Mind Streaming

Saturday, March 08, 2003

THE BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION

This is the coat of arms of the BBC, (the British Broadcasting Corporation) patented in the very early days of television,in 1927. Notice the globe and the stars representing the planets, at a time when Pluto had yet to be discovered! According to the heraldic description,the shield represents the ether, reflecting not only the globe but the universe as being the BBC's breadth and width of focus. The lion is an heraldic symbol stating that the BBC is British; the eagles (devices representing speed) on either side of the globe, have bugles hanging at their necks, representing public 'proclamation'. The lion, on the crest holds a thunderbolt (a lightening flash) in its right hand, representing, in heraldic symbolism, broadcast transmissions.
The BBC'motto, 'Nation shall speak peace unto nation', was based on biblical verses from the Book of Micah (chapter 4, verse 3) and Book of Isaiah (chapter 2, verse 4): 'Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.' It was adopted at the same time as the coat of arms was granted under 'Letters Patent' by the College of Arms in March 1927.

Now, even though I quietly resent that, in legal terms, I am a
'British citizen'( see my passport !)and a British 'subject',( namely I should bow in front of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II), I really feel that I am an Englishman. But yet I have a fierce admiration for the, uniquely British, BBC. We have five terrestrial T.V. channels in the U.K, the BBC and four 'Independent T.V.' channels, and yet the BBC remains 'unbiased' and independent simply because it is not beholden to advertising sponsorship for revenue and that is seen as its greatest strength and the real source of its integrity and worldwide reputation.

We pay an annual T.V.licence fee (around ?112 sterling per year for colour T.V.) solely to fund the BBC and in my view it is worth it. (All other channels are funded, exclusively through advertising.) It is incredible that licence fee 'dodgers' cost the BBC ?200 million pounds annually in lost revenue. Each year, a staggering 500,000 licence 'dodgers' are caught by those 'Post Office' detector vans and are fined heavily. The annual fee revenue is a staggering 2 billion pounds sterling. You only have to click on my BBC News link, or go and browse the 'BBCi' website to see what value the BBC provide (and I don't even mention its astonishing radio services for which we do not have to pay.)

Tonight, Angela's amazing son, Martin, was remembering his experiences, as a nineteen-year old Grenadier Guardsman, in the front line of the Gulf War and he showed us his photographs. One was of his combat colleagues arranged around their battle tank home-from-home, with a 'Union Jack' flag, and all with thumbs up to indicate victory. They'd learned that the war was over, not from their officers, but from the BBC World Service! (Martin told me that they flew the 'Union Jack' on their tank just so the American pilots didn't bomb them by mistake.) My father, incidentally, an ex-military man, always ironically referred to the American Airforce as the 'Royal Drop-shorts' , alluding to their unfortunate long history of bombing thier own people and allies instead of the enemy !)

We know that, in countries where the propaganda machine supresses information, the BBC World Service is seen as a lifeline of support and information, with its honest approach to World events and, at the same time, poses a real threat to the regimes that sometimes make, merely listening to it, a treasonable offence. The BBC employs an army of quality journalists and correspondents world-wide, all of whom, it is my belief, report on what they see in a detached, informed and authoratative way. There is a common belief nowadays that the 'Beeb', as it is affectionately known here, tends to be very 'conservative' and pro-government. Yet the majority of its journalists are left of centre liberals with no particular or obvious political allegiance and I still think, to this day that, largely, their reporting is matter-of-fact and objective. The BBC work, however, in an aggresive market place and are forced to compete against the other companies in the ratings war. (those companies resent their licence fee 'advantage'and want it ended.) The BBC rarely, even now, produce programmes that simply pander to the lowest common denominator and they still produce world-class programmes such as period dramas and documentaries.

The BBC is a truly British institution, and I believe, their motto ,'Nation shall speak peace unto nation',is not merely rhetoric. The BBC , above all other terrestial channels seeks, not only to entertain and inform, but also to use the media for what it can best do for humanity, to educate. No other british channel reaches so far beyond these shores. BBC websites are staggering in breadth and quality and how can we view this institution as conservative when, every day, it makes such very noble and extensive use of Internet technology to keep, not only its own people informed, but also the rest of the world?

In closing, Martin, my ex-soldier gentleman-brother,was dismissive of American attitudes in the Gulf and now with the impending Iraq conflict. In the British army, there has, he maintains, always been the even-handed notion of using 'reasonable' force to achieve an objective, namely, sufficient muscle-flexing to make the point but no further. As yet, he holds, what is a widespread perception, that the American Hawk mindset is to use unrestrained might to obliterate the enemy without reasonable restraint. Emptying enormous arsenals of bombs never worked in Vietnam I recall. The Gulf War here, through T.V.-mounted target-sight cameras, seemed an obscene government-orchestrated spectacle, where young pilots were viewed as boys engaged in a 'shoot then up' arcade video game, providing nightly entertainment for the folks back home who wanted revenge then, as they seem to now. I firmly believe that institutions like the BBC need then to be around to report such excessive misuse of power and to help us to think constructively about what actually underlies what is going on around us.
johncoxon 12:48 AM - [Link] - Comments (0)
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