5 ms·

https://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/mi5.bbc.staff_obs_18aug1985.html https://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/mi5.bbc.staf... > At the last

https://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/mi5.bbc.staff_obs_18aug1985.html https://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/mi5.bbc.staf... > At the last count, in 1984, the BBC had a staff of almost 30,000. We have discovered that all current affairs appointees, together with many of those involved in the actual making of programmes - including directors and film editors - are vetted. > We have also established who runs the system. It operates, unknown to almost all BBC staff, from Room 105 in an out-of-the way corridor on the first floor of Broadcasting House - a part of that labyrinth on which George Orwell modelled his Ministry of Truth in 'Nineteen Eighty-Four.' > The names of outside applicants are submitted to F Branch 'domestic' subversion desks at MI5, which is headed by the diplomat Sir Antony Duff. They are fed into a computer containing the details of 500,000 'subversives'. https://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/mi5.bbc.page9_obs_18aug1985.html https://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/mi5.bbc.page... > MI5 probably got their toe-hold in the BBC during the war when staff running the external services broadcasting to occupied Europe were vetted. Sir Hugh Greene, later to become director-general of the BBC, remembers: 'I was vetted in 1940. MI5 thought I was a Communist, but it turned out to be a mistake .' During the Cold War, Attlee's Government openly announced that civil servants who were Communists (or Fascists) would not be allowed access to classified material. But the BBC were keeping a secret blacklist. Hugh Greene recalls a case in the external services: 'He wasn't a security risk at all. It turned out he had worked for MI6,the rival secret service, and there had been an internal quarrel.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Christmas_tree%22_files https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Christmas_tree%22_files edit: the BBC coverage of the Scottish independence referendum, Corbyn, and Brexit was embarrassing. The Prescott memo is just the latest observation of how the BBC has been used as a tool to propagate elite opinions and accomplish intelligence objectives. Of course you like it, it's for you.

