More BBC... confessions

[steevo]

Well kinda in a new report. They state problems with their bias have been with climate change and poverty; if it wasn't for those darn celebrities advocating such noble world causes. They can no longer be 'hijacked' even advocating positions for of all people, Tony Blair.

Can this at least be a first step?...

"A staff impartiality seminar held last year is also documented in the report, at which executives admitted they would broadcast images of the Bible being thrown away but not the Koran, in case Muslims were offended.

"During the seminar a senior BBC reporter criticized the corporation for being anti-American."

Very doubtful. In their minds most reporting is fair and impartial, and concerning bias the thrust of acknowledgment is they have been victims of others' influencing them.

The Telegraph

[Teddy Bear]

Well spotted Steevo.
I think this article is worth copying in its entirety.

BBC report finds bias within corporation
By Gary Cleland
Last Updated: 1:04pm BST 17/06/2007

The BBC has failed to promote proper debate on major political issues because of the inherent liberal culture of its staff, a report commissioned by the corporation has concluded.

The report claims that coverage of single-issue political causes, such as climate change and poverty, can be biased - and is particularly critical of Live 8 coverage, which it says amounted to endorsement.

It warns that celebrities must not be pandered to and allowed to hijack the BBC schedule.

After a year-long investigation the report, published today, maintains that the corporation’s coverage of day-to-day politics is fair and impartial.

But it says coverage of Live 8, the 2005 anti-poverty concerts organised by rock star campaigners Bob Geldof and Bono and writer Richard Curtis, failed to properly debate the issues raised.

Instead, at a time when the corporation was renegotiating its charter with the government, it allowed itself to effectively become a promotional tool for Live 8, which was strongly supported by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Geldof, Bono and Curtis were attempting to pressure world leaders at the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, which was taking place at the same time, to help reduce poverty in developing countries under the banner 'Make Poverty History’.

Mr Blair said the campaign was a “mighty achievement”. The huge Live 8 concerts across the world were its culmination and the BBC cleared its schedules to show them, with coverage on BBC One, Two and Three and Radio One and Two.

Around the same time it also screened a specially-written episode of Curtis’s popular sitcom The Vicar of Dibley that featured a minute long Make Poverty History video and saw characters urged to support it. And it aired another Curtis drama, The Girl in the Café, in which Bill Nighy falls in love with an anti-poverty campaigner - even giving Gordon Brown an advance copy.

The BBC also ran a week long Africa special featuring a series of documentaries by Geldof and a day celebrating the National Health Service, prompting Sky News political editor Adam Boulton to tell a House of Lords select committee it was in danger of peddling government propaganda.

The report concludes BBC staff must be more willing to challenge their own beliefs.

It reads: “There is a tendency to 'group think’ with too many staff inhabiting a shared space and comfort zone.”

A staff impartiality seminar held last year is also documented in the report, at which executives admitted they would broadcast images of the Bible being thrown away but not the Koran, in case Muslims were offended.

During the seminar a senior BBC reporter criticised the corporation for being anti-American.

The report was jointly commissioned by BBC managers and the board of governors and will be published by the BBC Trust, which has since replaced the governors.

It has been approved by a committee headed by BBC trustee and former ITN editor-in-chief Richard Tait. Other members include BBC deputy director-general Mark Byford, head of BBC News Helen Boaden and creative director Alan Yentob.

Writing in The Observer yesterday, Mr Tait said that “the BBC cannot allow its output to be taken over by campaigning groups” and added: “At the BBC impartiality is and must remain non-negotiable because it is vital to safeguard the BBC’s independence.”

The report offers 12 new principles for the corporation to adopt to safeguard its impartiality.

These include: “Impartiality is no excuse for insipid programming. It allows room for fair-minded, evidence-based judgements by senior journalists and documentary-makers, and for controversial, passionate and polemical arguments by contributors and writers.”

A BBC spokeswoman said: “This report is about looking forward and how we are going to face the challenges of impartiality in the modern world.”

[Teddy Bear]

In typical mealy-mouthed fashion, here's how the BBC dismiss or try to squirm around the accusations of bias, even from within their own ranks.
Notice the first paragraph "If you've read the newspapers, you may have got the impression that a BBC report on impartiality has concluded that the BBC is "institutionally biased". "
Now why should we have that impression? Because of headlines like those above or the one from the Daily Mail you mean?
Perhaps it's from monitoring the BBC output for the last few years.

