The most trusted and powerful broadcasting organization in this world is the British Broadcasting Corporation (bbc). In the 1930s, it had a shameful history with Winston Churchill.
Mr. Churchill was doing everything possible to warn and save his country and the world from Adolf Hitler. Britain almost lost World War ii. The world came dangerously close to being slaughtered and enslaved by Nazi Germany.
A Churchill biographer, Henry Pelling, wrote that “the bbc had kept him off the air on controversial questions in the 1930s.” Those “controversial questions” included his strongest warnings about the dangers of Nazi Germany!
The bbc is funded by the people’s taxes and is supposed to be regulated by the government. The bbc is similar to America’s Public Broadcasting System (pbs). But that is like comparing an elephant to a mouse. The bbc is gigantic and has a worldwide impact unlike any other media network, and it virtually silenced Winston Churchill when he tried to warn his country. Britain was facing its worst crisis ever, and this state-funded corporation rejected his strong warning about Germany. The bbc worked hard to stop his message to SAVE the Western world!
Such a colossal and dangerous blunder should have brought the most profound change to the bbc! But the left-wing media have a very poor memory of their own wretched history. Have they learned anything from this extremely damaging history?
Did the bbc repent of this monstrous crime against its own country and much of the world? No, it did not. Its reporting is even more biased and dangerous today!
So what does that portend for the survival of Britain, America and the Western world? Do the left-wing media have the same attitude in our war against terrorism today? Yes, they do. And, in some ways, radical Islam is even more menacing than Hitler was. Think about what terrorists can do with weapons of mass destruction (wmd). Terror-sponsoring nations supply and support the terrorist movements used to tear democratic societies apart. And the left-wing media assist greatly in destroying the public will to fight the real enemy. We can’t go after the head of the terrorist snake, which is really Iran, strongly backed by Syria. Much of the media fights against the truth about terrorism. That means our leaders almost always lack the support to fight the real enemy, even if they have the will. We must stop terror-sponsoring nations or we can’t win the war against terrorism!
The left-wing media blind many of our people to reality—the way things really are. The terrorist nations know that and use it to their benefit in a frightening way.
Winston Churchill faced the same weak, deceitful kind of media in the 1930s. Almost all the media REFUSED to see Hitler for what he really was—until it was almost too late!
Finally, Hitler forced them to see how evil he really was! But they didn’t see until they were forced to see. Don’t forget that. And don’t expect them to voluntarily repent today.
This issue gets to the heart of the survival of our peoples. That is how important it is.
The recent history of Winston Churchill and the bbc is a good example to illustrate the deadly danger of the left-wing media. That history condemns many in the media.
Now the bbc has moved even further to the left. This has led it into its greatest crisis ever. The bbc’s example illustrates what is happening to all of the left-wing media today.
Here is what the Weekly Standard wrote on February 16 about this issue: “For the last week, much of Britain has borne witness to an outpouring of grief the like of which has not been seen since the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. When Baron Hutton … a hitherto rather inconspicuous retired member [judge] of the British supreme court, delivered his much anticipated report at the end of January on the death of Dr. David Kelly, a British government weapons expert, a collective howl of anguish went up from the well-upholstered parts of the media establishment.
“Lord Hutton concluded that Tony Blair, the British prime minister, was not guilty of lying about the threat from Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction when he made the case for war more than a year ago. Nor had he or his government ‘sexed up,’ in the immortal phrase, intelligence information about the nature of the Iraq wmd threat. The prime minister had been accused of both in a notorious report by the British Broadcasting Corporation that aired in late May 2003.
“Nor, for good measure, declared Lord Hutton, had Blair improperly ‘outed’ Dr. Kelly, the previously anonymous source for the report. Kelly’s exposure led more or less directly to the scientist’s suicide in July.
