Nigel Lawson

steven70

Grangousier said:

The problem was that it gave the impression that there was an actual debate. There isn't. Virtually all qualified people who understand climate science agree with the human model of climate change; Virtually none disagree. Very few actual economists thought anything good could come out of Brexit; two or three economists thought there could (and they have been proven wrong). By ensuring contrary views were given equal prominence (or greater prominence in many cases) suggested that their positions had more weight than they actually did. It was such an effective strategy for constructing a false narrative that it's hard to believe the editors in question did it accidentally. 

The Balance Principle is only applied selectively in any case - almost all economic analysis expresses the ideological prejudices of governments since Thatcher, while modern macroeconomic theory doesn't adhere to those principles and is often contradictory to it. But is rarely featured, and then represented as fringe voices (even when those voices are not in any way fringe in actual economic circles). In that way, ideology (that often runs counter to actual experience) is presented as unassailable fact. 

For example, the simplified model that represents the country's economy as a household economy ("maxing out the nation's credit card") is fundamentally wrong on many levels, but taken for granted by the economic departments of news organisations, who then go on to repeat government nostrums derived from those fallacious assumptions as though they were fact. Things like the budget, or economic statistics are uniformly reported from the point of view of those political orthodoxies, despite the fact that they don't reflect reality. In the case of the budget any "balance" is political (a Labour spokesperson is given a couple of minutes, often contextualised in a dismissive way), but there isn't room for critique or analysis drawn from alternative models to be represented. 

The current state of the country is a proof of this: the economic policies enacted since 2010 have been hugely destructive and economically illiterate, resulting in the rotting of civil society at all levels. The connection between austerity and social problems can be drawn directly, and the narrative that allowed those policies to seem sensible and even laudable was constructed in newsrooms. 

Another example is the way that programmes like Question Time are careful to include representatives of UKIP / Brexit Party / Reform UK because they supposedly have  a certain amount of support in the country, but not have similar lives of representation for the Green Party despite similar levels of support (even when broadcasting from areas where there are particularly high levels of Green support, such as Bristol).  

Yes, I think I am beginning to understand. It's almost as if the BBC are themselves at the very heart of some kind of Far Right Conspiracy. 

Anyways, RIP Nigel. 

Grangousier

It depends on what you mean by conspiracy. The term is usually employed to describe a secret society working behind the scenes to effect change in the world in some way, and is categorised alongside UFOs, ghosts and things like that. But there's nothing in the least bit secret or imaginary about the organisations who have been attempting to change the national narrative, with varying degrees of success. They tend to have a similar ideological bent, certainly, and you can often find members of different groups working together, and the fact that the sources of funding tend to be opaque does little to assuage the suspicion that it's coming from the same two or three sources. But the existence of those organisations is all out in the open.