Does the BBC have a bias problem?

By Torin Douglas
BBC media correspondent

The BBC has issued new guidelines on impartiality
If you've read the newspapers, you may have got the impression that a BBC report on impartiality has concluded that the BBC is "institutionally biased".

The Sunday Times reported that "the bias has extended across drama, comedy and entertainment, with the corporation pandering to politically motivated celebrities and trendy causes".

The Daily Mail headline said "BBC comes under fire for institutional left-wing bias".

It stated that "senior figures at the corporation were forced to admit it was guilty of promoting left-wing views and an anti-Christian sentiment".

Frank discussion

In fact, the report doesn't reach that conclusion - though it does quote people who hold those beliefs - and it also reflects concern over programmes associated with the Make Poverty History campaign, notably The Vicar of Dibley.

In fact, the report is a remarkably frank dissection of the BBC's attempts - and difficulties - in maintaining impartiality in the 21st Century, across its wide range of outlets and programmes.

Richard Tait, the BBC Trust member who chaired the team overseeing the report, is a former editor of ITN.

He said: "It doesn't say the BBC has a liberal bias - it says the BBC will have to work even harder to maintain the trust of the audience in future.

Former political editor Andrew Marr has been critical of the BBC
"Newspapers are becoming viewspapers, people are using the web to get a whole range of different sources of information, and the technology means people can choose their own news."

But some former BBC editors think there is bias in the organisation, at least on occasions. The report quotes comments they made at an open BBC seminar on impartiality.

Former political editor Andrew Marr said the BBC is "a publicly-funded urban organisation with an abnormally large proportion of younger people, of people in ethnic minorities and almost certainly of gay people, compared with the population at large".

All this, he said, "creates an innate liberal bias inside the BBC".

"It's a bit like walking into a Sunday meeting of the Flat Earth Society," said the Daily Telegraph's Jeff Randall about his time as the BBC's business editor.

"As they discuss great issues of the day, they discuss them from the point of view that the earth is flat.

"If someone says, 'No, no, no, the earth is round!', they think this person is an extremist. That's what it's like for someone with my right-of-centre views working inside the BBC."

Tait says the fact that the BBC could accommodate both Marr and Randall shows that those who run it aren't doing a bad job on impartiality.

"They are two very fine journalists with very different views of the world, both of whom did excellent jobs at the BBC producing impartial journalism.

"It's a matter of professionalism - it doesn't matter what your private views are so long as you keep them private."

Poverty problems

Campaigns like Live 8 will become commonplace, the report warns
But the report does acknowledge that things went wrong over the Make Poverty History campaign in 2005.

It cites differences of opinion among BBC executives over an episode of The Vicar of Dibley, which coincided with the formal launch of the campaign and featured the Make Poverty History video and website.

The writer of the comedy, Richard Curtis, was spearheading the campaign but nowhere was that acknowledged by the BBC.

The report says: "One view was that this was a laudable attempt to use the BBC's most popular comedy show to harness public interest for a worthwhile cause.

"Another (admittedly less widespread) view was that an unsuspecting comedy audience had been ambushed."

There were similar concerns over a one-off drama called The Girl In The Cafe (also written by Curtis); the broadcast of Bob Geldof's Live 8 concert in Hyde Park; and the subsequent Africa season of programmes, including a Geldof series.

All of these were linked to Make Poverty History, leading up to the report of the government's Africa Commission and the G8 summit in Edinburgh.

The report quotes Curtis as arguing that Make Poverty History was a movement, rather than a campaign, so the BBC should not have been so concerned about impartiality.

He said all the main political parties were in support, which he believed made it uncontroversial.

'Seductive mixture'


News programmes must present all sides of the debate, the report says
The report's conclusions reject this view. One of the new guidelines on impartiality says there must be "particular vigilance when programmes purport to reflect a consensus for 'the common good', or become involved with campaigns".

It says there are pressures on impartiality from the "seductive mixture" of well-connected talent, high-profile and well-meaning lobbyists, and the sympathetic involvement of production departments.

