Dacre on the Offensive

Dailty Mail editor Paul Dacre launched an attack on the BBC last night,accusing the corporation of

a kind of cultural Marxism" that is harming political debate and failing to represent the views of millions of licence fee payers.

And continuing

BBC journalism is reflected through a left wing prism that affects everything - the choice of stories, the way they are angled, the choice of the interviews, the interviewees and, most pertinently, the way those interviewees are treated,"

Quite what this makes the Daily Mail is uncertain but the comments made at the Hugh Cudlipp lecture are bound to arouse much interest.He went onto say

"Is the BBC's civic journalism, too often credulously trusting, lacking scepticism, rarely proactive in the sense of breaking stories up to dealing with a political class that so often sets out to dissemble and deceive,"

And accused not only the BBC but the Gaurdian,Times and the Independent of failing to hold the government to account,interestingly though,

Asked whether his newspaper would support David Cameron at the next election, he said: "It's far too early to say.
"The Mail is a conservative paper, it would be very surprising if it didn't support the Conservatives. Whether the current Conservative Party is conservative remains to be seen."
He said Mr Cameron had been "broken" by the liberal agenda of the BBC and others and said its policies were "a blood sacrifice to the BBC god".(Guardian Media)

Perhaps this is what Dacre is referring to,in his paper this morning,

Minister's fling with BBC girl who booked him for Newsnight

When pensions minister James Purnell appeared on Newsnight, viewers were mystified by the 'easy ride' he was given by the normally pugilistic Jeremy Paxman.
Licence payers complained to the BBC that Mr Purnell had been allowed to "get off lightly" instead of being thoroughly grilled over the nation's pensions crisis.
Now it has emerged tha the BBC has held an inquiry into the role of Newsnight producer Thea Rogers, who booked Mr Purnell to appear on the show - and who just happened to be in the middle of a fling with him at the time.

Not suprisingly Greenslade has already blogged on the same site which I make no excuse for reporting in full

Paul Dacre's speech last night was like an extended Daily Mail leader, a lengthy rant sustained by its own internal logic and just occasionally relieved by odd moments of insight. He rarely speaks in public, so his appearance at the London College of Communication was an event that drew so many people there was standing room only. But his pugnacious speech was heard in virtual silence as he landed blow after blow on the media institution he identifies as the enemy of the people: the BBC.
It appears that the BBC is the leading member of the "subsidariat", but The Guardian, The Times and The Independent got dishonourable mentions too. "Subsidised papers are, by definition, unable to survive in a free market", he said. "Their journalism and values - invariably liberal, metropolitan and politically correct, and I include the pinkish Times here - don't connect with sufficient readers to be commercially viable." They are "disdainful of common man, contemptuous even, of the papers that make profits by appealing to and connecting with millions of ordinary men and women."
The Guardian's greatest offence, it appears, is in being the advertising vehicle of choice for the "hugely subsidised" BBC, which is "the most powerful media organisation in the world". The BBC got both barrels - a "behemoth... too bloody big, too bloody pervasive and too bloody powerful... an amoeba that... just grows and grows". But size is only a venal sin. According to the Dacre account, its mortal sin lies in its remorseless purveying of an anti-conservative political and cultural ideology.
The central Dacre message was that the BBC became "almost an official arm of New Labour" and "until recently" has been "institutionally anti-Tory". Worse than that is its hostility towards small "c" conservatism. Instead, it adheres to a left-wing ideology or "cultural Marxism", which has undermined the conservative values evidently held by the majority of Britons. He listed several BBC crimes: news censorship, statism, political correctness, self-righteousness, liberal smugness, a closed thought system. (All of this, incidentally, was reported on this morning's BBC 4 Today programme without a word of negative comment!)
Anyway, though his anti-BBC message came as no surprise, it was clear that Dacre has developed a rather crude conspiracy theory about the "subsidariat" controlling a political narrative, which is at odds with the "genuine" views held by the majority of the British people. However, what he didn't explain - or couldn't explain - was the obvious failure of the behemoth to impose its views on the populus. According to his own logic, the British people hold viewpoints that don't accord with those pushed down their throats by the BBC. So, even if we accept that the BBC is purveying a consistent anti-conservatism (which I don't), it doesn't appear to have been very effective, does it?
In the end, Dacre was really complaining about the BBC, and the rest of the subsidariat, failing to agree with the values espoused by his Daily Mail.