Thread by @GeorgeMonbiot

We should never underestimate the extent to which the BBC changed this country by giving endless airtime to Nigel Farage, other far right extremists and the Tufton Street junktanks, while shutting out progressive voices. 🧵

You might wonder what its game is: after all, they all profess to hate the BBC and want to defund it. But I've seen this organisation change beyond recognition since I stopped working for it, 36 years ago.

It's true that the BBC was never an impartial organisation. It has done the state's bidding, and blacklisted radicals, from the beginning. But it never possessed the self-immolatory character it has now. How did it happen? Appeasement.

I worked at the BBC from 1985-87. Last of the glory years. Yes, it was Establishment, but it also had a bold go-get-'em mentality. That's why Thatcher launched her coup against it, from which the BBC has never recovered. It was turned overnight into a cowering shadow of itself.

Since then, it has grovelled to anyone who has the power to beat it up. Who has that power in spades? The billionaire press. The BBC shifts and shifts and shifts to appease the insane demands of the Mail, Telegraph, Sun etc. But they cannot be appeased. They'll always want more.

So rather than providing a counterweight to the psychopathic, nation-destroying demands of offshore billionaires and their junktank stooges, the BBC amplifies them. But appeasement only makes your opponents stronger.

An important part of the media baron strategy is to persuade their readers that the BBC is a leftwing organisation. Even as it bows to their every demand, even as its panels give more and more airtime to the far right, they insist it's a nest of Trots. And people believe it!

Even if Farage were appointed BBC chair, the message in the papers would be that his job was to "root out leftwing bias". This is what needs to be understood: the billionaire press is *dissatisfied by design*. It will not and cannot be satisfied.

In graphic form: who the journalists booked by Question Time work for. Leftwing bias? My left foot.

https://twitter.com/RussellEngland/status/1733030781352591821?t=jqR_Fh_X9R-5qjiEqhC0VQ&s=19

No one from @BylineTimes, @openDemocracy and other brilliant new left or leftist outlets. But plenty from the new and old billionaire-funded rightwing outfits.

Sorry, that should have read left-ish, not leftist. Autocorrect can go to hello ...