BBC Bias on Tory 'Cuts'

[Teddy Bear]

Maybe it's a coincidence, that BBC staff electing to strike because of their pension row with management have chosen 2 specific days to do it;

BBC workers to strike in pensions row

Thousands of BBC workers are to stage two 48-hour strikes in a row over pensions which threatens the corporation's coverage of the Conservative Party conference and the Government's comprehensive spending review, it has been announced.
Journalists, technicians and other broadcast staff will walk out on October 5 and 6, when the Conservative conference will be held, and again on October 19 and 20, the date of the spending review.

In addition, James Delingpole at the Telegraph, makes another observation on how the BBC continues their anti-Tory spin in this excellent article.

'Cut government spending and cute kittens like this will die!' says hard-hitting, unbiased BBC 'report'

By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: September 13th, 2010

It’s not often I feel much sympathy for Dave “Grocer” Cameron’s dismal, grubbily compromised Coalition government. But when you see leftist propaganda as blatant as this on the BBC website, you do begin to appreciate the scale of the challenge ahead of them as they try impose their “cuts” – (which aren’t actual spending cuts at all; rather they are decreases in the increase of public spending) – on the bloated public sector. (H/T Sheumais)

The article is headed “Spending Review: What would you cut?”

It invites readers to slash spending in various departments (Welfare, Health, Education and so on), which might seem easy – but whoa! there are consequences here as the BBC’s handy Guilt-O-Slide makes clear. Every percentage cut you inflict on the relevant department is shown by the BBC’s resident computer whizzes to have grim, real life consequences.

For example, the section on Welfare triggers an animation of an old lady slowly dying the more money you take away from her pension. A two per cent cut triggers the death of her cat Tiddles, which she can no longer afford to feed. A three per cent cut means from now on she has to survive on canned dog meat. A four per cent cut shows her turning blue with hypothermia. Etc.

The section on Defence is particularly effective. A five per cent cut, means that our military will no longer be capable of mounting a peace-enforcement operation in any country larger than Lundy. (The puffin graphics are particularly good on this one). Opt for a ten per cent cut and you are shown the graphic consequences of being no longer able to defend ourselves with anything more deadly than Molotov cocktails and pitchforks: British housewives being violated by invading Soviets, just like in Berlin ‘45, while children weep in the background. It was done by the same animation team who did Ed Miliband’s Bedtime Stories drowning pet climate change horror ad, so it’s very moving.

Oh, all right, so I have exaggerated slightly. But check out the web page for yourself – it’s pretty damned nauseating. The cultural assumptions behind it are so nakedly socialistic (Government spending good; low taxes bad) that it might just as well have been produced by Labour party HQ.

[Teddy Bear]

The Conservative Tim Montgomerie makes the observation in the Mail about the BBC biased obsession with cuts

Cut the bias: The BBC - the flagship of the public sector - is obsessed with stories warning of the dire impact of cuts but rarely speaks up for the private sector that funds it

By Tim Montgomerie

Last updated at 4:22 PM on 17th September 2010

The top three stories on the BBC website on one day this week were all about cuts. 'Police warn over cuts in spending', 'Charles Kennedy voices concerns over cuts', and - most chillingly - 'Cuts could harm race relations'.

Cuts aren't just uncomfortable - but they are racist, too!

Radio 4's Today programme is just the same. On Monday it led with union leaders' blood-curdling opposition to the Coalition's spending plans.

I awoke on Tuesday to hear that police chiefs were campaigning against threats to their budgets. Wednesday's top story was John Humphrys telling the nation that the Defence Select Committee of the House of Commons was fighting cuts to Britain's Armed forces.

The stories about cuts, cuts, cuts are relentless. Only the decision of BBC staff to strike when George Osborne finally announces the Government's spending plans next month looks likely to produce any kind of respite from the drum beat of coverage.

TV screens may go blank and radio stations fall silent at the moment when licence-fee payers are being told in detail about the future of the British economy.

It is, of course, only right that the BBC should cover the looming reductions in public spending. The medicine needed to cure the Labour hangover is of huge public interest.

The problem is the lack of any context in the Corporation's coverage.

Not just the context of the huge borrowing requirement that weighs heavily on the shoulders of every taxpayer - but also the absence of a sustained examination of the failure of the British state to deliver value for money.