"Increasingly manipulative and media-savvy pressure groups are hungry for free airtime, and so are governments," it cautions. "Live 8 was not a one-off - it was the future writ large. Next time it will be a spectacular about conservation, cruelty to children or climate change."

Tait believes that, in the end, the broadcasts stayed within the impartiality guidelines.

But it illustrates all too clearly how the complex the whole concept of impartiality is in the 21st Century.

[steevo]

Well I think its clear now they're really starting to understand there's another message out there and it is growing, a message about themselves and very foreign to the image they've become deluded with, and they're attempting to deal with it. I don't think there's any hope for them at present because they hate: their bigotry and ideological bent is too deep. Possibly tho if the message eventually becomes loud enough and well known, your politicians may begin to more seriously question their tax-imposed support.

[ascendinglark]

How the hell can a report about BBC bias be released without mentioning Israel? Or did I miss something?

[Teddy Bear]

Steevo, I wouldn't credit them with any likelihood of realisation of their own failings. Their arrogance and power convinces them of their 'rightness', and blinds to criticism. The problem for them is always with the critics, not them. They forget that the critics are the ones who give them their power, but so long as they are able to sway so many of these critics, it will continue.

AL - What you're observing is the bias

[steevo]

Right I am in agreement with you Teddy, I have no hope for them for the future either. Its a reality tho that they're not used to and finally having to confront because of folks like ourselves. I'm hoping it eventually becomes unavoidable, like 'in your face' to those having some ability to reconsider their tax exempt status.

[Teddy Bear]

An excellent article in today's Telegraph highlights this very point, as well as giving a thumbs up to 18 Doughty Street.

The BBC can't kick its addiction to bias
By Damian Thompson
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 19/06/2007

When it comes to accusations of Left-liberal bias, the BBC is a bit like an alcoholic. People have been sniggering about his drinking for years; he pretends not to notice. There have been complaints; he brushes them aside. Throwing up at that wedding reception? Someone spiked the punch.

Propositioning the boss's wife? That was a joke. But, deep down, the drunk knows he has a problem. More to the point, he knows that everyone else knows. So, nervously, he's prepared to admit that he might be a little too fond of the sauce.

Yesterday, the BBC Trust published From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel, an 81-page report with the subtitle "Safeguarding Impartiality in the 21st century".

That's a bit like the late Boris Yeltsin talking about safeguarding his sobriety. It is, however, the first time that the corporation has attempted to address the question, so we should read the report carefully.

The first reaction is to sigh with relief. The report acknowledges that "mainstream opinion" was wrong to attack monetarism, to belittle Euro-sceptics as small-minded and blinkered, and to assume that multi-culturalism would solve the problems of immigration.

Justin Webb, the BBC's Washington correspondent, is quoted as saying that "in the tone of what we say about America, we have a tendency to scorn and deride." (Would "we" in this instance mean Matt Frei, I wonder?) Roger Mosey, former head of BBC television news, says he has "some sympathies with what Janet Daley says generally about a liberal/pinko agenda".

Stephen Whittle, a former controller of the BBC's editorial policy, says that its journalists work within a straitjacket of unchallenged liberal assumptions.

You're telling me. A few years ago, I wrote a column called "Beebwatch" for this newspaper. That involved listening to hours of BBC output every day. It was a maddening experience. I simply could not believe the ease with which representatives of Lefty pressure groups commandeered segments of Woman's Hour and Today, their soprano nagging accompanied by pizzicato clucks from the friendly interviewer.

I was outraged and, like many outraged people, became a raging bore on the subject. After the column finished, I worried whether I might have exaggerated the problem.

But then I met Robin Aitken, a BBC reporter for 25 years, who reckons that during his time on Today, The Money Programme and Breakfast News he couldn't have formed a cricket team from Tory sympathisers at the BBC.

His book Can We Trust the BBC? argues that the Left-liberal culture at White City is basically intact. Aitken, admittedly, is a Conservative, so perhaps he would say that. But Rod Liddle, former editor of Today, definitely isn't, and in The Spectator last month he listed the groups that the BBC thinks it's OK to be horrible about: evangelical Christians, the Countryside Alliance, multi-national corporations, supporters of Israel.

