We Must Defend the BBC from Murdoch and Death by a Thousand Tory Cuts

Hasan, Mehdi, New Statesman (1996)

Rule one of politics, as Barack Obama's former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel once remarked, is: "Never allow a crisis to go to waste." Right-wingers in the UK have heeded his words: they certainly aren't allowing the crises engulfing the BBC "to go to waste". And their strategy is as brazen as it is cynical and opportunistic: to magnify and exaggerate the sins of the hated Beeb while quietly minimising the crimes of their friends at News International.

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A case in point was Boris Johnson's Telegraph column of 12 November. After blithely declaring that the "real tragedy" was the "smearing [of] an innocent man's name" by BBC's Newsnight (and not, as you might think, the sexual abuse of children), Johnson claimed that Newsnight's reporting had been "more cruel, revolting and idiotic than anything perpetrated by the News of the World".

Sorry, what? Dare I remind the …

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Publication information: Article title: We Must Defend the BBC from Murdoch and Death by a Thousand Tory Cuts. Contributors: Hasan, Mehdi - Author. Magazine title: New Statesman (1996). Volume: 141. Issue: 5132 Publication date: November 16, 2012. Page number: 25. © Not available. COPYRIGHT 2012 Gale Group.

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