{"id":178,"date":"2026-10-18T23:13:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-18T23:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nicspencer.com\/?p=178"},"modified":"2026-10-19T20:39:41","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T20:39:41","slug":"lazy-brexit-bleating-bbc-discovers-burning-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nicspencer.com\/?p=178","title":{"rendered":"Does the BBC Really Love Europe?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Immediately after the Brexit vote, while BBC staff were still ashen-faced with the shock of it, the state broadcaster entered an extended spasm of whimpering about the outcome and condemning what it saw as the dull ignorance and foreigner-hatred of the lumpen <\/em>British voter. Alongside this tiresome theme went another shorter-lived strand wherein the BBC declared its deep and passionate love for Europe, Europeans, and all things continental.<\/p>\n

Spencer noted at the time that despite this self-declared ardour for the peoples and civiliisations across the English Channel, the BBC had never much bothered to make programmes that taught the Britischer<\/em> about contemporary Europe, the organisation of its civilisations and the lives of its peoples.\u00a0 There were no programmes that went deeper than news clips, tour-guiding, ogling at food, snippets of history, tie-backs to the Second World War (diminishingly so) and the occasional offer on art or grand architecture. Nothing from the BBC taught us about the beating heart of the French nation, the Germans, the Italians, the Dutch, the Belgians, let alone the Danes, the Hungarians, the Portuguese or any of the other minor nations.<\/p>\n

All this fascinating and rich fodder that lay on the close continent was almost completely ignored by the BBC.\u00a0 There was\u00a0 the reporting of insults thrown in the European parliament, the snippets of news, and the collosally important tedium of the football leagues, but these do not educate us about the contemporary life of Austrians or Umbrians or Swedes.\u00a0 What quality of food is in an Austrian supermarket? How do they farm? What does a Neopolitan pay to rent a two-bedroomed flat? Can a Dane get his teeth fixed without taking out a second mortgage? What kind of discipline exists in Swedish schools? What are the hospitals like in Budapest? How much tax does a Roman pay and what does he get in return?\u00a0 The BBC neglected to tell us any of this, except perhaps in the remoter corners of Radio 4, and certainly produced nothing for\u00a0 mass consumption on television.<\/p>\n

Three thousand miles away to the West though lies the United States of America, and here the BBC has its favourite wallowing-hole.\u00a0 Is there anything about American life, politics and fiction that we don’t know or that the BBC will not dissect and serve up in great quantity?\u00a0 Little wonder that what starts on a street corner in Minneapolis ends with statues being vandalised in the UK.<\/p>\n

Spencer supposes that half of the BBC’s lack of interest in Europe stems from the language barrier,\u00a0 Does the BBC’s multi-million pound budget not stretch to employing a few bilingual programme-makers and presenters?\u00a0 It seems not. This is laziness.\u00a0 Easier to report on and make documentaries based in the USA, because no translation needed.<\/p>\n

Another possibility is that the BBC has never loved Europe to the degree it liked to claim in the aftermath of Brexit.\u00a0 The lover who chronically neglects the supposed object of his affections is not really a lover at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Immediately after the Brexit vote, while BBC staff were still ashen-faced with the shock of it, the state broadcaster entered an extended spasm of whimpering about the outcome and condemning what it saw as the dull ignorance and foreigner-hatred of the lumpen British voter. Alongside this tiresome theme went another shorter-lived strand wherein the BBC […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[72,74,73,75],"class_list":["post-178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-bbc","tag-brexit","tag-europe","tag-france"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicspencer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicspencer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicspencer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicspencer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicspencer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/nicspencer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":187,"href":"https:\/\/nicspencer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions\/187"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicspencer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicspencer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicspencer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicspencer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}