Ah yes, Israel. One of the few BBC journalists criticised in yesterday's report was Barbara Plett, who burst into tears when Yasser Arafat was airlifted out of his compound and then boasted about it in an article. She was caught red-handed, in other words; the incident became famous and so the report produces her as a burnt offering.

In contrast, we are told only that "a BBC News presenter" was unwise to write an article in the Daily Mirror entitled "Why the World Needs Hillary". That means you, Gavin Esler, though I had to use Google to find out.

Which brings us to the real reason this document has appeared. Google, YouTube, Al-Jazeera, Fox News: all these outlets provide competition for the BBC. The report acknowledges as much, referring in typical Beeb style to the "alternative vision" of Al-Jazeera, but to Fox's "avowedly opinionated" stance. Suddenly, the BBC finds that its reputation for impartiality has become its unique selling point, the only thing standing between it and privatisation.

Time to panic. For years, the corporation has ignored the little voice in its head that says impartiality went out of the window with Margaret Thatcher; it could afford to, because its critics had no redress and few media outlets.

But now anyone can mock the BBC on a blog or YouTube, or watch an excellent internet channel, 18 Doughty Street, founded by centre-Right entrepreneurs: the BBC report calls it "a harbinger of partisan television", but the truth is that, because it operates outside an ideological straitjacket, it is less partisan than, say, Radio 4.

This report is a step in the right direction. But, as anyone who has ever dealt with an alcoholic will confirm, it is best not to get your hopes up. Nothing will happen without a desire to change; and I don't think Auntie is ready to come off the sauce.

[Teddy Bear]

Another article in the Telegraph on the subject. It's great they're giving so much space to this subject. The more people start to actually listen to what the BBC are trying to convey, instead of just absorbing it blindly, the quicker will be their demise. They've been ignoring and dismissing complaints for years while playing their big brother role, and I look forward to the day when it comes back to hit them fully in the face.

BBC viewers angered by its 'innate liberal bias'
By Nicole Martin
Last Updated: 7:25am BST 19/06/2007

Commentary: The BBC impartiality report

Read the report in full (PDF)
The BBC is operating in a "left-leaning comfort zone" and has an "innate liberal bias" according to a report commissioned by the corporation.

Bob Geldof at the Live8 concert in London. The report criticised the BBC's coverage of the event

The report, From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel, said that the BBC's drift towards a liberal-minded approach to programmes risked stifling originality and angering viewers.

Mark Byford, the BBC's deputy director-general, said: "Impartiality is a core value for the BBC, which is non-negotiable and central to its relationship with licence-fee payers.

"As audience behaviours change and the media landscape develops rapidly, the BBC has to keep asking itself how best to safeguard impartiality in this digital age."

Andrew Marr, the BBC's former political editor, said at a seminar last year that the BBC is "a publicly funded urban organisation with an abnormally large proportion of younger people, of people in ethnic minorities and almost certainly of gay people compared with the population at large."

All this, he said in the report, "creates an innate liberal bias inside the BBC".

A survey of viewers found that the corporation was generally seen as impartial.

However, some respondents felt it had gone "too far" in its representation of racial minorities and was too politically correct.

One white man from the West Midlands said in response to a news item about terrorism: "The BBC was saying that 21 men have been arrested but when I flicked over Sky it said that the men were Asian.

"Other news channels tell you what you need to know, they don't hide it."

Most respondents outside south-east England believed that they were under-represented. When the BBC introduced three-dimensional weather maps in 2005, they appeared to suggest that northern Scotland was on the periphery because of the way the maps were tilted.

The problem was quickly rectified, but the report warned that "the continuing practice of giving temperature forecasts for conurbations rather than rural areas may suggest a presumption that the bulk of the audience lives in large cities, whereas the opposite is in fact the case".

The report criticised coverage of Live8 in 2005. It said that the BBC failed properly to debate the issues raised by the anti-poverty concerts. Instead, it effectively became a tool for Live8, which was supported by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

"The BBC also ran a week-long Africa special featuring documentaries by Bob Geldof, one of the organisers of Live8. This prompted a senior BBC executive to say that impartiality in that particular season was 'as safe as a blood bank in the hands of Dracula' ".

At a seminar on impartiality last September, Jeff Randall, editor-at-large of The Daily Telegraph and the former BBC business editor, described his time at the corporation: "They discuss issues from the point of view that the earth is flat."

