Impartial Truth
(Photo by Sara Lyth at Free Images Live UK)
If you don’t live in the UK, you may not have noticed the kerfuffle here several weeks ago after Gary Lineker responded to a video Home Secretary Suella Braverman promoting the government’s Illegal Immigration Bill. He said, in part:
There is no huge influx. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s [….].
The Illegal Immigration Bill is so bad, even Braverman admitted in public that it is likely to be in violation of international law.
It essentially makes nearly every avenue for attempting to seek asylum in the UK illegal, with emphasis on anyone coming across the Channel in a boat, and punishes such attempts by sending people back where they came from (or to another country) and banning them from ever applying for UK citizenship.
Experts have declared it unworkable. The EU has warned it violates international law. The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said it “would amount to an asylum ban,” a “clear breach” of the 1951 Refugee Convention.
Who is Gary Lineker? He’s a former footballer (soccer player to Americans), the host of the sports program Match of the Day and the BBC’s highest-paid presenter. He isn’t a BBC employee. He isn’t a journalist. He’s a freelancer who works on a contract basis.
Various big names on the political right pitched a tantrum. The BBC took him off the air. Other BBC sports presenters pulled out from hosting in solidarity with Lineker, affecting not only Match of the Day but also other sports programs. The pattern began to spread beyond sports programs.
BBC couldn’t carry on that way. They reinstated Lineker and all the presenters resumed working.
Around the time all of this happened, scrutiny intensified on Richard Sharp, the Chairman of the BBC since February 2021. A former banker, he was an advisor to Boris Johnson while Johnson was Mayor of London. Later he was an advisor to Rishi Sunak when Sunak was Chancellor. He donated £400k to the Tory party and helped arrange a loan of £800k to Johnson while Johnson was Prime Minister. He told Johnson that he wanted the job of BBC Chair before he applied for it, which appears to have discouraged consideration of others for the role, and he didn’t disclose his linkage with Johnson’s personal finances.
So many details about Sharp’s entanglement with the Tory party and then-Prime Minister came to light, an investigation occurred into how he got appointed. When the report was released to the Prime Minister late last month, Sharp resigned.
The BBC is supposed to be politically neutral. Many people (including me) had been saying the BBC seemed to swing strongly to the right during Sharp’s tenure. Large amounts of air time and wordspace went to not only British right-wingers, but also to pro-Trump and pro-Republican voices in the USA. Whenever news broke that had to be covered but didn’t conform to right wing talking points, the right wing got more than its share of air time to present their opposing view.
This was done under a pretext of impartiality. As shorthand, people call this both-sidesing. (How to write the term is not agreed. I’ve also seen it as bothsidesing, for example.) Where there are opposing opinions about an issue, presenting them both as valid has become a shortcut to claiming neutral, impartial coverage. It avoids the hard work of vetting for credibility and the discomfort of facing off with loud, angry proponents of lunacy that didn’t get wordspace or air time. Both-sidesing has become common practice in much of mainstream media.
But if one side is based on facts and the other on fantasy, both-sidesing isn’t neutral, isn’t impartial and isn’t news reporting.
Opinions can be all over the place, but facts are reality. They are intrinsically neutral and impartial. If they happen not to fit your worldview, it isn’t because the truth is biased; it’s because your opinions are based on something false. Cherry picking to present only facts that fit into your worldview and strive to suppress the rest creates a narrative just as false as an opinion based on fiction.
Presenting falsehoods as equivalent to truth promotes the falsehoods. Distorting the truth to fit an agenda amounts to propaganda. Both-sidesing isn’t just annoying. It opens the door to propagandists. It’s dangerous.
Where Will the BBC Go From Here?
The BBC’s situation will not unfold the same way as the USA’s grappling with Fox News Channel. FNC says it is not really a news channel and really only presents entertainment dressed up to look like news. (Nobody seems to wonder whether rules about truth in advertising apply to labeling an entertainment channel as a news channel.) So far they’ve agreed to pay about three quarters of a billion to Dominion to settle a lawsuit about FNC’s unfounded attack on the voting systems company’s reputation, they’ve fired their most popular presenter and now they face a larger lawsuit from another voting systems company they attacked. FNC is not state-funded media. Their troubled relationship with facts will play out in courtrooms and company survival or collapse.
The BBC is publicly funded but supposedly not state-controlled. Its quandary is unfolding in the political sphere.
The structure of the BBC has at least two pivotal weaknesses. The government that happens to be in power when the BBC’s chair needs to be filled gets to make that appointment. By convention, although the BBC is state funded, it is supposed to be impartial and that was more or less been honored until the 2021 appointment. This time the Tory party put someone with a glaringly obvious political agenda into the chair.
