Post by Teddy Bear on Aug 13, 2012 21:35:07 GMT
Despite the BBC's outgoing Director General, Mark Thompson, admission that he found a massive left-wing bias at the BBC when he first joined over 30 years ago, there is absolutely nothing he can point to that would show where this bias has been redressed. The BBC still does most of its advertising for job positions at the Guardian (86%), despite it having a very small and ever declining readership, but with the left leaning mindset that it caters to, it ensures the left-wing bias will firmly continue.
Here's the blog by The American Expatriate where these figures were first obtained
Not surprisingly, The Commentator obtained a Freedom of Information Act request to find out that the Guardian was the newspaper most procured by the BBC, despite it having one of the smallest circulation. Even the Independent procurement by the BBC, which only has a daily circulation of 90,000, is nearly the same as that of the Daily Mail, which has a daily circulation of 1.5 million.
Shows the BBC really has no concern for the majority of opinion in the country, but continues with its own agenda and supporting propaganda.
Here's what Peter Sissons wrote in his book 'When one door closes.'
'For 20 years I was a front man at the BBC, anchoring news and current
affairs programmes, so I reckon nobody is better placed than me to answer the question that nags at many of its viewers — is the BBC biased?
In my view, ‘bias’ is too blunt a word to describe the subtleties of the
pervading culture. The better word is a ‘mindset’. At the core of the BBC, in
its very DNA, is a way of thinking that is firmly of the Left.
By far the most popular and widely read newspapers at the BBC are The
Guardian and The Independent. Producers refer to them routinely for the line to take on running stories, and for inspiration on which items to cover. In the later stages of my career, I lost count of the number of times I asked a producer for a brief on a story, only to be handed a copy of The Guardian and told ‘it’s all in there’.
Here's the blog by The American Expatriate where these figures were first obtained
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
A BBC/Guardian partnership?
About a month ago, TAE noted that in the space of a week, The Guardian published two seperate editorial hosannas to the BBC, one in the regular Guardian, and one in the Sunday Observer. The latter came under the headline Worth Every Penny: The BBC still delivers the goods. At the time I wondered out loud whether this was an unconscious reference to the amount of money the BBC poured into The Guardian itself via advertising. One of the comments to the post took me to task, suggesting that I was "tipping over into conspiracy mania".
That prompted me to make a freedom of information request of the BBC regarding a breakdown of the amount of money it spent on recruitment advertising in the print media. Today, TAE got an answer.
In the fiscal year from from April 2004 until March 2005, the BBC spent a total of £568,343 on recruitment advertising in a total of 49 newspapers. The recipient of the largest amount of revenue from such BBC advertising was, by far, The Guardian. Nearly 41% of the BBC's expenditures, or £231,944, went into The Guardian's coffers. To put this into some perspective, this is over two and a half times more than the amount received by the next largest recipient, The Western Mail (a Welsh paper) which received £92,388, or just over 16% of the total expenditures. The Times/Sunday Times received a combined total of just £53,326, or a shade over 9% of the total. The amount received by The Guardian alone is approximately equal to the next seven largest recipients combined. And one of those seven, The Manchester Evening News, which received £11,100, is in fact itself a member of The Guardian Media Group.
Now, perhaps this rather blatant disparity in the distribution of the BBC's (tax-financed) advertising expenditures, can be easily explained. After all, one might expect the BBC to justifiably focus a lot of its recruitment efforts where the audience is, so if The Guardian has a particularly large readership, perhaps it makes sense that it receives a particularly large share of the BBC's advertising expenditures. Is that the case? Alas, no.
According to the National Readership Survey, of the 13 top line dailies in Britain, The Guardian ranks eighth, garnering just 2.5% of the total adult population. The Times has a readership 1.5 times larger than that of The Guardian, although it received only 22% of The Guardian's take in BBC advertising monies. The Daily Telegraph received only 15% as much, despite the fact that it has a readership almost double that of The Guardian. The paper with the biggest readership by far, The Sun, received no advertising revenues at all from the BBC's recruitment efforts. So, it would seem clear that it is not an effort to reach the widest audience that had produced such lopsided expenditures.
