Save the luvvies own channel

Channel 4, like much of the BBC, broke cover as a  result of the great struggles over Brexit and adopted openly partisan positions as the spokespersons of the new petite bourgeoisie. Many specific examples of C4 news coverage of Brexit-related issues  have been provided in this blog. The culture wars have opened on different fronts, of course but are still raging, and, understandably, it looks like the Government has had enough and are proposing to sell it off altogether.

I am not sure I agree with this, which seems like a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but I do think C4 News needs new editors and reporters. They now have the appalling E Wren who used to edit Newsnight, and still feature prominently the pompous and self-righteous callers-out and monologuists C Newman,  K Guru-Murthy and M Frei.

Nevertheless, the proposal has horrified luvvies and we can see the underlying schisms in things like the six pieces in today's Graun opposing the idea of selling off the Channel. Some are quite well-reasoned if a bit tone deaf to the issues of minority tastes: it is common to claim the Channel is popular because its programmes win luvvie awards for example.

Thus for the editorial:'... there are wonderful bright spots – shows such as Russell T Davies’ It’s A Sin, about young British gay men at the start of the Aids crisis, and the comedy We Are Lady Parts, about a Muslim women’s post-punk band'

Exactly the sort of thing we should all be interested in.

D Byrne (former Head of News) defends her former fiefdom by saying C4 News is broadcast for a whole hour and costs a lot of money -- but says nothing about the content being endless complaining and Boris-bating or Brexiteer-bullying in one or two notorious cases, or the waste of money putting C Newman in touch with G Lavrov only to have her ask him if he could sleep at night.

 Unfortunately, I needed to register to access the other 4. They seemed pretty repetitive.

The response to D Byrne's plea was inevitable and came in a letter to the Times today (April 7 2022):

Ms Byrne's myopic inability to acknowledge Channel 4's glaring left-leaning bias is sadly typical of the "nanny-knows-best" group think with which she and so many of her peers are infected that increasingly  divides them from the public, the very audience they are there to serve

Once they opted to nag us all so hard over Brexit they invited this sort of response I am afraid. They can't claim to be 'public service' any more: the veil has dropped.