beejiu 11mo ago
Keeping out communists from a state broadcaster at the height of the Cold War sounds sensible.
- croes 11mo ago
  Being a communist doesn’t mean being a foreign agent
  - ggm 11mo ago
    There's an old story about sombeody like Manny Shinwell (a CP member in the house of lords) and somebody in the labour party convinced they were being bugged and speaking Yiddish to each other on the phone (as if MI5 couldn't find somebody to understand Yiddish, polari, you-name-it)
  - ekianjo 11mo ago
    Debatable since foreign powers were clearly trying to grab influence thru the funding of communist parties in western countries
  - Popeyes 11mo ago
    But being a communist does mean you are more likely to be recruited if you are in a position of power and at a time of 'war'.
    - croes 11mo ago
      Wouldn't that be an an too obvious foreign agent? Just pay a 100% capitalist
- lmm 11mo ago
  If you're supposed to be defending democracy in the cold war, excluding people based on their political views amounts to surrendering.
  - t43562 11mo ago
    That's a very purist viewpoint. The other side hired people to work against Britain and managed to get them into sensitive organisations, particularly the security services of course. Should Britain have surrendered to that in the name of purity?
quietbritishjim 11mo ago
> propagate elite opinion I can't speak of the MI5 accusation but the elite opinion one is comically of the mark. The (economic/political) elite famously hate the Beeb for its "leftie" views (really, it's just being balanced and telling the facts that they object to). The Tories would love an excuse to tear it apart but historically it's been too popular for them to get away with that. If you had meant intellectual elites then maybe you would have a point but I don't think that's what you were saying.
- raffraffraff 11mo ago
  I think that everybody looks back with rose tinted specs. Off the cuff, I'd say that the BBC isn't as honest and transparent as I thought it was back in the 80s, 90s. Then I remember the Jimmy Saville cover-up. Britain's pound shop/ dollar store Epstein. > senior managers were not told of complaints about Savile because of an "atmosphere of fear" which still exists in the BBC Written 10 years ago and still true today. It's just that the lies de jour depend on who currently holds political and (to a far grater extent today) cultural power. The elites, in a modern cultural sense, are not necessarily people with traditional money and power (royalty, politicians, famous stars and billionaires). Undoubtedly they have power, but these days that type of power doesn't protect you from the mob. Today, power is wielded by people who claim to have none, yet somehow set the tone on social media (moderation rules), influence rules within universities, influence charities and NGOs, and from there, media outlets. Politicians today are just landing to all. The BBC has is right up there with all the other liars.
- gadders 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ad_hockey 11mo ago
    The UK. Being educated at Eton is a pretty good proxy for "the elite". We've had seven Eton-educated Prime Ministers in the 20th and 21st Century, and 100% of them were Conservatives. There has never been an Eton-educated Labour PM and the majority of Labour MPs come from state schools. The political skew among the elites is pretty obvious.
woodpanel 11mo ago
[flagged]
doe88 11mo ago
When you're attacked from all sides, it's either you're doing it all wrong or all good. Obviously I want to think it's the latter.
- gmac 11mo ago
  This is such a dangerously naïve view. Anyone who's any good at all at politics has learnt that this heuristic is widely applied, and is therefore careful to make a huge fuss irrespective of how well or badly things are going for them. (Well, I say anyone; I guess I mostly mean bad people, who aren't restrained by fairness or honesty).
- pjc50 11mo ago
  Someone very smart told me that incompetence is a form of bias all of its own, because it privileges people who are able to ask for corrections in their favor. (They had a nice worked example involving exam results - some years have much higher variance than others, due to incompetence in question-setting or marking, and in those years the mis-marking is randomly distributed but only the more middle class parents manage to work the system to get re-marked)
benrutter 11mo ago
> The Prescott memo is just the latest observation of how the BBC has been used as a tool to propagate elite opinions and accomplish intelligence objectives. Of course you like it, it's for you. I think this kind of criticism is in bad faith. Because there's an implication that you're comparing the BBC to some kind of ideal unbiased news outlet. In reality, the alternatives to the BBC are much more obviously nefarious and make far less steps to remove bias. If the BBC is a tool to "propagate elite opinions", then how would you describe Fox News, the Daily Mail, The Times (UK), or even CNN?
- gadders 11mo ago
  >>how would you describe Fox News, the Daily Mail, The Times (UK), or even CNN? "I'm not forced to pay for those via a tax" would be the key difference.
  - owisd 11mo ago
    You’d be forced to pay way more than the cost of the licence fee in punishing austerity if it was up to the Mail and the Times. The per capita cost of Brexit that they campaigned for far exceeds the licence fee.
    - gadders 11mo ago
      [flagged]
      - th0ma5 11mo ago
        Yes, for-profit services often cost more and deliver less than non-profit or at-loss public services which make more sense for commodity services especially those needed to survive like healthcare or infrastructure.
        gadders 11mo ago
        I'm talking about providing less services in the first place, regardless of who does it.
gadders 11mo ago
>>the BBC coverage of the Scottish independence referendum, Corbyn, and Brexit was embarrassing. Yes, they were clearly pro-Remain and anti-Corbyn and anti-Scottish independence. >> The Prescott memo is just the latest observation of how the BBC has been used as a tool to propagate elite opinions and accomplish intelligence objectives. Yes, it demonstrated examples of bias in favour of those elite opinions.
- gmac 11mo ago
  > they were clearly pro-Remain I would say they were a lot less pro-Remain than the facts were, such that they were effectively heavily biased towards Leave. Typically they'd interview someone to factually explain how Brexit would be bad, and then 'balance' it up by giving equal airtime to some liar/fantastist telling us how it would be wonderful.
  - gadders 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    - gmac 11mo ago
      Haha. But no, not only that. 90% of economists thought Brexit would be net bad [1]. But at least 50% of economists the BBC put on air thought it would be net good [2]. Edit: here's a longer-form version of this argument: https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2018/04/brexit-and-corbyn-how-our-media-fails.html https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2018/04/brexit-and-corbyn-h... [1] https://ifs.org.uk/articles/paul-johnson-leavers-may-not-economists-we-are-right-about-brexit https://ifs.org.uk/articles/paul-johnson-leavers-may-not-eco... [2] Waking up to the Today programme for years (yes, a better source here would be nice)
      - gadders 11mo ago
        All that shows is that 90% of economists were wrong. I mean I don't think it was massively good (government fumbles saw to that) but the UK isn't doing significantly worse than the rest of Europe, or worse than it was pre-Brexit. Economics isn't a proper science, but even so it's not a democracy - more people saying x rather than y doesn't guarantee they're correct.
ZeroGravitas 11mo ago
Somewhat off on a tangent but George Orwell got mentioned (possibly ”invoked") and he literally sent names of communists that couldn't be trusted to be involved in broadcast to the government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s_list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s_list
martinclayton 11mo ago
An aside: I always understood that Broadcasting House was inspiration for Room 101 (Ministry of Love) rather than the MoT. It's well-known that the University of London Senate House building was the inspiration for the Ministry of Truth. Both the interior and exterior have appeared in many films and TV shows. Seems to come out of the visual creative toolbox when there's a need to evoke oppression or technocratic stultification through architecture, which is a shame as it's rather nice to visit!

