The British Invasion - Sort of...
By Erik Rush (06/27/07)
After years of denial, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) finally admitted that its news coverage is biased toward the left. Now, in case you're not familiar with how television is setup in the U.K., BBC is pretty much the only game in town unless one has access to a paid service. It's sort of like we in America still having only the "Big Three" (NBC, CBS and ABC) as our sources of not only news, but entertainment as well.
Most Americans did not become aware of this admission by the BBC through the major American media, but it has been covered extensively and with great relish by the more conservative media and those outlets that provide equitable coverage.
The report initiated by the BBC led to this “revelation”; a June 17 “Media Matters” piece in WorldnetDaily cited this phenomenon as being due to the “inherent liberal culture of [their] staff,” according to the BBC.
Across the pond, it’s no secret that the “Big Three” television networks are no longer such (with good and just reason) and that newspaper readership across the country has plummeted. This has to do with a few key factors, among them the diversity that the Internet and cable television provide. To many of us it’s old hat that another key factor is the left-leaning bias of the major media.
This has also been widely reported by responsible media sources and as vehemently denied as the BBC and other international leftists once maintained referencing British television news. It has been almost (I stress “almost) hilarious to see journalists like Ellis Henican attempting to present straight-faced, salient, insightful rebuttals while others project childish, almost mentally-deficient arguments that the media is slanted to the Right rather than the Left.
The migration of fads and trends from Britain to America has been acknowledged for some time. Some occur rather quickly, like the “British [rock band] Invasion” of the ‘Sixties and the punk rock culture some years later. Others seem to take longer, due to what many Brits put down to as our prudishness; for example, such things as frontal nudity from the waist up have been commonplace on British television since I was a child. This has yet to happen in America, although it’s evident to millions of Americans that television entertainment here pushes the envelope about as far as it can.
So there are trends which arrived from the U.K. that are innocuous, some have proved rather creepy, while others are downright dangerous. For example, British foreign policy over they years resulted in their going from “ruling the waves” to waiving the rules, which has insidiously insinuated itself into American domestic policy. While things have become markedly more scripty here, the British now face a radical Muslim population within its own borders who present more than a threat; they’ve already experienced homegrown Islamic terrorism and Muslims there now have sufficient numbers to present a viable political menace. This all began with seemingly innocent developments like laws which prevented publication of materials which might be considered racist.
Yes – vague – and a very slippery slope.
It has recently become known that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton, (D-NY) and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) – who makes Clinton look like a conservative, are testing the waters apropos some sort of legislative approach to “addressing” conservative media outlets, particularly talk radio.
What disturbs me (a gross understatement) is the lack of shame with regard to the totalitarian overtones of their public overtures toward a “fix” for this “problem”. These are people who bleat about being as American and as patriotic as anyone else – but who are they referring to? American neo-Nazis? Black Panthers?
The next big lie that must be sold to the American people in order for this go gain ground is that talk radio is an aberrant anomaly or conspiracy whose existence is sort of a cultural two-headed snake. It is largely (if not wholly) the realm of racists, Christian zealots and rabid homophobes. No doubt that elites in the entertainment industry will be eager to help; during the 2000 election campaign, singer-actress Chér actually told a gay audience at a political function that George W. Bush’s election would mean cattle cars and death camps for homosexuals.
The informed realize that any effort to regulate the political content in media represents a threat of the highest order to the very foundation of our nation. What remains to be seen is how many Americans they manage to fool with this transparent, sordid and disgusting ruse.
(Printer friendly version) Email: Erik Rush
