Post by Teddy Bear on Dec 6, 2015 17:28:21 GMT
It is not a question of how one personally feels about the subject of whether cannabis use should be legalised, but how should this debate be covered by the BBC?
As Peter Hitchens relates below, the corporation definitely has their own angle in defiance of their charter.
As Peter Hitchens relates below, the corporation definitely has their own angle in defiance of their charter.
PETER HITCHENS: This boasting BBC cannabis abuser just proves the 'war on drugs' is bogus
By Peter Hitchens for The Mail on Sunday
The BBC’s bias in favour of the legalisation of cannabis is great, growing and ought to be diminished. The Corporation is supposed to be impartial on major issues of public controversy, but on this subject it is rampantly partisan.
Your guess is as good as mine as to why this organisation, dominated as it is by London Left-wing metrosexuals, should be so one-sided on this issue.
I have tried to pursue formal complaints about the problem but have been rebuffed by the absurd system in which the BBC is judge and jury in its own cause, and has never done anything wrong.
The BBC’s bias in favour of the legalisation of cannabis is great, growing and ought to be diminished
The BBC’s bias in favour of the legalisation of cannabis is great, growing and ought to be diminished
Though I have written a book on the subject, I have never been invited by the BBC to discuss it. Yet, last week, the Corporation aired an astonishing programme in which the novelist Sarah Dunant was permitted to transmit ten minutes of uninterrupted pro-marijuana propaganda.
She did this on a programme called A Point Of View, which lives up to its name, though the point of view expressed is almost invariably a Left-liberal one. I once applied to be one of its presenters, and was granted a hilarious interview in which the BBC person was not actually wearing an ebola-resistant suit, but might as well have been, so chilly and awkward was the exchange.
It turned out (not to my surprise) that my point of view wasn’t the sort they wanted, thanks very much. The excuses were laughable. The real reason was obvious. Wrong opinions.
But they are happy with Ms Dunant who, cheerfully describing herself as an ‘old stoner’, confessed to having broken the law of England for 40 years (amazing as it may seem, possession of cannabis is still technically illegal), having been ‘using’ cannabis throughout her adult life.
This blithe, on-air revelation (broadcast twice on transmitters paid for by the legally enforced licence fee) followed an admiring description of the legalisation of this drug in various parts of the US as ‘a whole new flowering of the American dream’.
It was preceded by the usual ignorant rubbish, which dribbles ceaselessly from the lips of the fashionable, about a non-existent ‘war on drugs’ which she asserted ‘has not worked’.
I am not aware that she has ever been prosecuted for her 40 years of admitted law breaking, nor do I think she will be on this occasion, despite her public confession.
Does it occur to Ms Dunant, who I suspect of being a ‘public intellectual’, or to those who hire her and accept her work, to wonder how there can be a ‘war on drugs’ or ‘prohibition’ if she can confess on air that she has been breaking the criminal law for four decades, yet remains a respectable person, at liberty and much more welcome in the studios of the BBC than I am?
By Peter Hitchens for The Mail on Sunday
The BBC’s bias in favour of the legalisation of cannabis is great, growing and ought to be diminished. The Corporation is supposed to be impartial on major issues of public controversy, but on this subject it is rampantly partisan.
Your guess is as good as mine as to why this organisation, dominated as it is by London Left-wing metrosexuals, should be so one-sided on this issue.
I have tried to pursue formal complaints about the problem but have been rebuffed by the absurd system in which the BBC is judge and jury in its own cause, and has never done anything wrong.
The BBC’s bias in favour of the legalisation of cannabis is great, growing and ought to be diminished
The BBC’s bias in favour of the legalisation of cannabis is great, growing and ought to be diminished
Though I have written a book on the subject, I have never been invited by the BBC to discuss it. Yet, last week, the Corporation aired an astonishing programme in which the novelist Sarah Dunant was permitted to transmit ten minutes of uninterrupted pro-marijuana propaganda.
She did this on a programme called A Point Of View, which lives up to its name, though the point of view expressed is almost invariably a Left-liberal one. I once applied to be one of its presenters, and was granted a hilarious interview in which the BBC person was not actually wearing an ebola-resistant suit, but might as well have been, so chilly and awkward was the exchange.
It turned out (not to my surprise) that my point of view wasn’t the sort they wanted, thanks very much. The excuses were laughable. The real reason was obvious. Wrong opinions.
But they are happy with Ms Dunant who, cheerfully describing herself as an ‘old stoner’, confessed to having broken the law of England for 40 years (amazing as it may seem, possession of cannabis is still technically illegal), having been ‘using’ cannabis throughout her adult life.
This blithe, on-air revelation (broadcast twice on transmitters paid for by the legally enforced licence fee) followed an admiring description of the legalisation of this drug in various parts of the US as ‘a whole new flowering of the American dream’.
It was preceded by the usual ignorant rubbish, which dribbles ceaselessly from the lips of the fashionable, about a non-existent ‘war on drugs’ which she asserted ‘has not worked’.
I am not aware that she has ever been prosecuted for her 40 years of admitted law breaking, nor do I think she will be on this occasion, despite her public confession.
Does it occur to Ms Dunant, who I suspect of being a ‘public intellectual’, or to those who hire her and accept her work, to wonder how there can be a ‘war on drugs’ or ‘prohibition’ if she can confess on air that she has been breaking the criminal law for four decades, yet remains a respectable person, at liberty and much more welcome in the studios of the BBC than I am?