Dear Polly,

I liked and agreed with what you wrote in today’s Guardian ("The BBC must not be led by the shock tactics of the Mail"), but you are still fighting  rearguard battles in a campaign that is already lost. I know that you are not a mercenary, fighting just because it is your job and livelihood.

The British media are driven by commercial interests (80%), political bias (10-20%) and noble journalistic idealism (0-10%), while the BBC, disappointingly, instead of setting a salutary example of impartial, non-commercial enterprise, largely imitates its commercial rivals, behaving as though it had to hard sell us what has already been paid for up front in licence fees:

“If it is happening it is happening here on BBC 24”

Hard selling us entertainment is bad enough, but doing it with “news” . . . . . I cannot think of the words to describe how depraved I find it.

We are in such a mess. It is like being on a huge luxury liner (not withstanding the many 3^rd and 4^th class passengers), which is springing leaks all over the place, so that you don’t know where to turn next. Neither, if you rely on the media, is it easy to know which leaks are imaginary (e.g. the latest vaccine scare), minor, serious or potentially fatal (e.g. non-sustainable transport policies and global warming).

Most people do not even notice the leaks, or just think them normal. The media uses, sometimes creates, them (along with sex, violence and scandal) to get people's attention, which is what they need to sell themselves, their opinions, their world view and their advertisers products and services.

 “If it is happening it is happening here on BBC 24”. If you allow it to sink in you will realise what a frightening statement this is, implying that if something is not reported on BBC 24 it is not happening . . . 

Even the best journalism can only give us a very selective view of the world. We have a lot of very bad journalism giving the majority of the population a very distorted view indeed of the world. I shudder at the thought of where it is leading us.

The importance of the media can hardly be overstated, and press freedom is surely one of our greatest achievements. What a tragedy and disgrace that it is being so badly misused. But there is so much rot in its foundations that it cannot be removed without replacing them entirely. We need a media based not on commercial interests (the principle cause of the rot, or an institution like the BBC which emulates them), but on democratic human interests. The media needs to be organised and controlled democratically from the grass roots of the society it serves. Like our non-sustainable, growth-dependent economy and materialistic lifestyles, the media too need to be revolutionised . . . . not by vainly attempting to change existing structures (which would elicit far to much resistance), but by creating alternatives. I wonder, could the Guardian be transformed into such an alternative structure?

We accept it because we know and can conceive of nothing other than our commerce-based, money-making-centred, socio-economic order, which also pays for most of the things we don't immediately associate with them, while the monumental failure of Communism and Socialism reinforce the assumption that there is no alternative.

If that really is the case, we are doomed, because the existing socio-economic order is inherently non-sustainable, with our addiction to its growth-dependent economy and to our grossly materialistic lifestyles causing us literally to plunder our planet, Spaceship Earth, disrupting its climate and life-supporting ecosystems in the process.

The central problem, which you and most others seem to overlook, is that our economy and lifestyles are based very largely on our "more animal than human" nature. Remembering Darwin and our animal origins, how could it be otherwise? Communism and Socialism also failed to take this into account, attempting to impose abstract ideals and ideas on man's unaltered animal nature. They couldn't possibly compete with capitalism, which exploits and harnesses man's animal nature, with those like yourself fighting to have as much of the created wealth as possible creamed off for redistribution and the overall good of society.

Polly, you Social Democrats are riding a dragon, which you think you can control, at least enough to obtain the wealth needed to create the social improvements that you want; but you cannot control it. It is taking its own fateful course, carrying us all, rich and poor alike, towards our doom.

If we are to save ourselves (and a fair part of creation with us) we have to alight from the dragon (of a socio-economic order based on man's primitive, more animal than human nature) and create a new, alternative, socio-economic order, based on our more enlightened human nature.

Don't be afraid, Polly. Shake off any giddiness you are feeling. I'm standing on solid ground and offering you my hand to help you jump down from the dragon's back.