Gerard Baker of the Times of London has a hilarious take in Real Clear Politics on the Bolshie BBC's invasion of the American media market. Called "BBC Bringing 'Sophisticated' News to America," it gives a British conservative's view of the government—owned BBC's attempt to sell Americans an even harder Leftist line than we already get from the alphabet channels.

To much fanfare, and a fair amount of predictable gushing from its liberal admirers in the US, the British Broadcasting Corporation, the state—owned bureaucracy that bestrides the UK cultural and political landscape like a colossus, launched a 24 hour news channel in America last week.

Billboards in Manhattan bellowed the BBC's message to passers— by, promising that the corporation would be bringing "news beyond your borders" into Americans' parochial little lives.

Baker freely admits that the Beeb peddles a pack of lies every single day to its vast, indoctrinated audience. (George Orwell used his experience working at the leftie Beeb as the model for the Ministry of Truth in his dystopian novel 1984. The role of the Ministry was to manufacture a daily story line which, in Orwell's time, protected Stalin's massacres until Hitler attacked Russia. The BBC hasn't changed one bit.)

The question is: Will Americans fall for the slick propaganda factory? The BBC has one huge advantage: It is completely subsidized. Every owner of a television set in the UK has to pay a monthly fee for the Ministry of Truth, no matter which channels they actually watch. Electronic spotting vans cruise the streets of Britain, triangulating television sets that haven't paid their Beeb cut, and levying big fines for nonpayers. In the UK, Big Brother is watching, and making you pay for it. It's a slightly more civilized version of Saddam Hussein's habit of charging his victims' families for the bullets used to kill their fathers or brothers. But the Beeb only murders ideas, not people. (Although people die every day as a direct result: in Darfur, Iraq, Israel and elsewhere in the world, just as they did in Stalin's time).

The annual subsidy for the Truth Factory's output runs to seven or eight billion dollars. Not all of it goes to "news." The Beeb does wonderful cultural programming. So the Beeb is entering the US market with a multibillion—dollar advantage. The Beeb's intellectual coterie doesn't believe in free markets, but just to make sure, it's getting the British taxpayer to pay for its US gamble. It's typical.

The big question is: Can America survive the new British Imperialism?

In the age of the internet, there will now be an Army of Davids against a squat squad of Goliaths, now spelled ABCCBSNBCPBSNPR plus US Beeb.

IF the free websites are allowed to flourish in Britain and Europe, as well as the US ——— a big "IF" ——— I'd say the Bloated Beeb is a dead duck. Free market conservatism could end up conquering Europe. We already own the former Soviet colonies and oppressed peoples in Western Europe, who know perfectly well they are being lied to by their media. That's why they voted against the Euro—Constitution when the government media were all for it.

It's a historic opportunity for the New Media. Today Rush Limbaugh, tomorrow the world!

James Lewis   6 7 06