Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The BBC can’t help loving Obama, just as it can’t help encouraging recession

Rod Liddle says that television news is intrinsically biased: it transforms what it reports. <br /> In the case of the economy, ministers are right to counteract this with a dose of optimism

Rod Liddle says that television news is intrinsically biased: it transforms what it reports.
In the case of the economy, ministers are right to counteract this with a dose of optimism

Excuse me for a moment; it’s all become a little too much for me and I need to sit down somewhere quiet, take a few deep breaths and dry my eyes. I feel all choked up inside. He came down for us, to wash away our sins. Sorry, sorry – forgive me, I’ve been watching the BBC’s coverage of Barack Obama’s coronation, live from Washington. It’s a sort of cross between Princess Diana’s funeral and Live Aid Concert, except happier and the black people aren’t covered in flies. Every so often they cut to something called the Bernie Grant Centre in north London where local youngsters from the ethnic minority community, on parole for the day, are chanting that famous spiritually uplifting refrain from Bob the Builder – Yes We Can!

I don’t know — maybe it’s just me — but if you watched the inauguration of Barack, did you detect just the tiniest, weeniest difference in tone from the broadcasters, compared to how they marked the re-election of President Bush four years ago? Just an infinitesimally minute difference in nuance? I might be wrong but I don’t remember them cutting to a bunch of well-fed, middle-aged, middle-class white people in the Peter Bruinvels Centre in Beaconsfield every so often to hear them singing ‘Go George — nuke the Arabs!’, amidst bunting and drained bottles of champagne. ‘Awe-inspiring’ and ‘breath-taking’ and ‘momentous’ and ‘I have a dream’ were the words used by the correspondents this time. Sheesh, I dunno, I could well be wrong — it’s just that my memory seems to tell me that with the inauguration of Bush, there was a little less ejaculate sloshing around.

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