More to the point, Thompson’s observations on the public’s lack
of trust in the BBC uses the pathetic example of the furore over the
promo on the Queen’s photo-shoot, not exactly at the cutting edge of
BBC news and current affairs programming.
Indeed, where it
counts most, on the BBC’s slavish adherence to the status quo, Thompson
has absolutely nothing to say except that whatever the BBC’s faults,
“The BBC remains by a long way the most trusted broadcaster, indeed the most trusted media provider of any kindâ€
But
why then do almost 1/3rd of those questioned (according to Thompson)
state that they have lost trust in the BBC? Thompson would have us
believe it’s because of little ‘faux pas’ here and there that have
resulted in the lack of trust.
But the major reason for the loss
of trust—that the BBC is a vehicle for state propaganda—is alluded to
when Thompson says “especially in the years since Huttonâ€. But why is
the Hutton ‘inquiry’ so important?
In truth, the Andrew Gilligan
interview with Dr. Kelly which in turn led not only to his alleged
suicide but also the axing of the top managers of BBC and finally the
pathetic Hutton Inquiry was the ‘tipping point’ for the public’s loss
of trust not only in the BBC but also in the government itself.
“The
serious problems we’ve found affected a minuscule percentage of our
output: not 10% or 1%, but perhaps a few thousandths of 1% of the
programmes we have broadcast over the past couple of years.â€
But
we are not talking about ‘errors’ of fact here but the ideological
position of the BBC and its role in pushing the ‘party line’, something
that is built-in to the very fabric of the BBC and always has been.
So
blatant was the state’s interference in the BBC’s news coverage of the
UK’s participation in the illegal invasion of Iraq that it literally
did a flip overnight. Thus Thompson’s utterly disengenuous remarks
about the BBC being “the most trusted media provider of any kind†were
it not such a serious subject, be absolutely laughable.
And
indeed, the very fact that Thompson felt it necessary to publish this
paean to the BBC’s alleged impartiality reveals not only how important
the BBC is to the state’s propaganda machine but also how vulnerable it
feels given the disastrous results of the British state’s attempt to
exhume the British Empire.
For as Thompson points out;
“Public
trust is not a new topic for us. We’ve always known that it’s the
foundation on which everything the BBC does is built. We’ve also known
that it’s asymmetrical – easy to lose, slow and difficult to restore.â€
Yes
indeedy, without public trust, the BBC is unable to be its ‘master’s
voice’ and unless it really asserts its independence from the state, it
won’t be ‘slow and difficult to restore’, but well nigh impossible and
the odds of this happening are as remote as the BBC regaining the trust
of the public.
Never before has the hegemony of the managing
elite been so effectively challenged, not only through its ineptitude
but because for the first time there are real alternatives which the
public can turn to, not as ‘alternative’ sources of news and
information but which the public can use as a comparison.
For
make no mistake, even though there is currently no challenge to the
rule of capital, the goings on inside (and outside) the BBC reflect a
deepseated crisis of confidence in the capitalist state of which the
BBC is such an integral part and has been so since its inception.
“However, especially in the years since Hutton, we’ve come to focus on it [public trust or rather, lack of it] first and foremost in the context of journalism. 
