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What has happened to the BBC?
What happened to the state system that garnered cross-party political and general public support? Once heralded as a bastion of anti-bias news and public education and entertainment has turned into the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda run by a veritable army of Goebbels.
Baroness Stowell, the chairman of the Lords communications committee, told Ms Turness that “BBC Verify is not necessarily seen universally as something that is helping the BBC’s reputation or building trust and confidence”.
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“Die beste Propaganda ist jene, die sozusagen unsichtbar wirkt, das ganze öffentliche Leben durchdringt, ohne dass das öffentliche Leben irgendeine Kenntnis von der propagandistischen Initiative hat.” Joseph Goebbels
Goebbels would be proud of the BBC, his quote in English is a confirmation of BBC Verify’s aspirations “The best propaganda is that which, as it were, works invisibly, penetrates the whole of life without the public having any knowledge of the propagandistic initiative.”
The new BBC Verify department must be approaching it’s first anniversary and I confess I did not believe the former government would allow it to continue for more than a few weeks. It was, after all, offering it’s opinion as fact and opposing opinion’s as “misinformation” or “disinformation”.
I am thinking of writing a paper on BBC Verify but as I am in the middle of a real project have decided it will have to wait, nonetheless, for those fans of Michael Connolly’s “Lincoln Lawyer” Mickey Haller (my current alter-ego) here’s what I think he would think of Goebbels pride and joy, BBC Verify:
BBC Verify? That’s rich. More like a velvet hammer for smashing inconvenient truths. It’s not about finding facts; it’s about dressing up bias in a sharp suit and calling it gospel. If you can spin the lie well enough, package it with enough polish, folks will believe the sun rises in the west if you tell them it does. It’s like hiring a defence attorney not to prove your innocence but to convince the world that guilt is a virtue.
The real irony? They call it ‘Verify,’ but it’s got the credibility of a used-car salesman swearing that a lemon is a Ferrari. It’s not about truth—truth’s messy and inconvenient. It’s about control, about shaping the narrative so the big fish stay big, and the little ones keep swimming in circles. In my line of work, we call that a con. But when you’ve got the money and the power, you call it journalism.”
With my sincere apologies to used car salesman.
Verbal Alchemy 