“By contrast, Hutton’s report found the bbc profoundly guilty. The original story by its reporter, Andrew Gilligan, that the government had deliberately inserted a false claim into a published document concerning Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, was unfounded. Worse, the bbc had failed to ensure proper editorial procedures to prevent such an erroneous report from being broadcast. Then, without having properly checked the story, the bbc’s management refused to back down from the report even though some of its own editorial staff were quietly expressing concern about its reliability.”
Fear of War
The bbc and the left-wing media are almost always against using our military might to stop the Hitler types and to do good in the world. That makes them dangerous in any age, but even more alarming in our terrorist war, in this era of such deadly weapons.
Here is what Dick Morris wrote in his book Off With Their Heads: “The establishment news media had always opposed the war in Iraq. Before the first bombs fell, it demanded UN approval for the operation; then, when the attack started without it, its political opposition morphed into military skepticism and dire predictions of disaster. …
“R.W. Apple Jr., writing in the New York Times, called the situation a ‘debacle.’ In London, the Independent warned hysterically that the battle ‘plan perished when Turkey refused to allow U.S. ground troops to use its bases.’ …
“At the New York Times, R.W. Apple noted that ‘with every passing day, it is more evident that the allies made two gross military misjudgments in concluding that coalition forces could safely bypass Basra and Nasiriyah.’ …
“As John Keegan, the defense editor of Britain’s Telegraph, observed, ‘The older generation, particularly those covering the war from comfortable television studios, has not covered itself with glory.’ Keegan, who has a chair in military history at Sandhurst, Britain’s West Point, noted: ‘Deeply infected with antiwar feeling and left-wing antipathy to the use of force as means of doing good, it has once again sought to depict the achievements of the West’s servicemen as a subject of disapproval. … The brave young American and British servicemen—and women—who have risked their lives to bring down Saddam have every reason to feel that there is something corrupt about their home-based media’” (emphasis mine throughout).
The bbc has led the media in their slanted, antiwar reporting.
Why are the left-wing views of war so disturbing? They are destroying the military spirit that defends our people! Our military power is of little value if we lack the will to use it.
Why should our most courageous young men and women risk their lives while most of the media condemn what they are doing? In the process we are fulfilling a prophecy where God says He will “break the pride of your power”—or will to use that power—because of our sins (Lev. 26:19). This is the real problem we must confront, regardless of our political philosophy!
A February 1 Sunday Telegraph editorial said this: “The Iraq war was just and predicated on Saddam’s criminally evasive behavior as much as the evidence of his deadly arsenal. Everyone, including France and Germany, agreed that the Iraqi dictator had such an arsenal: The question was what to do about it.”
But this is not the public perception. The left-wing media are leading much of the public to believe that there were no weapons of mass destruction and that the leaders of Britain and America knew it before they attacked Saddam! They malign our leaders who do have the will to fight, hoping to destroy them politically. That is how deadly devious their reasoning is. And no court of law or anything else is apt to change their thinking.
Here is what Melanie Phillips wrote in London’s Daily Mail, February 9: “Mr. Blair himself, though, whether he is brought down or struggles on, is not the main casualty here. The really lethal damage has been done to the alliance against terror and the ability of this country to defend itself.
“For if neither politicians nor secret intelligence are now to be believed, there will be no agreement to fight any battles that still lie ahead. This is, of course, what the appeaseniks have been working toward.”
If the “appeaseniks” had won in their battle with Winston Churchill (and they almost did), there would be no media freedom in the Western world!
The left-wing media learned nothing from that mega-disaster. As Mr. Churchill said, the only thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history. That means history is going to repeat itself! And the next time, there will be no political leader to save us!
Some people are going to scorn this analysis, but not for long.
These appeaseniks have a history of failing to learn nation-saving lessons. Norman Tebbit wrote, “The bbc would not have laid itself open to Mr. Blair’s putsch had it not so imperiously rejected my criticisms of its coverage of the American air strikes on Libya nearly 20 years ago. There was, I claimed, a weakness of editorial control, which allowed opinion advanced under cover of selective reporting to become a bbc corporate view which dominated the news coverage” (Sunday Telegraph, February 1).