The other major weakness is the very fact that it is publicly funded. It is simultaneously a blessing and a curse. Public funding frees the BBC from pressure that big businesses would exert if funding came from advertisements. The government is not supposed to control what BBC presents, but funding is leverage and sometimes leverage is tempting.
Current government has been strangling BBC’s budget, which has made the BBC desperate to mollify the government. For example, the last episode of Sir David Attenborough’s Wild Isles series was not aired normally on the BBC. It was reputedly deemed too upsetting for a certain segment of the political space, so it was relegated to online streaming only. The entire series built the case for that final episode. (If you wonder why I chose a photo of a puffin for today, it’s because in Britain we adore puffins. Of course Wild Isles spent some time showing their lives.)
Truth is impartial by nature. If the news you are reporting is factual, presenting a contrary opinion is the opposite of neutral. It shows you are biased toward fiction and propaganda.
Once upon a time, the BBC was regarded as a reliable source of news. Recent times undercut it, making it a cheerleader for a particular set of opinions. It can’t magically recover now that Sharp has resigned. Recovery needs time.
This past weekend was a test. King Charles III’s coronation was not all pomp and glory. In the run-up to the coronation, the Metropolitan Police used new anti-protest laws to arrest peaceful protesters who had coordinated with the Met beforehand to make sure their protests were legal. The Met also arrested volunteers who routinely work with the Met to distribute rape alarms to women, purportedly due to suspicion that women might use rape alarms to disrupt the coronation. Read that again. The Metropolitan police, some of whose members have recently been convicted of raping and/or murdering women, arrested volunteers who distribute rape alarms to women, which is not only legal but which usually the Met helps to coordinate. Other media covered this, but I don’t see it on BBC’s website.
The best way to be impartial is not both-sidesing. The best way is reporting what’s true, as best we can. We always need champions of truth. The UK used to hear the BBC the way the USA heard Walter Cronkite. I hope the BBC will be able to reclaim its soul.
From The Oklahoman newspaper, April 20, 2023:
Is Clifford the Big Red Dog too “woke”?
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt seems to think so.
After vetoing a bill that would allow OETA to continue operations, Stitt claimed that the state’s public broadcasting system is outdated and overly sexualizes children.
“It may have had its place in 1957. Why are we spending taxpayer dollars to prop up the OETA? It makes no sense to me,” Stitt said at his weekly news briefing. “And then when you further look at the programming, I don’t think Oklahomans want to use their tax dollars to indoctrinate kids. Some of the stuff that they’re showing,
it just overly sexualizes our kids.”
Oklahoma’s Legislature created OETA in 1953, and it launched its first broadcast in 1956. It is the only broadcaster in Oklahoma that covers all 77 counties, with 18 powerful antennas spread across the state, including the Panhandle.
Stitt further complained that the station had shown stories of parents defending their transgender children.
“They’re elevating LGBTQIA2S+ voices,” the governor said. “If you want to watch that, that’s fine. But why are we using taxpayer dollars to prop that up? I don’t think we need that and I’m glad to veto that bill.”
OETA has declined to comment.
OETA’s programming questioned
Asked to clarify which programs indoctrinate children, Stitt’s office provided a list of news programs and documentaries, plus some of the network’s entertaining educational shows that include “Clifford the Big Red Dog.”
One of the examples he cited was a “PBS NewsHour” segment that interviewed parents of transgender children. He also pointed to a documentary broadcast four years ago called “The Gospel of Eureka,” which follows a Passion Play actor and a drag queen as they prepare for their roles in the same rural Arkansas town.
Stitt also doesn’t like that the animated children’s series “Work It Out Wombats!” includes a kangaroo lesbian couple who’ve adopted a child, a situation that’s legal in Oklahoma (if kangaroos could adopt). Three years ago, an episode of “Clifford the Big Red Dog” introduced two characters, “Dr. Mulberry” and “Ms. Mulberry.” Both women were called “Mom” by one of the main characters’ friends.
That episode of “Clifford” was nominated for an Outstanding Children’s Programming award at the 2021 GLAAD Media Awards.
GLAAD, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, said Friday that public broadcasting and freedom of speech are trademarks of the values that every American cherishes.
“Oklahomans should have access to programs that represent and reflect everyone, including LGBTQ people and people of color, who are already vastly underrepresented in all forms of media, especially in children’s programming,” said GLADD CEO and President Sarah Kate Ellis. “Representation and storytelling show every viewer that they matter and belong in our world. Gov. Stitt must know that taxpayer dollars, which come from all taxpayers, should support programming and services for all, and that includes LGBTQ taxpayers and their families.”