"If someone says the earth is round, they think this person is an extremist. That's what it's like for someone with my right-of-centre views working inside the BBC."

Hugo Swire, the Conservative spokesman for culture, media and sport, said: "We have a right to expect impartiality from a publicly funded broadcaster. The corporation should be aware of and address such issues as bias."

[steevo]

I'm glad you posted these Teddy. Damian Thompson's was an especially enjoyable read. He is very astute and moving in my opinion. Its an article I may well refer to in the future.

BTW in my above post I meant tax supported, not exempt

[Teddy Bear]

Yeah, I enjoyed the images that Damien conveyed too.

2 BBC editor's blogs touch further on the subject of impartiality, obviously showing they're squirming somewhat at the coverage they're getting on the subject right now. Naturally they're trying their best to assure their public that they are. In the words of Shakespeare "methinks thou protesteth too much".

'Racist in Peace'Peter Rippon 19 Jun 07, 03:10 PM

Our coverage of the death of Bernard Manning provoked lively debate in the Glass Box on the PM Blog last night (the Glass Box is where listeners comment and discuss what they thought of the programme each day). We interviewed Frank Carson and some listeners felt our coverage proved we are a bunch of liberal lefties. What do you think? (listen to it here).

Ironically the item was followed by a look at the BBC Trust impartiality report. The report demonstrates how impartiality can be a fiendishly tricky concept. For me, had we interviewed a critic of Bernard Manning asking 'how racist was he then?' that would be a lefty perspective. Had we just asked Frank Carson to eulogise his friend that would have been partial as well.

The assumption we made was that Bernard Manning was a controversial comic who many accused of being racist. It is the same line taken by all the national press today from liberal lefty ones to the Sun's 'Racist in Peace' headline.

Some listeners say that because Carolyn Quinn put the allegations of racism to Mr Carson and asked how he felt about it that must be the BBC's view. I find this pretty simplistic.

If we challenge a contributor it does not mean that the position the interviewer is taking is 'the BBC view'. The fact that we gave air time to a friend of Mr Manning who gave a powerful and moving tribute does not mean we support that view either. All we are trying to do is to find the most effective way of telling a story in a way consistent with our obligation to be impartial.

Peter Rippon is editor of PM and Broadcasting House

Recent entries Reporting in complex timesCraig Oliver 19 Jun 07, 10:28 AM

It used to be so simple.

A generation ago the concept of impartiality amounted to giving "both sides of the argument". It was assumed that - give or take a little - it was enough to allow someone to state an opinion, someone else to disagree with it - and as long as you gave them roughly equal time, you'd been impartial.

The world of politics confirmed that this was the right approach - there was a clear spectrum, where people tended to fall on the left or the right.

A report this week into the concept of impartiality at the BBC called this the "see-saw" approach, easy to understand and implement - but patently unworkable in today's diverse society.

Britain is now home to a variety of groups with often strongly diverging opinions on how the world should be run and people should behave - the report used the analogy of a "wagon wheel", something with no fixed centre, and with spokes shooting off in all directions. The idea of a wagon wheel certainly helps remind editors that we live in complex times, and should strive to reflect that in our reporting, but it doesn't help you to remain impartial. So the report has come up with 12 ways to help ensure impartiality.

Those points are extremely useful - and here are the things I remind myself of when I come up against complex issues:

• No one thinks they're biased, so a good editor always challenges his or her own assumptions about a story/ the world.
• You can't always give the full range of views in one report. Fortunately you can return to the big issues of the day time and again.
• Sometimes views that people think are offensive need to be heard
• The BBC is for everyone, but if a certain group's views are not often reflected we won't fully understand the issues (and members of that group will simply switch off).

Craig Oliver is editor of the Ten O'Clock News

[Teddy Bear]

Another article today on the subject of BBC Bias, surprisingly enough in the Guardian. If you read the article online on their site you can see from those posting comments below it what most Guardian readers are about.

