Box Populi
This week, I am happy to say, Stuart Hood joins the Spectator as television critic. Readers of Encounter will long cherish his recent masterly and persuasive comparison between the BBC and the Communist party. Servants of 'the Party' and servants of 'the Corporation,' it will be remem- bered, reflect similar mental habits : 'the sense of belonging to a closed community; of having re- ceived certain truths about the nature of politics or of broadcasting; of subscribing to the same ethos; of sharing with all other members certain attitudes of mind.' We were regaled with mem- ories of the bad old days when 'News Division was a stronghold of "Stalinism,"' and of the even older days when 'the transcendental theory of the BBC took root' and bore 'the mystical doctrine of one Corporation,' a doctrine which has by no means withered away today though the choice facing the BBC in the near future (and which Mr. Hood discusses in this issue) may well accelerate the withering.
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