Aside from not wanting to see lesbian couples on state-funded TV, Stitt gave another reason why he wants to abolish OETA, which has a higher viewership than any other PBS affiliate in the country.
“The big picture here is, why do we use taxpayer dollars to fund a system that competes with the private sector?” he said. “I don’t see a need for taxpayer dollars to be funding a television station in 2023.”
What’s next for OETA?
The Oklahoma Legislature could override Stitt’s veto, which takes a twothirds majority of both the House and Senate. When lawmakers first voted on the reauthorization bill, it earned well more than that in both chambers. They’ll have until the end of May to decide whether to reverse the governor’s veto.
If OETA isn’t renewed by the July 1 expiration date, state law would allow it to operate for one additional year. Any funds left over would be sent to the state’s general revenue fund, and assets would be transferred to the Oklahoma Management and Enterprise Services agency. Oklahoma’s public radio stations are separate entities and would not be directly affected.
It’s not clear whether Stitt has approached OETA with his concerns about their programming. He’s approved their budget four times since becoming governor. In this year’s budget, he recommended reducing OETA’s $2.9 million state appropriation by $150,000.
OETA’s state appropriation only covers about one-third of its operating costs, said Robert Spinks, a founding member and former chairman of the Friends of OETA nonprofit. State funds don’t even pay for the kind of programming Stitt apparently objects to. Instead, programming is purchased through funds raised by Friends of OETA and by external corporate supporters.
OETA receives about $0.70 per Oklahoma resident in state funding, while other state networks receive as much as $4.26 per resident to support their educational television operations, according to a 2021 annual audit.
Stitt has not publicly offered an alternative to shutting down the state’s public broadcaster. If the Legislature doesn’t override his veto, Oklahoma would lose a lot more than “Sesame Street.”
OETA employs 53 people across the state.
Its network of broadcast stations, in conjunction with the nationwide Public Broadcasting System Warning, Alert, Response Network, has valuable use to emergency management agencies.
If the national Wireless Emergency Alert system breaks down, or if a cybersecurity incident or internet disruption to a carrier facility breaks its primary connection to federal emergency managers, OETA’s network provides an immediate alternate source of inbound emergency messages.
“Yeah, I don’t think that that has anything to do with our public safety,” Stitt said Friday when asked about OETA’s role in helping disseminate emergency notifications to every corner of the state. “I think we’ve got some initiatives right now on communication networks. DPS (the Department of Public Safety) is on that, and I’m not sure how much OETA is helping on DPS’s public safety.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, OETA also helped broadcast educational content to every county.
“Our stations were key providers of educational support, information and material for parents and for teachers who were required to teach through Zoom and other electronic means,” said Spinks. “It’s just one of many examples where OETA puts the interests of the people of Oklahoma first.”
As a PBS affiliate, OETA also broadcasts popular cultural programming like “Antiques Roadshow,” “American Masters” and “Great Performances”; history and natural sciences shows like “NOVA,” “Nature” and the OETA-produced “Back in Time”; plus news programs like the “Oklahoma News Report” and “Frontline.”
Culture war controversy
This isn’t the first time that public broadcasting has been threatened by politicians, some of whom didn’t like what they saw on TV. A year after “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” debuted in the United States, Fred Rogers spoke to Congress about the importance of the government funding non-commercial TV broadcasts for children.
In the 1990s, U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich tried and failed to eliminate funding for public broadcasting. Oklahoma’s own U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn tried to block appropriations a few years later, and some state officials failed to eliminate OETA a decade ago.
Greg Treat, who currently serves as the Oklahoma Senate president pro tem, said he once voted against reauthorizing OETA, but was brought into the office of that era’s Senate leader.
“I was told, at that time at least, that the towers were critically important to DPS and others. The license that was held by OETA was an FCC license, it was non-transferable,” Treat said Thursday. “And so they asked me not to be flippant in my vote.”
PBS and NPR went through an attempt to bring in conservative commentators - Tucker Carlson primarily, to bring "balance." I think it was a time when their boards were heavy with corporate conservative types. I remember a period when Carlson was regularly an opposing voice during Cokie Roberts' comments - and I wrote a letter complaining that NPR was elevating a known liar and hate-monger to legitimacy by including him. Both PBS and NPR have been targets of white-nationalist conservatives who want to eliminate them. The latest is Oklahoma governor Kevin Shitt (I mean, Stitt) who is trying to cancel the PBS license. I'll post the article separately, as it has a paywall.