beejiu 11mo ago

Keeping out communists from a state broadcaster at the height of the Cold War sounds sensible.

croes 11mo ago
Being a communist doesn’t mean being a foreign agent
- ggm 11mo ago
  There's an old story about sombeody like Manny Shinwell (a CP member in the house of lords) and somebody in the labour party convinced they were being bugged and speaking Yiddish to each other on the phone (as if MI5 couldn't find somebody to understand Yiddish, polari, you-name-it)
- ekianjo 11mo ago
  Debatable since foreign powers were clearly trying to grab influence thru the funding of communist parties in western countries
- Popeyes 11mo ago
  But being a communist does mean you are more likely to be recruited if you are in a position of power and at a time of 'war'.
  - croes 11mo ago
    Wouldn't that be an an too obvious foreign agent? Just pay a 100% capitalist
lmm 11mo ago
If you're supposed to be defending democracy in the cold war, excluding people based on their political views amounts to surrendering.
- t43562 11mo ago
  That's a very purist viewpoint. The other side hired people to work against Britain and managed to get them into sensitive organisations, particularly the security services of course. Should Britain have surrendered to that in the name of purity?

quietbritishjim 11mo ago

> propagate elite opinion I can't speak of the MI5 accusation but the elite opinion one is comically of the mark. The (economic/political) elite famously hate the Beeb for its "leftie" views (really, it's just being balanced and telling the facts that they object to). The Tories would love an excuse to tear it apart but historically it's been too popular for them to get away with that. If you had meant intellectual elites then maybe you would have a point but I don't think that's what you were saying.

raffraffraff 11mo ago
I think that everybody looks back with rose tinted specs. Off the cuff, I'd say that the BBC isn't as honest and transparent as I thought it was back in the 80s, 90s. Then I remember the Jimmy Saville cover-up. Britain's pound shop/ dollar store Epstein. > senior managers were not told of complaints about Savile because of an "atmosphere of fear" which still exists in the BBC Written 10 years ago and still true today. It's just that the lies de jour depend on who currently holds political and (to a far grater extent today) cultural power. The elites, in a modern cultural sense, are not necessarily people with traditional money and power (royalty, politicians, famous stars and billionaires). Undoubtedly they have power, but these days that type of power doesn't protect you from the mob. Today, power is wielded by people who claim to have none, yet somehow set the tone on social media (moderation rules), influence rules within universities, influence charities and NGOs, and from there, media outlets. Politicians today are just landing to all. The BBC has is right up there with all the other liars.
gadders 11mo ago
[flagged]
- ad_hockey 11mo ago
  The UK. Being educated at Eton is a pretty good proxy for "the elite". We've had seven Eton-educated Prime Ministers in the 20th and 21st Century, and 100% of them were Conservatives. There has never been an Eton-educated Labour PM and the majority of Labour MPs come from state schools. The political skew among the elites is pretty obvious.

woodpanel 11mo ago

[flagged]

doe88 11mo ago

When you're attacked from all sides, it's either you're doing it all wrong or all good. Obviously I want to think it's the latter.