Perhaps it is, instead, a desire to reach a particular kind of audience that has driven the decision to spend so much at The Guardian. But what kind of audience is the BBC reaching at The Guardian? Well, it is no secret that The Guardian is a left-leaning newspaper. Even Emily Bell, editor-in-chief of The Guardian Unlimited, admits (nay, proclaims) that it approaches the news from a "slightly more liberal perspective". Even if the BBC is not intending to target a left-liberal audience from which it will pluck its future employees, that is, in fact, precisely what it is doing when it spends nearly half of all its recruitment advertising in a single newspaper dominated by a left-liberal perspective.
Is this really the way that a tax-funded, "public service" enterprise ought to be running itself?
In any event, and in light of this information, I can only reiterate what I suggested a month ago...perhaps there is more to The Guardian's belief that the BBC "delivers the goods" than meets the eye.
posted by ScottC at 11:19 PM
A BBC/Guardian partnership?
About a month ago, TAE noted that in the space of a week, The Guardian published two seperate editorial hosannas to the BBC, one in the regular Guardian, and one in the Sunday Observer. The latter came under the headline Worth Every Penny: The BBC still delivers the goods. At the time I wondered out loud whether this was an unconscious reference to the amount of money the BBC poured into The Guardian itself via advertising. One of the comments to the post took me to task, suggesting that I was "tipping over into conspiracy mania".
That prompted me to make a freedom of information request of the BBC regarding a breakdown of the amount of money it spent on recruitment advertising in the print media. Today, TAE got an answer.
In the fiscal year from from April 2004 until March 2005, the BBC spent a total of £568,343 on recruitment advertising in a total of 49 newspapers. The recipient of the largest amount of revenue from such BBC advertising was, by far, The Guardian. Nearly 41% of the BBC's expenditures, or £231,944, went into The Guardian's coffers. To put this into some perspective, this is over two and a half times more than the amount received by the next largest recipient, The Western Mail (a Welsh paper) which received £92,388, or just over 16% of the total expenditures. The Times/Sunday Times received a combined total of just £53,326, or a shade over 9% of the total. The amount received by The Guardian alone is approximately equal to the next seven largest recipients combined. And one of those seven, The Manchester Evening News, which received £11,100, is in fact itself a member of The Guardian Media Group.
Now, perhaps this rather blatant disparity in the distribution of the BBC's (tax-financed) advertising expenditures, can be easily explained. After all, one might expect the BBC to justifiably focus a lot of its recruitment efforts where the audience is, so if The Guardian has a particularly large readership, perhaps it makes sense that it receives a particularly large share of the BBC's advertising expenditures. Is that the case? Alas, no.
According to the National Readership Survey, of the 13 top line dailies in Britain, The Guardian ranks eighth, garnering just 2.5% of the total adult population. The Times has a readership 1.5 times larger than that of The Guardian, although it received only 22% of The Guardian's take in BBC advertising monies. The Daily Telegraph received only 15% as much, despite the fact that it has a readership almost double that of The Guardian. The paper with the biggest readership by far, The Sun, received no advertising revenues at all from the BBC's recruitment efforts. So, it would seem clear that it is not an effort to reach the widest audience that had produced such lopsided expenditures.
Perhaps it is, instead, a desire to reach a particular kind of audience that has driven the decision to spend so much at The Guardian. But what kind of audience is the BBC reaching at The Guardian? Well, it is no secret that The Guardian is a left-leaning newspaper. Even Emily Bell, editor-in-chief of The Guardian Unlimited, admits (nay, proclaims) that it approaches the news from a "slightly more liberal perspective". Even if the BBC is not intending to target a left-liberal audience from which it will pluck its future employees, that is, in fact, precisely what it is doing when it spends nearly half of all its recruitment advertising in a single newspaper dominated by a left-liberal perspective.
Is this really the way that a tax-funded, "public service" enterprise ought to be running itself?
In any event, and in light of this information, I can only reiterate what I suggested a month ago...perhaps there is more to The Guardian's belief that the BBC "delivers the goods" than meets the eye.
posted by ScottC at 11:19 PM
Not surprisingly, The Commentator obtained a Freedom of Information Act request to find out that the Guardian was the newspaper most procured by the BBC, despite it having one of the smallest circulation. Even the Independent procurement by the BBC, which only has a daily circulation of 90,000, is nearly the same as that of the Daily Mail, which has a daily circulation of 1.5 million.
