The following article by Scott Norvell ran on May 20th in the European edition of the Wall Street Journal. It mentions Robin Aitken, Justin Webb and this blog. There is also quite a bit about the coverage of Malcolm Glazer’s takeover of Man U.
Robin Aitken has nailed it.
Those of us who pay the BBC’s annual £120 license fee but grit our teeth every time we watch one of its news programs have floundered for some time in search of a term to describe what ails the corporation. Mr. Aitken, a 25-year veteran reporter now retired, has put his finger on it: institutionalized leftism.
The phrase is a play on one — “institutional racism” — currently in vogue among the professionally aggrieved. It’s frequently lobbed when the forces of multicultural goodness can’t point to specific proof of racism in an organization but just know deep down that something is amiss.
Mr. Aitken told London’s Daily Telegraph (and subsequently confirmed in a telephone conversation) that Britain’s taxpayer-funded behemoth, arguably the most powerful media brand in the world, sports a world view remarkably at odds with a good percentage of the population to whom it purportedly answers.
The BBC’s world is one in which America is always wrong, George W. Bush is a knuckle-dragging simpleton, people of faith are frightening ignoramuses, and capitalism is a rot on the fabric of social justice. Through this prism, the United Nations is the world’s supreme moral authority, multiculturalism is always a force for good, war is never warranted, and U.S. Republicans sprinkle Third World children over their Cheerios for breakfast.
One could be inclined to dismiss one voice on this topic, but Mr. Aitken is hardly alone in his frustration. British conservatives complain constantly (largely in vain) about the political bent of the BBC, and bloggers, like the gang at Biased BBC (www.biased-bbc.blogspot.com), maintain exhaustive online records of its ideological imbalances.
The task isn’t a difficult one. Let’s just listen to the BBC’s U.S. correspondent Justin Webb: “America is often portrayed as an ignorant, unsophisticated sort of place, full of bible (sic) bashers and ruled to a dangerous extent by trashy television, superstition and religious bigotry, a place lacking in respect for evidence based on knowledge.”
“I know that is how it is portrayed because I have done my bit to paint that picture,” he confesses, “and that picture is in many respects a true one.”
Whole article here. It’s about the Schiavo case. To be fair, Webb is saying that America is, in his opinion, not always trashy, superstitious etc.
The recent takeover of Manchester United by American sports magnate Malcolm Glazer was the perfect platform for these biases to poke through. The hostile takeover of a football team is obviously more emotional than the takeover of, say, a car manufacturer, but the Beeb has so far proven itself to be everything a public broadcaster shouldn’t be on the topic.
Not being into football – sorry, guys – I hadn’t really thought of this one as a B-BBC issue. (One ought to be equally annoyed by bias when it concerns matters where one has no axe to grind, but without the oomph given by personal belief it’s harder. I do think the BBC is biased in favour of legalizing drugs, which I also favour.)
On the evening Mr. Glazer’s two-year effort to take over the club gelled, the flagship Ten O’Clock News’ take on it was a two-minute ad for the anti-Glazer camp. Effigies were burned. Angry fans marched. League officials expressed dismay. The correspondent closed the report claiming the deal would be bad for shareholders, bad for fans and bad for Manchester. Bad bad bad.
I’m guessing some of our commenters might agree with that verdict. But, as Mr Norvell goes on to say, it’s not the BBC’s place to speechify on the issue. This article, What options do United fans have? reads like a Green Paper issued to help the anti-Glazer fans settle on the best strategy. The very title assumes that no one who is a United fan will be indifferent to or actually support Glazer’s bid.
The tone has persisted. The BBC’s online product continues to portray the takeover as an effort by a rogue financier with a funny beard and no heart, who wants to “take Manchester away from the people and into the hands of market forces.” Never mind that Man U has been a public company for 14 years and, as one of the most valuable sports brands in the world, market forces are as much part of the team as red face paint and the smell of stale lager.
The wrong here is not that the BBC is portraying Mr. Glazer and his bid as unpopular — they are. It’s that the BBC’s mandate is not to pander, tabloid-style, to its audiences or use the story as a springboard for its anti-free market ideology. Its mandate explicitly calls for “impartial” coverage, and that’s not what I and millions of other U.K. residents are getting for our license fee in this and many other cases.
