The BBC’s monarchist bias has been confirmed by emails leaked to the Republic group. They show how the state broadcaster planned to exclude any criticism of Britain’s hereditary head of state Elizabeth Windsor from a documentary it commissioned to celebrate Windsor’s sixty years in office
Emma Findlay, a producer working on a documentary, wrote to an Australian journalist David Donovan that “we are not interested in hearing a personal bad word against the Queen”. The producer went on to say “If you do know any royalists who you have written about, or even someone who is for a republic (but is willing to talk about the Queen herself positively) then we would be very interested in either.”
According to a report in the Telegraph, a monarchist newspaper, the producer of “The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Song” also wrote that the Australian prime minister should not appear because she is “pro-republican”. “For example”, the producer wrote, “it has been suggested that he should meet with the President (sic) but after reading that she is pro-republican this might not be the best thought with the positive angle we are hoping to achieve.”
To confirm the pro-monarchy “angle” the BBC was looking for she wrote “we are . . . hoping to speak with people…who have a respect for the Queen . . . We are not interested in hearing a personal bad word against the Queen.”
Findlay was not unwilling to recognise that there are republicans in Australia, just as long as they would not show hostility to the woman who had taken their democratic rights. “In terms of providing a balanced view” she wrote in an email, “we are very happy to expose the fact that Australia would like to be a republic, it is only that we are not interested in hearing a personal bad word against the Queen.”
The willingness to recognise that there are republicans in the world, while excluding anyone not respectful of Windsor, is significant. It is no longer possible for the Corporation to pretend, as it once did, that nobody could possibly be against monarchy. That would make the charge of bias impossible to refute.
But it does use a tactic often adopted by monarchists and apologists for monarchy. That is to put Elizabeth Windsor beyond criticism even now that it is more acceptable for people outside Parliament to oppose monarchy in principle. Everyone is supposed to respect the clan’s matriarch and accept that she has done a good job. The arrogance of her belief in her feudal privileges, the huge amount of the people’s money she has taken over sixty years to live in astounding wealth, the character of her husband, and the misadventures of her dysfunctional family, are to be conveniently ignored because she is such a loveable lady! It seems this programme, also paid for with the people’s money, is intended to protect that delusive image.
The BBC is not alone in this. Even the republican Australian journalist who released the emails felt he had to insist that nobody in Australia had anything bad to say about Windsor. He went as far as to refer to her as the “boss” of his country’s prime minister!
This is not the first time that the BBC has stifled Australian antagonism towards the monarchy. It threatened to stop the Australian Broadcasting Corporation showing the Middleton/Windsor wedding if it also broadcast a TV satire of the event.
In the UK the Corporation allowed just twenty five seconds for a republican voice in a three hour documentary marking Windsor’s sixty years in office.
The BBC is funded by a licence fee. All Britons are expected to pay this in return for permission to watch television, whether the BBC’s or otherwise. For this reason it is supposed to show no political bias.