The BBC's bias is born of a shallow view of impartiality


This liberal-cosmopolitan institution needs to wake up to a world in which arguments have many more than two sides

John Lloyd
Wednesday June 20, 2007
The Guardian


At a BBC seminar on impartiality last year, there was a guest appearance on video by Jeff Randall, now editor-at-large of the Daily Telegraph. Randall recalled that during his days as business editor of the BBC he came in one day wearing Union Jack cufflinks and was accosted by a producer, who told him he couldn't wear them on air. Why not, asked Randall. Because, explained the producer, people will think we're endorsing the National Front.
I like that story because it encapsulates what is widely believed about the BBC - that it's a liberal, politically correct institution. Conservatives would go further, and say that it's a nation-hating, left-leaning, pro-European conspiracy which cuts out voices on the right - or, as the Telegraph columnist Janet Daley put it at the same seminar, allows them on as tokens, with distaste.

I think it's better to describe the BBC as a secular Church of England in the making. The church, or at least the liberals within it, came to see it as a holder of the ring for all religions, a kind of guarantee that religion will have its place, because the church will ensure it does - not just for itself, but for all. And this is the role that From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel: Safeguarding Impartiality in the 21st Century, thinks the BBC should play. Indeed, the image of the wheel was chosen for the report's title, author John Bridcut wrote, because in place of the left-right, capital-labour, liberal-conservative dualities of a bygone time, "in multipolar Britain, with its range of cultures, beliefs and identities, impartiality involves many more than two sides to an argument".

Ring-holding thus needs a more robust ring, as well as a more robust, if less fixed, centre. The default position of the BBC - insights on this, at the seminar, came from writer and broadcaster Andrew Marr, US correspondent Justin Webb, and BBC director of news Helen Boaden - is liberal-cosmopolitan, the position of the largely young members of the BBC's staff. For these men and women, some institutions and beliefs are seen as "naturally" reactionary - support for lower taxes, opposition to the European Union, support for a repeal of abortion legislation, a pro-Iraq war stance, an affection for hunting, and so on.

That is not to say they will not strive mightily to represent all points of view, to "balance" programmes and ensure that reactionaries are given their moments. But when the professional imperative slips, the default position comes out. One senior news executive told me that the BBC's coverage of the recent debate in the House of Commons on exempting MPs from Freedom of Information laws clearly expressed a view against the exemption, and had to be corrected.

The Bridcut report argues for a "wider and deeper application" of impartiality than a left-right balance. It's an important phrase, for it points to both a danger and a cure. The danger is that it will be interpreted mechanically so that, in place of carefully counted seconds for differing party positions, will come carefully calibrated contributions from a range of differing views - a response which could make for wider reporting, to be sure, but also shallower.

The chance the BBC has is to use the phrase to engage more fully, to come to grips with complexity. Complexity is the inevitable consequence of pluralistic societies and democratic governance - it is the greatest challenge to journalism because it means the object of journalism, to tell a defined narrative, constantly recedes. There are stories which have an end. One will come soon, in the ending of Tony Blair's premiership. But most don't: the nature of modern societies means that questions are always open and that journalism that slips into easy judgments, implicit or explicit, often betrays itself. Complexity is the enemy of shallow journalism; it is what you get when you deepen the application of impartiality.

Of course, reports, whether of 30 seconds or two hours, must have an end in time. But they need not have an end in narrative. Technically, the internet provides a space in which stories can be pursued, added to, corrected and opened to the audience for their contributions, in principle forever. And editorially, the avoidance of the implicit and final judgment which has become a feature of broadcast news opens the space for an assertion of uncertainty, which more closely reflects everyday experience and the nature of public life.

This means, as the head of BBC TV News Peter Horrocks argued in Oxford last year, that there is no censoring of opinion because it is thought by liberals to be embarrassing. It is true that some arguments no longer apply because no one believes them - there is no longer a sane constituency which argues against female suffrage, for instance. But there does remain an argument that women should not seek a full-time career, at least not if they have young children, and that opinion has to be heard.

The BBC can never foreclose on argument, for argument itself, in free societies, is never stilled. Thus debate must always be kept open, and those who present the arguments - the studio referees - are never better employed when they seek to draw out, rather than batter, the implications of argument. Impartiality is forever. If that insight becomes part of the BBC's genetic structure, then the report will have done its work, and a way of holding the 21st century ring will have been made possible.


