, by Robin Aitken, a well respected former BBC journalist is due out this week.
There is a long extract in today’s Mail on Sunday, What is the loneliest job in Britain? Being a Tory at the BBC, that is well worth reading. To whet your appetite here’s the introduction:
Working at the BBC can be a strange experience. On occasions during my 25 years as a journalist with the corporation it was jaw-dropping.
In 1984 I returned to BBC Scotland after covering the Tory conference in Brighton. The IRA had come close to assassinating Margaret Thatcher with a bomb and the country was in shock.
Apart, that is, from some of my BBC colleagues. “Pity they missed the bitch,” one confided to me.
For three decades I was that rare breed – a Conservative at the BBC. In my time working on programmes such as Today and Breakfast News I couldn’t have formed a cricket team from Tory sympathisers.
As one producer put it, you feel almost part of an ethnic minority.
We all know the cliched critique of the BBC: a nest of Lefties promoting a progressive agenda and political correctness.
Depressingly, that cliche is uncomfortably close to the truth: the BBC is biased,and it is a bias that seriously distorts public debate.
In the past 30 years, ‘Auntie’ has transformed from the staid upholder of the status quo to a champion of progressive causes.
In the process, the ideal at the heart of the corporation – that it should be fair-minded and non-partisan – has all but disappeared.
Do read the rest of the article. Can we trust the BBC? is available from Amazon.co.uk for £9.89 plus delivery (free if you spend a bit over a fiver on something else!).
Another recent book about the BBC that is on my current stack of books is Scrap the BBC! by Richard D. North (no relation to the Richard North at the excellent EU Referendum blog). This is also available from Amazon, cost £15.95 with free delivery, though can be bought at a discount from the publisher, The Social Affairs Unit (omm-sau), for £10 plus £2.75 postage via Amazon Marketplace.
Update: Some interesting comments on the original Daily Mail story, particularly the second and third ones:
Yep, wholeheartedly agree. I don’t look at the BBC website, and avoid their news programmes like the plague.
Steve, New Zealand
My son worked at the BBC until recently – he always felt it wise to keep quiet about the fact that I am a senior Tory activist, as did the daughter of another Tory Association chairman – and neither of them worked on the front line.
Sjm, London, UK
I was a coal miner one of many that voted for Mrs. Thatcher, I never had any regrets. I agree with your take on what has happened to the BBC, it angers me so much. Ideas are more deadly than bombs and the end of this dictatorship of the left in our country will be very bad. When it comes to it these liberals have no guts when it comes to a scrap. Well done to you, this from an ordinary bloke.
Frederick Mee, Rhyl North Wales
Well done to this author. A book like this is vital in the discussion.
Lmo, Notts, England
Thanks for trying to educate us, Cris. While you’re about it, maybe you can enlighten us as to what a through away phrase is.
That’s a new one on me.
HippieP
“A nice little rhyme up above by the way Fran, but unfortunately somewhat way of the mark (in more ways than one – Pooter ‘female’!)”
Glad you enjoyed the very gentle ribbing!
There WAS a Mrs Pooter – how could I know you weren’t she?
hippiepooter:
Andy Tedd suggests that Robin Aitken made up his accusations to make money:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments…6735950/ #330649
This really says all that needs to be said about the BBC.
hippiepooter | 22.02.07 – 6:20 pm | #
The point is that a book that says the BBC is a normal place to work full of normal people would not be very interesting to publishers or the readers of this board. Apologies if I didnt make that obvious enough for you or if the sarcasm was not clearly signposted.
Fran/Bryan/et al – the term ‘institutional bias’ is used when you are referring to bias you are convinced exists but cannot *objectively* prove.
You might also use it so that you can reference eg BBC comedy output as evidence of BBC journalism being anti-Bush.
So, in that case, I think the use of it on these boards is spot on.
I see there is a report on the Guardian on the BBC bias debate last night at the ICA
http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,,2019961,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=4
Did anyone from here go? Was it any good? I would have gone myself if I could have.
Biodegradable,
you make a reasonable point that there was no acknowledgement on the webpage of Barbara Plett’s FOOC piece about Arafat that it was the subject of a partly upheld complaint.
I have discussed this with BBC News. They have now added a link at the bottom to the relevant news story about the upheld complaint.
Nick Reynolds,
“John Reith” and I discussed this here some time ago. He too accepted that something should have been done, and I accepted his point that for “history’s sake” the piece should not be taken offline.
I’m glad to see that this blog can make a difference, and thanks for acknowledging that we are sometimes right.
Martin
I attended the meeting. Enjoyable, if a little tame apart from an Australian girl pressing Peter Horrocks (Editor Newsnight) about the systems the BBC had to ensure that there was roughly the same number of left/right of centre views expressed on the BBC.
Horrocks admitted that there were no such systems in place. Revealing, Huh?
Here’s part of what I sent to Peter Horrocks via his blog this morning.
Not a description, obviously, but you might get a flavour of some of what went on from it.
“I’m one of the people who broadly agrees with Robin Aitken’s point of view, so I’m interested to read that “naturally (you) disagree with his point of view.”
Why ‘naturally’? What is wrong with looking honestly at the issues Aitken raises and asking whether there might not be some truth in them?
Even more revealing was Jean Seaton’s comment that “she doesn’t want the BBC to be balanced, she wants it to be right”. This encapsulates the problem that so many of us perceive with BBC output reflected from comedy, to drama, to News and current affairs output.
Policy makers at the BBC believe that they stand for ‘right’ – without realising that their concept of ‘right’ has a very definite and very identifiable flavour to it.
You yourself gave excellent examples of this as you conceded that the BBC was unaware of the strength of public opinion on immigration and on Europe.
That you recognise the lapse in this instance is good, but you need to examine seriously why the lapse occured in the first place.
Aitken has suggested that it happened because there is a culture of accepted ‘goods’ at the BBC – in which Eurosceptism and concern about high levels of immigration did not appear!
Should you really be dismissing Aitken’s observations so lightly when you yourself have admitted a lapse which could only have arisen within a culture of pre-judged rectitude such as he describes?
I was encouraged to hear that the BBC wishes to engage more seriously with its license fee payers, and I’d suggest that more meetings like last night’s be set up so that interested parties can express support and concern directly to representatives of the BBC.”
Frederick Mee, Rhyl North Wales:
I was a coal miner one of many that voted for Mrs. Thatcher, I never had any regrets.
aahahahahahaahahh nice bit of fun, whoever you are. hahhaahh! god, if i laugh anymore i’m going to throw up!
please, come forward if this is true, justify yourself! explain! some of us who were too young to remember REALLY want to hear your story!
jb
Whoever you are you must be very young, very poorly educated – or maybe both.
I just posted the first review of Aitken’s book on Amazon to get the ball rolling.
A few more good reviews from everybody (or almost everybody) here might help to get the sales up and spread the B-BBC word around.
Just a thought
And how AP does it