Post by Teddy Bear on Sept 25, 2009 18:49:26 GMT
After being censored by the BBC, Daniel Hannan has commented on BBC bias, as Jeremy Hunt recently accused it of being. Its worth reading the comments following the Telegraph article for some amusing and succinct posts.
Unconscious bias at the BBC - and the Guardian
By Daniel Hannan
The Guardian makes some interesting points about BBC bias today. Picking up on Jeremy Hunt’s observation that Corporation staff lean largely Leftward, it quotes Andrew Marr’s obervation that the one-sidedness is “cultural and not party political”. Precisely. BBC presenters and editors rarely set out to promote one party over another. Their partiality, rather, is unconscious, reflexive, instinctive. Indeed, I remember a classic example from Marr himself. When Chris Patten averred that, on the issue of leaving the EPP, David Cameron should “listen to Angela Merkel and not to people like Daniel Hannan”, Marr, the interviewer, replied, “Yes, absolutely”. I don’t think he was trying to be snotty: he was simply couldn’t see that he was asserting an opinion rather than a fact. (Beeb types often make this error when discussing the EU: see here and here for examples). It’s the same tendency that leads presenters to introduce conservatives as Right-wing polemicists, but to introduce Lefties as disinterested experts.
The Guardian finishes with an amusing demonstration of its own unconscious bias: “There is, however, at least one self-confessed Conservative executive at the BBC. The BBC4 controller, Richard Klein, confessed his political leaning in August at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival”. Note the choice of verb. My dictionary defines “confess” as “to disclose something damaging or inconvenient to oneself; to make known one’s sins to a priest”. Alright, it was a light-hearted remark. Still, can you to imagine the Grauniad describing someone as “a self-confessed Labour supporter”?
By Daniel Hannan
The Guardian makes some interesting points about BBC bias today. Picking up on Jeremy Hunt’s observation that Corporation staff lean largely Leftward, it quotes Andrew Marr’s obervation that the one-sidedness is “cultural and not party political”. Precisely. BBC presenters and editors rarely set out to promote one party over another. Their partiality, rather, is unconscious, reflexive, instinctive. Indeed, I remember a classic example from Marr himself. When Chris Patten averred that, on the issue of leaving the EPP, David Cameron should “listen to Angela Merkel and not to people like Daniel Hannan”, Marr, the interviewer, replied, “Yes, absolutely”. I don’t think he was trying to be snotty: he was simply couldn’t see that he was asserting an opinion rather than a fact. (Beeb types often make this error when discussing the EU: see here and here for examples). It’s the same tendency that leads presenters to introduce conservatives as Right-wing polemicists, but to introduce Lefties as disinterested experts.
The Guardian finishes with an amusing demonstration of its own unconscious bias: “There is, however, at least one self-confessed Conservative executive at the BBC. The BBC4 controller, Richard Klein, confessed his political leaning in August at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival”. Note the choice of verb. My dictionary defines “confess” as “to disclose something damaging or inconvenient to oneself; to make known one’s sins to a priest”. Alright, it was a light-hearted remark. Still, can you to imagine the Grauniad describing someone as “a self-confessed Labour supporter”?