Publishing Company Blog | Seumas Milne on Pinkoes and Traitors by Jean Seaton – review: my father, the BBC and a very British coup

Seumas Milne on Pinkoes and Traitors by Jean Seaton – review: my father, the BBC and a very British coup

Written By Unknown on Friday, February 27, 2015 | 6:01 AM

The official history of the BBC misrepresents the removal of the director general in 1987. And the corporation has never recovered

It must be galling for true believers in Margaret Thatcher’s privatising mission that 35 years after she launched it two of the country’s most popular institutions, the NHS and the BBC, are still publicly owned. It doesn’t quite fit the tale of the triumph of the market. Both organisations still deliver prized universal public services, anathema to the neoliberal mindset. But both also bear the scars of the Thatcherite onslaught, continued under New Labour and Tory governments, including in the form of outsourcing and internal markets.

In the case of the BBC, its political independence has repeatedly been attacked and its journalism cowed. One of the most bizarre myths about the corporation, recycled ceaselessly in the conservative press, is that the BBC has a leftwing bias. As one academic study after another has demonstrated, the opposite is the case. From the coverage of wars to economics, it has a pro-government, elite and corporate anchor. The BBC is full of Conservatives and former New Labour apparatchiks with almost identical views about politics, business and the world. Executives have stuffed their pockets with public money. And far from programme outsourcing increasing independent creativity, it has simply turned some former employees into wealthy “entrepreneurs”, while enforcing a safety-first editorial regime.