– a BBC continuity announcer (in the London area) this evening, announced that tonight’s Panorama will be about the Beslan atrocity, and that it will, get this, “look at what the terrorists did and why they did it”. I hope that this terminological rectitude reflects a change of BBC policy rather than an inadvertant blip, although I expect that even once the broadcast wing of the BBC finally ‘gets it’ that the proto-Guardian wannabes at News Online will continue to treat their work as an ongoing portfolio for jobs at the aforementioned newspaper, recent examples including:
1) A fixation this weekend with events in Chile commemorating the overthrow of Allende 31 years ago. Worth a mention perhaps, but not worth being the first item on the News Online home page under ‘Americas’, nor worth being one of the four items on the ‘Latest:’ news ticker, especially when there is so much current ‘Americas’ news to report on;
2) Earlier today the News Online home page had a headline Boy shot dead during fox hunt, linking to a story with the same headline. This is yet another ambiguous News Online headline. Fox hunting, the sort with horses and hounds, is a contentious issue – so the headline could easily be misinterpreted, negatively, as having something to do with the perennial leftie fixation with ‘toffs in pink coats’. The reality is that the boy who was tragically killed was engaging in ‘lamping’ – hunting at night with rifles – the kind of fox ‘pest’ control that will become more common once the left finally get their way in banning hunting with hounds. Hours later the story and headlines were amended to read Shot boy was ‘mistaken for fox’.
Neither of these stories are necessarily biased in themselves, but they are both examples of a subtle bias that permeates News Online, the giving of undue prominence to leftie cause-celebres here (in the first case) and ambiguous headlines with negative connotations for another there (in the second case). Just the sort of slant that you’d expect to see on news in The Guardian or The Observer. No surprise there then, but not what you’d expect from a supposedly impartial news source.
Progress:
Russia’s grim return to reality
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/3646834.stm
Not only the reasonably balanced article itself, but the headline on the front page:
“Soldiering on
Grim-faced return to reality for Moscow after terror attacks”
.
And did anyone notice last night that the BBC news immediately followed a report on the 3rd anniversary of 9/11 with an article on Abu Ghraib – no doubt to provide balance.
And did anyone notice that Any Questions on Radio 4 on Friday seemed to have been taken over by the local branch of the Palestinian Solidarity Organisation (or was it the Muslim Association of Britain?), as the audience wildly applauded the description by one of the panellists of the Israeli Defence Force as terrorists? I am surprised Melanie Phillips bothers to turn up to these Guardianista love-ins.
And did anyone notice on the Today programme this morning the overtly sympathetic tone used by James Naughty when interviewing someone running the anti-Bush TV ads for the Democrats? And in the same programme did anyone notice the accusation that the Conservative Party had “lurched to the right” because Redwood was back in the cabinet? If Labour’s escaped piece of garden furniture gets back into the cabinet, will the Labour party have “lurched to the left”? Of course it will have, but you won’t hear the BBC ever saying that.
I wonder if anyone working at the BBC has a centre-right or even centre political outlook? I wonder what % of BBC journalists and researchers read the Times or Telegraph by choice, as opposed to the Guardian or Independent? It would be interesting to know, but I think I can guess the answer.
And there was the breathless interview with Erica Jong allegedly about her new book about Sappho, but actually an opportunity to come out with the usual nonsense to the effect that the US government was using war to control people, just like the Greek dictators, like Hitler, etc, etc.
As Mark Steyn said (more or less), the only person who *isn’t* like Hitler is the foreign dictator with a toothbrush moustache, heading a national socialist party, with a penchant for feeding people who disagree with him into a recycling shredder.
Eamon –
I think reading (on a personal basis) any other paper than the Guardian would seriously hinder your career at the BBC.
On the point about the “centre” the reason lefties like Andrew Marr (ex Socialist Organiser) can say that the BBC gets attacked from both sides is that its position on the left gets attacked by both the right and the extreme left. In no way does the BBC itself occupy the real “centre” of political belief.
The increasingly unwelcome trend is actually for the BBC to have its own policies on things like (see today’s coverage) immigration (always a good thing of course; diet (people must eat certain foods); vaccination (good for you)etc etc. Mostly these formal policies tend to stand slightly to the left of New Labour I would say.
David
Naugtie’s report on anti Bush reservist vets, cited by Eamonn above managed not to mention Rathergate or any doubt at all re documents alleging Bush misconduct , now, why would that be?
Channel 4 news did the same, referring to the docs, but not mentioning their dubious authenticity.