Nor is it wrong that lefty voices are heard on the BBC. There is a place for them, but not to the exclusion of rightish ones. Even we at Fox News manage to get some lefties on the air occasionally, and often let them finish their sentences before we club them to death and feed the scraps to Karl Rove and Bill O’Reilly. And those who hate us can take solace in the fact that they aren’t subsidizing Bill’s bombast; we payers of the BBC license fee don’t enjoy that peace of mind.
Fox News is, after all, a private channel and our presenters are quite open about where they stand on particular stories. That’s our appeal. People watch us because they know what they are getting. The Beeb’s institutionalized leftism would be easier to tolerate if the corporation was a little more honest about it.
Few with a grip on reality believe that there is a cabal at BBC House wringing their hands and plotting the re-nationalization of the coal industry or state-mandated racial sensitivity training for all six-year-olds.
Dunno about the coal industry, but the state-mandated racial sensitivity training for six-year-olds is up and running. It’s called Children’s BBC. That’s OK by me, done with a light touch. It’s the state-mandated Gaia worship that makes me long for an Establishment Clause.
But there is little doubt that, as Mr. Aitken puts it, a center-left groupthink dominates at the BBC and colors its entire output. It’s not deliberate. It’s worse. The producers just can’t imagine that someone could possibly oppose European integration or any of the other left-wing causes because to them, and their friends, these are self-evident truths. It simply doesn’t even occur to them that reasonable people could disagree with them.
The influence of this groupthink goes far beyond the BBC and now permeates the cliquish world of British broadcasting in general. Almost everyone in the television business has worked for the BBC at some point, sipped the Kool-Aid, and now carries the torch of institutional leftism. With few exceptions, every newscast in the country looks and sounds like a knock-off of the Ten O’Clock News, and the nation is not better for it.
Mr. Aitken is said to be the first BBC insider ever to come out of the conservative closet, and he is now putting his opinions into book form. He says that he tried to convince his bosses at the BBC of the problem, going to the trouble of documenting the bias for its Board of Governors, but none of them could be bothered.
If for nothing else, Mr. Aitken deserves high accolades for his contribution to the lexicon and his willingness to challenge a status quo that serves no one except the people who perpetuate it.
Mr. Norvell is the London bureau chief for Fox News.
I disagree that the Beeb doesn’t know what it’s doing most of the time when it pushes its soft-left political agenda. They use too many sophisticated “selling” techniques to push their political agenda. I used to be a marketing writer and I see the BBC using the same kind of techniques I was taught in order to “sell” a product or idea. Maybe some of the young, naive plebes don’t know what’s going on, but some Beebazoids obviously do know exactly what they are doing.
Susan,
Can you give examples of these ‘selling’ techniques that you believe are deliberate?
Tony,
the bbc can.
Well,for example the way the (D)HYS team phrases its questions to produce the responses they most want to elicit. Mostly in the “When did you stop beating your wife?” veign if it’s some issue relating to the US or Israel or the Tories, etc.
The second example I could give is their habit of finding some way of tieing their major “key message points” (and that’s what marketing writers call them) into every story no matter how poorly the “message points” actually relate to the story in question. (i.e. trying to tie-in the Iraq war with a story on the “obesity empidemic” or some other completely unrelated subject — that’s just a made-up example off the top of my head, not an actual story I’ve seen, but I could probably find plenty that are almost as ridiculous as my made-up one.)
One of the main elements of propaganda is to repeat the “key messages” over and over and over again. It gets boring and obvious to
keep doing it directly, so you must find indirect ways of doing it.
The other thing I often think of when I read BBC news is a corporate newsletter designed to get the troops revved up and moving “on message.” I used to write corporate newsletter articles that consisted of things like a puff piece on the CEO’s habit of collecting antique cream pitchers, then trying to find a way to tie-in antique cream pitcher collecting to a propaganda comment about the latest round of corporate cost-cutting moves. (It actually takes a kind of talent to write stuff like this.)
If you look for it, you can find examples like this all over the BBC website.
The other thing the (D)HYS team does is, when trying to promote something it likes rather than denigrate something it hates, is phrase their questions in a way designed to elicit positive rather than negative responses, i.e. “Do yo think the BBC is a superlative news organization, or merely somewhat superlative?”