Shows the BBC really has no concern for the majority of opinion in the country, but continues with its own agenda and supporting propaganda.
Here's what Peter Sissons wrote in his book 'When one door closes.'
'For 20 years I was a front man at the BBC, anchoring news and current
affairs programmes, so I reckon nobody is better placed than me to answer the question that nags at many of its viewers — is the BBC biased?
In my view, ‘bias’ is too blunt a word to describe the subtleties of the
pervading culture. The better word is a ‘mindset’. At the core of the BBC, in
its very DNA, is a way of thinking that is firmly of the Left.
By far the most popular and widely read newspapers at the BBC are The
Guardian and The Independent. Producers refer to them routinely for the line to take on running stories, and for inspiration on which items to cover. In the later stages of my career, I lost count of the number of times I asked a producer for a brief on a story, only to be handed a copy of The Guardian and told ‘it’s all in there’.
What Newspaper Do You Think the BBC Mostly Procures?
The BBC procures more copies of the Guardian than any other national newspaper, despite its small market share and continued decline. Quelle surprise!
"Guardian and a latte please" - BBC staffers, every morning By The Commentator on 13 August 2012 at 2pm
For many years those on the right of British politics have suspected that the BBC has an inherent bias in favour of the left. Perceived editorial lines on the EU, the NHS, Israel, and other issues aside, there is the classic stereotype of young BBC executives sitting around on the sofas of Broadcasting House, sipping chai tea lattes and peeping at The Guardian’s latest 'politically correct' offerings over the top of their designer frames.
Well perhaps some stereotypes are deserved after all.
After responding to a Freedom of Information response seen by The Commentator, we’re able to determine the papers of choice amongst the fair and balanced staff at the BBC.
Not surprisingly The Guardian tops the list with 59,829 bought between April 1st, 2010 and February 28th, 2011. In addition to this, “Auntie” bought 43,709 copies of the struggling Independent. This compares to 48,968 copies of the Telegraph and 45,553 copies of the Daily Mail.
It’s worth noting that not only did The Guardian emerge comfortably out on top with over 10,000 copies difference between itself and the Daily Mail, but, considering the national circulation of these newspapers (right), the BBC has a heavily disproportionate number of Guardian readers among its rank and file.
The Guardian has a circulation of 230,541 per day compared to the Daily Telegraph’s 634,113 and the Daily Mail with 1.7 million. Meanwhile, the Independent is lagging on a rather sorry-looking 90,001.
If you’re too lazy to do the basic mathematics, allow us: that means that two of Britain’s most popular right of centre newspapers combined have a circulation of some 2.3 million compared to The Indie and The Guardian which weigh in at just over 320,000.
Odd then, that despite besting their axis of left-wing rivals by seven times in the national market, the BBC procures almost 10,000 less copies of the Mail and Telegraph in the period displayed.
If nothing else, that ought to at least put to rest the clichéd argument that those on the right of centre concerned with Guardian influence are paranoid simply because the Guardian’s readership is shrinking. In this case, size doesn’t matter; it’s not how many read you, it’s who reads you; et cetera, et cetera.
Of course, it should come as no real surprise that BBC staff prefer to take their socio-political commentary from the likes of Polly Toynbee, to digest the foreign affairs analysis of Seumas Milne, and to take stock of the economic evaluation of Paul Krugman.
After all, the Beeb may not pin its partisan colours to the mast in the party political sense (though it comes close at times), but it is the culture of the institution which gives it a distinctively left wing flavour.
Take the the Newsnight team, for example. There is the new political editor, Allegra Stratton, formerly of The Guardian; Paul Mason, the economics editor, a Marxist sympathiser; and Stephanie Flanders whose disdain for anyone of a free market position is expressed so freely that the BBC charter may as well be a beer coaster for all the good it does in terms of bias.
In response to Mitt Romney’s pick of Paul Ryan as his VP Flanders tweeted the following:
In Flanders’s eyes someone who wants to balance the US budget by 2040 is somehow a crazed, budget-hacking extremist.
When noble prize winner and Keynesian economist Paul Krugman came to the UK to proselytise his borrow and spend solution to UK’s economic situation, he had a virtual love-in on Newsnight. He was put up, not against a trained economist of the Austrian or Chicago school, but a Tory MP, Andrea Leadsom, and businessman John Moulton.
