Gerard Baker: BBC is a politicized disgrace and even the NYT knows it

Top-notch rant in the Times of London by their U.S. editor (and former BBC employee) Gerard Baker. It's less about the sins of the BBC than it is about the elite culture of collectivism that has gripped British institutions--including London's "sort of postmodern communist mayor", "Red" Ken Livingstone.

But the Beeb is the worst (emphasis mine):

The groupthink and assumptions implicit in almost everything broadcast by BBC News, and even less explicitly by much else of the corporation’s output, lie like a suffocating blanket over the national consciousness.

This is the mindset that sees the effortless superiority, at every turn, of benign collectivism over selfish individualism, exploited worker over unscrupulous capitalist, enlightened European over brutish American, thoughtful atheist over dumb believer, persecuted Arab over callous Israeli; and that believes the West is the perpetrator of just about every ill that has ever befallen the world — from colonialism to global warming.

I’m often told, when I take on like this, that I’m ignoring the quality of BBC output. But I spent almost a decade in the employ of the BBC and I can say, without demeaning my gifted colleagues at The Times, that it has probably one of the highest concentrations of talent of any institution in the world. But that, of course, is the problem. It perpetuates its power by attracting and retaining an educated elite that is distinguished by its unstinting devotion to collectivist values. I’ve no doubt it does what it does very well. It is what it does I object to.

Baker whiffs it a bit at the end, citing a New York Times op-ed criticizing the Beeb that didn't say quite what he says it did. That op-ed by Frank Stewart focused on the bias specifically of the BBC World Service, while praising the domestic product that twisted Baker's knickers. But Stewart's slam of the World Service (and its planned expansion into the Arabic TV market) is still worth your time:

Many of us pick up BBC broadcasts in English, and we respect their quality. But the World Service in English is one thing, and the World Service in Arabic is another entirely. If the BBC’s Arabic TV programs resemble its radio programs, then they will be just as anti-Western as anything that comes out of the Gulf, if not more so. They will serve to increase, rather than to diminish, tensions, hostilities and misunderstandings among nations.

I've never been one for the cutesy wordplay nicknames that mar political discussion in the blogosphere, e.g. "Democrats"="DemonRATS!" or "Hillary" ="Hellary". I drop a few now and then if I think they're clever, but most of them aren't worth it and repel moderate readers--or people who wander by without their VRWC* secret decoder rings.

But there's one exception: four years ago about this time I was listening to revolting, insipidly anti-American coverage of the Iraq invasion on the BBC World Service radio. And since then, as often as not, I call them the "Baathist Broadcasting Company". And when I don't say it or write it, I usually still think it.

*Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Hellary's term, not mine.