Robin Aitken 'blows lid' on BBC bias

[Teddy Bear]

Another fine article highlighting much of what is evident but usually not mentioned in the media. (hat-tip to Mathewd)

Why I am convinced that the BBC is biased
By Tim Montgomerie
06 August 2006

FOX News has transformed broadcasting in America. It is loved by US conservatives as much as it is hated by the mainstream media. In the last few weeks it has been essential viewing for anyone who wants to escape from the BBC’s one-sided coverage of the unfolding Middle East tragedy.

Mainstream media critics deride Fox’s “fair and balanced” catchphrase but it’s not an inaccurate description of the cable network’s output. Fox has provided full coverage of the attacks on Lebanon. Like its old media rivals it has broadcast all of the heart-rending scenes of devastation from Beirut and Qana. It does not just balance it with a few reports of Israelis hiding in bunkers, however. It provides context. Fox has, for example, probed Hezbollah’s links with Iran and has alerted its viewers to the possibility that this conflict is part of a much more serious proxy war between Tehran and Tel Aviv.

Fox has also subjected the United Nations to heavy scrutiny. Can we believe, it asks its viewers, that a new peacekeeping force will protect Israel after six years of UN failure in southern Lebanon?

Veteran BBC journalist Robin Aitken has promised to do for the BBC what Bernard Goldberg’s “Bias” did to CBS. Aitken served as a BBC reporter for a quarter of a century and has accused it of an “unconscious, institutionalised Leftism”. “I was surprised to discover how many of my colleagues were active members of Labour or the Liberal Democrats,” he says. “They cannot bear President Bush because he’s a Republican and an evangelical Christian,” he continued. “I long for the day when I hear a reporter say something sceptical about the UN.”

While the BBC is programmed to avoid partisan bias – carefully ensuring that Tory, Labour and Liberal Democrat perspectives are fairly represented – its deeper biases are left unchecked.

On the international front the first fundamental bias is against Israel. The most famous example of this came when a BBC reporter explained how she wept at Yasser Arafat’s death. The fact that Arafat was a terrorist hardly featured in a report that contained little objectivity and a great deal of the emotionalism made famous by the BBC’s Fergal Keane.

Anti-Americanism is bias number two. The BBC’s coverage of the New Orleans flood was widely condemned in America. No attempts were made to explain the US system of state government to viewers. All blame was put on to Bush’s shoulders. The BBC headlined with stories of rape and mass looting at the time but never corrected these stories when they were shown up to be grossly exaggerated. The land which is richer and more scientifically advanced than the countries of Europe is routinely presented as unsophisticated by the BBC.

The BBC hardly hides its disdain for the Bush-Blair war on terror. British troops in Afghanistan and Iraq are known to be unhappy at the ways in which their efforts at reconstruction hardly receive any attention. The situation in places like Baghdad and Kandahar is grim but the nation’s public service broadcaster fails to balance stories of existing difficulties with an analysis of the consequences of failure.

Defenders of the BBC cite the corporation’s criticism of Tony Blair’s stewardship of the war as proof that it is not politically biased. But the criticisms invariably come from a left-wing, anti-war perspective. BBC reporters struggle to ask what might be called “right wing questions”. Soon after David Cameron had abandoned traditional Tory support for lower taxation and public service reform he was subjected to a very tough interview on the Today programme. Can voters be sure you have changed? Isn’t this new policy inconsistent with what you were proposing at the last election? Those questions were the questions of the establishment. Missing was an attack from the right. “Doesn’t Britain need lower taxes to compete with the world’s tiger economies?” “Isn’t school and hospital choice an essential way of forcing public service workers to improve their performance?”

The representation of Christians in BBC soap operas. The desire to break taboos in the drama output. The telephone number salary that is paid for Jonathan Ross to shock and awe. The ways in which the BBC crowds out start-up businesses by pricing independent competitors out of the market. The lists of BBC faults is a long one but the chances of reform are small as long as the corporation continues to enjoy the confidence of the public.

The BBC is unlikely to be brought down by political reform. America’s conservative politicians – like their British counterparts – were too afraid to take on the privileged position of the mainstream broadcasters. CBS, NBC and ABC were brought low by the bloggers and by the Fox phenomenon. Bloggers and Fox trailblazed new ways of presenting the news. Technology will do the same to the BBC. Britons will increasingly enjoy alternative sources of news and they will consume those alternatives in huge numbers.

