The Evening Standard reports on the views of BBC commissioning editor for documentaries, Richard Klein. (Hat tip to Jonathan Boyd Hunt. Read his comment here.)
Klein said: “By and large, people who work at the BBC think the same and it’s not the way the audience thinks. That’s not long term sustainable.”
“We pride ourselves on being ‘of the people’, and it’s pathetic…..Channel 4 tends to laugh at people, the BBC ignores them.”
His comments, reported in the corporation’s in-house magazine, come on the back of news earlier this week that a string of BBC executives and journalists have admitted that the corporation is institutionally biased.
And
Klein, who made his views known at an “audience festival” organised by the BBC last week to find out what its viewers think, admitted that the BBC’s liberal internal culture did not match that of the wider British public.
He said: “Most people at the BBC don’t live lives like this, but these are our licence payers. It’s our job to reflect and engage.”
And
Research conducted by the BBC showed that many viewers felt “gagged and alone” and also believed mainstream views were being driven underground.
Another reader reminded me that Nick Cohen had also covered the famous impartiality seminar in an article for the Observer on 7 October, discussed in this post by Laban Tall.
I don’t understand. Can you explain?
I think I see what you mean. I should have made clear I meant “inside the UK”.
Nick Reynolds,
The points about the Impartiality seminar have been addressed by Helen Boaden on the Editors Blog:http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2006/ 10/bias_at_the_bbc.html
Yes, I read her justification and I posted her a comment. Her article attracted almost 300 comments – or at least that’s how many they published. It’s far more comments than any other article received (that I know of) on The Editors blog. Here’s my comment:
Few events showed the BBC’s implacable bias as clearly as the reporting of its journalists on the Israeli-Hezbollah war. From Sykes to Thorpe to Guerin to Bowen there was a single-minded drive to demonise Israel and cuddle up to Hezbollah to the extent of not reporting or photographing anything that Hezbollah would not allow. The exceptions that proved this rule were few and far between. It was the most disgraceful display of bias that I’ve seen from the BBC in quite some time. Bowen was yelling “Israeli war crimes” before the smoke from the bombs had cleared and Guerin even abandoned her South African post to join in the fun.
Now Helen comes along to inform us that the admission of bias was some kind of jovial, hypothetical exercise that has no bearing on actual bias. Well, I recall Helen defending the weepy Barbara Plett when the storm broke over her admission that she had wept at the sight of the terrorist Arafat being airlifted to France for treatment. Helen’s defence went something like this: “She unintentionally gave the impression of over-identifying with Arafat.”
Yes, well it would have been better I suppose for Plett and the BBC if she hadn’t slipped up like that and revealed her bias.
Now we await with interest the first BBC journalist to weep over Ariel Sharon in his coma and thunderously condemn the next Palestinian homicide/suicide bombing.
It wasn’t published. I wonder why.
“Now we await with interest the first BBC journalist to weep over Ariel Sharon in his coma”
Now if the BBC had a sense of humour (which they don’t being hand wringing PC beardies to a man) they’d make damn sure that when Ariel passes on it’s covered by some RADA type weeping hysterically whilst snorting into a large hanky and drumming his fists on the ground.
Yeah, can you imagine. The mere thought of a BBC hack weeping over Ariel Sharon – or any other Israeli for that matter – does have its funny side.