There's an obvious parallel here. In the United States, there is a large section of the political right which has managed to detach itself completely from reality. Michael Ledeen is a case in point. This group employs a number of techniques to spread their fatuous propaganda and have had considerable success. Deliberate attempts to muddy the waters of accepted facts are not uncommon.
Most notably, they ferociously attack the "liberal media" whenever it dares to challenge their "facts" or any part of their fantastic belief systems. Blogging has become one of the key tools used to mobilise their credulous base to apply pressure when necessary. This is blogging not as an enabler of two-way communication but as a platform for propaganda. Any attempts to challenge or even discuss the "holy orthodoxies" in the comment sections of these blogs will either be ignored or met with a horde of mockery and abuse. In this way, they are generally able to avoid having to acknowledge or correct factual errors and evade participating in any serious discussion about their beliefs.
By using these techniques, this group have moved the goalposts to such an extent that much of the media in the US now feels in must provide "balance" by reporting their bizarre beliefs as if they were credible.
In the UK, Dale, Staines and Biased BBC are attempting to adopt a similar model and the BBC is their primary target. Unity explains why here:
The reason that the political right have such an issue with the BBC is not that the BBC is markedly biased against them so much as, in defining the middle ground in news journalism - not what is neutral but what is reasonable - it provides a clear benchmark against which the biases of other news outlets can be readily assessed and evaluated by the general public.The existence of the BBC as a respected news source means that people like Michael Ledeen have no credibility in this country when they claim that Ira
For most people, that can only be a good thing.
Update
Bush Announces American Withdrawal From Reality. Heh!
2 comments:
I do agree that BBBC do go a bit overboard in their critisism to the point where you suspect a light froth must be appearing at the corner of the writer's mouth.
However, they also show genuine examples of lefty, collectivist bias which is not too difficult because it's fairly obvious.
I suspect a heavy froth, myself.
I'm of the belief that you could cherry pick the BBC's enormous output to "prove" anything you want. For example, last night I was flicking through the channels and Songs of Praise was on BBC One. And they're always bigging up the Royal family in one way or another.
It's enough to get this anti-hereditary monarchy, atheist leftie frothing, I can tell you. Bloody religious/establishment bias...
In all seriousness, Biased BBC's cherry picking method is inherently flawed. They only see and write about examples which confirm their beliefs. If I sent them examples of "right wing bias" from Top Gear, for example, do you think they would post them?
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