[Teddy Bear]

A video of Robin Aitken expressing his views on BBC bias is shown by 18 doughty Street

Robin Aitken on BBC Bias - presented by 18 Doughty Street

Tim Montgomerie and Peter Whittle present Robin Aitken at the Institute for Commonwealth studies with the New Culture Forum. Here Robin expresses his views about the BBC and whether or not it represents the British public and their views.

[steevo]

Its an excellent article and he is right on - what a powerful voice. I just came from 18 Doughty Street and was about to post it

I would like to add one significant point insofar as the development of alternative US conservative media with respect to our liberal/left establishment media. Other than a few periodicals we had nothing until the very early 90s. Our AM radio was all but written off with the exception of sportscasting when conservative talk hit the airwaves, and big-time. Rush Limbaugh was a catalyst. This call-in 'town hall' in my opinion has changed our political landscape, at least until recent years, more than Fox or the internet.

[Teddy Bear]

Article in Daily Mail by Robin Aitken. The 'inside story' doesn't get much better than this.

What is the loneliest job in Britain? Being a Tory at the BBC
by ROBIN AITKEN

Robin Aitken was left frustrated when he raised questions of political bias within the BBC

Working at the BBC can be a strange experience. On occasions during my 25 years as a journalist with the corporation it was jaw-dropping.

In 1984 I returned to BBC Scotland after covering the Tory conference in Brighton. The IRA had come close to assassinating Margaret Thatcher with a bomb and the country was in shock.

Apart, that is, from some of my BBC colleagues. "Pity they missed the bitch," one confided to me.

For three decades I was that rare breed - a Conservative at the BBC. In my time working on programmes such as Today and Breakfast News I couldn't have formed a cricket team from Tory sympathisers.

As one producer put it, you feel almost part of an ethnic minority.

We all know the cliched critique of the BBC: a nest of Lefties promoting a progressive agenda and political correctness.

Depressingly, that cliche is uncomfortably close to the truth: the BBC is biased,and it is a bias that seriously distorts public debate.

In the past 30 years, 'Auntie' has transformed from the staid upholder of the status quo to a champion of progressive causes.

In the process, the ideal at the heart of the corporation - that it should be fair-minded and non-partisan - has all but disappeared.

I suppose none of this should have surprised me. I got a job with BBC Radio Brighton

in 1978 after working in newspapers. I was delighted; I believed I was joining the world's finest broadcasting organisation with a global reputation for integrity.

But by the time I was appointed BBC Scotland's business and economics correspondent in 1981, I had doubts. The BBC in Scotland was deeply antagonistic towards the Conservative Government; our narrative was one of devastating industrial decline and Government heartlessness.

I had endless arguments with colleagues.

On one occasion, a producer got so cross with me for defending Mrs Thatcher that we came close to blows. His view, shared by many colleagues, was that her Government's actions were indefensible.

But surely if BBC impartiality meant anything, we would have balanced our story by emphasising the growing banking, oil and electronics industries.

Instead, we constantly lamented the closure of shipyards and fretted about the ailing Ravenscraig steelworks.

By the time I moved to London to work on the Money Programme in 1989, Thatcherite economics could no longer be dismissed: they worked.

The Left's bitterness towards Thatcher, however, was undiminished.

The real Britain was recovering, but inside the Money Programme offices it was a gloomy economic winter where every privatisation was doomed and government spending was ruthlessly cut to satisfy wicked monetarists.

Our scripts were as opinionated as any commentary in The Guardian. I argued the case for Thatcherism but was massively outgunned.

I was viewed, I think, as a deluded oddity - more to be pitied than taken too seriously. My face didn't fit and I moved to Breakfast News.

The General Election of 1992 put things into sharp focus. The BBC had privately rejoiced at the downfall of Thatcher in 1990 and there was widespread expectation of a Labour victory.

But that optimism was misplaced. Neil Kinnock failed to convince the voters.

On Election night, the atmosphere in the newsroom was one of palpable deflation. A young female producer was in tears.

John Major had little opportunity to enjoy his success; within months, Sterling was ejected from the Exchange Rate Mechanism and his Government never recovered.

