Dimbleby, like his news colleagues, had been conned; most of the weapons had missed their military targets and killed civilians.
In 1991, according to The Guardian, the BBC told its broadcasters to be ‘circumspect’ about pictures of civilian death and injury. This may explain why the BBC offered us only glimpses of the horrific truth – that the Americans were systematically targeting civilian infrastructure and conducting a one-sided slaughter. Shortly before Christmas 1991, the Medical Education Trust in London estimated that more than 200,000 Iraqi men, women and children had died in the ‘surgical’ assault and its immediate aftermath.
An archive search has failed to turn up a single BBC item reporting this. Similarly, a search of the BBC’s coverage of the causes and effects of the 13-year embargo on Iraq has failed to produce a single report spelling out that which Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, put so succinctly when asked if the deaths of half a million children were a price worth paying for sanctions. ‘We think the price is worth it,’ she replied.
There was plenty of vilifying of the ‘Beast of Baghdad’, but nothing on the fact that, up to July 2002, the United States was deliberately blocking more than $5bn worth of humanitarian and reconstruction aid reaching Iraq – aid approved by the UN Security Council and paid for by Iraq. I recently asked a well-known BBC correspondent about this, and he replied: ‘I’ve tried, but they’re not interested.’
There are honourable exceptions to all this, of course; but just as BBC production values have few equals, so do its self-serving myths about objectivity, impartiality and balance have few equals – myths that have demonstrated their stamina since the 1920s, when John Reith, the BBC’s first director general, secretly wrote propaganda for the Tory Baldwin government during the General Strike and noted in his diaries that impartiality was a principle to be suspended whenever the established order and its consensus were threatened.
Thus, The War Game, Peter Watkins’s brilliant film for the BBC about the effects of a nuclear attack on Britain, was suppressed for 20 years. In 1965, the chairman of the BBC’s board of governors, Lord Normanbrook, secretly warned the Wilson government that ‘the showing of the film on television might have a significant effect on public attitudes towards the policy of the nuclear deterrent’.
Generally speaking, outright bans are unnecessary, because ‘going too far’, which Watkins did, is discouraged by background and training. That the BBC, like most of the Anglo-American media, reports the fate of whole societies according to their usefulness to ‘us’, the euphemism for western power, and works diligently to minimise the culpability of British governments in great crimes, is self-evident and certainly unconspiratorial. It is simply part of a rich tradition. John Pilger, article December 2003, ‘Opposition Views Are Absent at Dyke’s BBC’
BBC: Its long-documented history of suppression, of doing the bidding of British governments, and of serving Western power. John Pilger, lecture 2018
The media’s long-time role as disseminators of state and vested interests’ propaganda. ibid.
Evidence is the root of real journalism. ibid.
On the 14th November 1922 the British Broadcasting Company was established. John Reith, a tall balding Scot, with a long scar running down one cheek, was appointed general manager. To call John Reith odd would be a wild understatement. Andrew Marr, The Making of Modern Britain, BBC 2009
The BBC produces wonderful programmes; it also produces a lot of old rubbish. Jonathan Dimbleby
I’m not certain that the BBC can claim to be making a wide enough range of distinctive programmes to make the case convincingly. Jonathan Dimbleby
I deplore the loss of arts on BBC One and Two. Jonathan Dimbleby
On 8th May 1945 the Allies formally declared that the War in Europe was over. It was VE Day ... For the BBC, as for the nation, it was the summit of a quite extraordinary journey. Jonathan Dimbleby, The BBC at War I BBC 2015
William Joyce [Lord Haw-Haw] had expected to find refuge in Berlin. In fact he found celebrity. ibid.
The government decided that the BBC could help ... ‘This is London calling in the Oversees Service of the BBC.’ ibid.
Edward R Murrow: a new programme London After Dark. ibid.
The BBC was starting to win the war of words against the enemy abroad but it had yet to win the trust of the politicians or the generals at home or of the hearts and minds of the British people. Jonathan Dimbleby, The BBC at War: Into Battle II
The BBC had become embedded in the national psyche as a genuine public service broadcaster. The BBC had been moulded by the war – now it faced the challenges of peace. ibid.