· John Lloyd is director of journalism at the Reuters Institute, and a contributing editor to the FT Magazine [e-mail]

[Teddy Bear]

The Telegraph are really 'getting their teeth' into the BBC recently over the issue of bias. Great to see, and here's another scathing article about it, and one with which I wholeheartedly agree. The headline says it all:

BBC can't be cured of bias - so sell it off
By Simon Heffer
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 20/06/2007

It is impossible to write about the BBC without emotion intruding. The institution is part of the memory of almost all of us, from our earliest days, and part of our folk memory.

Among the voices echoing from infancy one is saying: "The time is a quarter to two, and it is time for Listen with Mother." Or, if you prefer, another says: "This is the BBC Home Service. Here is the news, and this is Alvar Liddell reading it."

We care about the BBC so much not merely because we all pay for it, but because we drank it in with our mother's milk. We came into this world with the BBC being both the kindly aunt of legend, and the voice of authority. It defined a national identity, though not one that would be considered correct now.

Later today, the director general, Mark Thompson, is outlining some sort of "mission statement" for the future of the corporation. We must await that with interest, but be prepared to take serious issue with it.

As my colleague Damian Thompson wrote yesterday, a substantial report on impartiality, written by an intelligent former BBC producer, John Bridcut, has just been published.

Mr Bridcut has had a wide brief. The report deals not merely with standard arguments about political bias, whether in dealing with domestic or foreign issues, but with such matters as whether Scotland was given sufficient square footage on a new map used for the weather forecast, or the equitable programming of styles of classical music.

It has come to some refreshingly honest conclusions, notably about the urge the liberal consensus at the BBC has to jump on bandwagons - such as not questioning the assumptions behind Bob Geldof's analysis of how to rectify poverty, or admissions that certain foreign correspondents, like the over-excitable Gavin Esler in dealing with questions about America, lose all pretence of objectivity from time to time.

Yet there is also a claim in the report that seems to me so self-deluding as to risk rendering it worthless.

Discussing an attack on the BBC a few months ago by the editor of the Daily Mail, who had accused the corporation of being "in every corpuscle of its corporate body, against the values of conservatism", the report rather too smugly observes: "This is the latest of several accusations of a political conspiracy levelled by those on the Right - a notion which few who have worked at the BBC would recognise."

I may not know as many ex-BBC people as Mr Bridcut, for I have never worked there, but it has always surprised me how, once they are out of the organisation, so many inmates find it easy to admit that a prevailing wind of Leftism blew strongly, and, if they wished to remain in productive work, they knew it was best to sail with it.

That the BBC is institutionally Leftist is nowhere better shown than in two examples in the report. The BBC was quick, in the decades after Lord Reith, to accept the nostrums of the post-war consensus. The consensus decided monetarism was absurd, and therefore the BBC never took it seriously.

Now, a variant of the doctrine long advocated by such shallow men as Milton Friedman and Enoch Powell is practised by Gordon Brown. Therefore the BBC no longer disdains it.

Similarly, only fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists (to use a phrase of David Cameron's) were thought to be against the European Union. Therefore, the BBC barely noted the existence of UKIP before the 2004 European elections, in which it did well.

That, too, has changed, but late in the day, and after the facts made it inevitable. It is not the BBC's job to follow what it defines as opinion; it should fairly reflect various views according to their weight in our public discourse.

Impartiality, though, is but one of the problems facing the corporation. Far worse, I would argue, is its lack of ambition on behalf of its audience.

I do not mean in terms of investing, or coming up with wheezes, or finding ways to cover great events on whatever part of the globe they happen to occur: I mean the corporation's subscribing to the apparent assumption that its audience is bovine, almost devoid of curiosity and bereft of any general knowledge.

Lately I have watched episodes of "flagship" programmes that seek to raise "serious" issues or (as Lord Reith put it) to inform, educate and entertain the public. Slickly produced, they are usually superficial, gimmick-led and almost entirely lacking in insight.

An exception is the BBC's wildlife programmes, in a class of their own because they are often made by one of the Titans of the age when the BBC made truly intelligent television, Sir David Attenborough. He commissioned Civilisation, which you had better buy on DVD as I imagine we might wait a while to see it again on BBC2.