Twenty years ago Libya had made terrorist strikes against the U.S. (outside the country). President Ronald Reagan struck back at Libya, killing one of Muammar al-Qadhafi’s children.
We spoke the only language Qadhafi understood. His own family was struck with terror. For the next decade this terrorist-sponsoring nation was very quiet. Many journalists were amazed.
Now, after we removed and captured Saddam Hussein, Qadhafi has agreed to get rid of his wmd. He fears Saddam’s fate could be his own!
These are signs that should convince the left-wing media that there is only one way to win the war against terrorism. We must change the terror-sponsoring nations.
Mr. Qadhafi got a taste of his own terror, and it changed him. This is what so many in the media refuse to understand.
Libya’s agreement to destroy its wmd is the most positive sign from our war with Iraq. If we had the will to continue in this direction, we could win the war against terrorism. But we don’t have that will.
If the peoples of America and Britain were united behind our leaders, there would be more fear in the terrorist-sponsoring nations. Those nations would begin to think more like Libya, which had been financing and cultivating terrorists for years.
I believe that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair should amplify and expand this deep and critical truth to our peoples more than what they have done so far.
This is the paramount vision our peoples fail to see.
Too many in the media see a few branches, but refuse to see the terrorist tree. This blindness to the overview, the bigger vision, is why they make so many monstrous mistakes—as they did in the lead-up to World War ii.
The only way to win this war is to chop down the terrorist tree.
Again, we must stop state-sponsored terrorism or we cannot win. What is going on in Israel should show us that. The terrorist-sponsoring nations will keep supplying the terrorists until Israel is too discouraged to fight. And that is also how they will wear down Britain and America should we allow it!
We can’t beat the terrorists, fighting as the Israelis are—the way the terrorists want us to fight. We could easily beat them if we forced the terrorist-sponsoring nations to stop their massive, criminal acts.
This philosophy is totally rejected by the left-wing media (and left-wing politicians and educators). Over 85 percent of the media were against the election of George W. Bush. Their goal is to change the people to their way of thinking. And they are succeeding, frighteningly well. They are also destroying the security of America, Britain and Israel. So this concerns each one of us.
They arrogantly believe they are qualified to tell people how to think. Their goal is not to get the facts to our people, which journalists should be doing. The left-wing media’s goal is to change our people’s thinking. They are not trustworthy journalists. They want to rule—not inform. They are tyrants and terrorists of the intellect!
The left-wing media scorn history. That is why they never seem to learn lessons from history—even recent history like events leading up to World War ii and the Iraq war. They worship the false god of their own human reasoning.
That means they give us very little context in their reporting. They give us their biased opinion and often fail to give us the whole story. They are lost in their own warped human reasoning. They are a danger even to themselves! They are also a grave danger to the many people who trust them.
Left-Wing Media Power
Media conglomerates are extremely powerful. They are becoming too powerful for politicians to challenge. To directly challenge the mega-media often leads to political death. The media frequently have more power with the people than the politicians do.
The left-wing media are in a power struggle to get control—and they are winning. They are becoming more powerful than the government, even though they were not elected by the people.
Here is what the Weekly Standard said: “But the fact is that the bbc occupies a position in British public life quite unlike that of any media organization in the United States or, indeed, in the free world. It runs several tv channels, including two all-news services and several all-news radio networks. Its main news shows on tv and radio reach upward of three quarters of the British people every week.
“What is more, with Britain’s print media being politically partisan, the bbc’s past reputation for impartiality has made it much more widely trusted than any competitor. Imagine the influence of the main American tv networks, pbs, cnn, Fox News, National Public Radio, the New York Times, and the newsweekly magazines all rolled into one and you have some inkling of the reach of this giant” (op. cit.).
Prime Minister Blair received favor in the eyes of Judge Hutton. But with another judge, it could easily have gone the other way. And if it had, Mr. Blair would no longer be prime minister.
