They promise too much

Only Truth can give true reputation: only reality can be of real profit. One deceit needs many others, and so the whole house is built in the air and must soon come to the ground. Unfounded things never reach old age. They promise too much to be much trusted, just as that cannot be true which proves too much.

Baltasar Gracian - The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)

Following on from the previous post, it is worth pointing out that a media and entertainment organisation such as the BBC cannot possibly be impartial. Impartiality is not and cannot be a major aspect of mainstream media businesses. It is an ideal rather than some attainable state and in any event the audience for impartiality seems to be far too small. For mainstream media everything must be framed in a familiar way. The framing has to appeal to both stakeholders and to an audience - it cannot be impartial.

To take a very simple example - in reporting the activities of Greta Thunberg an impartial BBC would recognise that she exemplifies an appeal to false authority. She is not an authority on climate change and her lack of authority would have to frame all BBC reports about her activities. The puppet’s strings would have to be visible.

A related problem affects enormous swathes of BBC reporting. In general celebrities are not authorities on areas of life beyond their professional expertise. This is not to say that outside opinions have no value, but celebrity status rarely adds to that value. In world of mainstream media it obviously adds value, but in an impartial world it would not.

In a similar vein, whenever a minister or shadow minister makes some kind of claim, an impartial BBC would have to provide background sources to the claim - no misleading omissions. It would have to find out who advised the minister and on what basis that advice is deemed to be valid. Yet this is probably not what BBC viewers actually want. They want the cut and thrust of politics not the dull grind of impartial reporting. This is what the BBC clearly wants too.

Another problem would arise from politically influential people. An easy but powerful example has been provided by Jeremy Corbyn with his long history of sharing platforms with political extremists and fanatics who engage in or seek to justify political violence. Skating around Mr Corbyn’s inglorious political history is not impartial.

The BBC generally claims to have an even-handed approach to political debates, but even-handed is not the same as impartial. Mr Corbyn’s political history would be a major factor in any impartial approach to many political debates in the UK. It need not be an issue in the even-handed approach favoured by the BBC. Even-handed can be and often is far less than impartial.

There is no particular need to labour these points because the BBC quite obviously has a corporate culture and like all cultures it cannot be impartial, otherwise it would not be a culture. This is the problem which has to be tackled politically because the failings of the BBC are essentially political. It purports to be more than it ever can be. As Baltasar Gracian wrote over three and a half centuries ago They promise too much to be much trusted, just as that cannot be true which proves too much.

In which case the BBC has to evolve into a commercial business because only this would allow it to be tolerably open about its allegiances. As a media business it must project allegiances because it must appeal to an audience with similar allegiances, an audience which is not and never will be impartial.