and accurate description of said actions and conditions. Plenty of news organizations fail at that point.

In the United States, at least, news organizations with a conservative slant tend to fail on that criterion more frequently than news organizations with a liberal slant.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. The very word "liberal" implies a certain open-mindedness.

Here in Britain all our news channels are committed to an ideal of balance. Our newspapers (many of them owned by Rupert Murdoch) are a different matter.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Slight pedant point, but a Spoonerism would leave the Minister as Hairyme Junt, which has a poetry of it's own. What we joyously heard is apparantly called an eggcorn.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ah right. :)

I suppose the "c" became detatched from the word "culture".

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

So you went to the same school as a Junior Pink Floydling??!!

Wow!

One of my ex-bosses can do better. He went to the same school (or was it college?) as Guido Fawkes...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I hasten to add we weren't there at the same time.

The most famous person from my time at Lancing is the dramatist David Hare.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Your school seems to be quite adept at producing Young (or not so young) Turks. But in terms of pushing the boundaries of upsetting the Establishment, David Hare wins hands down!!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

He was a prefect when I was in my first year. I remember him as intense and highly strung. He told a bunch of us off once for talking after lights out and it was scary. He was also- as you'd expect- a noted schoolboy actor.

[airstrip.livejournal.com]

Well, frankly, the truth has a strong left-wing bias.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I won't quarrel with that.