Even after this ruling, most of the people still trust the bbc more than they do Mr. Blair. So what does that portend for his political future? He may lose his office, even though he won the court case! It was a victory for the truth. But Mr. Blair could still lose his job.
Glaring Weaknesses
Just how strong was the bbc’s case against the government? “Few at the corporation were surprised when [bbc Director General Greg] Dyke came out fighting after the bbc was attacked by the government over its coverage of the war in Iraq. He was determined to back his reporters. But that commendable loyalty was fatally flawed by an indifference to detail in which the devil resided.
“Dyke’s evidence to Hutton was painful to read. It was clear that he hadn’t done his homework before engaging with Number 10 in a fight to the bitter end. In his rush to shore up Gilligan, Dyke hadn’t asked the appropriate questions. The bbc’s governors made matters worse by immediately endorsing the director general’s stand instead of demanding that he and his executive team put crucial facts under the microscope” (Sunday Telegraph, op. cit.).
The author of that statement is Jeff Randall. He has worked for the director general, Greg Dyke, before. He also said he would work for him again. So the writer is not an enemy. But still the “evidence to Hutton was painful to read” for Mr. Randall.
The bbc leaders still cannot see and will not repent of their faults. They are simply too arrogant to see their own glaring weaknesses. And they are a part of the most powerful and trusted media corporation in the world!
The bbc accused the government of lying about wmd in Iraq. But it was their own staff that was doing the lying. Still, most of them won’t admit they were wrong.
Leaders of such power-packed media must have abundant humility or they are a deadly danger to their nation and the world!
Here is an editorial page comment from the same issue of the Sunday Telegraph: “Lord Hutton was quite right to conclude that ‘the bbc failed to ensure proper editorial control over Mr. Gilligan’s broadcasts on May 29.’ What is no less remarkable is that—once the government issued its complaint—the bbc failed to subject Mr. Gilligan’s incendiary report to any form of serious scrutiny. Greg Dyke, who resigned as the corporation’s director general on Thursday, did not read the transcript until four weeks after the broadcast. Mr. Gilligan’s notes—which Lord Hutton found unsatisfactory—were not examined” (ibid.).
How casual the media can often be, while they assassinate people’s good names and character! They even cause suicides—but few people seem to be deeply concerned. The people often delight in such slanderous reporting. Some in the media are so selfish that they can’t, or won’t, see how cruel they can be. We have degenerated into a very sick people.
Here is how the Weekly Standard summed up the issue: “The Kelly story was not an isolated incident. It was merely the most infamous example of a left-liberal bias that refracts all news coverage through the prism of the bbc’s own distinctive world-view.
“The bbc’s coverage of the Iraq war itself marked a new low point in the history of the self-loathing British prestige-media’s capacity to side with the nation’s enemies. …
“The great virtue of Lord Hutton’s devastating indictment is that it represented for the first time an independent verdict. The editorial failings it criticized, the tendentious reporting it identified, the massive bureaucracy it exposed, and the troubling strategic vision that underlay it all demand a radical change at the bbc, if the organization’s reputation is to be restored.
“The bbc has long been one of the world’s most highly valued outlets for quality broadcasting. In unfree countries, it remains a lifeline and the exemplar of independent media. But Lord Hutton has exposed an institution whose power and influence are now matched by its arrogance and self-righteousness. The learned judge, it is to be hoped, has opened the way to a long-delayed revolution” (op. cit.).
Not Seeking the Truth
One of the most insightful criticisms of the bbc was written by Melanie Phillips of the Daily Mail, February 2: “It has forgotten its obligation to the truth. This problem is infinitely more serious and more pervasive than the Gilligan affair. There is a rot running right through the corporation. And I say this as a passionate defender of public service broadcasting and an occasional contributor to the bbc’s programs.
“Across a wide range of issues, its journalism has long departed from its founding ethic of impartiality and objectivity. With a few honorable exceptions, it views the world through a prism of left-wing thinking: against America, against the nation-state and against Western moral values. This bias reveals itself on subjects as diverse as the war on terror, Europe, Israel, Ireland, the Conservative Party, gm food, cannabis, big business, family values, feminism and religion.
