MEPE

[HBendor]

Media - The BBC's commitment to bias is no laughing matter
Posted by: "B Taverna" bltaverna@yahoo.com bltaverna
Fri Oct 27, 2006 4:14 am (PST)
Note:

A major problem for Israel and the criticism is well
taken.
Many comments, most in agreement, at the linked
website.

Barbara

The BBC's commitment to bias is no laughing matter

By Tom Leonard
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 27/10/2006

It's fair to say the message is finally getting
through: the BBC has a problem with impartiality. The
row over BBC bias has been rumbling on longer than war
in Sudan and always seemed just as unresolvable. The
format was always the same: take a bunch of
Left-leaning, liberal-minded television executives and
a bunch of Right-leaning politics wonks with
obsessions about BBC reporting of the Middle East, the
EU and the Tory party. Then they hit each other over
the head with rolled up, heavily underlined copies of
programme transcripts from Newsnight or Today.

And this is a battle that the BBC has become very
adept at fighting. Every time the clamour of bias on
some particularly hard news issue, such as Israel,
Iraq, or Brussels, gets too loud, the corporation
commissions some research that finds no bias, or –
next best – evidence of bias on both sides.

But no matter how much BBC bosses swear blind there is
no problem, the issue refuses to go away. Why? Because
for many licence-payers, the BBC's skewed assumptions
about what the world is about and how its inhabitants
should think is the most annoying thing about it –
more annoying than dumbing down, than the universal
licence fee, than Jonathan Ross's £18 million pay
packet. More annoying even than Natasha Kaplinsky. And
particularly infuriating when the BBC denies it
outright, as did Michael Grade, the BBC chairman, in
an article published a few days before a governors'
impartiality summit a month ago.

Not that he'd already made up his own mind or
anything. Anyway, embarrassingly, it emerged (through
leaked minutes that were rather harder to elicit from
the corporation than Mr Grade's article) that even
some of his most senior journalists disagreed. Andrew
Marr, hardly one of the BBC's token Right-wingers,
declared that the BBC "is not impartial or neutral.
It's a publicly funded, urban organisation with an
abnormally large number of young people, ethnic
minorities and gay people". It has, he added, "a
liberal bias, not so much a party-political bias. It
is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias." The
meeting also heard that the BBC was patronising its
audiences and constrained by an intolerant version of
politically correct liberalism.

The bandwagon is gathering momentum. Yesterday it
emerged that a BBC executive, Ann Davies, has
questioned whether the corporation should "help break
the constraints of the PC police" after audience
research found it was out of step with much of
mainstream public opinion. Another BBC boss, Richard
Klein, commissioning editor for documentaries, told
staff it was "pathetic" for the BBC to pride itself on
being "of the people".

They're all spot on. It's high time the debate moved
on from narrow notions of political bias. Far harder
for the BBC to gainsay is that it has a liberal
cultural bias, one that envelops pretty much all
programmes, not just news and current affairs. If you
want to find the most solid evidence of partiality,
look at the BBC's entertainment output – its dramas,
comedies and arts programmes. This is where its guard
is down, where the BBC editorial police are not
watching out for "balance" weak points. And it's also
where, arguably, the partiality is far more
subversive.

I wouldn't know where to start in tackling the
political correctness of BBC drama, but I think the
Iron Cross with Oak Leaves would go to Spooks, BBC1's
flagship series about impossibly right-on MI5 agents.
The series was originally praised (by the BBC) for its
accuracy about the real work of the Security Service.
So what did it kick off with on the first episode? A
pro-life extremist bomber out to cause mayhem. Come
on, you must know about them! No? Well, what about
episode two, which tackled the equally pressing issue
of racist extremists in league with Right-wing
politicians plotting mass murder of immigrants? I lost
interest in Spooks, but tuned in again a few weeks ago
for the start of the fifth series. It was about
homegrown al-Qa'eda terrorists taking over the Saudi
embassy and murdering innocent people. Except that
they weren't British Muslims at all, but undercover
Israeli agents. Once again, the villains are a million
miles away from the ones you might expect, and
top-heavy with the forces of reaction.

The forces of reaction are conversely
under-represented in pretty much every BBC panel show
that I can think of. I'm not suggesting it has to
bring back Jim Davidson, but are there any Right-wing
funny men on the BBC? Meanwhile, any Guardian
columnist who doesn't have a regular gig on the BBC
needs, frankly, to change agents. That newspaper – or
the Independent, if they're desperate – is the default
button for BBC researchers phoning round for a studio
guest.

The death, earlier this year, of Linda Smith, a
regular on Radio 4's The News Quiz, and the subsequent
glowing tributes to her caustic Left-wing wit from
fellow panellists drove home the point that most of
them were either serving or former Guardian
columnists.

Of course, they poke fun at the Government but – as
with so much BBC criticism – it's almost always from a
Left-wing perspective. Over on BBC2, producers of the
arts discussion show Newsnight Review achieve similar
success in striking a balance among their regular
guests.

Anyone who could even be vaguely described as
Right-of-centre is a rarity. Inevitably, this sets the
terms of the debate. And so, as happened in the
summer, when a panellist described George W. Bush as a
warmongering moron, nobody so much as stirred in
dissent. When, a month later, Newsnight tackled the
controversy over Ken Loach's allegedly sympathetic
film about the IRA, they interviewed two film critics.
They were from the Guardian and the Independent on
Sunday, and, sure enough, they agreed what a great
director he was.

Sometimes, even the BBC notices the bias. Not long
ago, I watched a three-man media debate on Newsnight
in which two were Guardian writers. The other was
captioned with his previous job on another newspaper.

But does this all matter as much as accusing the
Government of "sexing up" a dossier on WMD? Yes, more
so. In embedding a liberal agenda in programmes where
people's bias antennae may not be so finely tuned, the
effect is more insidious. The rocks of the BBC's
cultural assumptions are starting to fall apart
somewhat: witness its second thoughts on its
commitment to multi-culturalism. More reassessments
will follow and the BBC, if it has any sense, should
welcome them.

As it wrestles with the inevitable decline of its
audience in the digital age, impartiality is that rare
problem for the BBC – it's one that it can actually do
something about.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/10/27/do2701.xml
_________________
JUDEA & SAMARIA are clear and unquestionably JEWISH!

MiddleEast Political Expressions