You can see from here how it works.
The most spectactular piece of (thoroughly unethical) neuro-linguistic programming on the part of the BBC was the “smoking gun” trailer for the Panorama which looked at the casus belli before the Iraq war. The trailer cleverly managed public opinion – UNR 1442 clearly placed the onus on Iraq to prove that it had auditably destroyed its WMD. This they consistently failed to do, and obstructed the inspection process design to check their claims. The trailer implied that it was the responsibility of the coalition to “find a smoking gun” – reversing the burden of proof. Iraq was not in the position of a defendant in a trial – the cease-fire after the liberation of Kuwait was contingent on provably good behaviour (which was not often forthcoming). The BBC not only failed to explain this, they managed to mould the perceptions of the nation in a very different direction. On its own this is grounds for closing down the news operation in the BBC, frankly.
Robert
I suspect that very few people in the UK could take you on even a short walk through the facts of how we came to be in Iraq. The BBC and its comrades have done a fine job of disseminating ignorance and lies.
The one thing the socialists have always done well is re-write awkward history.
Susan – far from trying to best a master like yourself, I would like to reinforce your point with another example of how the BBC herds the cows along its chosen path. They may come up with a headline (which I have just made up) along the lines of: Junior high school grades fall as teens fear Iraq War fallout.
Obviously, as Susan pointed out, there is absolutely no connection here, except one the BBC has manufactured. Crude examples litter the whole BBC site daily.
They, the tenth rate sociology graduates from tenth rate universities really think they are leading the public by the nose. They think no one notices.
A perfect example of how the BBC manipulates the news to reinforce its own agenda occured on Radio 4’s Six O’Clock News program about a week ago.
The third item was a report of a fairly inconsequental speech by George Bush complete with sound bite immediately followed by news of a suicide bombing in Irag where several died.
The trick was of course in the juxtopositioning of items. The Iraq story might have rightly claimed third place as it was a relatively important story. The Bush sound bite from an uncontroversial speech had on its own little relevance for a UK audience compared with domestic news items that should have taken reporting priority.
By following Bush talking about democracy and ‘The War on Terror’ with the Iraq atrocity the intention was to reinforce the impression that the former was responsible for the latter.
The BBC would never of course have considered mounting the items the other way round as this could have implied that encouraging democracy was an attempt to provide a solution to terrorism.
What a load of Murdochian bull! The BBC has been perfectly fair to weirdo beardo GLazer as far as I can see. Yes I can see why Fox news might wish to make common casue with Glazer to serve the Murdoch agenda – retaining control over TV football in the UK (and elsewhere).
Glazer is a rubbish issue to choose to criticise the BBC on.
David Field
You should not parody yourself with kneejerk hostility to Rupert Murdoch.
Glazer is not in league with Murdoch. Indeed he may well try to gouge much more money from Sky for coverage of Man U matches.
I’ve been disappointed that the BBC hasn’t adequately reflected the views of the majority of UK football fans who are just longing for Glazer to run Man U into the ground.
Even the French can no longer take the bias in their public funded media:
“This is a grotesque situation,” says Jacques Cotta, a well-known TV correspondent for France 2 who is one of the leaders of the campaign for fair coverage in the lead-up to the referendum.
“Publicly-owned media in France are broadcasting sheer propaganda to the public, and this absence of any pluralism or any attempt to represent and discuss the point of view of those who want to vote No to the Treaty is profoundly undemocratic”
The Bebb have no problem reporting this since, I can only guess, they see it as an outside problem but not their own.
Another nice quote:
“In cyberspace, a whole range of opinions – individual or on behalf of trade unions and anti-globalists group such as ATTAC – can be freely accessed, while No campaigners appear much more at ease with the Internet than the traditional party campaigners.”
They got that right alright.
(Link in the second comment above.)
It was no surprise that the recent BBC one day strike was easily best supported by…….. the news department!
‘I’ve been disappointed that the BBC hasn’t adequately reflected the views of the majority of UK football fans who are just longing for Glazer to run Man U into the ground.’
As a Manchester City supporter I agree absolutely with Cockney on this one.
Verity, here is a good example of BBC propagandizing by headline:
US ‘declares hostility’ to Iran
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4236923.stm
The headline implies that there is an actual quote by a US government source “declaring hostility” to Iran.
