Post by Teddy Bear on Sept 5, 2010 18:54:45 GMT
I'm well aware that the pro-EU bias the BBC maintains is worthy of its own board in this forum. However I personally do not have the energy to follow and comment on it. If anybody is interested in doing so however, please let me know and I would be very happy to open a board on this topic.
In the meantime, the highly estimable Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph has a fine article on the subject.
The BBC officially regards Eurosceptics as mad
By Daniel Hannan
There’s a fascinating snippet in Rod Liddle’s column today (secured behind the fastness of the Times paywall). He writes of being summoned to see his boss at the BBC following a complaint about the Corporation’s bias against Eurosceptics. The complaint had been made by Lord Pearson of Rannoch, then a Tory peer. Rod writes:
See how the concept of insanity has been redefined by our state broadcaster? Malcolm Pearson was, and is, the most decent of men. Instead of raging publicly against the BBC, he had set out, politely and patiently, to convince it that it could do better. To this end, he employed a professional firm to monitor all BBC current affairs programming over a period of six months. Its methodology was thorough and empirical. It measured, to the second, how much airtime was given to enthusiasts for closer integration, how much to soft sceptics, and how much to opponents of EU membership. It looked at the background clips, and at the remarks of presenters. Its conclusion – as I well remember, having been involved with the project – was inescapable. The BBC was consistently biased against Eurosceptics, not only in the sense of rarely inviting them on air but – more insidiously – in the sense of casting them as eccentrics.
Malcolm was perhaps naïve in believing that his findings would be enough to induce a culture shift within the Beeb. But “mad”? If so, then the 55 per cent of British voters who, according to the BBC’s own opinion poll, want to leave the EU, must be dribbling loons.
To be fair, the BBC did start to include anti-Brussels voices in its broadcasts after the Pearson exercise – whether because it genuinely recognised that it was in the wrong or, as Rod’s anecdote would suggest, simply to get us psychotics off its back. But anyone who thinks that the Beeb is now neutral on the issue of European integration need only compare its coverage of UKIP and the Greens.
Most bias takes the form of opinions being presented as fact – a process which is, almost by definition, unconscious. If you begin from the belief that EU membership is vital to Britain’s prosperity – if you regard this as a datum, rather than an arguable proposition – your coverage of the European question is bound to seem biased to the 55 per cent who disagree. They, in turn, will strike you as people who cannot accept objective reality – in other words, as mad.
In the meantime, the highly estimable Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph has a fine article on the subject.
The BBC officially regards Eurosceptics as mad
By Daniel Hannan
There’s a fascinating snippet in Rod Liddle’s column today (secured behind the fastness of the Times paywall). He writes of being summoned to see his boss at the BBC following a complaint about the Corporation’s bias against Eurosceptics. The complaint had been made by Lord Pearson of Rannoch, then a Tory peer. Rod writes:
The [BBC] panjandrum listened to my nervous musings and then held aloft Lord Pearson’s latest letter and said: “Rod, you do realise that these people are mad?”
See how the concept of insanity has been redefined by our state broadcaster? Malcolm Pearson was, and is, the most decent of men. Instead of raging publicly against the BBC, he had set out, politely and patiently, to convince it that it could do better. To this end, he employed a professional firm to monitor all BBC current affairs programming over a period of six months. Its methodology was thorough and empirical. It measured, to the second, how much airtime was given to enthusiasts for closer integration, how much to soft sceptics, and how much to opponents of EU membership. It looked at the background clips, and at the remarks of presenters. Its conclusion – as I well remember, having been involved with the project – was inescapable. The BBC was consistently biased against Eurosceptics, not only in the sense of rarely inviting them on air but – more insidiously – in the sense of casting them as eccentrics.
Malcolm was perhaps naïve in believing that his findings would be enough to induce a culture shift within the Beeb. But “mad”? If so, then the 55 per cent of British voters who, according to the BBC’s own opinion poll, want to leave the EU, must be dribbling loons.
To be fair, the BBC did start to include anti-Brussels voices in its broadcasts after the Pearson exercise – whether because it genuinely recognised that it was in the wrong or, as Rod’s anecdote would suggest, simply to get us psychotics off its back. But anyone who thinks that the Beeb is now neutral on the issue of European integration need only compare its coverage of UKIP and the Greens.
Most bias takes the form of opinions being presented as fact – a process which is, almost by definition, unconscious. If you begin from the belief that EU membership is vital to Britain’s prosperity – if you regard this as a datum, rather than an arguable proposition – your coverage of the European question is bound to seem biased to the 55 per cent who disagree. They, in turn, will strike you as people who cannot accept objective reality – in other words, as mad.