The BBC: the mouthpiece of the Establishment?
Tom Mills is a lecturer in Sociology and Policy at Aston University. He is a former co-editor of New Left Project.
Impressive ... a direct challenge to the notion of the BBC as a
pillar of liberalism and social democracy...
*Time Higher Education*
The BBC is a key element in Britain's unwritten, and rarely
described, constitution. The role it plays is inseparable from the
misconceptions that surround it, and that it energetically
promotes. Tom Mills has set aside both liberal and conservative
fantasies about the institution and describes it as it is in fact.
The result is required reading for those who want to understand
Britain, and an invaluable resource for those who want to change it
for the better.
*Daniel Hind, author of The Return of the Public: Democracy,
Power and the Case for Media Reform*
Reveals that far from being a sanctuary for independent journalism,
the BBC is intimately connected to the power it is supposed to hold
to account. This book is a brilliant corrective to mainstream
histories of the BBC and a valuable reminder of the need to build a
democratic media that is free from vested interests.
*Des Freedman, Professor of Media and Communication,
Goldsmiths*
If ever anyone took seriously Margaret Thatcher's belief that the
BBC was a hotbed of socialist and subversive propaganda, Tom Mills
offers the opposite-and, on the face of it, more convincing-view
... Mills traces the corporation's evolution into a broadly
social-democrat organization (in editorial terms, at least), and
then into the neo-liberal claque it appears today:
business-obsessed, apparently blind or deaf to labour relations and
workplace issues, happiest when rolling out corporate mergers and
balance books, but just as puppyish in its support of unpopular
foreign policy.
*Times Literary Supplement*
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