The director Ken Loach has taken aim at the BBC, describing its news coverage as “manipulative and deeply political” and saying it is a “rotten place for a director”.
The prominent leftwinger, who is promoting I, Daniel Blake, his Palme d’Or-winning film about a man’s struggle with the UK benefits system, said there was a need to “democratise” the corporation. “Diversify it so that different regions can make their own dramas,” Loach told the Radio Times. “And its notion of news has got to be challenged.
“The BBC is very aware of its role in shaping people’s consciousness: this is the story you should hear about, these are the people worth listening to. It’s manipulative and deeply political.”
In response to the comments, a BBC spokeswoman said: “BBC News is independent and adheres to clear published editorial guidelines including on impartiality. The BBC is consistently rated the most trusted and accurate news provider by the majority of people in the UK.”
It is not the first time that Loach, who has been vocal in his support of Jeremy Corbyn, has criticised the BBC’s news coverage. Last month, he told an audience at University College London to complain to the corporation whenever they thought coverage was biased against Corbyn, and labelled the corporation a “propaganda arm of the state” that adopted a “pretence of objectivity”. “The BBC is not some objective chronicler of our time,” he said.
Loach has had a long and fruitful relationship with the BBC, which 50 years ago broadcast his influential film Cathy Come Home, charting a family’s descent into poverty and homelessness. His new film, I, Daniel Blake, was made in partnership with BBC Films.
However, Loach implied that the BBC had lost its appetite for socially conscious TV drama. “Even then, people overstated how much of it there was. Anyway, now the drama is produced by outside production companies and horribly micromanaged.
“The directors I know in television say it’s a nightmare. That’s true for all the broadcasters,” he conceded, “but the BBC is a rotten place for a director.”
He also criticised the broader TV industry for choosing shows such as Downton Abbey, which presented a “rosy vision of the past”. “It says: ‘Don’t bother your heads with what’s going on now – just wallow in fake nostalgia.’ It’s bad history, bad drama. It puts your brain to sleep.
“You might as well take a Mogadon as watch it. TV drama is like the picture on the Quality Street tin, but with less quality and nothing of the street.”
Despite his dislike of nostalgia, Loach told the Guardian that in some respects he preferred the society of the 60s in which Cathy Come Home was set.
“When she was shown as homeless, people were angry about it. Now society is nowhere near as cohesive. The consequences of Thatcher and Blair have eroded the sense that we are responsible for each other, that we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. So in that sense, I prefer the days of Cathy.”