As the BBC celebrates 100 years at the centre of British life, it faces more question about its future than ever. David Dimbleby, Days that Shook the BBC I, BBC 2022
The relationship between BBC and Government is always going to be uneasy because the Government holds the purse-strings. ibid.
She [Thatcher] attacked the BBC because she saw it as full of fat cats and bloated bureaucracy. ibid.
There was one issue that really angered Mrs Thatcher and that was the way the BBC covered Northern Ireland. ibid.
The government could appoint a chairman who could just sack the director-general. This was unheard of. ibid.
The monarchy is deemed to be an unassailable part of the constitution. ibid.
‘The BBC has apologised for the deceitful way Martin Bashir secured his famous interview with Princess Diana.’ ibid. news
Dyke seemed to be a sort of different animal at the BBC. He wanted to shake things up. David Dimbleby, Days that Shook the BBC II: Trust Matters
It only takes one mistake to land the BBC in real trouble. ibid.
Alastair Campbell: ‘They’d [BBC] better issue an apology pretty quick.’ ibid. evidence to parliamentary committee
The Hutton Report is published … ‘Hutton vindicates Blair, Campbell, and damns the BBC’. ibid. news
Hutton Report: ‘An appalling and really quite disgraceful piece of judicial nonsense.’ ibid. Ian Hislop
The Jimmy Savile scandal: one of the worst in the BBC’s history, and yet again it screws up.
If we can’t trust you to investigate your own organisation, how can we trust you on the big issues that affect all of us. ibid.
So we have two big scandals, and on both occasions the only thing to do to regain public trust is the man at the top to go.
Ross & Brand: ‘My grandfather is distraught … now sack these sickos.’ David Dimbleby, Days that Shook the BBC III, Sun front page
People thought that by letting it go ahead, the BBC was showing itself to be completely out of touch with popular opinion. ibid.
There was a glass ceiling that they [women] couldn’t get above. ibid.
People in Scotland, people in the north of England and poorer people consistently feel the BBC is not representing them. And that is a major major flaw. ibid.
Go back to the time it [Black & White Minstrel Show] was cancelled, and you hear these two views … The BBC had great difficulty coming to terms with issues of race. ibid.
Nick Griffin: It’s a difficult call. But I think it was right because I think that in a democracy you had to listen to all the voices. And encourage that when the voice was heard people turned away from it. ibid.
To most, Caversham is simply a sleepy Berkshire suburb. To those who work for the BBC, however, it’s the guardian of their travails and triumphs. Contained within the walls of this unassuming building, the BBC has locked its secrets away in file upon file of correspondence. BBC: The Secret Files, BBC 2015
The word ‘conservative’ is used by the BBC as a portmanteau word of abuse for anyone whose views differ from the insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, naive, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy of that sunset home of the third-rate minds of that third-rate decade, the 1960s. Norman Tebbit
BBC axe investigation into Sir Jimmy Savile and schoolgirls. Mirror online headline 8th January 2012
Four weeks ago an ITV documentary broadcast allegations that one of this country’s best known TV stars, a man of the people, a friend of royalty, a devout Catholic who comforted the sick, was a child abuser. And he’d been allowed to get away with it unchecked for fifty years. Panorama: Jimmy Savile – What the BBC Knew, BBC 2012
More than 200 people have claimed they were Savile’s victims. ibid.
Just how much BBC staff really knew about Savile’s abuse? ibid.
He always had at his disposal a camper van. ibid.
Among the guests on Clunk Click were young people from hospitals and other institutions. ibid.
Gary Glitter also appeared on Clunk Click. ibid.
The BBC could be the target of thousands of claims. ibid.
Boys were targeted too. ibid.
Rumours were being picked up by Fleet Street. But still the story didn’t come out. ibid.
The Newsnight editor suddenly applied the brakes. ibid.