I inadvertently caught some of Radio 4’s rib-tickling comedy review of the week’s news, News Quiz, today: I’m normally alert enough to reach the radio before any of the gems uttered by the usual suspects on the panel actually penetrate my consciousness. I was probably lulled by the snippet of Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady” that was playing when I sat down to lunch. This turned out be the intro to a question about Sarah Palin joining Fox News last week.
Brilliant! Two left-wing bête noires for the price of one.
Did you know – and this may have escaped you – that Sarah Palin’s not that bright? I know! I was impressed by how adroitly the panelists picked up on this normally overlooked point, but, by golly, they really homed in on it this time. Genius! And so refreshingly original! That’ll teach the silly little chav to “get above her raisin’”, as we believe those frightful hayseeds who don’t live in Washington, New York or Los Angeles say. I mean, she didn’t even study law at an Ivy League college. The damned cheek of the woman!
The other thing the razor-sharp quintet spotted – and you have to respect the fact that nothing much gets past these Radio 4 comedy types – is that Fox News is (gasp!) politically biased! Not just that – it’s right-wing!! What’s all that about?
The News Quiz is a standard-bearer for Radio 4 comedy: it’s incredibly unfunny, utterly unoriginal, unbearably smug, and unremittingly left wing. For it to be regularly broadcast by an organization whose charter states that it should be politically unbiased is a disgrace.
Fox News, on the other hand, isn’t tasked with maintaining political balance. Unlike the BBC, it is openly and avowedly right-wing: its inbuilt political bias is the very reason for its existence. Every other major news outlet on American TV is run by the liberal left: does the US really need another bunch of bleeding-heart tax-and-spenders filtering news and current affairs through the prism of their drearily familiar dogma?
Obviously not.
Presenting news from an unashamedly right-wing perspective for an American audience makes perfect sense: the Republicans polled over 45% of the vote at the last Presidential election. How dare a bunch of self-satisfied modish foreign twerps sitting in a studio in W1 sniggeringly suggest that just under half of American voters should be denied a major news outlet broadly reflecting their political point of view.
But, of course, I was forgetting - that’s actually what happens in this country.
When the Left suffered seventeen years of brutal oppression under the blood-smeared jackboot of the Thatcherite junta, it set about capturing the commanding heights of our culture – the Arts, Academia and the Media were all swiftly secured. The result was that, when Labour got back into power, anyone of a vaguely right-wing bent hoping to find anything remotely resembling their political views represented on mainstream TV or radio found themselves disenfranchised.
This form of cultural totalitarianism has actually become increasingly entrenched during the past 13 years. And there’s no point in adducing attacks on the Labour government by various media outlets: they are always from the left.
If I get the chance to slump in front of the TV with a cup of tea after lunch, I either watch reruns of Top Gear or, in the unlikely event that there are none to be found, switch to Fox News. Both provide a soothing aid to digestion. No one’s going to suggest dribbling away more of my tax on things I’m strongly opposed to, or drone on with ersatz compassion about the latest section of society bidding for victim status, or explaining why yet more pretexts are urgently required for eroding my right to privacy.
Seriously, where are the right-wing programmes and commentators on British TV and radio? Probably 30% of the population is fundamentally right-wing or Conservative, and I’d imagine another 10-15% will vote Tory at the next election, without being strongly committed politically: the classic “small c” conservatives who decided to give that nice young Tony Blair a chance, and subsequently didn’t find him too scary, but who can’t bear the sight or sound of the glum Scot who replaced him without a by-your-leave.
Where do we find news and current affairs programmes or panel-based comedy shows which don’t either ignore us or sneer at our opinions?
I don’t know. But I think we should be told.
No comments:
Post a Comment