Thrown into this emotional vortex is my problem with the corporation’s political slant. Like Robin Aitken, I’ve long been frustrated with this issue and used to be one of those men who shouted at the radio: I used to write about it too, until I realised that it was impossible to raise the subject without boring myself. (And Robin’s book explained the problem better than I ever could.)

My belief was that the BBC veered Left because it was part of the public sector, and therefore the people within were both inclined to favour public ownership and insulated from the need to respond to public demand and so provide balance. But I was wrong, I think; although the BBC will inevitably reflect establishment thinking, which in our age is soft Left (the “nice Left”, as I think of them), it wouldn’t be rectified by selling it off – that would indeed make the problem far worse.

US networks such as CNN are much more flagrant in their biases than the BBC and have grown much more so over the course of the 2010s, a period when polarisation has smothered ideas of political toleration and journalistic standards.

Or just look at Sky News, which ten years ago was pretty much as neutral as it was possible to get, but now seems far more slanted, an impression not helped by its presenters tweeting the cheapest sort of point-scoring partisan drivel. There has obviously been a huge generational shift at Sky, and those coming through presumably must see journalism as connected to activism, a problem across the media.

I think there’s a very good argument for scrapping the licence fee, and instead funding the Beeb through income tax, but as media becomes more diffused and therefore extreme the need for the BBC has grown stronger. Without it, we’d just develop the American pattern and have a Left-leaning broadcasting media flattering their mostly urban liberal audience by reaffirming their prejudices, and a shouty conservative alternative media full of troglodytes and weirdos, with no neutral institution hosting any sort of national conversation at all.

Of course the BBC can never be free of bias, because no news source can ever can be, but at least it tries.

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Ed West’s book Tory Boy is published by Constable

edwest

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