For the duration of the Stop BBC Bias crowdfunding appeal which we are promoting on TCW, we are reminding our readers of the breadth and extent of BBC bias by republishing a number of our previous reports. It is, as Rod Liddle pointed out recently, a metropolitan middle-class liberal bias that’s reflected not just in their Brexit coverage, but their coverage of the Islamic murders at London Bridge which failed to mention the word. The utter lack of political diversity in the BBC bubble, he points out, is an enormous problem for the country, reflecting only the PC and SJW views of 4million or so (if that) affluent liberals. Nowhere is it clearer than in the BBC’s own female preferential agenda that DAVID KEIGHLEY reported on in this article first published on March 7, 2017:
According to the latest BBC annual report, 48.7 per cent of its 21,000 full-time staff are women.
That’s a much higher rate than in the population as a whole – 13.4million men and 7.8million women are in full-time work, or 37 per cent women, according to the Office for National Statistics – so this is quite an achievement in the ‘equality’ stakes. It boils down to the fact that the Corporation has been working flat out for many years to boost the number of females in its pay.
Tellingly, the statistic is contained in the ‘diversity’ section of the report. This means that the level of women’s employment – even though it is within a whisker of being at par – is still considered to be a matter of major concern, juxtaposed with the need to achieve quotas for those from ethnic and religious minorities and among those who are disabled.
Strangely, the ultimate target in terms of male/female ratios in the female employment table is left blank. Could it be that in Corporation feminist thinking it will be 60:40 or maybe even higher before male chauvinist piggery is banished?
Whatever the target, it is still not enough in some quarters. Sharon White, the chief executive of Ofcom, which from April, when the new BBC Charter comes into full effect, assumes a regulatory role over elements of the Corporation, is one of those who is not satisfied.
The reason? According to former civil servant Ms White, Auntie is still not putting enough older women on screen either as presenters or in dramatic roles.
Ms White is not alone in her belly-aching. When Helen Boaden left her £340,000-a-year post of director of BBC Radio towards the end of last year, she complained that she had spent her career battling against the posh ‘entitled men’ who inhabited senior management posts.
The annual report reveals that part of the BBC’s agenda in the equality stakes is support for a number of initiatives that fight for women’s rights. One such is ‘Global Women in News’. It boasts more than 1,000 BBC members, with the goal ‘to boost and support the career progression of the female workforce in a meaningful way’.
Sarah Gibson, a co-founder, says that this includes the holding of a variety of network events ‘with inspiring guest speakers’. Who might those be? Top of her list are Arianna Huffington, founder of the overtly liberal-left blog The Huffington Post, and Miriam Gonzalez-Durantez, who is on record as attacking International Women’s Day organisers for daring to invite her to take part in a letter addressed to ‘Dear Mrs Clegg’.
How foolhardy of them. It may be that this Global Women in News group is doing excellent work in smoothing women’s career paths, but key points here are: (a) the equality agenda is also part of the reinforcement process of the BBC’s liberal/Left echo chamber, and (b) all this effort to achieve ‘equality’ eats up substantial BBC resources and time and effort.
The scale of such costs is not disclosed in the annual report, but by contrast the BBC will not pay for systematic monitoring of its own output to check for political balance, with disastrous consequences in terms of a failure of impartiality over issues such as Brexit.
And how does this female preferential agenda affect the BBC’s output? By generating programmes and approaches that emphasise the importance of family in raising healthy, well-adjusted children? Maybe not. In the three years since it was launched, TCW has identified legion examples of the BBC feminist and gender agendas and propaganda.
Here, for example, Kathy Gyngell explores veteran war reporter John Simpson’s concerns about the dominance on screen of females at the Corporation, and shows how the internal Diversity Strategy is driven not by merit, talent or skills but by ‘age, gender, disability, ethnicity and sexual orientation’.
Here, Laura Perrins identifies how the quest for female equality is behind the BBC’s relentless championing of women’s football, despite audience tastes.
And here, Mark Ellse shows how a feminist victim agenda drove the recent plot in The Archers featuring domestic violence.
There is no escape from it, even in glossy BBC dramas where the plots are about female subjugation and nasty, shallow, preying men. Men who are nice have to have major drawbacks – such as being thick or without drive.
Finally, how about this, taken at random from the BBC’s educational pages? BBC iWonder says in a section about whether we still need men (because of advances in genetic engineering):
‘Despite these breath-taking advances in science, it could be that human psychology and economics will also favour having two sexes. The majority of people still identify as heterosexual, and raising families on one’s own can be exhausting and unaffordable in the modern world. Children might also prefer and benefit from having two domestic parents, although this remains a controversial topic.’
Eh? In the continuing BBC struggle for feminist ‘equality’ – despite par being achieved – there is clearly no end in sight to the war. Grudgingly, it is accepted that there might be some sort of role in future for males. But astonishingly, in the sisters’ estimation, the continuation of the two-parent family unit is ‘a controversial topic’ – and perhaps should only be considered at all because ‘raising families on one’s own can be exhausting and unaffordable’.
Brave New World indeed.