As Andrew Marr observed:
"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 a liberal bias, not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias."
The BBC has a disproportionate influence on national debate in a whole range of areas. With such influence – not to mention the coerced funding of anybody with a television and a fear of the law – the BBC must always be reminded that it does not have carte blanche to express the opinions of the people who work for it as the impartial truth.
The BBC procures more copies of the Guardian than any other national newspaper, despite its small market share and continued decline. Quelle surprise!
"Guardian and a latte please" - BBC staffers, every morning By The Commentator on 13 August 2012 at 2pm
For many years those on the right of British politics have suspected that the BBC has an inherent bias in favour of the left. Perceived editorial lines on the EU, the NHS, Israel, and other issues aside, there is the classic stereotype of young BBC executives sitting around on the sofas of Broadcasting House, sipping chai tea lattes and peeping at The Guardian’s latest 'politically correct' offerings over the top of their designer frames.
Well perhaps some stereotypes are deserved after all.
After responding to a Freedom of Information response seen by The Commentator, we’re able to determine the papers of choice amongst the fair and balanced staff at the BBC.
Not surprisingly The Guardian tops the list with 59,829 bought between April 1st, 2010 and February 28th, 2011. In addition to this, “Auntie” bought 43,709 copies of the struggling Independent. This compares to 48,968 copies of the Telegraph and 45,553 copies of the Daily Mail.
It’s worth noting that not only did The Guardian emerge comfortably out on top with over 10,000 copies difference between itself and the Daily Mail, but, considering the national circulation of these newspapers (right), the BBC has a heavily disproportionate number of Guardian readers among its rank and file.
The Guardian has a circulation of 230,541 per day compared to the Daily Telegraph’s 634,113 and the Daily Mail with 1.7 million. Meanwhile, the Independent is lagging on a rather sorry-looking 90,001.
If you’re too lazy to do the basic mathematics, allow us: that means that two of Britain’s most popular right of centre newspapers combined have a circulation of some 2.3 million compared to The Indie and The Guardian which weigh in at just over 320,000.
Odd then, that despite besting their axis of left-wing rivals by seven times in the national market, the BBC procures almost 10,000 less copies of the Mail and Telegraph in the period displayed.
If nothing else, that ought to at least put to rest the clichéd argument that those on the right of centre concerned with Guardian influence are paranoid simply because the Guardian’s readership is shrinking. In this case, size doesn’t matter; it’s not how many read you, it’s who reads you; et cetera, et cetera.
Of course, it should come as no real surprise that BBC staff prefer to take their socio-political commentary from the likes of Polly Toynbee, to digest the foreign affairs analysis of Seumas Milne, and to take stock of the economic evaluation of Paul Krugman.
After all, the Beeb may not pin its partisan colours to the mast in the party political sense (though it comes close at times), but it is the culture of the institution which gives it a distinctively left wing flavour.
Take the the Newsnight team, for example. There is the new political editor, Allegra Stratton, formerly of The Guardian; Paul Mason, the economics editor, a Marxist sympathiser; and Stephanie Flanders whose disdain for anyone of a free market position is expressed so freely that the BBC charter may as well be a beer coaster for all the good it does in terms of bias.
In response to Mitt Romney’s pick of Paul Ryan as his VP Flanders tweeted the following:
Stephanie Flanders
✔
@bbcstephanie
Ryan is risky VP choice for Romney. Republicans now so extreme, his main appeal 4 swing voters was record as a moderate. Ryan anything but.
11 Aug 12
In Flanders’s eyes someone who wants to balance the US budget by 2040 is somehow a crazed, budget-hacking extremist.
When noble prize winner and Keynesian economist Paul Krugman came to the UK to proselytise his borrow and spend solution to UK’s economic situation, he had a virtual love-in on Newsnight. He was put up, not against a trained economist of the Austrian or Chicago school, but a Tory MP, Andrea Leadsom, and businessman John Moulton.
As Andrew Marr observed:
"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 a liberal bias, not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias."
The BBC has a disproportionate influence on national debate in a whole range of areas. With such influence – not to mention the coerced funding of anybody with a television and a fear of the law – the BBC must always be reminded that it does not have carte blanche to express the opinions of the people who work for it as the impartial truth.