The BBC mounted a barrage of negative coverage on everything from the NHS to sleaze.

That was coupled with a devotion to the European ideal. I remember arguing with a senior editor about the Maastricht Treaty and saying it was an issue of democracy, not economics. He told me I was mad.

As the 1997 Election approached, the Government was constantly on the defensive and the BBC was often happy to do Labour's Opposition work for it.

Fortunately, I didn't always have to concentrate on domestic politics and did stints in Washington and Russia.

But in 1998 I finally decided to voice my concerns. I was in my 40s, experienced and confident enough to say what I believed.

Also, I had the perfect place to do it. My colleagues had elected me to the BBC Forum, designed to improve communication between management and staff.

At one meeting, director-general John Birt seemed nonplussed when I raised the issue of Left-wing bias.

He asked Jenny Abramsky, a senior news executive, to answer. Her reply was short and dismissive; my fears, she said, were unfounded. I was wrong to raise them.

In 1999 the news was dominated by Nato's war against Serbia. The BBC was supportive, in contrast to its sceptical attitude to the Falklands and the first Gulf wars.

Why the difference? At the time Tony Blair enjoyed uncritical support within the BBC, as did President Bill Clinton.

At a Forum meeting in December 2000, I suggested to Greg Dyke, the new director-general, that there should be an internal inquiry into bias.

Dyke, a Labour Party donor and member along with BBC chairman Gavyn Davies, mumbled a muddled reply. As he left the meeting, I overheard him demand angrily of his PA: "Who was that f****r?"

At the end of the meeting a reporter from the BBC staff magazine Ariel asked for more details but warned me that "controversial" topics were often spiked.

Sure enough, not a word appeared.

I feared I was becoming one of those obsessives -familiar to all journalists - who write long, fastidiously researched but quite mad letters in green ink.

But I felt my worries needed to be addressed - even at the risk of looking ridiculous.

In 2001 I was hired by Rod Liddle, then editor of Radio 4's Today, to report on politics and economics. With an audience of six million, the programme is arguably the most influential in Britain.

But I soon began noticing bias in the subjects chosen, the people interviewed and the tone of voice.

I wrote to Phil Harding, the BBC's director of editorial policy, using the Macpherson Inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence as an analogy.

If the Metropolitan Police was "institutionally racist", I wrote, the BBC was "institutionally Leftist".

He was reluctant to engage and eventually told me he could devote no more time to my views, while Mark Damazer, deputy head of news, accused me of feeling frustrated about my career progress and attacked me for impugning the integrity of my colleagues.

Both allegations were false; I enjoyed my career and never doubted the integrity of my colleagues - they truly believed they were acting impartially, they just didn't recognise their bias.

'Neutral' for BBC journalists is left of centre for everyone else; everything is seen through the distorting prism of the progressive agenda.

As one senior news presenter told me: "Anybody who attacks the Labour Government is always coming from the Left, and the Tories are written off as insane or - if there's the slightest chance of them getting anywhere - evil."

But Damazer wasn't interested in my views.

As I was so "disaffected", he suggested I consider leaving the BBC.

The situation was becoming Kafkaesque. I was trying to get the BBC to be true to its obligations and being treated like a mad dissident. Privately, though, many colleagues agreed I had a point.

As Christmas 2002 approached I decided there was one, final avenue left open to me: the BBC governors. However, I hesitated.

I was, after all, an ordinary employee and, frankly, I was nervous of repercussions: I could be risking my career.

Nonetheless, I voiced my concerns.

Alongside specific interviews and programmes I thought demonstrated bias, I recounted the story of Steve Richards and John Kampfner, BBC current affairs presenters who both subsequently became political editor of the New Statesman.

About two months later I received a response.

After discussing my letter with Dyke and Richard Sambrook, then director of news, they concluded I "did not provide conclusive evidence of systematic bias".

I was disappointed. It wasn't just the slightly patronising tone of the reply, but the way my concerns were dismissed on the say-so of a senior BBC executive.

What would the BBC have said if the Metropolitan Police, faced with accusations of racism, had held a brief internal inquiry that concluded that there was no problem?

Bias not only stifles public debate; it is destructive for the corporation, too. Adherence to a left-of-centre agenda brought the BBC to its biggest crisis in decades and one I witnessed at close quarters on Today.

