Is the BBC one big plot?

9:48am Thursday 17th April 2008

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WELL, you have to laugh. According to the leader column in a national newspaper, and I won't name it, other than to say that there is a "Daily" and a "Mail" in there somewhere, we are suffering from a "Leftish-leaning monoculture in Britain".

And it's all the fault of the BBC.

Not for the first time, I am forced to wonder if other people watch the same BBC as I do.

The one I gaze at with half a bloodshot eye leans towards tawdry populism at times, what with all these dancing celebrities and would-be musical stars. But politically, it plays everything more or less straight, and if it does wander we are talking about nuances rather than deliberate bias.

The general liberal-mindedness might annoy some people, especially if they are sitting down to write a leader article on a rightwards-tipping newspaper, but it isn't the same thing as leaning to the left.

What got the leader writer agitating was a suggestion that the BBC should give some of its licence fee to struggling commercial television companies, including Channel 4 and ITV.

This strikes me as a bad idea, because what sense can it make to tip publicly raised funds into a big private hole? It won't improve matters much for the commercial companies, and it will damage the BBC, which, for all its faults, is still something this nation should cherish.

Sadly, such a move would fit with this Government's peculiar private-is-good mantra, which is increasingly to be heard in the "honest-it's-not-privatised" NHS.

But here's a thought: if private business is so good and wonderful at everything, where do they find all those bumbling berks on The Apprentice? Then again, perhaps that show is all part of a Leftish BBC plot designed to make private business appear ridiculous.

Anyway, the leader writer glowering at the BBC opined that slicing off some of the licence fee and giving it to other broadcasters would be an "excellent idea". Rather more worryingly, this frowning middle-aged grump who catches the train in each day from somewhere nice in the Home Counties - well, it's a guess, but that's how I imagine him or her - also supported a parallel proposal being floated by the Tories.

This suggests that channels which don't receive a share of the licence fee should be freed from the impartiality rules that constrain broadcasters in this country.

That might not sound like much, but it should worry all of us. Instead of watching a TV news programme in which the presenters try to tell the story down the middle, there is a danger that we would be faced with US-style ranting news anchors, blatantly spouting political views.

This proposal, by the way, is a bit of coy political flirting from the Tories. Rupert Murdoch would dearly love to unleash such Fox News-style one-sided reporting on Britain, and David Cameron appears to be fluttering his lashes in the hope that Rupe's newspapers might back him at the election. (Just to be fair, it is worth pointing out that Tony Blair was a terrible one for flirting with the newspaper owners and courting the Right-inclining newspapers).

A rant has its place. This column has housed a few down the years, and I always enjoy the rants of other columnists, even when finding myself violently opposed (well, maybe not Melanie Phillips or Richard Littlejohn, who imperil the blood pressure too gravely).

However, raving diatribes should be kept out of our TV news for good. Better to have liberal dithering from the BBC rather than a host of overheated bigots delivering babbling lectures in place of mostly balanced reporting.

Balance might not be exciting, but it does keep everything in its place.