Every household and business in the land is living on tighter budgets. The state cannot be exempted.

For years, taxpayers have been funding a state in which wasting money is endemic - from aircraft-carrier projects that run billions of pounds over budget.

Despite this profligacy and the telephone-number salaries enjoyed by too many state employees, government spending is always seen as a good thing in BBC-land.

Cuts are invariably seen as bad. I don't accuse BBC journalists of waking up with a deliberate mission to damage the Coalition Government, but that is the result.

Recent whingeing BBC coverage could have been designed by a joint committee of the trade unions and the Labour Party.

And I would argue that the almost exclusive focus on the downside of cuts is not just irresponsible, given the Corporation's public service duty, it is also a serious failure of intellectual imagination.

Most BBC staff members probably make every effort to leave their political views at the door of the recording studio, but if you are surrounded by people who have only ever worked for the state and have never been part of the wealthcreation process, you struggle to think any differently.

And BBC journalists do struggle to ask the kind of questions of the state that occur naturally to people who work in the private sector or run businesses.

Where, for example, are the BBC investigations into why health outcomes in Scotland are no better than at hospitals in England and Wales, even though the Scottish NHS gets more money?

Where is the report on the Ten O'clock News that tries to understand why French suppliers get more profit out of their contracts with the British state than they receive from their own government?

Where are the Newsnight interviews that explore why some local authorities are able to deliver exactly the same, or even better, public services at a much lower cost than others?

Where is the Today programme outrage at the fact that public sector workers are now better paid than their private sector counterparts, and have retained greater job security, more generous pensions and shorter working hours?

Where is the Five Live survey into why businesses and entrepreneurs are leaving the UK because the taxes necessary to pay for the wasteful state are making Britain internationally uncompetitive?

Taxpayers hand over their hard-earned money to the state, but do we really get excellent schools or world-class hospitals in return?

For years, BBC reporters have failed to be a champion of the taxpayer, who pays their salaries.

BBC journalists struggle to ask the kind of questions of the state that occur naturally to people who work in the private sector or run businesses.

And now they rush to defend their fellow public sector workers when a Government elected with a mandate to make cuts begins the necessary task that voters gave it.

We shouldn't be surprised at any of this. As a public sector body itself, the corporation is, of course, a prime target for cuts.

And when the BBC advertises for new staff it does so in the Leftwing Guardian newspaper.

An analysis of the self-declared political affiliations of BBC staff on Facebook revealed that they were 11 times more likely to describe themselves as liberal than conservative.

The Corporation's Andrew Marr conceded this was true when he agreed that the BBC has an 'innate liberal bias'.

The terms liberal and conservative may not provide a perfect guide to the political views of BBC staff, but the massive preponderance of liberals points towards the problem of institutional Leftism in the Corporation's ranks.

Meanwhile, the BBC takes painstaking care to ensure a gender and ethnic balance in its newsrooms. Over the past two decades, younger women and ethnic minorities have featured more prominently on our TV screens - and rightly so.

The BBC has not, however, done anything much to ensure an ideological balance.

The Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt once complained that the BBC employed too few Right-wingers.

'I wish they would go and actively look for some Conservatives to be part of their news-gathering team,' he said. He later, regrettably, rode back f rom thos e remarks.

He shouldn't have done.

There are too few people in BBC newsrooms who think in ways that truly represent the broad crosssection of licence-fee payers.

So, in the absence of the BBC changing its employment practices any time soon, I suggest some questions that Jim Naughtie, Jeremy Vine and Huw Edwards may like to consider raising:

Minister, how much of this extra spending will go directly to patients, and how much will be gobbled up by an even fatter NHS bureaucracy?

Why don't you cut taxation on small businesses in order to create more jobs for poor communities? Wouldn't violent crime be brought under control if we imprisoned more repeat offenders?

There are too few people in BBC newsrooms who think in ways that truly represent the broad cross-section of licence-fee payers.


Given the ineffectiveness of the welfare state, shouldn't faith-based organisations receive a bigger share of poverty-fighting budgets?

How can you support a benefits system that penalises couples who marry?

Why, Mr EU Bureaucrat, do you get paid twice as much as our Prime Minister?