Within the BBC, opinion ran strongly against the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Most staff felt war was unjustified; feelings intensified by their contempt for President George Bush.

On Today we occasionally allowed the case for war to be made, but the prevailing tone was doom-laden. Arguing for a better balance was a thankless task: at one meeting I said our coverage was too anti-war; the editor's response was brusque.

"That's a very dangerous view," Kevin Marsh, who took over as Today's editor in 2002, told me. Dangerous to whom? I wondered.

On 25 May 2003, four days before Andrew Gilligan's infamous report, Today presenter John Humphrys wrote about weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the reasons for invading Iraq in a Sunday newspaper.

He said: "You need a very good reason to kill people. Which is why so many were opposed to the war in Iraq in the first place. But eventually most were persuaded, even some MPs who had expressed profound misgivings. The question many of them are asking now is whether they were misled."

Four days later Gilligan conveniently provided the answer on the air, in his report about claims that Iraq could launch WMDs within 45 minutes.

"Actually," he told Humphrys, "the Government probably knew that that 45-minute figure was wrong."

The crucial point about the Gilligan saga is that the BBC got into a mess because it wanted to believe the story.

Today and the corporation would have quickly disowned Gilligan's story had it not so perfectly fitted their chosen narrative.

In late 2003 the Today programme became obsessed with the 'human rights' of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

At a planning meeting I argued that 'human rights' are contingent and that fanatical Islamists cannot expect to be treated as innocent victims. Afterwards, a BBC trainee confided that she often found herself thinking along similar lines but felt unable to speak up.

It is worth bearing in mind what happens if someone at the BBC breaks ranks.

In 2004, TV presenter Robert Kilroy-Silk wrote about the Arab people and asked: "What do they think we feel about them? That we adore them for the way they murdered more than 3,000 civilians on September 11 and then danced in their hot, dusty streets to celebrate the murders? That we admire them for being suicide bombers, limb amputators, women repressors?"

Kilroy-Silk's TV career ended the next week.

In a statement, the BBC's director of television, Jana Bennett, said: "Presenters of this type of programme have a responsibility to uphold the BBC's impartiality.

"This does not mean that people who express highly controversial views are not welcome on the BBC, but they cannot be presenters of a news, current affairs or topical discussion programme."

But how consistently is the Gospel according to Bennett adhered to? Are sanctions equally applied to all presenters who express "controversial views"?

Consider this passage: "The Pope's approach to AIDS has been outrageous. He has called for a ban on the use of condoms in fighting the disease in Africa...The orders from Rome are verging on the wicked."

A controversial view? Certainly among Britain's four million Catholics. An impartial view? Certainly not. And the writer? John Humphrys in a newspaper column in October 2003.

Another example, from a writer seeking "rational debate" on gay sex without a condom: "The first guy I ever f***** without a condom gave me HIV.' Since I've been HIV-positive, I've had 'unsafe sex' more times than I can remember, often with men whose names I could not tell you now."

Controversial? Yes. Impartial? Hardly. So who is writing here? Nigel Wrench, one of the presenters of Radio 4's PM programme, in The Pink Paper in 2000.

So how was the Jana Bennett test applied in these two instances? It wasn't.

The point is that whether a statement is "controversial" or not depends on your starting point.

What Kilroy-Silk said was controversial, presumably, among Britain's Muslim minority but, decisively, it was controversial within the BBC.

What John Humphrys wrote was not. Nigel Wrench is still one of the senior reporters, and sometime presenter, on PM; his views were, presumably, also judged not to be controversial.

After the Hutton Inquiry in 2004 I decided to take voluntary redundancy from the BBC. It was an amicable parting but I felt I could take my complaints about bias no further. The money I got enabled me to write the book which I hope will start a proper debate about the BBC's impartiality.

In 2007, there is a solid consensus within the BBC on most issues of private morality and, in many cases, public policy.

One presenter described the sense of superiority that working at the BBC confers on its staff.

"It's the whole thing that 'we know best' and it's our responsibility to educate the poor unfortunates beneath us in how things should be."

The way the BBC is run is about to change, with the governors replaced by a BBC Trust. But this is unlikely to deal with bias.

The Government will make appointments to the Trust - it will undoubtedly hire 'reliable' people whose political views mirror its own.