gmac 11mo ago
This is such a dangerously naïve view. Anyone who's any good at all at politics has learnt that this heuristic is widely applied, and is therefore careful to make a huge fuss irrespective of how well or badly things are going for them. (Well, I say anyone; I guess I mostly mean bad people, who aren't restrained by fairness or honesty).
pjc50 11mo ago
Someone very smart told me that incompetence is a form of bias all of its own, because it privileges people who are able to ask for corrections in their favor. (They had a nice worked example involving exam results - some years have much higher variance than others, due to incompetence in question-setting or marking, and in those years the mis-marking is randomly distributed but only the more middle class parents manage to work the system to get re-marked)

benrutter 11mo ago

> The Prescott memo is just the latest observation of how the BBC has been used as a tool to propagate elite opinions and accomplish intelligence objectives. Of course you like it, it's for you. I think this kind of criticism is in bad faith. Because there's an implication that you're comparing the BBC to some kind of ideal unbiased news outlet. In reality, the alternatives to the BBC are much more obviously nefarious and make far less steps to remove bias. If the BBC is a tool to "propagate elite opinions", then how would you describe Fox News, the Daily Mail, The Times (UK), or even CNN?

gadders 11mo ago
>>how would you describe Fox News, the Daily Mail, The Times (UK), or even CNN? "I'm not forced to pay for those via a tax" would be the key difference.
- owisd 11mo ago
  You’d be forced to pay way more than the cost of the licence fee in punishing austerity if it was up to the Mail and the Times. The per capita cost of Brexit that they campaigned for far exceeds the licence fee.
  - gadders 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    - th0ma5 11mo ago
      Yes, for-profit services often cost more and deliver less than non-profit or at-loss public services which make more sense for commodity services especially those needed to survive like healthcare or infrastructure.
      - gadders 11mo ago
        I'm talking about providing less services in the first place, regardless of who does it.

gadders 11mo ago

>>the BBC coverage of the Scottish independence referendum, Corbyn, and Brexit was embarrassing. Yes, they were clearly pro-Remain and anti-Corbyn and anti-Scottish independence. >> The Prescott memo is just the latest observation of how the BBC has been used as a tool to propagate elite opinions and accomplish intelligence objectives. Yes, it demonstrated examples of bias in favour of those elite opinions.

gmac 11mo ago
> they were clearly pro-Remain I would say they were a lot less pro-Remain than the facts were, such that they were effectively heavily biased towards Leave. Typically they'd interview someone to factually explain how Brexit would be bad, and then 'balance' it up by giving equal airtime to some liar/fantastist telling us how it would be wonderful.
- gadders 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - gmac 11mo ago
    Haha. But no, not only that. 90% of economists thought Brexit would be net bad [1]. But at least 50% of economists the BBC put on air thought it would be net good [2]. Edit: here's a longer-form version of this argument: https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2018/04/brexit-and-corbyn-how-our-media-fails.html https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2018/04/brexit-and-corbyn-h... [1] https://ifs.org.uk/articles/paul-johnson-leavers-may-not-economists-we-are-right-about-brexit https://ifs.org.uk/articles/paul-johnson-leavers-may-not-eco... [2] Waking up to the Today programme for years (yes, a better source here would be nice)
    - gadders 11mo ago
      All that shows is that 90% of economists were wrong. I mean I don't think it was massively good (government fumbles saw to that) but the UK isn't doing significantly worse than the rest of Europe, or worse than it was pre-Brexit. Economics isn't a proper science, but even so it's not a democracy - more people saying x rather than y doesn't guarantee they're correct.

ZeroGravitas 11mo ago

Somewhat off on a tangent but George Orwell got mentioned (possibly ”invoked") and he literally sent names of communists that couldn't be trusted to be involved in broadcast to the government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s_list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s_list

martinclayton 11mo ago

An aside: I always understood that Broadcasting House was inspiration for Room 101 (Ministry of Love) rather than the MoT. It's well-known that the University of London Senate House building was the inspiration for the Ministry of Truth. Both the interior and exterior have appeared in many films and TV shows. Seems to come out of the visual creative toolbox when there's a need to evoke oppression or technocratic stultification through architecture, which is a shame as it's rather nice to visit!