The BBC does great things. The Proms. Period drama. Big sporting events. Natural history programming. The World Service.

But these great things cannot be an excuse for lazy, highly partisan news programmes that vehemently look after the interests of the state and those who work for it - but do not defend the interests of the taxpayers who finance this bias.

[Teddy Bear]

And another article to highlight the BBC agenda re the cuts.

BBC whinge watch

By Daily Mail Comment

Last updated at 8:30 AM on 17th September 2010

On the BBC's 6 O'Clock News one night this week, four separate stories covered the widespread opposition to the Coalition's planned cuts, and their potentially devastating effect on everything from the Army to the film industry.

Then – with no hint of irony – it moved on to report on how the NHS was paying for teenagers suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder to go surfing in Cornwall.

Not once did it cross the reporter's mind that at a time of national fiscal emergency, this was an indulgent waste of our money which Britain cannot possibly afford.

But then virtually all of the Corporation's coverage assumes that state spending is always good and cuts are bad.

No one points out that a doubling of NHS funding led at best to a marginal improvement in the nation's health. Or that prodigious expenditure on education led to falling standards. Or that profligate welfare spending has actually damaged those who have become dependent on handouts.

Instead, we have scaremongering and hand-wringing. Which is why the Mail has decided to launch a BBC Whinge Watch. In the ensuing weeks, we will monitor the Corporation's output to highlight bias and ensure it reflects the interests of the private sector – which pays its bills – as assiduously as the concerns of the public sector of which it is the flagship.

And perhaps the BBC might even dare to turn the spotlight on its own spending. After all, the two-year licence fee freeze that it proposed yesterday is going to look very modest in the context of the savings that will have to be made by the rest of the public sector.

[Teddy Bear]

I'm including this response from the BBC to the criticism that has been levelled at it about bias over the 'cuts'. It shows how the BBC hierarchy merely dismisses with a load of pompous self-congratulatory bullshit that has become its 'mark'. I'm reminded always of the Fawlty Towers episode with the Yank, where he accuses Basil of poorly running the hotel and shoddy service, and asks any of the other guests if they agree. Since Basil is so used to cowering the guests, and they hesitate in replying, he launches into this pompous 'British' retort to the Yank, until one of the guests interrupts him to agree with the Yank, and then they all pipe up.

Helen Boaden should really read what her boss has just announced about being aware of MASSIVE left-wing bias within the organisation 30 years ago. It would show her that there's nothing unbiased in the BBC genes.

I'm just waiting for the day the British public pipe up.

Impartiality is in our genes

Helen Boaden | 11:13 UK time, Saturday, 18 September 2010

I always think that impartiality is in our DNA - it's part of the BBC's genetic make-up.

Anyone who thinks differently doesn't really understand how the organisation works and how seriously we take issues around balance and impartiality.

That's why, for example, we've planned our coverage of the spending cuts so carefully - to make the choices facing the government clear to our audiences and ensuring we cover the "whys and wherefores" of the spending review. It's how we always approach our reporting - whatever the subject.

The licence fee is the public's money so people are clearly fully entitled to their opinion on our coverage. And if they want to criticise it, of course they can and indeed will do so. There was one such example in the Daily Mail yesterday. There'll always be people who express views about our coverage particularly at a sensitive time politically. That's part of the warp and weft of living in a democracy. Our job is to ensure we remain absolutely impartial and present the facts to our audiences - without following any agendas.

For the broad audience BBC News is as respected and as valued as it's ever been. At big significant news moments such as the General Election and for everyday news and analysis audiences turn to us in huge numbers to help them make sense of the world - both at home and abroad.

That's because our audiences trust us and our specialist journalists like Nick Robinson, Stephanie Flanders, Robert Peston, Hugh Pym and Mark Easton. When stories are complex, highly charged and politicised, audiences rely on our specialists to give them context, assess evidence and test opinions without fear or favour.

Our presenters take professional pride in holding the powerful to account through fair but tough questioning. All our journalists - on and off air - are acutely aware of their responsibility to be impartial. That's why, for example, we report the problems of the BBC as we would any other institution. And that's why our trust ratings remain so high. And in a healthy democracy our audiences would not want it any other way.

Helen Boaden is director of BBC News