The erstwhile young rebels who changed the BBC in the Sixties and Seventies are now the Establishment, and their views, once so radical, have become an ossified consensus - just like the ones they replaced.

However, there is a big difference: the old Establishment was undermined by media scrutiny; the new Establishment is the media. Who can debunk it?

One answer comes from America, where the Right long complained about liberal bias in the main networks. The Americans, true to form, turned to the free market; Rupert Murdoch's Fox News provides a calculated alternative with a brash, patriotic, unashamedly populist tone.

It is time to give people a choice in Britain.

Perhaps the BBC should divest itself of a small part of its £3 billion a year income for an alternative service. Two per cent of revenues would give a newcomer £60 million a year for a speech-based rival to Radio 4.

The centre-right in Britain needs to be clear-sighted about its situation.

The BBC is a profoundly influential opponent of nearly everything conservatives believe, with the Right forced to accede feebly to the Left-liberal consensus.

If the time comes when British conservatives feel like fighting back, broadcasting policy might not be a bad place to start.

[Teddy Bear]

Doughty Street reports on Robin Aitkens observation that so far nobody at the BBC has wanted to interview him about his accusations against the BBC.

Makes me think of the BBC 'Watchdog' programme after they show how corrupt a particular company is, few want to go 'on air' to present their side of the case.

Is the BBC running scared?
Tonight at 9pm on 18DoughtyStreet.com there is an exclusive interview with Robin Aitken. 25 years a BBC reporter his new book - Can We Trust The BBC? - lifts the lid on the Corporation's institutionalised biases. Below he writes about the extraordinary fact that his former employer has not interviewed him once about the book. It would appear that the BBC isn't just institutionally biased but institutionally cowardly, too.

"Is the BBC running scared? I only ask because there’s been a deafening silence from the Corporation over the past couple of weeks on a subject which must be close to its heart; its reputation.

Let me explain: last month my book ‘Can We Trust the BBC?’ was published. The central allegation in it is that the BBC suffers from a crippling institutional bias towards a liberal-left view of the world. I should know – I worked as a reporter for the Corporation for 25 years and have spent the last two and a half years since I left the Today programme researching and writing the book.

Now here’s the strange thing; in the run-up to publication a number of BBC programmes, including Today, rang me up and said they’d be interested in talking to me. We sent out dozens of review copies to various programmes; since when - nothing.

There could be good reasons of course. If the book was inaccurate, wrong-headed, scurrilous or trivial it wouldn’t deserve to be taken seriously.

But actually it is none of these things. It has been widely reviewed and no-one has rubbished it. Even reviewers who are themselves left wing seem to agree I may be on to something.

So I think I can claim, with due modesty, that my book is serious and level-headed.

Now I take the view that public institutions have a duty to engage with their critics. And, funnily enough, the BBC agrees. On its website it makes much of its ‘accountability’.

So you might think that when serious criticism comes along it might want to defend itself. But apparently not. It seems that a collective decision has been taken to ignore this upstart critic – exactly the same response as I encountered when I was working for the BBC and tried to raise these questions internally.

Why should this be so? A couple of weeks ago I shared a platform at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London with Peter Horrocks, Head of BBC TV News. We debated the proposition that the BBC is institutionally biased. And even he seemed unable to make a strong counter-argument.

So I suspect that the reason the BBC has denied me access to the airwaves is because my argument is, literally, irrefutable.

You’ve probably seen those rather self-congratulatory promos the BBC is running at the moment which give you a montage of clips of journalists doing various intrepid things and then comes the catchline ‘this is what we do’ a solemn voice intones. And it’s true that some of my ex-colleagues show great courage in the course of their work.

But when it comes to this argument the bravery evaporates.

The BBC is proud of its star interviewers; people like John Humphrys, Kirsty Wark, Jeremy Paxman and Jim Naughtie. These are people who’ve made their names as fearless interrogators.

Funny that not one of them seems to want to cross swords with an obscure reporter who has had the temerity to point out that the Corporation’s claim to impartiality is a Big Lie. And that if word was to get out about just how unfair, one-sided and biased most BBC programmes are there could be consequences. The Corporation’s cherished reputation might be irreparably damaged.

They couldn’t possibly be scared – could they?"

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By: Tim Montgomerie | 08-03-07 08:21