But there’s no such quote contained in the story. None of the quotes from US government sources used by Reynolds mention the word “hostility”.
The headline instead refers to Paul Reynold’s own description/characterization of various US statements on Iran”
“The United States has not declared hostilities against Iran” (writes Reynolds). “But it has declared hostility.”
The BBC is quoting its own reporter’s opinions in a headline as if the reporter was an actual information source!
Susan –
I agree. It is often in headlines, boxed quotes, story selection, facial expressions, tone of voice, mockery and so on (rather than actual content) that the real opinions of the BBC are revealed – what you might call media body language.
Having taken a good look at many of the examples of pro-left BBC bias suggested both here and elsewhere I agree that bias seems obvious in these cases. Tretament of the War on Terro being a primary case – where many examples cited, not to mention the outcome of Hutton seems to back up the claim that the Beeb pursued an anti-war agenda. Still, when I come accross full length documentaries such as ‘Saddam – A Warning from History’ and ‘The Case Agaianst Saddam’ – two panorama docs that fully back the coalition line, I can’t help wondering whether there isn’t at least some balamce between views evident. Is it a possibility that rather than being ‘institutionally leftist’ the Beeb is the home of many a lefty journalist who may have a poltical axe to grind, but equally gives voice to an oppositional view elsewhere? I am open to the possibility that the balance is weighted hevaily in the favour of the left, is this what you would argue? I don’t claim to know, not having undertaken a thorough analysis of all output in a quantitative measurement of programmes exhibiting bias. So…I see clearly the bias you point to here in many of the examples cited, and at the same time it seems equally as likely that bias of the opposite order is evident in many of the examples cited by those who think the BBC adopts a pro-gov, pro-coalition line. Both sides of this argument can show solid examples of the bias they claim exists. So what does that leave? A simple weighing up of one against the other in terms of time, quantity, extemity of tone?
If indeed the BBC is ‘institutionally leftist’ – as I think Robin Aitken is claiming (who, incidentally certainly should be taken seriously but no doubt has own axe to grind too)do you feel this is a product of the kinds of people attracted to it, ie, their eduactional background etc, or something else…ie the dominanace of left politics in parliament. Be interested to know what you think the source of the agenda is.
Educational background is part of it. Leftist influences in the Universities especially in the humanities and the sort of soft subjects that BBC entrants typically follow.
Hilary, this has been analysed in detail so many times on so many blogs and in so many publication, including the broadsheets, that I cannot believe you have not been exposed to these arguments before now.
If you’re American, you can click on any of the archives at the right of the page, or click on any of the blogs for vivid background. If you are British and have never noticed the blinding bias on the BBC, I don’t expect you stumble forward crying, “I can see! I can see!” anytime soon.
And Susan, we cannot forget our old bête noir, (D)HYS, and the way they formulate the questions. They are always along the lines of : Do you think the BBC’s news coverage is excellent or merely OK? Send us your views!
Today’s little winners: Can teenage pregnancies be reduced? [duh] and Do you welcome ID cards?
Susan and Verity,
On the headlines, I know exactly what you mean. I’ve noticed it, too.
Verity, yes (D)HYS of course. Some future topics to be explored:
“Euroskeptics: Can they be stopped from starting another Holocaust?”
“Sainthood: Is the Vatican right to limit it to Roman Catholics only”?
“Israel: Is the ‘security fence’ causing cancer and birth defects in Palestinians”?
“Muslims: Are they God’s chosen people, or merely very, very special?”
and, of course, the inevitable:
“Suicide bombers: Send us your tributes.”
Susan – That was hysterical! The only thing is, you missed a trick in the Israeli security fence story. The headline should have read: Is the “security fence” causing cancer and birth defects in Palestinian babies?
Shouldn’t that be ‘Israel’s apartheid wall’? ;o)
When the BBC was running their ‘Great Debate Forum’ they had one topic about what folks thought about Israel’s ‘wall’. I wrote the hosts several times to point out that the ‘wall’ part of this structure comprised only 5% of the total, with the rest being a fence, and that they should rephrase their question.
Do you think anybody there cared? I wasn’t surprised, I just wanted to test them.
test2