It is hard to imagine such a nakedly elitist series - though it was a representation of elitism that drew in millions every week precisely because the public does wish to learn, and likes not having its intelligence insulted - being commissioned today: or something like its predecessor The Great War, or its successor, Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man.

There is a lesson here from the impartiality report. It is not the obvious one that intelligent people should have programmes made for them, too: it is that, just as the BBC allows itself to be hijacked by Leftist, right-on campaigning causes or political issues, it also allows itself to be hijacked by the agenda of the uneducated.

This is as sad, as dangerous and as destructive as any form of political bias, of which it is the bastard child.

The so-called Right in this country knows the BBC is under the sway of Leftists. That is precisely why David Cameron, in an "if you can't beat them, join them" moment, has decided to alter his party's agenda in an attempt to prevent the BBC from giving him a hard time (it worked for a while, but not, I fear, any more).

And since the report refuses to admit that many in the BBC work to an implicit liberal-Left agenda, are politically motivated just as much as I, as a newspaper columnist, am, and see no reason why these things shouldn't be the case, it is clear nothing will change.

With digital broadcasting and the internet, the case for the BBC is highly questionable. So is the case for impartiality.

It is time to let a thousand flowers bloom. The need for political balance and all other forms of impartiality should be ended.

If someone wants to set up a Marxist channel that talks only about Scotland, let him. The market will decide, and that, given the feasibility now of real choice, is how it should be.

Our public service broadcaster should be reduced to a news service on both wireless and television, and provide one or two other things that are a public good but that the market can only debase by providing - such as Radio 3 and, perhaps, BBC 4.

Sell the rest off, and use the proceeds to cut our taxes.

I know this offends all our sentimentalities about the dear old Beeb; but its institutional Leftism is incurable. The dogs have been barking ever since the dawn of the digital age, and it is time the caravan moved on.

[steevo]

Well I certainly agree about the BBC's wildlife programs, they are second to none in quality.

I don't describe the BBC's bias in terms of "allowing itself to be hijacked." It can be misleading to phrase it that way as they know exactly what they are involving themselves in.

But obviously Mr. Lloyd is no fool. It is a good article.

[steevo]

I found this statement right-on from Libertarian Alliance Director, Dr Sean Gabb:

Here

The BBC is a propaganda vehicle for the ruling class - that is, for that loose coalition of politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers, educators, and media and business people who derive wealth and power and status from an enlarged and activist state.

In its mealy-mouthed, bureaucratic way, the BBC has now admitted that its core function is not to report the news or to entertain the public, but to impose the specific ideological viewpoint known as 'political correctness', an evil axis of anti-liberal, anti-white racist, anti-Western, anti-Enlightenment and collectivist values and coercive social engineering. With the decline of old style Marxism and Socialism this form of illiberal doctrine has gained a growing and hegemonic role throughout much of academia, charities and civil organizations, churches, social and welfare services, most political parties, and government and the civil service. But its main transmission mechanism is via a controlled media, of which the BBC is the natural centre.

As an ideology, political correctness promotes the power and privileges of the ruling class. It stigmatises and demonises any dissenting opinion, seeks to censor and silence it, and manipulates information in order to balkanize society into alleged 'victim' groups who provide tribalistic bases for the exercise of political power - and the extraction of economic profit - by that class.

The answer to this admitted bias is not better regulation: all regulation must ultimately be overseen by the same members or clients of the ruling class who produced the bias. It is not privatisation: that will do nothing more than turn a propaganda vehicle for the ruling class into a profitable propaganda vehicle for the ruling class.

The only answer is full and immediate abolition. The BBC should be taken off air. Its employees should be sacked and its buildings sold off. All its internal records should be destroyed. All its copyrights should be thrown into the public domain.

At the same time, all the Broadcasting Acts should be repealed, and the airwaves should be opened to private appropriation in the same way as land in an uninhabited territory is open to appropriation. The sole function of law in such an environment should be to ensure that appropriated frequencies are actually used, and that other broadcasters do not trespass on the frequencies appropriated by each.

There should be no more regulation of what is broadcast in this environment than there now is of what is printed.

But we must begin with the BBC. It must be destroyed - before it destroys us.

[Teddy Bear]

Yeah - he's describing the BIG BROTHER COVERAGE that the acronym also stands for. I couldn't agree more with his final sentence.