“And one reason why Andrew Gilligan’s report never got the scrutiny it warranted was because it corresponded to the bbc’s own prejudiced view of the Iraq issue—which had got so bad during the war that the crew of the Ark Royal stopped watching the bbc in protest. …
“The bias infects everything from the choice of subject to the selection of interviewees and the implicit premise behind the questions asked. Of course, it is vital that bbc interviewers should give no quarter; there must be no return to the supine approach of a long-departed deferential age. But all too often, such robust interviewing is directed only at one side of the argument, while the other is handled with kid gloves.
“The bbc has a duty to occupy the dispassionate center ground. The problem, however, is that it has shifted that center ground sharply to the left. But because it thinks that still is the center, it cannot grasp that its own ‘impartial’ standpoint is actually deeply partisan. This is a terrifyingly closed thought system, which repels all objections.
“Greg Dyke is being presented as a martyr to the bbc’s independence. But in implying that journalists might get away with false statements if they attribute them to somebody else, he has shown as poor a grasp of journalistic ethics as did the staff who protested at his departure.”
The bbc has become so self-righteous that it thinks it should get away with false statements. It has forgotten its obligation to the truth and how noble it is to always seek and tell the truth. Only the truth can set us free (John 8:32).
The bbc does indeed have “a terrifyingly closed thought system.” We can’t even calculate how much damage is done by the most powerful media corporation in the world!
But it is a far deeper problem than the bbc or the left-wing media. It reflects a massive decadence in America and Britain. And that includes most people and the media. This is the giant problem we are unwilling to face.
Clive Davis of the Washington Post stated, “As a former bbc journalist myself, I don’t believe most bbc journalists are corrupt people, or that they go out of their way to doctor the news. But the depressing truth is that most of the organization’s producers and its movers and shakers live in an extraordinarily narrow world in which they only socialize with like-minded people. They genuinely find it hard to believe other people may hold different views” (February 9).
Such people are not seeking the truth. They are content in their “extraordinarily narrow world.” They live in darkness!
Words will not bring people out of this darkness. It will take a jolt like World War ii. That is the only reason Winston Churchill came to power. And if we don’t wake up, we are going to be hammered by a far worse World War iii of wmd to wake us up!
Patrick O’Flynn, of the Express, January 29, wrote, “The vast bulk of job vacancies at the bbc are advertised only in the Guardian [a left-wing newspaper].”
The bbc must make a radical change in its political world-view. But it has been allowed to rule itself. It will change only if it is pressured to do so.
In the Sunday Telegraph of February 1, Alasdair Palmer wrote, “It is to be hoped that the whole of the bbc—rather than just Lord Ryder—will eventually stop trying to maintain that ‘Gilligan was basically right’ ….
“Gilligan’s central allegation was, however, different: It was that the government was guilty of bad faith by inserting material into the dossier, probably knowing it was wrong or questionable.
“The difference between the two claims is the difference between truth and falsehood. It is a difference with colossal consequences. Journalists who are unable to recognize it cannot be relied upon to tell the truth—and should not be working for the world’s greatest and most trustworthy source of news.”
It is indeed “the difference between truth and falsehood” and “a difference with colossal consequences.”
Falsehood enslaves us—it takes us into a black world of deceit. It is a less violent slavery than what terrorists fight for—but it is still slavery! It is a slavery of the intellect. We become enslaved to error, evil and fantasy and call it truth and freedom.
This issue gets to the core of whether or not we really love truth and freedom. Anything less than the truth is just another form of slavery and terrorism.
The self-willed, arrogant, left-wing media are trying to enslave us, just as Osama bin Ladin is! It’s just another form of terrorism.
Whether it comes from the right or left, it is still repugnant. The more we see such hatred of the truth, the more we ought to see how precious truth is.